From the New York Times bestselling author of The Impossible Vastness of Us and the On Dublin Street series comes a heartfelt and beautiful novel about daring to dream and embracing who you are.

I am Comet Caldwell.

And I sort of, kind of, absolutely hate my name.

People expect extraordinary things from a girl named Comet. That she’ll be effortlessly cool and light up a room the way a comet blazes across the sky.

But from the shyness that makes her book-character friends more appealing than real people to the parents whose indifference hurts more than an open wound, Comet has never wanted to be the center of attention. She can’t wait to graduate from her high school in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the only place she ever feels truly herself is on her anonymous poetry blog. But surely that will change once she leaves to attend university somewhere far, far away.

When new student Tobias King blazes in from America and shakes up the school, Comet thinks she’s got the bad boy figured out. Until they’re thrown together for a class assignment and begin to form an unlikely connection. Everything shifts in Comet’s ordinary world. Tobias has a dark past and runs with a tough crowd—and none of them are happy about his interest in Comet. Targeted by bullies and thrown into the spotlight, Comet and Tobias can go their separate ways...or take a risk on something extraordinary.

Also By Samantha Young

The Impossible Vastness of Us

The Fragile Ordinary

The Fragile Ordinary

Samantha Young

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Samantha Young 2018

Samantha Young asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9781474084055

To the bestest friends a girl could ask for.

Here’s to over twenty years of glorious friendship, and many more to come.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Acknowledgments

Extract

About the Publisher

1

Out there she’s just a zero,

Observed. Judged. Promptly erased.

In here she’s always the hero,

Understood. Respected. Embraced.

—CC

Edinburgh, Scotland

I am Comet Caldwell.

And I sort of, kind of, absolutely hate my name.

People expect something extraordinary of a girl called Comet. Someone effortlessly cool and magnetic. Someone who lights up a room and draws attention the way a comet does when it blazes light and fire across the sky.

But a comet, when you break it down, is the opposite.

It’s an icy body that releases gas and dust.

Comets are basically great big dirty snowballs. Or, as some scientists have taken to calling them, snowy dirtballs.

Yup. A snowy dirtball. That makes more sense.

I was not a blaze of light and fire across the sky. I was just your average sixteen-year-old high school girl. An average sixteen-year-old who was spending the last day of summer uploading her latest attempt at poetry to her anonymous blog. The one with the comments turned off so I wouldn’t be subjected to public opinion and ridicule. “The Day We Caught the Train” by Ocean Colour Scene blared out of my laptop as I worked. I had a thing for nineties and early noughties indie music.

My phone vibrated. I ignored it, making sure the typesetting on my latest post was just right. Because that’s what I really cared about. The typesetting. Not the poem. Or that people would stumble across my blog and scorn the words torn from my beating heart.

The buzzing started up again and I sighed in irritation.

Vicki Calling.

As one of my two best friends, Vicki didn’t deserve to be ignored. I put my music on mute and picked up. “I hope you know you’re interrupting Liam and I, but keep it on the down low. Miley doesn’t know about our secret love.”

Vicki gave a huff of laughter. “Babe, I’ll take it to the grave.”

“So what’s up?”

“What’s up is Steph and I have been standing outside your house for the last ten minutes, ringing your doorbell. We can hear the music you dug out of a time capsule and Kyle has peered out the window at us and shooed us away twice.”

Kyle was my dad. Although I thought of him as Dad in my head, I never actually called him Dad. My parents had taught me to call them Carrie and Kyle from the moment I could make vowel sounds.

Of course my dad had waved my friends away. Because answering the door for people who weren’t there to see him would be too much like hard work.

I hopped off my bed, hurried out of my room and down the hall to the front door. As I swung it open, I was blasted by the familiar scent of the salty sea beyond our garden gate along with a rush of cool wind. I hung up my phone.

Vicki eyed my outfit carefully and then decided. “Nice.”

To say I had a quirky taste in fashion was putting it mildly. I was currently wearing a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar underneath a preppy lilac cardigan. Very 1950s. I’d matched it with a turquoise multilayered silk petticoat, and a pair of Irregular Choice Victorian ankle boots. They were lilac and instead of laces they were adorned with turquoise satin ribbons tied into large bows.

Steph stared at Vicki as if to say, Are you serious? and then she gave me a pained smile. “Dude, surely Carrie notices you in that outfit?”

I chose not to be insulted.

Steph was petite with an enviable bra size and a butt that actually filled out her River Island jeans. She wore her long honey-blond hair in carefully arranged loose curls, and her makeup was always perfect. Fashion-wise she mostly wore on-trend clothes from the more expensive stores in the shopping center but dipped into high-end designer when her lawyer dad felt like spoiling her.

Right now she was wearing skinny jeans with purposely placed rips in them, knee-high brown leather boots with a low heel and a Ralph Lauren bomber jacket.

Unlike Steph, Vicki, the wannabe fashion designer, appreciated my attempt to be different. Although to be fair it wasn’t really an attempt on my part. Or even an attempt to get Carrie to notice me—I didn’t think it was anyway. I just wore whatever jumped out at me from my wardrobe that day.

Plus, 195 days out of the year, I had to wear a school uniform. The days when I didn’t, you bet your ass I was going to have fun with my outfits.

Wearing an oversize thin cream sweater with an angled hem, paired with bright green leggings with skulls on them, Vicki was more adventurous, like me. But she was naturally cool. This was a girl who could pull off the name Comet. She wore loosely laced black leather biker boots, large gold hoops in her ears and a bright green suede crossover body purse. Her tawny skin was flawless, so Vicki didn’t wear as much makeup as Steph, whose pale white skin tended to blemish. At that moment, like usual, Vicki was wearing only a few coats of mascara on the thick lashes of her hazel eyes, and a touch of gloss on her full lips. Her dark brown afro danced above her shoulders in the wind as she turned to raise an eyebrow at Steph.

“What?” Steph shrugged.

“Filter,” Vicki reminded her.

“It’s fine.” I waved off Steph’s comment. We all knew Carrie wouldn’t notice me if I ran through the house with my petticoat on fire.

“We didn’t come here to pass judgment on your cool as shit outfit,” Vicki emphasized for Steph’s benefit, but our friend just rolled her eyes. “It’s the last day of summer, Comet. We’re going to a party. You’re coming with us.”

“A party?” I asked. The thought of going to a party to hang out with a bunch of our classmates who would either ignore me or make fun of me, when I could finish posting on my blog, then curl up with the book I was in the middle of reading, made me want to slam the door in their faces and pretend I’d never answered my phone in the first place.

As if she saw the thought on my face, Steph shook her head. “Uh. No. Dude, you have to come to the party.”

“Steph, stop saying dude. You aren’t American. And this isn’t the 1990s.” Although I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off as a sixteen-year-old in the 1990s. There was the music, of course. Oasis, hello! Need I go on? And then of course there was the lack of social media. I think there might have been instant chat back then. But if instant chat was a tiny school playground, social media was a city made up entirely of school playgrounds. There was plenty of laughter, games and messing around...but there was also that dark corner where the quiet kid got pushed around by the bully.

“Speaking of American—that’s why you need to come to the party. Cute American boy is going to be there.”

“And who’s that when he’s at home?”

“We so need to plug you in,” Steph tutted as she tapped her phone screen, alluding to the fact that I avoided most social media platforms. After a few slides of her finger over the screen she held it up to me.

It was a blurry photo of some girl with her arm around some guy.

“What am I looking at?”

“Cute American boy,” Steph replied in her duh voice.

I huffed, “You can tell he’s cute from that picture?”

“Uh no. You miss everything. Everyone who has met him is talking about how cute he is on WhatsApp. When are you going to download it?”

A niggle of worry pierced at me but I just shrugged. “I’ll get around to it.”

“You say that all the time.”

The truth was I didn’t want to download WhatsApp and join our class group. The thought of my phone binging every second with a notification made my toes curl in my shoes with irritation. And yes. I was aware I was an anomaly among my kind.

“Anyway,” Vicki said, taking pity on me. “You’re coming, right?”

I really, really just wanted to get back to my book. The heroine had a crush on this boy at this new boarding school she’d been sent to, and I was at this part where it looked like he might like her back. “Whose party is it?”

My friends shared a look.

“Well?”

Steph sighed dramatically. “It’s Heather McAlister’s...but what she did was so long ago, Comet. You really need to get over it.”

“Her words.” Vicki pointed to Steph. “Not mine.”

Hurt pierced me. While Heather no longer bothered me, having made the decision sometime ago to pretend I didn’t exist, there was a time when she was my mortal enemy. She’d taken a dislike to me in our first year at high school for whatever reason and had tortured me for a year. Hid my uniform after P.E. class so I had no choice but to finish the rest of the school day in my gym clothes. Told Stevie Macdonald that I had a crush on him, prompting him to come up to me in the hall to let me down. He told me he was flattered but I wasn’t really his type.

What he really meant was I was a geek and he was already having sex with girls older than he was.

Not that I’d had a crush on Stevie.

And let’s not forget the time the teacher asked us in English what our favorite book was and Heather said, in front of everyone, that my favorite book must be Matilda because I could relate to having parents who hated me.

I’d suspected at the time that Steph had let something slip about my relationship with my parents when she’d attended Heather’s thirteenth birthday sleepover. Vicki, like a true friend, had turned down the invitation, but Steph had said she thought that would be rude.

She didn’t think it would be rude. She was just afraid of not being popular.

I was mad at her but I hadn’t said anything. Vicki said enough for the both of us, Steph stopped talking to us for a few weeks and then after a while we were all friends again. Like nothing had happened.

But Steph’s attitude now brought it all flooding back. “If she’d called you STD Steph to your face and behind your back for an entire year, would you have forgiven her by now?”

My friend’s cornflower blue eyes widened. “Did she call me that?”

“Probably,” Vicki muttered.

“I’m making a point. The girl chanted ‘Comet, Comet, she makes me want to vomit’ at me every day for weeks.”

Steph exhaled. “Look, Com, I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I know she was mean to you. But she hasn’t bothered you in years. Come to the party.”

If it was Heather’s party, that meant the guests would be every kid at our school who had no idea who I was. Meaning the ones who were involved in extracurricular stuff like...sports. Their social adeptness, their ability to walk into a room and just start chatting and laughing with complete strangers, was foreign to me. I was socially awkward and pretty certain no one was interested in hearing anything I had to say anyway.

Why would I put myself in an uncomfortable position, go to a party that would make me insecure and miserable, when I could be reading a book that made me feel giddy with anticipation?

“I can’t.” I shrugged, stepping back into my hallway. “I have to have a shower and get stuff ready for school tomorrow.”

Vicki frowned at me while Steph threw up her hands. “What was the point?”

I flinched but shrugged, trying to appear as apologetic as possible.

“C’mon.” Steph grabbed Vicki’s hand. “It’s freezing standing here. Let’s go.”

