The It Girl (15 page)

“Brendan keeps looking at you, Sophie.” Josie smiled. “He's showing off because you're here.”

“No, I don't think so.” Sophie blushed.

“Are you two going out?” I asked carefully.

“Not yet,” Josie answered for her friend. “It's obvious that Brendan likes her though. Do you think you'll see him a lot when you're doing the internship with his mom over spring break? Do you think he visits her when she's on set?”

“I thought the internship was the prize of the raffle?” I looked at them in confusion.

“It is. Josie's being presumptuous that I'll win.”

“Well, you did buy about twenty tickets.” Josie grinned.

“No I did not!” Sophie said, giving Josie a pointed look.

Josie smiled knowingly to herself and went back to watching the boys run around. “I didn't realize your friend Jess was really into photography,” she said a few moments later, looking over at me. “Or does she just like Brendan as well?”

“I do not like Brendan! Shut up, Josie.” Sophie laughed.

“No, she doesn't like Brendan either!” I replied, patting Dog's head as Sophie smiled at me. “She's really into that sort of thing . . . photography and art. An internship would be great for her. I think she'd be really good at it; she's very creative.”

“I'm surprised you haven't entered the raffle, Anna. Being around people like Helena and Marianne. They must have worked with loads of famous photographers, right?” Josie asked.

“Marianne models quite a lot I think. It isn't really my thing though. Especially not fashion photography. I wouldn't have a clue! Not like Jess or you, Sophie.”

“Yeah, it would be cool to be on fashion shoots,” Sophie said, twirling her hair around her finger. “Brendan's mom
does a lot of those. She did one for
Vogue
you know. Do you think you'll ever be in a big magazine like that, Anna?”

“No way! I'd probably always end up on their worst-dressed lists. Luckily, I'm not interesting enough to them.” I laughed. Dog pulled on the leash again and barked as the ball came racing past him.

“You could make them interested in you,” Josie said sweetly. “If you started dressing up and going out more with Marianne. Although Jess would probably get jealous, wouldn't she.”

“Jess? I don't think so.”

“Oh, Anna, of course she would!” Josie chuckled, as though she found my naïvete endearing. “You've been getting a
lot
of attention recently. It's silly that you have such little confidence in yourself. You could be very pretty if you dressed up more.”

“Really? Um, thanks,” I said, taken aback by what sounded like a compliment.

“Absolutely. We could show you how!” Josie continued. “But I don't think Jess likes you hanging out with us, does she? I could tell at lunchtime.”

“Josie, don't be mean.” Sophie sighed. “I'm sure Jess is very happy that Anna is making new friends. It's nice you're hanging out with us, Anna. It's been fun getting to know you.”

“Thanks,” I said uneasily. Josie's comments made me think about Jess and her reaction to the changes that have been going on. She's been very supportive, but Josie did have a point. It was a bit strange that Jess was so reluctant for me to go to the park with a new group of friends.

My uncomfortable thoughts were disturbed by Brendan, who came bounding over to us. “Anna,” he said, breathing heavily from all the running. “Let Dog off the leash.”

“No way.” I laughed. “He would destroy that soccer ball.”

“He must be dying to be let off the leash. Go on,” Brendan encouraged. “It'll be funny.”

I looked at the girls. Sophie shrugged. I reached forward and unclipped Dog's leash. Immediately he sped toward the soccer ball that James was dribbling and pounced on it.

He tumbled across the field, back legs and tail flying forward and over as he rolled along, and then he attempted to gnaw at the ball. But it kept rolling away from him, making him very excited. James and the others laughed and ran toward Dog, kicking the soccer ball from him and happily running away with it while Dog chased each of them in hot pursuit, occasionally managing to steal it back.

After a few minutes, Dog leaped on the ball so aggressively that it hurled away from him and into the net. “GOAL!” James
cried, and everyone ran laughing toward Dog to celebrate.

“You have the most hilarious dog.” Brendan laughed as he doubled over.

