Lindsay's Surprise Crush (7 page)

He didn't seem offended by what she'd said, which, upon reflection, she felt a little bad about. She'd been a bit harsh, calling it dorky music, she had to admit. But the kid had a thick skin. He stood up as the bus's brakes screeched. “This is my stop. See ya.”

THAT EVENING LINDSAY RAN THROUGH HER ALL
About Me presentation several times. She was dreading it. Why did it have to be first thing in the morning? And why did they have to present it? Couldn't they just write a report like they usually did? She was really different from her older brother, who loved to perform—on stage, at a party, wherever. Some people were just like that, but not her.

She flicked through the slides on her computer, frowning.

Several kids had already presented over the course of that week, and their presentations had been really interesting, she had to admit. She had had no idea that Nadia Melek's father had been born in Cairo, or that Nadia spoke Arabic. Before the presentation, Lindsay thought people in Egypt spoke Egyptian.

She had been amazed to learn that Ned Norman had won a robotics competition when he was ten, and that
he'd already placed out of tenth-grade math.

Claudia Flores, the Mexican exchange student, had shown them pictures of the town she was from in Mexico, and each one looked like a postcard. There were candy-colored buildings bathed in sunlight; azure, glimmering beaches; and her village square at night, with sparkly lights and outdoor restaurants, where people milled around all dressed up. Lindsay couldn't imagine leaving a place that pretty and coming to live here. Claudia showed a picture of her with her three brothers. One of her brothers had even played for the Mexican national soccer team. Nick let out a “Whoa, no way!” when Claudia told them that. Lindsay turned off her computer and opened her math book, staring down at the problems and frowning.

The fact that the other kids' presentations had gone so well just made Lindsay feel worse, not better, about her own presentation. Those kids were interesting. They had real stories to tell. Hers was going to be so dull. What was so interesting about her family? A mom who used to be a concert pianist but was now just a mom who taught piano lessons on the side. A dad who was a lawyer, and not the rich kind. A brainiac brother who was better at piano than she was, and also really good-looking and theatrical,
off at college. Big yawn. Claudia's brother played on a
professional
soccer team. Ned Norman was not only a genius, but he also had a really cool family—one of his uncles was a police detective in New York City.

She closed her math book with a sigh. There was no way she could concentrate on it when she was all stressed about the presentation. She'd do her math in study hall tomorrow. She lay back on her bed and stared at the ceiling.

And to make it even more awkward? Even though she edited as many out as she could, a full two-thirds of the pictures in her slide show featured Nick. And Cassidy would be sitting right in front of her, probably snickering her head off, gloating about going out with Nick and thinking how Lame Lindsay thought they were still friends. Things really couldn't get much worse.

Except that they could.

That night she tossed and turned a lot, fretting about her presentation, about Nick, about anything and everything, the way you only do in the middle of the night. At last, toward morning, she managed to doze off. When her alarm went off, she was tired but somehow she also felt a new resolve.

She was not going to worry about what people
thought. She would give her presentation, and everyone could just deal with it.

It was true, wasn't it, that she and Nick had grown up together? That they had been best friends for nearly thirteen years? She had thirteen years' worth of pictures to prove it. And she wasn't going to deny her past. Sure, he'd changed. He was different. But that was now. This was then. What he'd become didn't change who he had once been.

She chose her outfit carefully. She didn't want to look too dressed up, or like she'd fussed too much. It was too warm for her favorite red sweater, and anyway, she'd worn that apple picking. She finally decided on her second-favorite top, a blouse that buttoned up the front and was gathered in a little at the waist, and her second-favorite pair of pants, her raspberry-colored corduroys. She put on some strawberry lip gloss and gathered her hair in a ponytail, then looked in the mirror. It was fine. She looked okay. She was not glamorous like Cassidy, and never would be, but she looked like herself: a sort-of pretty, smart, fringe-popular girl.

At school, she got to homeroom early, but stood outside the door, gathering her courage. This would be no
big deal. She wished she didn't get so nervous speaking in front of a group, but she would handle it just fine.

