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This class was going to be so much fun.

S
eriously. Stella was a straight up bitch. I had only ever had one class with her freshman year; since then we hadn’t had much contact, except for last week when we’d kept colliding. Grace was right, though. She was an asshole.

I was still mad about her “helping” me without asking when I met up with Grace for lunch.

“Whoa, you look like you’re super pissed. What happened?”

“Stella Lewis is now in my English class. For some reason. No idea how that happened, but she said her dad was an English professor so maybe he pulled some strings for her or something. Basically it means that she’s going to be glaring at me and giving me the cold shoulder for the rest of the year,” I said, barely taking a breath. I’d been holding onto that rant since I left class.

“Tell me how you really feel, Ky,” Grace said, slinging her arm around my shoulder.

“She’s just so irritating,” I said as we dropped our backpacks at our table and went to get in line for food.

“Uh huh,” Grace said, prodding me in the back.

“No I didn’t,” I said, looking over my shoulder at her. She just smirked and I had no idea what the hell that meant.

“What is happening right now?” I asked as I handed her a tray.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” she said, fiddling around for the silverware. I tried to prod her about it as we got food and then again when we sat down, but she just pretended to zip her lips and refused to talk to me.

I chatted with Molly instead, but I couldn’t help but look over at Stella’s table. She was sitting with her back to me, her hair draped perfectly over her shoulder. She really was pretty. That kind of easy but polished pretty. And she didn’t have to wear a massive amount of makeup to achieve it. The raw materials were all there. I bet she looked amazing with no makeup on.

Yeah, I needed to put a stop to those thoughts like yesterday. I made myself stop looking at her by reminding myself how annoyed I’d been earlier. I just needed to distract myself with something, so I started going through the steps to create different effects in Photoshop. It worked well enough that by the time lunch was over, I had only looked at Stella a few times.

“S
o, anything new happen today?” my mom asked at dinner and I nearly choked on my asparagus.

“Not really,” I said after I sipped some water to clear my throat. I hadn’t told them about Stella joining my class because it didn’t seem important or relevant.

“You okay?” Dad said, rubbing my back.

“Yup. Just went down the wrong pipe.” I changed the subject and then my mom changed it back to my college applications. She’d been into the guidance office at least three times already, begging for applications. They weren’t due for months, but she wanted me to “get a jump” on them. Mostly this required me writing tedious essays about my high school experiences and the volunteer work I’d done since I was eleven. It had been mandatory, but I’d enjoyed it. Soup kitchens, building houses, walking shelter dogs, that kind of thing. They wanted me to do it for college, and I just thought it was a nice thing to do. My parents had one-track minds.

I escaped to my room as quick as I could and went back to working on the web design for the blogger. I was so close to being done, I was just doing tweaks and testing to make sure that everything was going to work out and that there weren’t any bugs.

I had my headphones on and was blasting Halsey so I didn’t hear it when my mom knocked, and I nearly bit m tongue in half when she tapped me on the shoulder.

“Oh my God, Mom, don’t do that!” I put my hand on my chest and tried to get my heart to beat at a normal level. She handed me a cup of tea.

“I thought you could use some tea. How’s it going?” Um, what? We’d already talked at dinner not that long ago.

“Fineeeee,” I said, drawing the word out.

She smiled, but it was one of those placating smiles that parents used right before they dropped bad news.

“Good, good,” she said, sitting on my bed. Uh oh. That was the second bad sign.

“Mom, is everything okay?” I asked, knowing I was probably going to regret the answer.

“Oh, fine, fine. Just making sure everything’s going to okay. You seemed a bit off at dinner.” Shit. My parents were too observant for their own good.

“No, I’m fine. Just busy. Start of the year, you know?” I laughed a little and cringed at how fake it sounded.

Mom patted my arm and I sipped my tea so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

“Well, you know that you can talk to your father and me about
anything
.” Okay, this was getting weird. They couldn’t possibly know anything about . . . 

“Yeah, I know, Mom,” I said in a voice that was a little too loud. “I have to get back to work, okay?” I said, pointing at my laptop.

“Sure, honey. Sure.” She gave me another smile and put a kiss on the top of my head before leaving and shutting the door quietly behind her.

Um, weird.

P
ractice that night was brutal. Everyone was off, even me. I kept having difficulty with my heel stretch, which was nuts because I’d been doing them fine since I was eleven.

Coach ended everything early so there weren’t any permanent injuries.

“I don’t know what is wrong with all of you, but I hope it’s fixed by next practice. None of those stunts should have been falling. You’ve been doing them for years. Go stretch out and then go home.” She walked away, muttering to herself.

I shared a look with Midori.

“Ouch. It’s like there’s something in the water,” she said, stretching her neck out. I got down and started working on my hips and then sunk down into my spits, right, left and middle.

“You okay?” Midori asked as we gathered our stuff and headed out to the parking lot.

“Yeah, just feel off. Maybe it’s PMS,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t that. She gave me a weird look as we got in the car.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to talk to me about?” I shook my head.

“Okay, okay. Then will you give
me
some advice?”

“Of course, you don’t even have to ask.” She took a breath and proceeded to tell me that she had a huge crush on Nate Klein. I had suspected as much, since I’d caught her staring at him during lunch at least ten times in the past two weeks.

“But I don’t know if I should go for it. I mean, what’s the point? We’re just going to end up dating and then breaking up when we go to separate schools. And I’m not in the mood for just a fling.” I knew what she meant. Not that I had my eye on anyone. I wasn’t dating boys anymore. It sucked and I hated it and I always felt like a liar when I did it. When I first realized that I was attracted to girls, I thought maybe I liked them in addition to boys. And then I’d dated a few boys and realized there was just nothing there for me. But girls? Oh, yeah.

“Well, I guess you have to decide if it’s worth the risk. Maybe you won’t break up at the end of the year. Maybe you’ll stick it out for the long haul. And maybe not.” She laughed a little.

“You’re so practical sometimes.” I guess I was. I never really thought about it much. Sure, romance was fun and wonderful, but it was also work and didn’t just happen by magic. Or at least I didn’t think it did. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d ever really been in love. I’d had feelings for the guys I went out with, but they were only ever friendly. I was just waiting for that one girl to knock me off my feet and then I’d be all in. Just had to get through this last year of high school and then I could go to college and start looking for her.