Page 53 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“Beck?” he asks, frowning his heart-shaped lips. “Are you all right?”
“Stop talking,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
Those strong eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline. “What?”
“I mean…”
I mean, stop talking, because when you do, I have to look at your lips. Those round, cherry-pink lips. And I’ve never noticed how soft they look before, two plump, juicy fruits that I’d love nothing more than to take a big—
I inhale sharply. Where the hell didthatthought come from?
Manuel is still staring at me, his expression growing more nervous by the second.
Pull yourself together, Eliot, I think desperately.He’s still Manny. He’s still the boy you said goodbye to a month ago, even if he’s grown, like, six inches, and also gained a disturbing amount of muscle. And probably a six-pack. None of that matters, because he’s your best friend. The only person at school you’ve ever been able to stand. The only person who makes your Worries go quiet, even if it’s just for a few minutes at a time.
He is your best. Fucking. Friend.
And I would never jeopardize that friendship for something as trivial as him becoming insanely hot overnight.
Never.
So I don’t. I push my observations about his looks down,deepdown, just as I do with my Worries. I push them down, and I lock them away in a box that I will never, ever allow myself to open. Not for anything. Because nothing could possibly be worth ruining what he and I have.
I curve my mouth into the most convincing sarcastic smile that I can manage. “I mean, stop talking, Valde, because we have a fresh box of Fruit Roll-Ups to eat inside.”
His expression falters. It’s barely a half second of change, but in that moment, I think I see something bizarre.
I think I see disappointment.
It’s gone just as soon as it appeared. He matches my smile, throwing a muscled arm over my shoulders and tugging me toward the front door. “Well, we wouldn’t want those to go to waste, now, would we?”
—
THAT YEAR, WE START DATING.Both of us—Manuel first, then me, like dominoes collapsing toward romance. For him, it’s inevitable.And at the sight of his newfound height and lean, muscular runner’s body, girls practically flock to him. He has his first girlfriend by the end of the first week of school, they’ve broken up by the end of the second, and he has another by the third.
Me, I’ve never had a boyfriend before. Not even one of those preschool boyfriends, the ones you hold hands with one week and break up with the next. But something must have changed about me over the summer, too, because I catch guys checking me out in the hallways on multiple occasions. They never approach me, though. Not the way girls do with Manuel. In class, a few guys start flirting with me, but it always ends after a week or two. I never know why. One day they’re friendly, and the next they give me the cold shoulder when I say hello.
More than once, I check to see if my deodorant is still working.
It’s not surprising that Manuel finds love well before I do. I mean, I’m notugly. I have clear skin, high cheekbones, and a mostly symmetrical face. A mouth that, when it laughs, could swallow a small school bus. I wear my dirty-blond hair long and straight. I almost never put on any makeup but mascara and the occasional zit-covering foundation. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about my looks until this year.
“You look like that folk singer,” Manuel once told me.
“Which one?”
“The one with the long hair and the middle part.”
“That’s, like…every folk singer ever.”
“No, no, no. I’m thinking of just one. She married Johnny Cash.”
“June Carter?”
“Yes. June Carter. You look like June Carter.”
I tried to picture Carter, but all I remembered was Reese Witherspoon playing her inWalk the Line. All I remembered was Carter holding Cash as he shivered and screamed, a decade’s worth of addiction bleeding out onto his bedsheets.
—
