The Lonely Hearts Club (3 page)

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I didn't care. This was going to be the start of an amazing year. I opened the door to school, excited about getting a fresh start, minus all the boy craziness.

The smile on my face quickly vanished when the first person I saw was Dan Walker, wearing the letter jacket I'd "borrowed" when we were dating. How fitting that I would be greeted by a reminder of hideous boyfriends past. I was just thankful that Nate was miles away back in Chicago. I turned the corner to get away from Dan and saw Kevin Parker, who was apparently still too cool to give Tracy the time of day.

My frustration grew as I continued to survey my classmates. I'd walked these hallways thousands of times, but it was as if my eyes were open for the first time. All I saw were girls falling over themselves to flirt with guys, couples walking hand in hand, guys being ... well, guys: loud, obnoxious, egotistical. They didn't go to girls; girls came to them.

My bag vibrated and I pulled out my cell phone. I stopped dead in my tracks and Brian Reed bumped into me. "Watch it!" he yelled as his girlfriend, Pam, glared my way. Heaven forbid they weren't able to hold hands 24/7.

I snapped out of my daze. I was convinced there was some sort of mistake. But no -- the phone cruelly confirmed the truth: It was a text from Nate. Of course he would find a way to torture me even though he wasn't around.

Have a good first day.

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What? First, he knew I wasn't talking to him. Second, it had only been two weeks -- did he think I'd forgotten? Third, could he have been any lamer? I deleted the text and shoved my phone back into my bag.

I refused to let Nate Taylor ruin one more day of my life.

"You're in so much trouble, Bloom!" Ryan Bauer was leaning against his locker, arms folded, with a mischievous grin on his face.

Fabulous. I was so not in the mood to deal with his crap.

"What is it?" I asked impatiently as I opened my locker, three doors down from his.

Ryan looked at me, confused. "Um, never mind." He grabbed my class schedule from my stack of books,

Ryan Bauer was one of those guys with a clingy girlfriend whose life revolved around him. He was the biggest cliché at our school: a star athlete with good grades, who just happened to also be gorgeous. He was over six feet tall with a lean build; he had amazing blue eyes; and he was always running his hands through his black, wavy hair. Naturally, he was also one of the biggest flirts in school. I used to go along with it, but this time I didn't have any desire to further feed his ego.

He was a guy. A guy guy. As far as I was concerned, he probably had the dead bodies of small children and puppies hidden in his locker.

I almost didn't recognize him without Diane Monroe hanging on his every move. Ryan and Diane had been dating since forever. Well, technically seventh grade, but in high school

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that was forever. Diane was the classic girlfriend for an over-achiever like Ryan: shiny long blond hair, pale crystal-blue eyes, model-thin frame, and always, always put together -- your standard Cheerleader/Student Council President type.

"Man, it looks like we only have World History together" Ryan was saying to me now. "Todd is in that class, too. That totally sucks."

"Yeah, sucks," I didn't even try to hide the sarcasm in my voice.

"Hiya!" I looked down the hallway and saw none other than Miss Diane Monroe walking toward us with a huge smile on her face. She probably had some sort of sixth sense telling her that Ryan was talking to another girl. I tried not to roll my eyes as I started fishing my books out of my locker. "Happy first day of school!" she said.

I slammed my locker shut and tried to head to Spanish class -- but my path was blocked by Diane, standing in front of me with her smile getting even wider, which freaked me out somewhat.

"Hey, Penny," she said. "How was your summer?" Her eyes were practically sparkling with enthusiasm. It was almost enough to make me gag.

I looked at her in confusion. Why was she talking to me? We hadn't spoken in forever.

"Uh, hi, Diane." I didn't understand why everybody felt the need to bring up summer on the first day of school. It was so

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annoying. Summer was over. There wasn't a need to think about it. Ever again.