Vicki gave me a half-hearted wave and one last look I couldn’t decipher, but hoped wasn’t irritation. I watched my friends stride off down my garden path. They stepped outside, closed the gate and walked away along the esplanade.

The Studio, our house, sat right on Portobello Beach. Which meant I just had to walk out of my garden and across the esplanade, and I stepped right onto the beach. My bedroom, a guest bedroom, the kitchen, sitting room and a bathroom were situated on the ground floor of the white-painted brick midcentury building we called home. Upstairs, taking full advantage of the sea views, was Carrie’s art studio and my dad’s office. My mother was famous among the art crowd as a successful and generously compensated mixed media artist. My dad was a writer. He’d won a few literary awards for his second novel, The Street, a commercially successful book that had even been made into a British television mini-drama. The money from that novel paid for our house in this sought-after location. Although he did well with his books, my dad had never achieved the same heights with his subsequent novels, and I think he kind of enjoyed playing the part of the frustrated artist.

Most people thought it must be pretty cool to have semifamous artist parents.

It wasn’t.

At least not my parents.

The most thought my parents have ever given me was in choosing my name. For two weeks I was Baby Caldwell while they struggled to find something unique they could agree upon. Then they gave me a name I couldn’t possibly live up to and proceeded to treat me with offhand kindness, disinterest and sometimes outright negligence. I was an accident, and not a happy one. My parents were too much in love with their art and each other to have any love left to spare for me.

That’s why my friends were important to me. But so was self-preservation.

I shut the front door and locked it, then leaned back against it as a sudden headache flared behind my eyes. This wasn’t the first time I’d refused to hang out with Vicki and Steph.

When we were kids we were all quiet, geeky, book-types, but when we got to high school they started to change. Steph decided she wanted to be an actress and even won a part in a local advert for a soft drink company. She came out of her shell, landing parts in the school plays, and as the years turned her from an average blonde girl into a stunning teenager, she got so much attention from boys that she became boy-crazy.

Vicki seemed happy to spread her wings, too, socially. And where Steph’s bubbly loudness got her what she wanted, Vicki’s laid-back, effortless cool made people flit to her. She was the kind of girl everyone wanted to be friends with. She was my BFF, and seeing her friendship circle grow was hard for me.

I would admit to being a little jealous.

Now I was worried, as well.

If I kept refusing to hang out with them if it involved hanging with other people, would Vicki and Steph one day give up on me?

The thought caused angry butterflies to take flight in my stomach and tears to prick my eyes. Some days I wished I could be more like my friends. But if it meant pretending to be something I wasn’t, exhausting myself trying to please people who didn’t really care about getting to know the real me, then I chose lonerhood. I chose books.

I slammed into my bedroom, not caring if the noise jerked my dad out of whatever sentence he was taking a painstaking amount of time over, and launched myself onto my bed. Lying flat on my stomach, I stared across my large bedroom at the shelves that lined two walls. Books, books and more books. Just the sight of all the shapes and sizes, all the colors, all the textures, stretching up on bookshelves that were fitted to the ceiling, made me content. No matter what was happening in my life, in my room, I had over eight hundred worlds to disappear into, and over a thousand others on the e-reader on my nightstand. Worlds that were better than this one. Worlds where there were people I understood, and who if they knew me would understand me. Worlds where the boys weren’t like the boys in this one. They actually cared. They were brave and loyal and swoonworthy. They didn’t burp your name in your ear as they passed you in the hall or bump into you a million times a day because they “didn’t see you standing there.”

I stretched across the bed, picked up the paperback I was reading and flipped it open.

No way was some cruddy party hosted by Heather McBitcherson better than the world I was holding in my hands.

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

2

If only you studied me

As hard as you study that canvas

It would set me free.

Instead bit by bit I vanish.

—CC

My dad wandered into the kitchen as I stood at the counter eating a bowl of cereal. As he strolled toward the coffee machine with his hair in disarray and his pajamas crumpled, he stared at me curiously.

He reached for a mug in the cupboard above the coffee machine. “You’re in uniform.”

I looked down at myself in misery. I loved clothes. I loved color and shape and throwing things together that other people might not think worked but that felt fun and adventurous to me.

I did not like the black blazer I was wearing over a scratchy white shirt, or the black pleated skirt with its frumpy knee-length hemline. I’d tucked in the waist, lifting the hem to just above my knees, so it didn’t look as ridiculous. The blazer had gold piping and a gold crest over the left breast pocket. Matching it was the black tie with the small gold crest beneath its knot. My only concession to fun was my black Irregular Choice shoes. They had a midheel, closed just below my ankle and laced up. The fun was in the bright gold stars that made up the eyelets for the laces.

“When did you start back at school?” Dad turned to me once his coffee was brewing. He crossed his arms, then one ankle over the other, and peered at me over the top of his glasses.

“Today.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think I’d seen you in uniform before now. Jesus, that was a quick summer, eh?” He turned back to his coffee and scratched his neck. “Did you do anything fun with your friends?” I barely made the question out through his giant yawn.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Aye?” He gave me a quick smile. “Good.” Grabbing his coffee, he moved past me and patted me on the head. “When did you get so tall?” he asked as he stopped to pour himself out some cereal.

I held in an exasperated sigh. “I’ve been the same height for the last year.”

“Really?” Dad seemed confused. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.” I was one of the tallest girls in my class.

“Well, you don’t get that height from Carrie.” He grinned.

I stared at my dad. All six foot three of him. My mum was five foot three. At five foot nine I certainly hadn’t gotten my height from her. Or anything really. In fact, if I didn’t already know my parents hadn’t meant to have a child at all, I’d have suspected I was adopted.

To prove my point, Carrie shuffled into the kitchen, her lids lowered over her eyes so far that they were almost shut. Paint streaked one of her cheeks and her hair. While she was petite, compact, with olive skin, and had light brown hair and dark brown eyes, I was tall, slender, ivory-skinned with pale blond hair and light blue eyes. I’d inherited my dad’s eyes, but otherwise we looked nothing alike. He was nowhere near as pale as I was and had dark brown hair. Apparently, I’d skipped back a generation, taking after my Swedish paternal grandmother in looks.

Carrie aimed for Dad, and he had just enough forethought to dump his bowl out of the way before she collapsed against his chest. “How long have I been in there?” she mumbled.

Dad chuckled and wrapped an arm around her, kissing her on the top of the head.

Painful envy stabbed my chest at the display of affection and I looked away so I didn’t have to see it.

“A few days, love.”

“Really?”

I sometimes wondered if Carrie really did get so lost in the art she was creating that the days just slipped away from her. Or if she only pretended to lose days because she thought it made her sound even more artistic. Dad was the only one of us allowed in her studio, and he’d creep in quietly to leave her food and beverages throughout the day.

“Wow.” Carrie pulled out of his arms and went straight for the coffee machine. She didn’t even look at me. “Diana better bloody love it, then. It’s been a while since I did the hermit thing.”

“Are you happy with it?” Dad asked.

Carrie gave him a sleepy grin over her shoulder. “You know I’m never a hundred percent happy with it. But it’ll do.”

Meaning she thought it was bloody fantastic. Her best work ever!

I grabbed up my book bag. “I better get to school.”

“Oh, Comet.” Carrie flicked a look at me as if she’d just realized I was there. “How is school going?”

The question was asked so she’d feel like she was attempting to care about her child’s life. “It’s the first day of term.”

She shot an amused oops look at Dad. “Really?”

Dad nodded. “Comet’s starting fifth year. Can you believe it?”

If it wasn’t already apparent, Dad was the more involved parent of the two. If you could call his vague interest in my life involved.

“Fifth year?” She yawned. “What age is that again?”

In that moment I wanted to run upstairs to her studio, grab a paintbrush, and smear I’M SIXTEEN, DIPSHIT! all over her newly finished painting.

“It’s sixteen, love,” Dad said gently.

“No.” Carrie frowned at me. “Did you have a sweet sixteenth?”

Wow. Okay. She was in fine form this morning. “Yeah.” I grabbed my house keys and headed for the exit. “I spent it with a biker called Vicious and we made sweet sixteenth love all night.”

I heard my dad’s laughter and Carrie’s confused murmurings as I wandered down the narrow hall to the front door. Outside, the cool morning breeze from the sea blew strands of hair free from my ponytail and I sauntered out of the garden gate onto the esplanade.

“Not saying hello this morning, Comet?” a familiar voice called out.

I stopped and looked over my shoulder into our neighbor’s garden. Only a shallow wall separated our paved, no-fuss outside space from Mrs. Cruickshank’s well-tended front garden with its rows of flowerbeds and tiny stretch of lawn.

Mrs. Cruickshank was on her knees by one of her flowerbeds, wearing her usual uniform of baggy jeans, holey knitted sweater and garden gloves. Her long gray hair was twisted up on top of her head in an old-fashioned bun that I was certain wasn’t even in fashion when she was my age an unknown number of years ago. Thick, bright turquoise glasses were perched on her nose as she peered at me in amusement.

“Lost in your thoughts again, Comet?”

“Sorry, Mrs. Cruickshank. First day of school. I’m daydreaming,” I gave her an apologetic smile.

“First day, eh? Ready for it? Those imbeciles you call parents feed you properly so you have brain energy for the classroom?” she asked, frowning.

I stifled a smile. Not much got past Mrs. Cruickshank. While she would speak to me all day if I had the time, she barely even managed a smile for Kyle and Carrie. Not that they really noticed.

Instead of answering her question, I deflected, “How are the daylilies coming along?” Over the years, despite my disinterest in gardening, I’d learned much from my neighbor about the plants that could survive in a coastal garden. Mrs. Cruickshank had been having trouble with her pink-and-yellow-gold daylilies the last we spoke. It puzzled her, because it was apparently a plant that thrived in most places, and she’d never had problems with them before.

“I replanted them. These new ones are coming along fine. But it’s my lantanas that are looking well, don’t you think?” She nodded to the bright orange, cheery flowers at the bottom of the garden with a smile akin to that of a proud parent.

“They look wonderful, Mrs. Cruickshank,” I spoke truthfully.

She turned that smile on me. “Have a cracking day at school, Comet. I’m baking today. Be sure to nip around before tea and I’ll give you some of whatever I cook up. Just for you, mind.”

This time I did smile. My neighbor was a fantastic baker and generous, too. However, she wasn’t that sold on me sharing her treats with my dad and Carrie. I reckoned it was to do with the fact that Mrs. Cruickshank and her husband hadn’t been able to have children. She’d told me about it a few years ago, and it was the only time I’d seen her get emotional.

“Thanks.” I waved. “See you later.” I walked away, down the esplanade.

The beach always calmed me. The best thing my dad ever did was buy this house. Between the beach and my bedroom, I had a sanctuary here. I could spend longs hour on the sand, watching people pass by as I wrote my poetry. Houses, flats, bed-and-breakfasts, the Swim Centre, the Espy—a pub and my favorite place to get breakfast—sat along the sand-covered concrete esplanade.

