Lindsay's Surprise Crush

“DID YOU HEAR WHAT HAPPENED TO NICK LOPEZ?”

A tingle rippled up and down Lindsay Potter's spine. She stared at her friend Rosie. “No! What? What happened to him?” she asked.

“You'll never believe it,” said Rosie, lowering her voice to a whisper. Then she glanced at someone over Lindsay's shoulder. “Oh! Look! Sasha got her hair cut!”

Lindsay turned, trying not to show her frustration, and smiled and waved at Sasha, who was just stepping off her bus to join the throngs of kids milling around and socializing on the first day of school. She turned back to Rosie, trying to keep her voice even and not sound too anxious. “
What
happened to Nick?”

“Oh! Right. Nick. Well, I heard from Chloe, who heard from Jenn, that he—”

“Move along, girls, the bell's going to ring any
minute,” said Mr. Drakely, the teacher on morning bus duty. He was herding middle schoolers in the direction of the main school entrance. Sure enough, the bell rang a moment later.

“See you fourth period!” called Rosie, hustling up the steps, her new purple backpack bouncing on her back.

Lindsay's thoughts were swirling as she made her way quickly to her locker. She knew just where it was—she'd had the same one last year, her first year of middle school. She spun the dial for her combination and wondered if anyone had managed to fix the sticky door over the summer. One yank told her no one had. Sigh. Another year with a sticking locker door.

Twang!
The locker finally decided to open. She smooshed a few things into it and slammed it closed again, eager to get to homeroom to find out what had happened to Nick.

Nick was her best friend. They'd been babies together. Actually, their friendship was even older than that. Their moms had met in pregnant-lady-exercise class!

How could she not know what major catastrophe had happened to her best friend? True, they hadn't seen each other since June. She'd gone off to visit her cousins in
Cleveland for a week, and when she'd gotten back, he was already gone—first to baseball camp, then soccer camp, then some other kind of jock camp way out in the wilds of Maine, near where his dad lived. And when he finally returned, she had been gone again, first to music camp, and then her family drove her older brother up to college to help him move in.

Maybe Nick had broken his leg or something! She frowned. Maybe whatever had happened to him was the reason he hadn't returned her texts last night. She'd texted him twice, once to tell him they were in the same homeroom, and then again to ask him if he'd heard the rumor that Mr. Bates assigned homework to his homeroom students. And he hadn't responded. Was he in the hospital? In traction? No, he would have been able to text if he were in traction. Maybe both his hands were bandaged with second-degree burns or something? She swallowed uneasily. What a way to start seventh grade.

She walked into Mr. Bates's homeroom. The second bell had not yet rung, so kids were wandering around, chatting, hugging long-lost friends, and complimenting haircuts and new sneakers. She looked around the room
quickly, trying to spot Nick. He wasn't there. Maybe something truly terrible
had
happened to him!

She saw Jenn, who waved her over toward the desks near the window. She also saw some really tall new guy who was surrounded by kids. He seemed to try to catch her eye, but she looked away quickly. She could feel the worry creeping over her.

“Did you see Nick?” a voice whispered from her right side.

She turned. It was Sasha.

“No!” she said. “Where is he?”

Sasha pointed quickly with her finger. A tiny giggle escaped her.

Lindsay followed her gaze. Her brow furrowed. What was Sasha talking about? She seemed to be pointing toward that new kid. He was a head taller than all the other kids in the room. He looked tall enough to be in high school. Was he standing in front of Nick? Lindsay craned her neck to get a better look. The new kid had really dark hair and broad, muscular shoulders. He looked really cute from behind. And then he turned around. He . . .

 . . .
was
Nick.

MR. BATES CLAPPED HIS HANDS TWICE AND TOLD
everyone to take a seat.

In a daze Lindsay allowed Sasha to propel her across the room toward a desk near the window, right next to Jenn.

How
could
that be Nick? Had he grown six inches over the summer? Or even
eight
inches? They'd been about the same height back in June, and it's not like she was
short
. Maybe he'd been an inch or two taller, but not much more. And now he had to be over six feet tall.

She flicked a glance at him and looked away again. He wasn't just tall. He had shoulders. And arm muscles. How could that possibly be?

Jenn elbowed her in the ribs. “Did you see Cassidy Sinclair come in? The girl who was new last year? She's going out with Nick, you know. Or anyway, that's the rumor.”

Lindsay allowed herself to look up again. It seemed to be true. Cassidy was sitting next to Nick, leaning sideways, one elbow on his desk, her glossy, butterscotch-colored hair tumbling over her arm as she said something to Nick and then laughed coyly.

He grinned a little sideways grin, the same grin he'd always had. But now it was on a new face.

Lindsay resisted the impulse to rub her eyes with her hands and gape at him.

“Cassidy practically doesn't even talk to seventh graders,” sniffed Sasha from Lindsay's other side. “Now that she's the megastar of the soccer team.”

“She talks to Rosie,” Jenn pointed out.

“Well, that's because Rosie's on the
soccer
team with her,” said Sasha patiently, as though she were speaking to a small child. “She only talks to seventh-grade
soccer
players. Not mere mortals like us.”