“He's pretty ridiculous.” I shook my head, giggling.

“I'm really happy you're here, Anna,” Brendan said, brushing my arm with his hand.

I blushed and watched Brendan run back across the field to join the others in chasing down Dog, who was now just sprinting around the place without a clue what was going on. Brendan tackled Dog and began scratching his stomach happily. I laughed and looked over at Sophie and Josie.

Josie was watching Sophie carefully. Sophie was watching Brendan. Neither of them were laughing.

•  •  •

“I'm just saying,” I explained for the billionth time. “They gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

Connor put his pen down thoughtfully. It was only the two of us in detention that day, and Mr. Kenton had gone to try to work the coffee machine in the teachers' lounge.

“I don't get it.” He shrugged, swinging his feet up so they were resting on the table. “How does a bunch of chickens give someone . . . the heebie-jeebies?”

“Connor, don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. You can't
understand what they're saying when they do all that clucking.”

“I'm not sure I understand any animal.”

“But clucking is a sinister sound. Who knows what they're plotting?”

“What could they possibly be plotting?”

I ignored him. “And they have eyes on the side of their heads! That's just wrong.”

“If they gave you the heebie-jeebies, then why did you go help collect the eggs?”

“I told you. I was seven years old and my parents tricked me into it. It was at one of their friends' farms. I was so afraid of the chickens that I refused to go near them to get the eggs. Dad told me to stop crying and then, to show me they weren't frightening, he went and picked one up to bring toward me. I freaked. Mom threw a bucket of water at him when we were walking back toward the house and that made me laugh. Moms always know what to do.”

“It's pretty cool that your parents get along.” Connor nodded.

“Yeah, I'm clucky.”

He looked at me deadpan.

“Oh come on!” I exclaimed, throwing my head back. “That was such a good one!”

“It's an old one. Done before. Get some new material, Spidey.”

“Well, excuse me, comedy pro; I'll try harder next time.”

Connor chuckled and then got back to sketching. I narrowed my eyes at him. “When are you going to show me this new thing you're working on? You can't keep it a secret forever.”

“I'll tell you what.” He grinned and covered his sketchbook with his arms so I couldn't see. “I'll show you my new drawings when you show me your hip-hop moves.”

I snorted. “Well, that will be never then.”

“Fine with me.”

“Fine.”

I sighed and pretended to be engrossed in my chemistry notes. When I stealthily peeked in his direction, I could see that he was smiling to himself as he quickly moved the pencil down the page.

It was weirdly calming to watch Connor draw. I even found the sound of the pencil scratching around on the paper comforting.

I looked at the first sentence of my chemistry notes, reasoning that it was probably a bit weird to keep staring. Connor was likely to poke me in the eye with his pencil if I kept doing that.

Sodium + chlorine = sodium chloride

2Na + Cl2 = 2NaCl

Hmmm . . . “When are you going to let me see it?!”

“You couldn't even last two minutes. In fact I think that was just under sixty seconds.”

“Fine, fine, I'll get back to my chemistry.”

“Have you got to the second sentence of that page yet?” he asked, still not looking up.

WHAT IS HE DRAWING THAT NEEDS THIS MUCH ATTENTION?!
It was killing me.

“I'm actually on the third paragraph.”

“Don't lie, Spidey. I can tell when you're lying.”

“Can I ask you something?” I put my highlighter down.

“You can't see my new work until it's finished.” He sighed.

“I wasn't going to ask about that,” I said smugly. “I was going to ask why you're in detention all the time. You've never actually told me.”

“You've never actually told me why
you're
in detention all the time.”

“Oh please,” I snorted. “Everyone knows why
I'm
here.”

“I guess yours was a bit more of a talking point.” He smiled. “You can't guess mine?”

“Well, you're here all semester like me, so it must have been bad. Did you set fire to something too?”

He chuckled. “Nah, nothing so exciting. It was actually my drawing that got me in trouble.”