I left early for school so I could stroll along it and enjoy the pleasant breeze of a mid-August morning. The sun was low in the sky, casting light over the sea so that it sparkled and danced as I walked along beside it in companionable silence. The salt air made me feel more at home than my own mother did.

What was new though, right?

There was no point in getting upset about it, because in five months I’d be seventeen, which meant in less than two years I’d leave for a university an ocean away. Upon which I had no intention of ever returning to my parents’ home.

It was a twenty-minute walk to school, and the closer I got to it, the more I fell into step with pupils wearing the same uniform. It was here I became truly anonymous, the bright glitter of gold from my shoes the only spot of difference between me and the girls in front of me.

Suddenly I was at the school gates, staring beyond them at Blair Lochrie High School. It was built a year before my first year at the school, and there were strict rules and regulations about litter and maintenance to keep it looking its best. It was a modern building, all white and gray and glass.

As I stepped inside, I couldn’t wait for the day I’d step out of it for the last time.

* * *

“I’m studying at yours after school,” Vicki said without preamble as she sat down beside me in Spanish, our first class of the day.

“You are?”

She nodded vehemently, the tight corkscrews of hair several inches above her forehead swaying with the movement. “Otherwise, I’ll get locked into watching Steph audition for the school show.”

“They’re auditioning already?” I frowned. “It’s the first day back at school.”

“Surprise auditions. They want raw performances or something. They’re doing Chicago this year.”

“Isn’t some of that a little...I don’t know...adult?”

She shrugged.

“So why are you studying with me and not giving Steph moral support?”

Vicki rolled her hazel eyes. “Babe, you know I love her, but after last night I need a little break.”

This was not unusual for either of us. We did love Steph. Truly. But sometimes when she got lost in her own little world—which was a nice way of saying she became incredibly self-absorbed—it was hard to stay patient with her. The best thing to do, we’d discovered, was to discreetly take a break from her. “What happened at the party?”

Vicki glanced around to make sure no one was listening and then leaned into me. “The guy, the American guy, he wasn’t into her. He was already snogging Heather when we got there. So Steph went after Scott Lister.”

My eyes grew round. “Heather’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Ugh, aye,” Vicki huffed. “Not only did she dump my ass the second we got to that party, but she got into a huge fight with Heather, and then blamed me for not stopping her snogging the face off Lister.”

“I don’t get it. Why was Heather mad at Steph for kissing Scott if she was kissing the new guy?”

“This is Heather we’re talking about. Who knows what’s going on in that twisted mind?”

“And Steph took the whole thing out on you?”

“Yup. She apologized, but I’m still kind of pissed off about it. Totally ruined the last night of summer.” She nudged me with her elbow and grinned. “I bet you had a better night with whatever book you were reading.”

I blushed. My friend knew me so well. Most of the time, like now, it felt as if Vicki just accepted who I was, but there were days that she seemed a little distant and annoyed, like last night, and I worried my hermit-like qualities irritated her.

“Hola, quinto año! Quién esta listo para comenzar español avanzado?” Our teacher Señora Cooper strolled into the room. She shot Vicki a smile my friend easily returned. Because Vicki’s dad was a maths teacher at our school, a lot of the other teachers knew Vicki really well and liked her.

Although, I couldn’t think of anyone who didn’t like Vicki. Maybe Heather. But I didn’t think Heather truly liked any other girl. They were either competition or beneath her notice. Nothing in between.

Señora Cooper’s classroom door opened again, and my breath caught in my throat at the sight of the boy striding through it.

What the ever loving...

It was like he’d walked straight out of the pages of the book I had been reading last night!

Tall—very tall—with an athletic physique, the boy looked around the classroom and then at the teacher. “Spanish, right?”

I froze at his American accent.

This was cute American boy?

Okay.

Cute was entirely the wrong descriptor.

He had close-cropped dark blond hair, and his tan skin suggested he’d spent his life somewhere with lots of sun up until now. Light gray eyes scanned the room as we all looked at him, and he stood there seeming comfortable with the attention, like it didn’t bother him at all. I’d be blushing and squirming if a room filled with strangers were staring at me.

“Como tu te llamas?” Señora Cooper asked with a raised eyebrow.

He gave her a lopsided smile, all white teeth and boyish charm, and this little unexpected thrill fluttered in my belly. A feeling I got only when reading about swoonworthy book boyfriends.

I swallowed hard, not sure I was enjoying this new development.

“Tobias King. But you can just call me King.”

Tobias King.

Crap.

He even had a book-boyfriend name.

I groaned inwardly as Señora Cooper told him to take a seat after checking her register to make sure he belonged in her class. As he passed me without noticing me, I took in his face and wondered how it was possible for a teenage boy to look like that. Sure we had cute guys at our school, but none of them looked like that. Like...a teen Viking!

He had a strong, chiseled jaw, a slightly too-wide nose—an imperfection that only added to his attractiveness—and a smile that could charm you out of your last Irn-Bru. It occurred to me, as he angled his long body into a seat beside Daniel Pilton, that he looked familiar. He shared more than a passing similarity to a certain star of a dystopian book-to-film franchise I had pinned to my bedroom wall.

I hunched over, hating this sudden awareness of the stranger.

“They don’t grow them like that here,” Vicki whispered, amusement in her words.

I smirked and shot her a look, but I must have been blushing because her eyes widened. Vicki being Vicki, she didn’t push the subject, and Señora Cooper started teaching.

It was difficult to concentrate on that first class, because my imagination ran away from me. I could feel his presence, burning like a fire behind me, and suddenly he was the hero in a dystopian novel and I was the heroine. I was smart and sassy, he was brooding and taciturn. Whilst I didn’t need help to take down a regime that subjugated women, he was my protector all the same. He taught me to fight harder and I taught him to live harder. After one particular battle we had to hide out alone, share sleeping quarters, and things got—

When Vicki nudged me hard, I jerked out of my daydream and was stunned to realize class was over and the bell was ringing for second period. Blushing, I fumbled to put my books in my bag.

“Are you okay?” she asked me, studying me too intently.

“I’m fine,” I nodded.

“Hmm.” She threaded her arm through my elbow and led me out of class. “You get weirder every day, Comet. You know I love that about you, right?”

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

3

I lost my focus today.

He was the cause.

No ordinary Monday.

’Til it turned out it was.

—CC

Quite without meaning to I found myself thinking about our new student for the rest of the morning and hoping to find him in my other classes. To my disappointment, I didn’t see him in my next class, or during morning break, or in my third class.

Come fourth period I was sitting in Higher English at a desk by myself because Steph had gotten to class before me and bagged the seat beside Vicki. Vicki gave me an apologetic look as I surveyed the room. It was either take the empty desk at the front of the class or take a seat next to Heather. Even if she hadn’t been glaring at me with a clear piss off expression, I would have taken the dreaded front table and sat without a partner.

The teacher, Mr. Stone, was my favorite. I’d had him in first year and again last year. When I saw his name on my curriculum this year, I was so happy. He was one of the few teachers invested in my work, and whatever I wrote, he seemed to get it. He was always encouraging me, and even though I was pretty sure I’d die of mortification if anyone else actually commented on my work, I didn’t mind when he did. It never felt like a criticism, only an effort to make me a better writer. Still, I hadn’t had the courage to show him my poetry. I didn’t have the courage to show anyone my poetry.

He looked up from reading the register, probably counting to see if we were all there, and blinked in recognition when he saw me sitting up front. Mr. Stone smiled. “Comet, it’s nice to have you back in my class.”

I smiled in return and nodded—I hoped in a way that expressed I was glad to be there, too.

“It looks like we’re missing one.” Mr. Stone’s gaze swept around the room. “Tobias King?”

“Oh, he’s new, Mr. Stone,” Heather piped up. “He’s probably just trying to find us. I saved him a seat.”

At that moment, Tobias sauntered casually into the room and my breath caught again.

Seriously. What was that?

That weird fluttering in my belly was back. I’d heard Vicki talk about how Jordan Hall, a college boy on her street, gave her butterflies every time she saw him. And Steph had butterflies over a new boy every three months.

Was this...was this that elusive crush?

Don’t get me wrong; I’d had crushes before, but usually on actors and characters in books. They gave me a giddy, girlish ache in my chest. This was different.

This was nausea-inducing fluttering and an all-encompassing feeling of awareness.

Dammit.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to me until college, where I’d miraculously develop some social skills, or find a like-minded guy with an equal lack of social skills.

“Tobias King, I presume,” Mr. Stone greeted him. “I’m Mr. Stone. You get a pass on being late today because you’re new, Mr. King, but tomorrow I expect you to be here on time.”

“Sure thing.”

“Tobias, over here.” Heather waved at him.

I suddenly remembered that Vicki said Tobias and Heather had snogged the faces off each other at her party the night before. Feeling deflated didn’t stop me from studying his face when he saw her. Indecision and wariness seemed to flitter over his features before he cleared his expression and walked over to slide into the seat next to her.

“Right, now that we’re all here, let’s get started.” Mr. Stone walked over to the pile of books on his desk. “This year we’ll be covering one play, one novel and a number of pieces of poetry. First term—” he lifted up one of the books to face us “—we’re studying Hamlet for the critical essay part of this year’s exam.”

There were several groans around the room, and I rolled my eyes. Who groaned at Shakespeare? Uncouth, uncultured, uncivilized barbarians, that’s whom.

Mr. Stone started handing out a book each to us, and I took mine with a smile.

“Have you read it, Comet?”

I nodded. I’d painted the words To Thine Own Self Be True above my headboard in my bedroom.

He smiled back at me and then continued on, handing out the play to everyone.

I flipped open the copy, hoping the lure of Shakespeare would be enough to distract me from the beautiful boy behind me. This was English class. The only place at school I felt at home.

Tobias King wasn’t going to fluster me or divert my attention from Mr. Stone and a class I loved.

* * *

Considering how disturbed I was by the thought of having a crush on a boy at this school, I was almost grateful for what happened next.

It was after lunch and I was heading to history. The wide corridors were filled with students milling around or walking to their next class. As usual I was slipping through the crowds anonymously when I saw him coming toward me.

My heart started racing in my chest.

He really had the most gorgeous smile.

And then I realized who he was smiling at.

Stevie Macdonald. And with Stevie were his crew of borderline delinquents.

Huh.

That surprised me. To be honest it surprised me Stevie was still in school. I’d have bet everything I owned that he would have dropped out as soon as he turned sixteen. His friends, too. But nope. There they were.

What surprised me about Tobias hanging out with Stevie was the fact that Tobias had to have achieved good grades at his old school to have been accepted into my Spanish and English classes. Stevie and his crowd weren’t exactly high achievers.

But there they were, messing around like they’d known each other forever.

As Tobias neared me, my breath once again seized in my throat.

And then it was expelled with force when Stevie shoved Tobias and he clobbered me, nearly knocking me off my feet. Thankfully the new guy had fast reflexes. Almost as soon as he hit me, he turned and grabbed my arms to steady me.