"So, notice anything?" Diane started to twirl around. Everything about her screamed perfect -- no big changes there -- so I just shrugged. "Penny." Diane looked stunned. "My outfit -- don't you remember?" I scanned her clothes: fitted denim blazer with a black sequined shirt underneath, pink layered miniskirt, and four-inch pink strappy sandals. I shrugged. Clearly, I didn't remember.

"Penny!" Diane opened up her blazer to reveal that the sequined shirt had a Beatles logo. "Now do you remember? We always wore a Beatles shirt on the first day of school."

My mouth dropped open. Yeah, when we were ten ... and on speaking terms.

"Um, sorry," I said. "Its been a long time."

Diane's shoulders slouched. I wasn't giving her the response she'd been hoping for.

What did she expect? The last time I'd kept our first day of school ritual was in eighth grade. That was the day I'd been late for school because Diane hadn't come by my house to get me like she always did. That was the day my best friend forgot to wear her Beatles shirt. And it turned out to be the day I'd finally realized our friendship was over. We had been best friends for almost ten years. Our mothers had met at a book club when we were in diapers and had decided to make regular play dates for us. Her mother would pick us up from school

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and take us to the park, or we'd go back to my house and play in the backyard.

But none of that had mattered. Nothing else had mattered to Diane once Ryan came into the picture.

Diane had decided she only had room in her life for one person.

It had been between her best friend and her boyfriend.

Guess which one she'd picked.

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chapter six

I GOT AWAY FROM DIANE AND Ryan as quickly as possible, before they could become Diane and Ryan in the middle of the halls. But Diane's name popped back up at lunch,

"So guess who tried to make small talk with me in Biology and French like were friends?" Tracy asked while we walked to the cafeteria after morning classes. "Diane Monroe -- can you believe that? I think she is probably jockeying to get as many votes for Homecoming Queen as possible."

"Yeah, she's acting weird!' I agreed.

"Ugh, I can't stand her."

Tracy had never really been a big fan of Diane's -- not many girls in school were. Maybe it was her perfect appearance or the fact that she excelled in everything.

But that was just petty jealousy.

There was really only one person at McKinley who had a valid reason to hate Diane Monroe.

Me.

If it wasn't bad enough that she was a prime example of A Girl Who Gives Up Her Identity for a Guy, she'd also given me up. I'd always thought those girls who'd dump their friends whenever a guy showed interest in them were pathetic. But

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when I became one of those friends, I'd found out how much it hurt.

Just another example of what guys had done to ruin my life. As if treating me like crap wasn't enough, they stole my friends.

Even though I hated Tracy's list for how much it upset her, I was usually secretly glad when it ended up being a big failure. I never wanted to lose Tracy like I'd lost Diane.

Once we made our way through the long line of confused freshmen who were not yet aware of the cafeteria poison, Tracy and I established ourselves at our lunch table -- the same one as last year. Our friends Morgan and Kara soon followed.

"Hey, guys," Morgan greeted us as she and Kara sat down. "My parents are so riding me about having more extracurricular activities on my college applications. Can you believe that? I have to start worrying about college already. Didn't we. just start junior year?"

We all nodded in agreement. Kara shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with her apple as the rest of us dove into our lunches. It was hard not to notice the fact that she had lost even more weight over the summer -- if that was even possible. She was practically drowning in her gray McKinley High hoodie.

Suddenly, Kara's body was pinned against the table by a short, curly-haired girl "who must've slipped on the floor. Her tray hit Kara's head and her soda spilled on Kara's shoulder.

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"Oh, no!" the girl screamed. "My soda.'" We all looked in shock as she picked up her plastic cup and surveyed her outfit, ignoring Kara completely. I'd never seen tins girl before, so I figured she had to be a freshman. There was no way I would've missed her, even though she couldn't have been more than five feet tall. Everything on her was done to the extreme-acrylic nails meant to look like a French manicure, dark brown hair that had been over-highlighted with blond streaks, eyebrows narrowly plucked, and lips overly penciled in. She was wearing a very mm, denim skirt and a lace tank top in other words, looking like she was going to strut down a catwalk instead of eat lunch at the school cafeteria.