“Rosie told me Cassidy got drafted by some premier team this summer and now she's, like, a soccer goddess or something,” said Jenn.

“A soccer goddess who is going out with Nick Lopez. Can you say ‘stuck-up'?” said Sasha.

Lindsay nodded as if she were closely following what
her friends were saying, but in reality she was still trying to process that the kid across the room from her was Nick.
Her
Nick.

Mr. Bates was writing stuff on the board. Kids passed out study planners and random permission slips. Lindsay took hers from Jenn and passed them on to Sasha. She was still deep in thought. It must be true. He must be going out with Cassidy. Why hadn't he told her? They were practically siblings. They told each other everything. Granted, they hadn't talked or texted in several weeks, but that was because he hadn't been allowed his cell phone or Internet access in Maine, where he'd gone to his last camp.

A new thought occurred to her. Maybe now that they were in seventh grade, it wasn't okay for them to be friends anymore. Maybe he'd grown into a stuck-up person as well as a tall person over the summer. Is
that
why he hadn't answered her texts last night?

A low but audible collective groan rose up in the class, and she focused on what Mr. Bates was saying. He was explaining the All About Me assignment. All the seventh graders had heard about it—the eighth graders had done it the previous year, so most of the seventh graders were
expecting it. There was her name on the board, slotted for a ten-minute oral presentation, complete with pictures, a week from Friday. She groaned too. She checked for Nick's name. There it was—scheduled for the Tuesday after her Friday.

She stole a glance at Nick, and found he was looking straight back at her. She felt her face flush. He pointed to the board and rolled his eyes at her. She felt her face get hotter. Her heart started thumping so loudly, she was afraid the whole class would hear it.

Stop it,
she told herself.
You cannot act like a dork when your best friend so much as looks at you!

After class, she hesitated for a minute outside the door of the classroom, checking her schedule to find the room number of her math class.

“Hey,” said a deep voice above her head.

She looked up. It was Nick.

“Hey!” she said, smiling shyly.

“So what's up with—”

“Can you believe—”

They'd both spoken at the same time, their words tumbling over each other's. Then they both stopped and laughed.

Awkward pause. Lindsay couldn't help noticing that he smelled different. Like pine cones and maybe aftershave? Whatever it was, he smelled good.

“You first,” said Nick with that sideways smile.

“Why didn't you return my texts last night?” she blurted out.

Nick looked confused. Was he pretending he didn't know what she was talking about? Or was he trying to think up a reason besides the truth—that he'd just blown her off? He started to say something when Cassidy appeared at his side.

“Nicky!” she said with a huge smile. “What field are you guys on this afternoon?”

Nicky?
thought Lindsay. The last time she'd called him Nicky—about six years ago—he'd knocked her over and tried to put snow down her back. She had easily overpowered him, being taller than he was back then. She'd run away laughing but had never called him that again. Why did Cassidy Sinclair get to call him that?

“So what were you saying?” she asked, but Nick was smiling at Cassidy.

Oh, forget it,
Lindsay thought. She pivoted around and headed off to her math class. Whatever. Maybe
Nick—
Nicky
—and Cassidy really were going out. Or maybe it was just a soccer thing. He and Cassidy certainly had that obsession in common.

Then she heard his voice booming down the hallway. “Hey, Linz . . . catch ya later!” She turned. He was saying it to
her
. Cassidy was practically glowering at her, with her hands on her hips. Lindsay waved quickly and kept going. Maybe they'd catch up at lunch.

Classes that morning went by in a blur. It was all about passing out textbooks, teachers talking about course expectations, deciding on seating plans. When she walked into English class fourth period, she was happy to see Rosie and grabbed a seat next to her.

“Did you hear Nick Lopez is going to be the starting keeper?” Rosie whispered to her while Ms. Haddam was passing out the syllabus.

“I thought that kid from last year, what's-his-name, is the goalkeeper,” Lindsay whispered back.

“Kyle Grossman? Yeah, he was, but Nick beat Kyle out for the position,” said Rosie. “It helps to be really tall when you play in goal, and Nick is now the tallest on the team. Plus he went to a goalkeeper camp and he's really good. You should see how far he can punt,
too. At practice yesterday he was on fire. It's awesome. And everyone is talking about how hot Nick got over the summer. Is that weird for you? To see a kid you've been friends with your whole life suddenly become the Big Man On Campus?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Lindsay. “It's hard to think of him that way when I remember how he agreed to dress up like a princess with me when we were four.”

Rosie giggled.

Just before lunch, Lindsay hurried into the bathroom and locked herself in a stall so she could pull a plastic tag off the back of her new blue jeans—it had been bugging her all morning. She was about to emerge when she heard a group of girls walk in.

“ . . . Nick Lopez is, like, totally amazing looking,” said some girl whose voice Lindsay didn't recognize.

“I know, right? I heard the eighth-grade girls already voted him the hottest guy in the middle school, and he's only in seventh grade,” said another.

“How does my hair look?” asked a third. “I think I need to defrizz before I walk past his table.”

“I say we go sit at the table next to his,” said a fourth.

In a fit of giggles, they left the bathroom.