“Sorry,” he apologized, and for a moment our eyes met.

My skin burned beneath my shirt where his fingers gripped me, and I found myself entranced by the flecks of gold and blue in his eyes. They were more blue-gray than light gray like I’d thought.

The heat in my skin traveled all over me, and I knew my face was probably on fire.

Damn my pale skin!

Just like that, he let me go and turned to laugh at whatever Stevie had said. I stumbled a little, turning in shock to watch him stride away as if he’d never even touched me, talked to me.

Tobias King was not book boyfriend material! A book boyfriend did not knock the heroine quite literally off her feet and then walk away once they made eye contact.

“Nice,” I muttered, infuriated.

It had been silly of me to think my intense reaction to Tobias King would be returned. He’d been here a day and was already the most popular boy in school.

This was the wake up I needed to shake me out of my stupid insta-crush.

After all I was just Comet Caldwell.

Great big bloody snowy dirtball.

* * *

“I was thinking we could ‘study’ at yours instead,” I air-quoted as I fell into stride with Vicki.

The end of day bell had rung five minutes ago, and I’d caught sight of my friend weaving through the crowds heading out of school.

For some weird reason, Vicki looked unsure. “Why?”

I knew the girls liked hanging out at my place because my parents never bothered us and because I was right on the beach. But I was feeling unexplainably prickly toward Carrie today and really didn’t want to breathe the same air as her. “This morning Carrie either pretended to or genuinely forgot that I’m sixteen years old and have been for a while.”

“What?” Vicki wrinkled her nose. “Babe, she gave you a birthday card. With money in it.”

“No, apparently, Kyle gave me a card with money in it and signed Carrie’s name.”

“That’s rubbish. I’m sorry.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. “Okay. Come to mine, then. I’m sure Mum won’t mind, because today was her day off.”

Vicki’s mum was a general practitioner at the local doctor’s surgery but ever since Vicki’s younger brother, Ben, was born she’d worked part-time. Ben had been a surprise—a happy one—arriving nine years after his big sister.

“Well, if you’re sure.” I wasn’t going to argue.

Vicki’s house was on the way to mine, about a ten-minute walk from school and just a few blocks from the main street in Portobello.

Portobello, or Porty as it was known locally, sat on the east coast of Edinburgh, about a twenty-five-minute car journey from the city center. It used to be a beach resort with fun fairs and rides, but now it was more about volleyball, kayaking, sunbathing, swimming, dog walking and the arts. Years ago, as part of an art event, a steel tidal octopus sculpture had been installed on the beach. During low tide he was completely visible, but during high tide you could see only a tentacle or two.

We had independent stores, cafés and restaurants in Porty, and a Victorian swimming pool with an original Aerotone and Turkish baths. It was a village with identity and personality, and it had a laid-back vibe with a socioeconomic mix of low-to-mid income and mid-to-high income families. There were people who spoke with a more anglicized Scottish accent, like me and my friends, and those like Stevie who spoke in thick Scots. It was a mishmash, and for the most part I loved that.

But that came with problems. I knew some kids who were bullied for having less money than other kids, and kids like me who were bullied for being posh and a swot—a geek, a brainiac, a nerd. Our school had its “good” kids, its overachievers, and then it had the “bad” kids, the disrespectful kids, the troublemakers and the underachievers. Overall, I didn’t interact much with the “bad” kids, as I wasn’t part of their circles, and I liked living in Porty.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have every intention of getting as far away from here as possible when I went to university. And I meant far. My dream university was in the US of A. The University of Virginia. It was really well-known for writing, for its literary magazines, poetry workshops and for its Pulitzer Prize–winning graduates. If that wasn’t enough, the awesome Tina Fey graduated from there! Yes. If it took my blood, sweat and tears, I would become a proud alumna of UVA and no one, not anyone, was going to get in my way of seeing that dream come true.

“You’re quiet,” Vicki mused as we strolled in silence toward her parents’ house.

I shrugged. “Just first day blues, I guess.”

“Or...” She nudged me and grinned. “I saw you checking out the new guy.”

I blushed crimson and shook my head frantically.

“Fine.” She turned stone-faced. “Keep your secrets.”

Frustration gnawed at me. Vicki took it personally when I kept things to myself, but it wasn’t personal. I just wasn’t a sharer. Not wanting to hurt her feelings, however, I sighed. “Fine. He’s good-looking. That’s a fact. Nothing more.”

“Really?” She beamed at me. “Because I thought I saw your tongue roll out of your mouth when he walked into Spanish.”

“Yeah, well, he ruined any illusions I might have had over his crush-worthiness when he nearly knocked me off my feet in the school corridor and then walked away.”

“He didn’t apologize?”

“Well, yeah, but it was like—” I grabbed her arms to demonstrate. “Sorry,” I said indifferently, let her go and strode away quickly. Stopping I looked back at her. “I may as well have been a traffic cone.”

She burst out laughing at my dry tone and hurried to thread her arm through my elbow. “I bet that’s not true. You’re really pretty, Comet. It’s just this uniform does nothing for you. For any of us.”

“Well you always look amazing.”

“He needs to see you as the real Comet.” She squeezed my arm, grinning at me. “He won’t be able to take his eyes off you then.”

It was sweet of her to try to reassure me, but I was over it. “It doesn’t matter. Did you see who he’s hanging out with?” I wrinkled my nose in disdain. “Stevie Macdonald and those idiots. Ugh. No thanks.”

“Stevie’s not so bad,” Vicki disagreed.

“He’s disrespectful to teachers,” I argued.

“God forbid.”

I frowned at her sarcasm. “Your dad is a teacher, Vicki. It should bug you, too.”

“It would bug me if Stevie was disrespectful to my dad or to any of the teachers that give a crap, but I’ve only seen him wind up the ones that clearly are just there to pick up a payslip.”

Realizing we disagreed entirely on the matter, I stayed silent.

She laughed. “Not all of us are afraid of authority figures, babe.”

I wasn’t afraid of authority figures. I just... I respected the adults in our lives who made time to talk to us, teach us things.

God... “I’m such a geek,” I groaned.

Vicki started to shake with laughter, setting off my own, and we giggled all the way to her house.

When we stepped inside the whitewashed bungalow, Mrs. Brown kissed her daughter on the cheek in greeting and then turned to me. “It’s lovely to see you, Comet.” She engulfed me in a hug, one that I soaked up.

I could hear sounds of cartoons coming from the living room, and I could smell something amazing cooking in the kitchen.

Mrs. Brown let me go and smiled at me, taking me in. “You get prettier every day, Comet.”

I blushed furiously, unused to such compliments, and she reminded me of Vicki as she laughed at my reaction. Vicki was a gorgeous blend of her mixed heritage. Where her mum was Caucasian with light hazel eyes and golden-brown hair, her dad was British Black Caribbean with dark umber skin, dark brown eyes and dark hair he always wore close-shaven in a fade.

“Can Comet stay for dinner, Mum?” Vicki asked, and I was surprised how tentative she sounded.

It had never been a problem before for me to stay over for dinner.

Frowning, I watched uneasiness flicker in Mrs. Brown’s eyes before she nodded. “Of course.”

“Will Dad be home?”

Again, Vicki’s tone surprised me.

“He hasn’t said otherwise.”

They shared a look I didn’t understand, and the sudden tension between them made me feel like an outsider. “I really should probably just go home.”

“Nonsense.” Mrs. Brown smiled brightly at me. Falsely. “But you girls must be hungry now. Let me make you a snack,” Mrs. Brown said, striding down the hall toward the kitchen in the new extended part of the house. As she passed the living room, she raised her voice. “Ben, volume.”

Almost immediately the noise from the television lowered.

I wouldn’t want to disobey Mrs. Brown either. Although she was always kind to me, she had that matter-of-fact, authoritative personality that seemed so prevalent in GPs.

We followed her, not having to respond to her offer because she knew from experience that we weren’t going to turn down a snack. I shot a questioning look at Vicki as we walked, but she didn’t meet my gaze. Hmm.

I waved at Ben, who looked up from the couch as we passed and waved back so enthusiastically that I paused. Vicki’s little brother was quite possibly the most adorable human being in the world, and the only child I’d met thus far in my short life to make me wish my parents had given me a sibling.

“Hey, Comet.”

“Hey. How was school?”

He made a face. “It was okay.” And I assumed my opener failed to pass muster because that was all the attention I was going to get. He returned to eating a banana and watching his cartoons.

I found Vicki and Mrs. Brown in their large, modern kitchen. Whereas our kitchen was the same ugly 1980s-looking disaster that had been in the house for decades, Mr. and Mrs. Brown had bothered to update theirs, and it was all clean lines, white and shiny.

The smell of pot roast made it the most inviting space despite its starkness.

Already in the middle of putting a banana, a sandwich and a cookie on a small plate each for us, Mrs. Brown smiled up at me. “Vicki said you had a particularly good day at school today. What happened?”

I shot a dirty look at my friend and then quickly covered it with a bland smile. “Mr. Stone is teaching us Hamlet in English. Vicki knows how much I love Shakespeare.”

Vicki snorted. “Right. Shakespeare.”

Her mother shook her head, smirking. “I know I’m missing something here, but from the look on Comet’s face she doesn’t want to talk about it so I’m going to let it go.” She slid a plate over to me and then handed the other to her daughter, leaning in to cuddle her as she did so. “Stop teasing your friend about boys.”

While I blushed again at her perceptiveness, Vicki huffed. “It could be about something else.”

“Not at sixteen.”

“Know-it-all.” She rolled her eyes as she moved to the fridge and grabbed us each a bottle of water. “Thanks, Mum.”

“Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Brown.” I took my water from my friend so she could take hold of her own plate and then I let her lead the way to her bedroom at the front of the house. Ben’s was just behind hers, and her parents’ bedroom was in the new extension near the kitchen.

Vicki’s room, much like my own, had barely any wall space left uncovered. Film posters, posters of her favorite rock bands and high fashion magazine spreads were pinned to every available space. She had two dresser mannequins, one wearing a half-finished corset-top, the other an almost completed steampunk-inspired dress. A bookshelf beside them held bolts of fabric, pins, scissors, papers and trays filled with beading, sequins and ribbons. Attached to the wall behind the mannequins was a corkboard and pinned to the corkboard were her designs.

My friend was wicked talented.

There were different-colored candles everywhere, and a bed with Moroccan-inspired jewel-tone, multicolored bedding with a ton of Indian silk cushions scattered over it. I kicked off my shoes and got comfy on her bed as she settled at her computer desk and immediately bit into her sandwich.

“Vicki?”

“Hmm?”

“Is everything okay?” My skin heated as I worried I was crossing a line by asking. “Between your mum and dad?”

Her gaze dropped to the floor and she swallowed. Hard. Expelling a weighted breath, she shrugged. “They argued all summer.”

Not knowing what it must be like to have parents that argued since mine rarely did, I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

Her gaze flew to mine, and I saw the anguish she’d been hiding. “A lot of it is about money. And about me.”