Cassidy appeared and shimmied sideways past her to get into the room. “Hi, Lindsay,” she said. “You're presenting today, right?”

“Yep.”

“I think it's so cool that you didn't get all dressed up and whatever! I'm totally stressing about what to wear for my presentation, but it's neat that you don't care!” said Cassidy in a sweet voice, and then she disappeared into the classroom.

Before she could react to that, Lindsay's phone vibrated in her pocket. She looked around quickly. Who would be texting her now? She could get in trouble if she got caught using her phone, but this had to be important. She pulled it half out of her pocket and peeked at the screen.

It was from Rosie. Lindsay slipped out her phone and looked at it, hidden behind her note cards.

OMG Linz I am SO SORRY!!!

Lindsay gulped, then quickly texted back.

For what???!!

There followed a long pause. The first bell rang. That meant she had only three minutes or so before the second bell rang. She didn't know what Mr. Bates would do if she was tardy on the day she was supposed to present! At last her phone vibrated again and then once more as Rosie replied to her in a series of texts, one after the other.

I mentioned something to Ava at soccer practice yesterday that you and Nick had hung out and had an apple orchard date last weekend. I guess Ava told Bella, and Bella told EVERYONE because this morning Jenn texted me and said everyone is talking about it.

Before Lindsay could text a reply, another message came through.

And Jenn heard that some kids are saying that you have been telling everyone that you and Nick are going out now. They heard you ask him out in the hallway!!

What????!!!!

Sorry, bell's going to ring. g2g see u at lunch. Sorrryyyyyy!!!

Lindsay shoved her phone back into her pocket and stood there in a daze. The second bell rang, which snapped her out of it. She hurried into class and was in her seat before the bell had stopped ringing.

She looked up, trying to catch Nick's eye, but he would not look in her direction. He had heard the rumors for sure. She darted a glance at Cassidy. Cassidy smiled at her, but Lindsay was sure it was an Evil Smile. Like she was planning to enjoy watching Lindsay crash and burn up there.

Lindsay felt her face get hot all the way up to the roots of her hair. Everyone thought she was this delusional girl who believed she and Nick were boyfriend and girlfriend, and was going around declaring that to be true, even though he was obviously going out with Cassidy. And now she had to get up there and do a presentation that was basically a Me and Nick show? That would confirm every one of the rumors. They'd think she was a stalker with a huge, one-sided crush on Nick.

There was no way she could go through with it. Maybe she could will herself to faint on the spot. She tried but it didn't work. She remained fully conscious.

“Lindsay Potter? Are you all set to present?” called Mr. Bates.

Nick looked up and met her eye. She couldn't read his expression. Was he mad? Upset? Did he feel sorry for her?

She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.

The clock ticked.

Someone coughed.

A chair scraped.

Mr. Bates raised his eyebrows encouragingly.

Cassidy moved her chair a couple of inches closer to Nick's, and crossed her arms expectantly.

That made Lindsay mad.

She'd do it anyway, no matter what rumors were flying around. Cassidy might get to say she and Nick were going out if she wanted to. But she, Lindsay, knew him better than anyone. Practically better than his own mom. People could think what they wanted to think. If people wanted to believe the rumors, there wasn't much she could do about that.

She stood up and walked to the front of the room, feeling her face burning. With shaking hands, she stuck her flash drive into the port on the classroom computer. She looked up quickly. Claudia Flores was smiling at her in a sweet way, as if to say she'd been there and knew how Lindsay must be feeling. That helped. Lindsay smiled back gratefully.

She clicked on her first slide. It was a picture of her mom, hugely pregnant, standing belly to belly with Marissa, also hugely pregnant. The class tittered.

After introducing herself, she started in. “This is my mom. And this is her best friend, Marissa. She and Marissa were pregnant at almost the exact same time. They had babies five days apart. I was born on March fifth. Marissa's baby was born on March tenth.” She paused. “Marissa named her baby Nick.” She paused. “As in, Nick Lopez.”