'Are you okay?" Morgan handed Kara some napkins to clean

"Ash-ley!" the girl screamed at her friend. "Did I get anything on my shirt?"

Tracy whipped her head around. "Excuse me -- what about apologizing to my friend who you just soaked?"

The girl looked at Tracy like she was speaking a foreign language.

"What? I spilled my soda."

Tracy shot her the patented Tracy Glare --- eyes squinted into tiny slits, lips pursed, a look of complete disgust. "Yes, you spilled your soda -- on my friend. Do you understand what an apology means?"

The girl opened her mouth in annoyance. She mumbled

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something that I guess was supposed to be an apology (it sounded more like a question: "saw-reh?") and walked away.

Tracy sat back down, "Unbelievable. It's the first day of school and already these freshmen think they own the place. Oh, and, what a shock, look what table they're going to "

There was a long group of tables against the windows that would always hold the jocks and cheerleaders, including the infamous Elite Eight; Ryan Bauer and Diane Monroe, Brian Reed and Pam Schneider, Don Levitz and Audrey Werner, Todd Chesney and one of his many revolving girlfriends.

Tracy and I were among the few girls left in our class who hadn't made it to the table as Todd's girl of the moment. I'd never had a desire to be part of their demented version of Noah's Ark, where you could only survive if you were paired up with a member of the opposite sex. If I had to choose between dating Todd and missing the boat, I was fully prepared to drown.

Both Kara and Morgan had dated Todd. Morgan had dated him in eighth grade, and he would go around and lie to the basketball team about how far he got with her. After he'd dumped her, Morgan had become increasingly popular with the other guys in class, until she'd realized it was because they all thought she was easy.

You would've thought that Kara would've learned from Morgan's mistakes. But no. Todd had managed to disarm all common sense in a girl, Kara had thought it would be

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different, so she'd taken the plunge . . . and found that this girl named Tina Mclntyre was swimming in the same pool at the same time.

I couldn't help but wonder why it was that a guy could find two good girls to date at the same time, when we girls couldn't even find one decent guy.

My face became hot as I thought about how much trouble Todd had caused -- not just with Kara and Morgan, but with practically half our class, I never understood the power he had over girls. He was your typical dumb jock: a big guy with a dirty blond buzz cut and an outfit that always showed off at least two sports team logos.

Thinking about Todd made me realize I wasn't the only girl at McKinley who would benefit from a boy boycott.

Those nasty freshmen girls were all over him now, and he was enjoying every minute of it.

"Guys are jerks," I practically shouted.

A laugh escaped Tracy's throat. "What to the evs -- like you don't spend your time flirting with Ryan and Todd!"

Like I WHAT?

"What are you even talking about?"

"Are you even kidding me? Every time you're around Ryan, you flirt up a storm."

Yeah, well, that was the old Penny. New Penny was done flirting. I'd be happy if I never had to speak to any guys for the rest of the year.

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"The guys in the Elite Eight aren't the problem," Morgan said. "Those girls are so shallow and have zero -- and I mean zero -- things to discuss outside of their boyfriends."

"Well," Kara interjected, "Diane is always nice to me. But Audrey and Pam are a little full of themselves."

Morgan glared at their table. "Please. Sure they're cheerleaders and date the star athletes -- how boring! -- but nobody really likes them. You know that's what's totally ridiculous about all of this -- all those guys who are allegedly the popular ones are despised by most of the students. And anytime they're nice to somebody outside the group, it's always, always because they want something."

"Exactly!" Tracy chimed in. "Today in class, Diane pretended she wanted to be KFFs with me. And she tried the same thing with Pen this morning."

Morgan nodded. "Exactly. It's obvious she wants something."

"Yeah, well, whatever it is," Tracy said, looking over at the Elite Eight table, "she's not going to get it."