“About you?”

“I’m costing them a lot.” She gestured to the area of her bedroom dedicated to her design work. “None of that comes cheap. Plus, Dad doesn’t think it’s smart to just apply to London College of Fashion and the Rhode Island School of Design. And he thinks applying to Parsons is pointless.”

It was true, Parsons School of Design in New York was one of the best design schools in the world and incredibly hard to get into, but if anyone could, it would be Vicki. I told her so.

She looked saddened rather than encouraged. “Dad wants me to apply for a business degree at St. Andrews.”

I made a face, my stomach twisting with the thought. “No. No way. Vicki, you have to pursue fashion. You’re amazing at it.”

“Mum agrees.” She gave me a tired smile. “Which is why she and Dad have been arguing a lot. Dad thinks it’s all a waste of money.”

“I don’t get it. Your dad was always so supportive.”

“Well, now reality is setting in and he realizes it’s no longer a hobby.” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’ll work out. I’m sorry about Steph in English. I was hoping we’d sit together.”

I moved with the abrupt change in subject, although I was concerned Vicki had been dealing with this all summer and hadn’t told me. And probably wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t felt the tension in the house. Did Steph know? It bothered me to think Vicki had confided in Steph and not me.

Forcing the worry away I just nodded. “You seemed cool with her at lunch.” Even though she’d made our ears bleed talking about the upcoming impromptu audition and complaining that it was unfair for the teachers to have them give unpolished, unpracticed performances. It was only the first round of auditions, however, and she’d get a chance to practice for the second round if she made it.

Neither Vicki nor I had gotten a word in edgewise, but Vicki hadn’t seemed that concerned. Not that she was really a drama-llama anyway.

“Life is too short to get annoyed at Steph when she gets like that.” She shrugged. “Still, I could have used the break from her in class. Plus, I hate that you’re sitting on your own.”

“You know that if I couldn’t sit with you or Steph, I’d prefer to be on my own anyway.”

She nodded but stared in an assessing way.

“What?”

“I just... It would be great if you’d come out of your shell this year. People have no idea how cool you are.”

I chuckled. “Because I’m not. I can barely string two words together around new people and none around boys. Once upon a time you used to be the same.”

My friend gave me a sympathetic look. “I grew up, Comet,” she replied gently.

I flinched. “And I haven’t?”

“Just...just try harder. I think you still think you’re that little kid who couldn’t speak to her parents, much less anyone else. You’re not her anymore. Try. Please. For me?”

I nodded, the ham and cheese sandwich Mrs. Brown had made me suddenly tasting like dust in my mouth. The thought of trying to be more social made me uneasy. I didn’t want to be put in situations that made me sweat under my arms and flush strawberry red like a loser.

I wanted to feel safe and comfortable.

And I didn’t see what was so terrible about that.

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

4

How do you conquer each moment,

When you have no one on your side?

Make peace with the idea that life,

Is just one continuous high tide?

—CC

Walking toward form class for daily registration that morning, I saw Steph coming toward me and braced myself. I worried for a second that she knew Vicki and I had been avoiding her last night, but the nearer she got to me the bigger her smile grew. When we met outside the classroom door she threw her arms around me and hugged me.

Used to Steph’s impromptu displays of affection I laughed and hugged her back.

“That was for yesterday.” She pulled out of the hug but huddled against me as we walked into our form room together. “I know I just went on and on about myself. I got so worked up about the audition. Anyway, everything okay with you?”

And this was why it was difficult to stay mad at Steph. I smiled at her as we sat down at a table together. “Everything is fine with me. How did the audition go?”

“Wait, wait.” Vicki suddenly appeared, sliding into a seat at the table. “I want to hear.”

“I already apologized to Vicki on Snapchat last night,” Steph said, which explained Vicki’s renewed enthusiasm for supporting her.

“The audition?” Vicki said.

Steph beamed. “It went great. All those hours spent singing ‘All That Jazz’ in the shower paid off. They asked me back for another audition next week.”

I squeezed her arm. “Steph, that’s great. Well done.”

“Thanks. Ahh! I so want to play Roxie.”

“You’d be the perfect Roxie,” Vicki insisted.

“Not if I have anything to do with it.”

In unison, we turned toward the new voice, and residual anger from long ago burned in my throat. Heather. It was hard for me not to resent her, and I wasn’t sure I cared if that made me unforgiving.

Vicki leaned back in her seat, one eyebrow raised. As cool and laid-back as my friend was, she could also emanate serious pissed-off vibes. Like now. “And what does that mean?”

Heather smirked. “I made it to the second round auditions, too.” Her gaze zeroed in on Steph, who was staring up at her with a mixture of guilt and irritation in her eyes. “And I’m going after the part of Roxie.”

This was a surprise, because Heather had been director’s assistant on the school shows for the past few years. She loved bossing people around. She had not, however, played a part before.

Why now?

Perhaps because Steph had snogged Heather’s ex-boyfriend at her party and she was evil and vindictive?

We were all thinking it.

Vicki snorted. “Good luck with that, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

“Why?” Heather’s gaze locked with Steph’s. “Because you’re so special? Aye, right.”

“Take a walk, McAlister,” Vicki huffed. “No one likes a drama-llama.”

My onetime nemesis gave Vicki a narrow-eyed gaze but strutted across the room, hips swaying, hair swinging, and took a seat with her friends.

“I hate the way she walks.” Steph glowered. “Where does she think she is? At a bloody runway show?”

There was a tiny, tiny part of me that was a little gleeful about all this. It was wrong. It was small. I knew that. But Steph had been disloyal once in order to play nice with Heather McAlister, and now she was getting a taste of why it was futile to suck up to a girl like Heather. She enjoyed causing problems and misery for people.

“What a cow.” Steph turned to look at us, her blue eyes round with shock. “Was she always such a cow?”

Vicki and I exchanged a look. “Yes.”

“God. You kiss someone’s ex-boyfriend and you might as well have murdered him, the way she’s acting.”

I caught sight of movement in my peripheral and turned as Andy Walsh, a video-game-and-rugby-obsessed boy in our class who somehow managed to cross social cliques with admirable proficiency, leaned his chair on its back legs toward us. He balanced it perfectly as he whispered to us, “It’s not about Lister. She’s just pissed off because King messed around with her at her party but doesn’t want to date her.”

Tobias.

“So she’s taking it out on me?” Steph whined.

Andy shrugged. “She’s taking it out on everyone. And it’s not like King made her any promises.”

I noted the hero worship in Andy’s eyes and just stopped myself from rolling mine.

Vicki grinned at him. “Seriously? That would make him the first guy to not run around panting at Heather’s arse.”

Andy grinned back. “The guy is a god among men.”

I groaned but Vicki chuckled. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely starting to like him more.”

Once Andy had turned his attention from us, Steph leaned toward me. “I know why she’s being a bitch to me, but now I also know why she was a bitch to you, Comet. At the party I asked her friend Liza why Heather has such a problem with you.”

Not really sure I wanted to know why Heather had a problem with me, I stiffened.

Vicki, however, demanded, “Tell us, then.”

“Well...” Steph’s eyes lit with the power of knowing gossip we didn’t. “Apparently, Heather’s life isn’t as perfect as she wants people to think. Her parents are on her constantly to be the best. At everything. And she was. She was top of her class at her primary school. Then first year hits and you, Comet, scored top marks in our English and history projects in the first term. Liza said her parents gave her such a hard time about it, and that’s why she came after you. That’s why she can’t stand you. Because you showed her up to her parents.”

Despite Heather’s cruelty, I felt more than a flicker of compassion. While my parents didn’t show me enough attention, Heather’s sounded overbearing. It didn’t soothe the humiliation I’d felt when she was bullying me, but at least now I understood that her lashing out had nothing to do with me personally.

It would appear to be a pattern of Heather McAlister: taking her crap out on the wrong people.

After registration, we dispersed for our classes, Heather throwing Steph another sneering, challenging look before she left. I shook my head, patting my friend’s shoulder in comfort. “Ignore her. She can’t even play the part of the villain originally.”

“Eh?”

“Well...” I gestured to where Heather had disappeared down the corridor. “It’s like she’s watched every American mean-girl movie and combined and adopted the roles as her own.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s still trying to mess with me.” Steph worried her lip.

Vicki threw an arm around Steph’s neck. “Like we’d ever let that happen.”

Our friend gave us a grateful but still tremulous smile, and we parted ways for our different classes.

* * *

Every day in English Mr. Stone told us he would assign a part from Hamlet to a student and we’d read through a scene. The thought made me nervous, because I was soft-spoken and hated having to try to project my voice to be heard in the room. As I waited for everyone to filter in to class at seventh period, the nervousness I felt dissipated as Tobias walked into the room with Andy. Andy murmured something to him, and they both looked at Heather. Andy punched Tobias playfully on the arm, almost in a good luck, man kind of way, and Tobias walked toward Heather wearing a blank expression on his face.

Mr. Stone had told us yesterday that the seats we had chosen were now our assigned seats for the rest of the year. Tobias was stuck.

I tried to appear inconspicuous as I followed his movement, peeking at him from behind strands of my hair. Heather glared at him as he approached, and then shifted her seat and her stuff away from him like he had a disease.

He didn’t acknowledge her, instead taking his seat and leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head like he hadn’t a care in the world.

Soon class was in full progress and I was happy to escape unscathed as Mr. Stone asked Steph to read the queen’s part.

There was a moment of awkwardness when he asked Tobias King to read for Hamlet.

“No thanks,” Tobias replied, creating a hush of shock in the room.

Mr. Stone crossed his arms and stared impassively at the newcomer. “No thanks?”

“Yeah.”

I looked over my shoulder, because everyone was looking at him and it was nice to be able to stare without anyone watching me. Tobias had his chair tipped on its hind legs with his arms over the back of it, all casual insolence.

“I wasn’t really giving you an option, Mr. King. Participation is a part of the grade in this class.”

Tobias shrugged, staring at my favorite teacher. “Then I guess you’ll need to mark me down because I’m not reading the part of some pansy-assed Danish dude that wants to screw his mom and can’t get over the fact dear old daddy is dead.”

There was sniggering around the room but not from me. I turned away from the boy I’d thought was beautiful when I’d first seen him. Funny how the more I heard from him, the less attractive he became to me.

Mr. Stone scowled at Tobias. “You don’t have to read, Tobias, but you do have to show me some respect. Watch your language and get your chair on the ground. Now.”

Mr. Stone’s authority rang around the room, and I peeked back over my shoulder to see Tobias do as he was bid. However, he didn’t wipe that annoyingly bored look off his face.

It was almost comical how quickly Michael Gates, a guy in the year above us, agreed to read the part of Hamlet after that.

Mr. Stone relaxed, clearly refusing to allow one kid to ruin the class, and we continued.

“‘Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, and let thine eye...’” I wanted to look over my shoulder and grin at Steph as she read, because she was reading the queen’s part in a fake English accent that was causing a buildup of giggles in the back of my throat.