The class erupted in surprise. Mr. Bates shushed them, but he, too, was looking fascinated. Nick grinned uncomfortably and readjusted his long legs to the other side of his desk.

She clicked to the next slide. “This is me at one day old. That boy is my older brother, Matthew. He was six when I was born.”

“Awwww,” some of the girls said.

Matthew was grinning ear to ear as he held his baby sister in his arms and beamed at the camera. He had a sprinkle of freckles across his nose, and one of his front teeth was missing. Lindsay paused. Matthew was kind of a cute kid, she realized.

The next few slides were pictures of Lindsay's family, her grandparents, a piano recital poster showing her very young-looking mother looking very glamorous in a long black gown. She showed a picture of her dad with a lot more hair on his head, back when he graduated from law school. The kids were polite as she talked, if a bit fidgety.

But then she clicked to the next slide. It was a picture of two babies sitting with their backs to the camera on the piano bench and slamming on the keys, turned partly toward the person taking the picture, giggling. “The fat one is Nick,” said Lindsay. Everyone started laughing. Baby Nick was wearing just a diaper, and he really was chubby, the rolls of fat spilling over the top of his diaper, his pudgy wrists like twisted balloons. “He never got much better at piano than that,” she added. Big laugh from the class.

Across from Lindsay, Nick sat with his long legs
sprawled under his desk. He wore that half smile on his face, as though he didn't mind the good-natured teasing he was getting, although the tips of his ears had gone red. Was she embarrassing him? Oh well.

And then she flicked through picture after picture of her and Nick—dressed for Halloween as a knight and a princess; on the town soccer team in identical uniforms, when Lindsay had been a full two inches taller than Nick (more laughs); and then at her tenth birthday party, when her dad had taken the two of them, plus Matthew, to a professional baseball game. She and Nick were both dressed in head-to-toe Cubs uniforms. And Lindsay was
still
taller than Nick. Which earned him even more friendly teasing from a few of his friends in the homeroom.

Finally she got to the last slide, a picture of herself from the past summer that her mom had snapped with her smartphone. It showed Lindsay standing in front of their car, clutching a pile of piano books to her chest, grinning widely because she'd just gotten her braces off. She clicked off the projector.

She'd prepared her conclusion and practiced it ten times the night before, but now she addressed the class without looking at her cards. She felt the words bubble up
inside her and decided just to say them.

“So now we're in seventh grade,” she said. “I think seventh grade is kind of a crossroads. It's time to grow and change and meet new people. We can't necessarily remain friends with people we've known all our lives, because people change.” She paused, panicked, and looked down at her card. But she couldn't read it, because her eyes had gotten all misted up. So she just ended with a lame-sounding “So, yeah. That's my presentation,” then walked quickly back to her desk and sat down.

Sasha and Jenn both patted her on the arm from either side, whispering that she'd been awesome.

People clapped politely, and Mr. Bates told her “Good job,” and then the bell rang and everyone stood up, shouldering backpacks, shuffling papers, and getting ready to head to the first class.

Lindsay shot up from her desk and was one of the first people out of the classroom when the bell rang. She headed straight for the girls' bathroom and into one of the stalls. Once inside, she burst into tears.

SHE COMPOSED HERSELF QUICKLY, THOUGH.
Lindsay wasn't even sure why she was so emotional. The talk had gone pretty well, considering. Maybe everyone was gossiping about her “Nick fixation,” but there wasn't much she could do about that. She'd found Nick's expressions impossible to read. Was he mad at her? Pleased to be so featured in her presentation? Did he even care? That was probably the worst option, for him to not even care.

She made it to her next class on time and tried to concentrate on school all the way up until lunch. She was dying to see Rosie, to talk to her about everything, about how complicated it all was.

When she got to her locker just before lunch, Rosie was waiting for her. Lindsay took one look at her friend, and her day went from bad to worse. She did not like
the look on Rosie's face. It looked mad, and reproachful, and . . . she couldn't say what else.