“How?”

“Last semester I skipped a couple of classes when I was working on some of my characters . . . forgot to do homework because I was drawing every evening. Ms. Duke was pretty cool about it. She said if I finished my homework in detention, I could use the rest of the time to get creative.”

“I've never seen you doing homework in detention.”

“Maybe that's because someone is constantly asking me questions and distracting me from it.”

“Please!” I exclaimed. “You are always distracting me. Today is an exception.”

“Don't get touchy. It's nice to talk to someone who likes the same kind of things I do.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “It's nice to put off going home too, sometimes.”

“How's that all going by the way? The It Girl stuff?”

I shrugged. “Better. Marianne and I are actually having real conversations. Sort of. It took a little while though. We're pretty different.”

“How do you mean? Does she have pet chickens?”

“Very funny. You know. Sometimes it's hard to be . . .” I hesitated, feeling embarrassed. I hadn't really spoken to anyone else about this at length before.

Connor put down his sketchbook and looked at me curiously. “Tell me.”

“Well, you know—” I paused. Connor was looking at me intently. I hadn't realized quite how dark his eyes really were. Geez—why was I thinking about that? “Um, it's, well . . . um . . . really
hard
to be around people like that. Not because they're not nice or anything. Marianne seems lovely. Not that I know her that well but, you know, she seems nice. But she is also
Marianne Montaine
. Britain's perfect It Girl.” I shrugged. “And I'm not.”

He leaned back in his chair and picked up his sketchbook and pencil again. I looked at him, slightly confused, as he pushed the pencil back and forth. Had I bored him so much that he was just going to start drawing again?

How embarrassing. I really needed more tips from Jess about how to speak to people in public.

“I disagree.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I think
you're
Britain's perfect It Girl, Spidey,” Connor said seriously.

“You're teasing me again,” I said grumpily. “Stop it. I was telling you personal stuff there.”

“I'm not—I promise!” He laughed and went back to his sketchbook. “Don't worry. You just keep doing what you're doing. You'll get it eventually.”

Right on cue Mr. Kenton came in, grumbling about stupid complicated machinery and how he doesn't understand why they couldn't just have a kettle, coffee cans, and mugs like they used to.

I shifted back in my seat and tried to concentrate on the chemistry equations in front of me, but it was really difficult—and not just because chemistry is so thrilling.

Every time I glanced over at Connor drawing, he had this mischievous grin on him. And it bothered me—I just didn't know why.

THERE IS NOTHING I DREAD
more—except for sports day—than the bus rides at the beginning and end of a school trip.

No one else has to worry. Everyone else gets excited about school trips because you get to miss a day of class and you get to go somewhere new. But, for me, bus rides are merely another cause of humiliation. Like school dances, they naturally highlight the popular and the unpopular. Nothing shouts “You have no one to sit with!” louder. I have always sat on my own or, worse, up front with a teacher.

Today, on the last day before break, our grade was being taken on a field trip out in the country somewhere. That was two of my worst fears combined. Bus rides AND sports.

In theory, now that I had Jess and Danny, it might not have been so bad, but Danny gets horrifically carsick, so he had bagged Jess as his seat buddy for emotional and bag-holding support. She wasn't
delighted with the responsibility for “McPukey,” and it also meant that I was essentially by myself again, but at least I could try to get the seats in the row opposite them. I would have to be quick in the dog-eat-dog pile-on to the bus.

I was so nervous that not even Dog could pull me out of my slump the evening before the outing. Not that he didn't try. At one point he even brought me a frozen leg of lamb. Although amazed that he had managed to retrieve it from the freezer (seriously, HOW?!), I just couldn't feel calm.

“Don't do the activities you don't want to do,” Dad had told me. “Or if you have to, then laugh at yourself. You can't expect to be good at everything.”

Oh thanks so much, Dad. I don't know whether you've noticed, but, thanks to the genes you passed down to me, I happen to be good at NOTHING.