Michael read as Hamlet with absolutely no inflection or enthusiasm. Poor William must have been rolling in his grave to hear it.

“Stop there, Michael, thank you,” Mr. Stone said. “What do you think is being said here between the queen and Hamlet? Comet?”

I raised my head from the words on the page, feeling everyone stare at me.

Mr. Stone gazed at me encouragingly. “What do you think, Comet?”

It wasn’t that I wasn’t used to answering questions in class. We’d had to do class talks, where we either did a presentation to a group of peers or to the entire class. I’d hated every minute of those, but I’d gotten through them. I guess I was nervous because there was a person in our class who had never heard me talk, and I was passionate about this stuff, while he seemed to think it was all a joke.

Come on, Comet. Like you should care what that Neanderthal thinks of you?

“I think,” I started, “the queen is questioning Hamlet’s continued grief over losing his father. When she says, ‘cast thy nighted color off’ she means his mourning clothes and his mood. And then she asks why, when everyone knows of the inevitability of death, should Hamlet’s father’s death be so unique. It’s almost like she’s questioning whether Hamlet’s grief is real or for show, and Hamlet replies that yes, from his outward behavior it might be easy to think he’s just acting a part, but he insists that his grief is deeper than mere appearance.”

Mr. Stone stared at me a moment and the class seemed to wait with bated breath along with me. A slow smile curled his mouth and he nodded. “Excellent, Comet.”

I flushed, relaxing in my chair, as he asked Michael, who was reading the king’s part, to continue.

Pleased with myself, relieved I really did understand the flowery, beautifully overcomplicated prose of Shakespeare, I settled back in my seat to follow the rest of the scene. But that burning sensation I had on my neck when the class was staring at me, waiting for me to answer, hadn’t gone away. In fact, it felt like my neck was burning hotter.

Giving in to temptation, I glanced over my shoulder, searching for the cause, and froze, breath and all, when I did.

Tobias King was looking at me.

Really looking at me.

Our gazes held for a moment, and my cheeks grew warm as my heart picked up pace.

Tobias frowned and jerked his gaze away.

Flushing harder, I turned back fully in my seat and willed my heart rate to slow.

So what if Tobias King had finally noticed me. He was a bad boy. He was arrogant, cocky, hanging out with guys who were going nowhere in life, and he definitely shouldn’t be in my Higher classes with me. I was not attracted to this boy, and I should not feel a thrill of anticipation, a flutter of butterflies, just because we’d made eye contact.

No.

Nope.

Definitely NOT.

I was Comet Caldwell. I might be many things, and not many other things, but I was above having a crush on a boy who disdained Shakespeare.

* * *

“Uh, Comet.” Mr. Stone approached me after the bell rang.

I looked up from putting my books and jotter away. “Yes?”

My teacher leaned a hand on the desk and lowered his voice as the rest of the class filtered out for their last class of the day. “I was wondering if perhaps your dad might be interested in coming in next term to talk with the class about writing skills.”

An instant flush of irritation rushed through me and then worse...

Self-doubt.

Had Mr. Stone paid attention to me only because of who my dad was?

“I just found out.” He smiled, looking sheepish. “I never put K. L. Caldwell and your dad together. It was Mrs. Bennett that told me yesterday.”

Mrs. Bennett was my third-year English teacher. She’d also tried to get me to ask dad to come speak with the class.

“Um...” I stood up, pulling the strap of my heavy bag onto my shoulder. “Did Mrs. Bennett tell you my dad doesn’t do school talks?”

The light of anticipation died in his eyes as he straightened. “She mentioned it. I was just hoping he might have changed his mind.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stone. I really am. But it’s not his thing. He asked me not to ask him again. He doesn’t like being put in the position of having to say no to me,” I lied.

“Oh, then don’t, please,” Mr. Stone reassured me. “It was just a thought. You better get to your next class.”

As I was leaving he called my name again. I looked back and he gave me an encouraging smile. “You did well today.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stone.” I smiled back and left his classroom feeling reassured that my favorite teacher liked me as a pupil and not as K. L. Caldwell’s kid. But the lie I’d told him, and not the thing about my dad not enjoying saying no to me, sat heavy on my chest, refusing to shift.

I hated lying.

Yet, I hated the idea of my dad coming into our class and talking about writing and books with us. There was no way I’d let the rest of the world see the strange dynamic between me and my father. Plus, he’d love the whole thing. Educating young minds. Passing on literary wisdom. I didn’t want him to have that.

I didn’t want him to have any part of the one place in my life right now, outside of my beach and bedroom, that fit me.

* * *

“Comet!”

Startled by the interruption, I pulled out my earphones and twisted my neck to find my dad standing behind the bench I was sitting on. The sea wind blew his hair off his forehead and his T-shirt batted around his body like a flag.

I looked out at the sea and frowned to see how rough it was getting out there. The clouds above us were growing steadily dark.

“Carrie made her celebratory chicken curry. Thought you might want some.”

Although when I’d gotten home from school I’d eaten two muffins that Mrs. Cruickshank had baked, I wasn’t going to say no to Carrie’s chicken curry. Grabbing my stuff, I hopped off the bench and followed my dad over the esplanade and into the garden.

He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You’re not even wearing a jacket. It’s cold out here, Comet.”

Goose bumps prickled my skin, but I hadn’t even noticed, I’d been so lost in writing. “Yeah.”

After dumping my notebooks and pens in my bedroom I found my parents sitting at the island in the kitchen eating the only thing Carrie knew how to cook.

A bowl of curry had been left out for me, and I grabbed a water from the fridge before sitting down with them. Every time Carrie finished a commission, she made enough chicken curry to last us days. However, usually it was left to either Dad or me to feed us. I had to give my parents props for that. They had never forgotten to feed me. As far as I was aware.

“Kyle said you were writing. Again,” Carrie commented as I dug into my curry.

I froze and looked at them both through lowered lids.

“Finally going to admit we’ve got another writer in the family?” Dad teased.

“I’m not,” I lied. “It’s homework assignments for English.”

They seemed to accept that. Or at least they pretended to.

“I wish I was writing a bloody homework assignment.” Dad frowned at his dinner. “I wrote fifty words today. Fifty.”

“Honey, it will come.” Carrie wrapped her small hand around the nape of his neck and squeezed him in comfort. “It always does.”

He gave her a pained smile. “I think maybe I need a change of scenery.”

I covered my snort with a cough, but neither of them were looking at me. We lived on a beach! Hello! He had the best view of any writer, ever.

“Well, we could go away.” Carrie flicked a look at me. “Comet’s old enough to stay home alone for a few days.”

Again with the covering of more snorts.

I’d been old enough to stay home alone while they went on a mini-break together since I was thirteen years old. It was just another reason Mrs. Cruickshank didn’t like my parents. They’d left me to take a mini-break to Vienna, and our neighbor hadn’t realized I was home alone until my parents’ return. She’d told me to tell her next time so I could stay with her. I hadn’t ever actually stayed there, but the few times my parents did leave me at home while they traveled, she’d kept an eye on me and cooked dinner for me. To be fair Dad hadn’t seemed all that keen on the idea of leaving me, but Carrie had insisted she’d been left home alone far younger than that and it had never bothered her.

Except, I knew from my confounded curiosity and eavesdropping that the last part wasn’t true. As I’d grown older, stumbling—sometimes deliberately—upon their private conversations, I’d learned there were reasons that Carrie treated me like I was more of a housemate than her daughter. And although I was angry on her behalf, I was still furious on my own behalf, too.

“Why don’t we go to Montpellier for a long weekend? You love it there.”

Montpellier was my dad’s favorite city in southern France. I waited, dreading him saying yes. We might not spend huge amounts of time together when we were at home, but it was comforting to know they were there when I went to sleep. I hated being alone in the house at night. Whenever they left me, I slept with a baseball bat I’d borrowed from Steph beside my bed. Pride stopped me from slipping over to my neighbor’s house to stay in her guest bed. I didn’t want her to know it bothered me when my parents left me.

Dad turned to me, a plea in his eyes. “How would you feel about it, Comet? I just... I really need a break. Help with the writer’s block.”

I shrugged, like it was no big deal to me. “You guys do what you want.”

“There!” Carrie beamed at me. “We can go.”

He grinned back at her. “When should we leave?”

“I’ll see if I can book us in somewhere this Thursday to Monday.” She tilted her head. “Maybe we should consider making this a monthly thing. Why don’t we look at property while we’re there, get an idea of house prices?”

“I love the idea.” He glanced back at me. “As long as Comet’s okay with that?”

I swallowed a piece of chicken, the food I’d consumed suddenly sloshing around in my stomach. “Sure. Buy a holiday home in the south of France. I’ll just assume I’m not invited to these monthly weekend breaks.”

He gave me a pained look but Carrie scowled. “Comet, we’ve come this far without you turning into a sullen teenager. Don’t start now.”

“That would be a ‘Yes, Comet, you assume correctly.’” I pushed my bowl away, no longer hungry. “Don’t worry about it. I prefer when you’re not here anyway.”

After locking myself in my room, I slumped back on my bed and stared at my ceiling. When we first moved into the house I’d wanted glow in the dark stars all over my ceiling. The problem was the ceiling in my bedroom was higher than one in the average house. Before my bed was moved into the room, my dad had borrowed tall ladders and stuck the stars on the ceiling under my direction.

He and Carrie had argued that night, because she’d been left to unpack so much herself while he “arsed around with bloody stickers on the ceiling.”

A year later, when I asked if I could get fitted bookshelves, Dad hired a guy, didn’t even inspect the work as it was happening, or notice that I’d asked for the added expense of a ladder and rail so I could reach the highest shelves and move across them like Belle in the bookshop scene in Beauty and the Beast. When it was finished, my dad just paid the guy without commentary, without caring.

That was my dad. One minute he cared. The next he didn’t.

Mercurial.

That was one of my favorite words in the English language.

However, I doubted any kid wanted their parent to be mercurial.

I grabbed a pen and opened my notebook to write it all down.

A ball of frustration tightened in my chest. Why did I need that constant reminder? I should just get it by now. I was on my own. I always had been.

Enough of the woe!

I slammed my notebook closed and crossed the room to my bookshelves. It was time for a mood changer. My eyes lit on the first book in a bestselling teen vampire series. The heroine was sassy, kick-ass and she was all those things despite being neglected by her parents. I pulled out the book and curled up with it on the armchair in the corner of my room.

As I fell into my heroine’s adventure, my parents, the house...it all just melted away.

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

5

Hey you, pretty girl with no filter,

Are we friends or are we enemies?

You’re mercurial and slightly off-kilter,

For my safety, I’m labeling us frenemies.

—CC

Much to my disturbance, I discovered that just because you tell yourself you can’t possibly be attracted to a Neanderthal, doesn’t mean you suddenly stop being attracted to a Neanderthal.

It was the only explanation for how hyperaware I seemed to be of Tobias King’s whereabouts. As it turned out we had three classes together. He was in my maths class as well as Spanish and English. All Higher classes, and from the little I’d gleaned over the week—because my ears were hyperaware of him, too, and pricked up anytime I heard someone discussing him—Tobias was in only Higher classes.

If his first week was anything to go by, however, he wouldn’t be there long.

Thursday, we were in maths, and I was sitting next to a girl I didn’t know well, Felicity Dodd. If it was possible, she was even quieter than I was. We hadn’t spoken a word to one another.

We hadn’t gotten that far into class when I became aware of a low hum of noise, and it struck me quite quickly that it was the sound of music blasting out of earphones. Our teacher, Ms. Baker, heard it, too, and stopped to scan the room. I turned to look behind me, my eyes automatically zeroing in on Tobias.

And sure enough...

He was the cause of the noise.

He had his head buried in his arms on the desk, and the white wires of earphones could be seen coming out of his ears.

Frustration boiled inside of me. What was this kid’s problem? Jesus! Did Mummy and Daddy drag him away from America and he was trying to punish them by being a total dipshit at school?

Boo-hoo!

At least they hadn’t left him there. I’m pretty sure my parents would have left me if they flitted countries. And hey, let’s not rule the possibility out. There was still time for total and complete abandonment.

Scowling, I looked up at Ms. Baker to find she was doing the same. Her hands flew to her hips. “Mr. King.”

Nothing.

Of course not.

His music was too loud.

Our teacher turned her attention to Tobias’s neighbor, Becky Ford. “Miss Ford, could you please nudge Mr. King?”

Becky looked like she was wishing she’d sat anywhere else as she gently nudged him. He didn’t budge.

“Harder, Becky.”

She shoved him.

Tobias’s head flew up, whipping around to glare at her.

Becky glared back and pointed to the front of the room.

Confused, he followed her direction. Upon realizing he’d been caught, he stared blandly at Ms. Baker, who mimicked taking earphones out of her ears. Rolling his eyes, Tobias did her bidding.

“What’s up?” he said.

I thought Ms. Baker’s head was going to explode. Instead she held out her hand. “Give me that.”

“Give you what?”

“Whatever device you’re using to listen to music while you’re in my class.”

“It’s my phone.” Tobias shook his head. “No way am I giving you my phone.”

I swallowed a gasp. His attitude was the kind I’d expected to put up with in years one to three. But in fifth year, I was in classes with other driven people who needed good grades to achieve whatever their future ambitions were. I did not expect to have to put up with this crap from someone in my class, and I was sure Ms. Baker was thinking the same thing.

“I don’t know how things are done in the US of A, Tobias, but here, when a teacher confiscates something from a pupil for good reason, that pupil does not refuse.”

“This one is.”

The class shifted collectively in their seats.

“If you don’t hand over your phone, you can just get up out of that seat and walk yourself to Mr. Jenkins’s office.”

“And who the hell is that?”

Really?

Attracted to that? I thought to myself.

“Mr. Jenkins is an assistant rector here, and watch your language.”

“Assistant rectum? That’s an unfortunate job title.”

Someone snickered at the back of the room.

“I’m sure you’ve already been made aware of this, Tobias, but rector is our term for principal. An assistant rector is a vice principal. Perhaps you understand how much trouble you’re in now.”

“Whatever.” Tobias stood up abruptly, his chair scraping against the wooden floor. “Just point the way.”

Ms. Baker marched toward the classroom door to open it for him, and the door happened to be in front of my desk. She stopped him at the door and gave him directions to Mr. Jenkins’s office.

“And Tobias,” she said quietly, but I was right there, so I heard every word, “despite your grades and test scores, you will not last in my class with this attitude. If you’d like to remain in Higher Mathematics, you better rethink your behavior. Do you understand?”

His answer was to salute her and stride out the door.

Ms. Baker stared after him, looking concerned and peeved at the same time.

Finally, she slammed the door closed and continued with class as if nothing had happened.

* * *

“What are the plans for the weekend, then?” Steph said as she sat down at our table in the cafeteria. Despite the fact Vicki and Steph both had friends outside of our circle, only the three of us ate together at lunch. I had a feeling this was deliberate on their part and for my socially awkward benefit. Either that or I embarrassed them. Neither reason made me feel great about myself.

The cafeteria was the hub of the school. Glass doors ran along either side of it, but could only be accessed from inside. A massive staircase spiraled into the center of the cafeteria and led to the upper floor classrooms like English. Ground-floor classrooms were dedicated to subjects like Home Economics, Graphic Communication, Engineering, Chemistry, Biology and Physics.

At one end of the cafeteria was the lunch counter, where our lunch ladies and gentlemen provided okay meals. A new health program had been instituted in the school so, along with burgers and chips, we had fresh salads and soups.

There were never any burgers left, but there was always plenty of salad.

At the opposite end of the room were vending machines—soft drinks, water, chocolate bars, packets of crisps. And along from them, pool tables. I didn’t know who’d had the bright idea to give us the luxury of pool tables in the cafeteria but I wasn’t sure how long that luxury would last.

Tobias, Stevie and their crew were playing on one table while their dinner plates were scattered over the other.

“Earth to Comet?” Steph waved a hand in front of my face.

I jerked my gaze away from Tobias and tried not to blush.

I failed.

“What were you staring at?” she frowned and glanced over her shoulder.

Vicki saved me. “The idiots at the pool table.”

There was a loud hoot from the boys, and Stevie playfully shoved Tobias as they all laughed.

Steph rolled her eyes. “I’m surprised they’ve even lasted the week. Stevie got kicked out of two of my classes.”

“The new guy got kicked out of one of mine,” I offered.

“Why even bother coming to school?” Vicki wondered.

“To wind up the teachers and piss the rest of us off.” Steph shrugged. “Anyway, this weekend?”

“My parents left yesterday for a long weekend in Montpellier.”

Both my friends’ heads jerked up from their plates. “Seriously?” Steph said, sounding excited about it in a way I didn’t understand.

I nodded cautiously.

They looked at each other and grinned.

“Okay, what’s with the evil mastermind smiles?”

“Party at Caldwell’s,” Steph explained.

My stomach dropped at the thought. “No.”

Their expressions fell.

“No way.” I shook my head. “My parents would kill me.”

“It’s not like you owe them anything, Comet,” Steph grumbled. “They practically ignore you.”

That stung but I didn’t let it show. “Actually, I’m pretty certain I owe them my existence. An existence they would snuff out if I let strange teenagers into the home where they work. You know...expensive artwork and unfinished manuscripts lying around.”

Vicki slumped. “She’s right.”

“Oh come on,” Steph huffed. “That house is perfect for a party. It’s a mess, stuck in some time warp. The only reason it’s even clean is because Kyle is obsessive about cleaning it.”

Irritation flexed its muscles within me, curling my fingers tight around the bottle of water in my left hand. “Are you trying to say I’m filthy? Unclean?”

Steph’s eyes widened at my unfamiliar tone. I rarely got pissed off with my friends. Correction: I rarely revealed when I was pissed off with my friends. “No, I didn’t mean that. God, Comet, I’m sorry. You know I say stuff without thinking.”

“No, you say mean stuff when you don’t get your way.”

Vicki’s jaw dropped and I couldn’t work out if that was horror, amusement or respect in her eyes or even a mixture of all three. Steph flushed.

An awful silence fell over our table.

We stared at anything but each other as the noise of the cafeteria faded into the background. The impulse to apologize, to make things all right, clambered up my throat, and the determined stubbornness within me tried to stop it. However, the truth was my friend had apologized, and it just made me an ungracious arsehole to not accept it.

“I’m sorry.” My gaze flitted to Steph, who looked ready to cry. “You apologized. It was mean of me not to accept it.”

My friend looked up at me in relief and gave me a tremulous smile.

“Phew!” Vicki relaxed back in her chair. “Okay, now that’s done with, back to this weekend. Before you say anything, Comet, I get it. We can’t have a party while your parents are away. But we could have a sleepover and not tell our parents your parents are away. Instead we could go hang out with Jordan and his friends.”

Jordan as in Jordan Hall? The nineteen-year-old almost boy next door Vicki had been crushing on for two years? I raised an eyebrow and she laughed. “We ran into each other this morning, and he mentioned his friend was having a party on Saturday and I should come.”

Steph’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “Oh my God. Oh my God!” She squealed and reached across to squeeze Vicki’s arm in excitement. And then she swung her gaze back to me. “Comet, come on! We have to do this for Vicki.”

I didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of college boys.

I didn’t want to go to a party where no one knew me and wouldn’t care to know me.

I wanted my friends to just sleep over at my house so I wouldn’t be alone the entire weekend.

No doubt seeing the thought in my eyes, Vicki’s expression fell, disappointment clouding her features. She gazed at me in reproach, as if to say, You promised you’d try. And I had promised, hadn’t I?

Feeling angry butterflies at the thought, I nodded. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

While Steph practically bounced in her seat with excitement, Vicki’s disappointment melted into gratitude. “Thank you.”

I smiled in return, but inside I was already dreading this weekend more than I dreaded end-of-term exams.

* * *

When the girls asked me if I wanted to hang out with them after school the plan had always been to lie and tell them I had a dentist appointment. Before lunch I would have felt bad about the lie, but after stewing over our conversation in the cafeteria I didn’t feel guilty about heading into the city without them. Being corralled into doing something I didn’t want to—being made to feel guilty for not wanting to go to some party with strangers—made me feel resentful. It also made me feel even more insecure than normal. While most days I could argue that wanting to live inside the world of books more than I wanted to live in the real world was perfectly rational considering how boring and sad my life was, there were days like today when I couldn’t. Because Vicki and Steph made it seem like it wasn’t normal. And maybe they were right.

Maybe there was something wrong with me.

Maybe I really was a weirdo.

Good thing I was going to the one place I didn’t feel that way.

After school I hurried home and changed out of my uniform, and then I caught the bus from Portobello High Street in the center of town. It took me into the city, to Edinburgh University, and from there I walked to Tollcross where my favorite café was. Pan was this almost ludicrously hipster café for poets and artists. There was a mishmash of murals painted on the walls, and a gallimaufry of furniture, including tables and chairs, sofas, armchairs and beanbags. Rugs of all sizes and colors had been thrown across the scuffed hardwood floors, and the café counter was discernible as such only because of the coffee machine behind it and the cake stands on it. At the far end of the room a small stage with a mic awaited poets and musicians. While I ordered my usual—a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top—a young guy, around college age, was onstage reading a poem from the crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

Taking a seat at the back of the room, loving how no one here paid attention to me or my ruby-red Dorothy shoes, I took a sip of my hot chocolate and listened. The guy’s voice trembled and his hands shook, but it was hard to tell if it was from nerves or because of the subject of his poem.

“It was like a knife of white heat

Plunged into my chest

Exploding in a myriad of pain and anger.

Like a long lost letter unopened,

Its pages waiting to bring

A sudden dawning;

To complete a puzzle that once

Had been so difficult

For a little boy to understand.

The realization is consuming in its accompanied rage.

Does he know what he did?

A little boy suffers as another

Parades his falsities

To an audience of jesters.

His teardrops fall

Among the court of

Villains and victims,

Whilst another’s falls silently

Behind his eyes and down

Over his broken heart.”

As much as I loved being at Pan, soaking in the good and the bad poetry and the fact that you could be a purple elephant in this room and no one would care, I could never dream of getting up on that stage and reading my own poetry aloud. It was only upon visiting the café that I’d discovered something depressing. Apparently, I belonged to a group of poets that had fallen out of fashion.

A poet whose poetry rhymed.

The only poets here who rhymed were the spoken word artists—those who wrote slam poetry.

I wasn’t a spoken word artist.

And the only other kind of poet I’d come across in Pan were the free verse poets. Maybe rhyming wasn’t cool anymore. I was a lover of Robert Burns, William Blake and John Donne. I loved rhyming. I loved the challenge of it. But I knew that a lot of people thought rhyme felt forced and that poets shouldn’t be constrained by it.

Being in the minority didn’t give me a lot of confidence in my work. Pan was the one place where no one made me feel abnormal. I did not want to put myself in the position of being judged by a crowd of people I admired.

Shoving my worries aside, I lost myself in other people’s thoughts, emotions and imaginations. The poetry café was another escape. The surrealism of the venue, with its murals and tie-dyed fabric billowing across the ceiling like a canopy, made it feel as if I had walked into a dream. Here, I was in a bubble in the same way I was when I cracked open a book. Yet, it was different because I was alone without really being alone. I was surrounded by real live people who liked the bubble just as much as I did.

“Comet?”

The familiar voice made me tense.

No.

This wasn’t happening.

Not here, where I was perfectly anonymous.

My inability to be disrespectful to the owner of the voice made me look over my shoulder and up. Sure enough, Mr. Stone stood behind me with a cup of coffee in hand and the leather satchel he wore that was always bursting with papers slung over his shoulder. His smile was curious as he stepped toward me. “Do you come here a lot, Comet?”

I nodded. And since when did you start coming here?

As if he’d heard my unspoken thought he said, “A friend recommended this place. I usually do my marking at school but I fancied a change of scenery. Do you perform?” He gestured to the stage.

I shook my head.

“Do you have material you could perform?”

My heart rate increased at the inquisition. I knew Mr. Stone didn’t mean it as an inquisition, but the intrusion upon a part of my life I kept private unsettled me. “Maybe.”

He gave me a knowing nod. “You should think about performing. Your poetry assignments are stellar. You’re talented. You intend to go to university, yes?”

I nodded again.

“Well, universities look at your outside interests and passions. Lots of kids have good grades. You’ll need something that stands out. Performing here regularly would be a start.” He smiled at me again, clearly waiting for a response.

I didn’t know how to respond. My palms were sweating and I was feeling cornered. Thankfully, someone else stepped onstage and Mr. Stone leaned over to whisper, “I’ll leave you to it. But think about it, Comet.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stone,” I whispered.

But inside I was yelling at my favorite teacher for pointing out something I’d been doing my best to ignore. That my excellent grades weren’t a guarantee of admission into the University of Virginia, and that a university such as it was would be looking for students who stood out among the crowd. Mr. Stone was right. Being a part of Pan, gathering the courage to tread the stage here, was just an example of what it would take to make it into UVA and flourish there if I got in.

I couldn’t just sit passively by in the audience.

Yet I wanted to.

For the first time, I couldn’t just enjoy myself at Pan. Instead I imagined myself finally being brave enough to get up there and perform. Of being brave enough to remove the anonymity from my blog and use it as part of my application process for university.

Yet, I didn’t make a move to do anything. I was stuck. Courage wasn’t something you found at the bottom of a hot chocolate or in a few words of encouragement from your favorite teacher. Courage was clearly something I needed to find, but how was I supposed to when there was a big part of me that didn’t mind the fact I hadn’t discovered it?

Going to UVA was the biggest goal I had in my life. If I wanted it that badly...surely something would have to give?

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

6

Shakespeare said it best,

To thine own self be true.

To his wisdom, I attest,

So I’ll be me, you be you.

—CC

How the hell did I end up here?

I had asked myself that question maybe thirty times from the moment we’d arrived at Jordan Hall’s friend’s party. The party was in a flat less than a minute from my house and from what I could tell was rented out by four students. The flat’s windows looked out over the sea and from the noise blaring from the speakers in the sitting room I was surprised it hadn’t been shut down by the neighbors downstairs yet. Everyone here was college age or older, and I felt like a kid as I stood in the corner of the room, nursing a can of soda.

I wasn’t oblivious to the looks being thrown my way, and it was making me nervous.

It was a rare occasion when I was uncertain of my wardrobe choices, but tonight I was. I stood out from this art crowd, who all wore a surprising amount of black for supposedly creative people. Tonight, I was wearing above-the-knee-length bright yellow socks, an oversize blue tartan shirt dress with a large slouchy black belt around my hips, a black boyfriend cardigan with a brooch shaped like a yellow teacup pinned to it and a pair of patent blue-and-white striped Irregular Choice ankle boots. They had an oversize blue bow on the side, but what made them really different, was the fact that the heel wasn’t conventional—it was a mini-sculpture of Alice from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.

My parents might not pay me a lot of attention but they gave me a generous monthly allowance and, while I did save some of it every month, I spent a lot of it on books and clothes. Nearly every pair of shoes I owned were Irregular Choice. I could probably open my own shop with how many pairs I had in my closet.

Vicki, who had disappeared with Jordan almost the moment we’d arrived, suddenly reappeared. She strode over to me, grinning happily. I gave her a fond smile even though I secretly blamed her for putting me in the position I was in. Loving people was complicated, right? “You look happy.”

She nodded. “Jordan is so cool...and—” she stepped into me, her back to the room, and gave me this look I didn’t understand “—his friends are fascinated by you.”

I blushed. “They think I’m a weirdo, right?”

Vicki laughed. “No. The opposite. They don’t realize you’re shy. They just think you’re mysterious and unusual—but in a good way. These are art students, Comet. They like different.” She gestured to my clothes. “A few of the guys have asked who you are.”

This time I blushed for a whole other reason. “Funny. Steph bolted from me as soon as we got here.” She didn’t have to tell me she was embarrassed by how I was dressed.

“Steph wouldn’t know individuality if it bit her on the backside.” Vicki threaded her arm through mine. “These aren’t high school students, Com. They appreciate someone that knows who they are and isn’t afraid of it. Talk to one of them.”

The thought of talking to one of these strangers made me want to run in the opposite direction. What if I said something stupid? Or couldn’t speak at all and just stood there gaping at them like a guppy? I suddenly found myself irrationally angry with Vicki for trying to push me. It may have been residual irritation from Mr. Stone’s surprise appearance at Pan this week and his unwanted but sensible words of advice. He hadn’t meant to be pushy and neither had Vicki, but I felt pushed all the same.

“Jordan’s friend Ethan told us he thinks you’re gorgeous.” She subtly nodded her head to the opposite side of the living room. “He’s the one in the black Biffy Clyro shirt, standing near the television with the redhead.”

My gaze flew in that direction, curious despite myself about a guy who would call me gorgeous. No one, as far as I was aware, beyond Vicki, had called me gorgeous before. To my surprise the guy in the Biffy Clyro shirt was cute. Really cute. In that disheveled “lead singer of a rock band” kind of way.

Our eyes met and he smiled at me.

Stunned, I looked back at Vicki and she laughed. “Told you.”

I wanted to run. Run right out of the party, down the beach and lock myself inside my empty house. I didn’t know how to speak to boys my age; how the hell was I supposed to speak to an older, more experienced boy? And I didn’t want to speak to him. I didn’t know him. He was just a random at a party, and speaking to him meant a racing heart, sweaty palms and most assuredly boring him until I was mortified by his discomfort.

I wanted to kill my friend.

“He’s coming over. See you later.” And just like that Vicki was gone.

Yes.

Definitely going to kill her.

“Hi, how’s it goin’?”

My gaze flew to the guy who was now standing in front of me. Ethan, wasn’t it?

Our eyes were on level with one another, and I realized Ethan was the same height as me. He had a rangy, sinewy physique, however, that gave the illusion of greater height. The dimple that popped in his cheek with his lopsided grin was all kinds of charming.

He brushed his dark hair off his forehead. “I’m Ethan.”

“Comet,” I said quietly. And I’d like to leave now.

“That is such a cool name.” Ethan grinned harder. “Really suits you.”

It really didn’t. “Thanks.”

We stared at each other and I blushed. Again.

Ethan’s eyes brightened. “So...you go to Blair Lochrie with Vicki?”

I nodded. Words! My head was filled with bloody words, and yet I was taking so long to come up with ones that sounded okay that the silence just stretched between us.

A gaping, yawning chasm of silence.

Mortified, I looked anywhere but at the boy in front of me.

“So, uh, is that a cartoon character on your shoe?”

Stunned he was still standing there, I shrugged. “Kind of. It’s Alice from Alice in Wonderland. She’s really a book character more than a cartoon, because Lewis Carroll published the novel in 1865 and the Disney version came out eighty-six years later, although technically my heels are the Disney version of her...” Shut up! Someone shut me up!

To my wary surprise, Ethan nodded like I’d said the most fascinating thing ever. “Cool.”

Sensing it was my turn to ask a question I blurted out, “Are you an art student?”

He shoved his hair out of his face again, and I had to curb the urge to advise him he should just cut it if it was annoying him. “Aye. Photography. But I’m more focused on my band, right now. We’re called Lonely Boy, inspired by the song from the Black Keys. We’re kind of The Black Keys meets the Arctic Monkeys meets Babyshambles. Our musical aesthetic is alternative punk-dance-rock wrapped up in a social conscience. We’ve been playing a lot of gigs in...”

As it turned out, there were some boys you didn’t have to say anything to. You just had to pretend to be interested in what they were saying.

* * *

After an hour of listening to Ethan, lead singer of Lonely Boy, wax poetical about his life in the band, I excused myself to use the bathroom. I had a headache and needed the reprieve. On my way out, Steph cornered me.

“What does biomorphic mean?” Her pupils were large, her skin was flushed, and she was swaying a little.

“How much have you had to drink?” I nodded to her beer.

“Just a few.” She waved me off. “Comet, hurry, what does it mean?”

“Biomorphic? Why?”

She stamped her foot like a petulant child. “Because the cute art guy I’m talking to keeps calling his work biomorphic, and I’m just smiling at him like an idiot because I don’t know what it means.”

I took her beer. “You’ve had enough. And it means taking living things, like plants, the human body, and making abstract images from them.”

“You are so smart!” She kissed my cheek and hurried toward the kitchen at the end of the hallway, not even aware I’d taken her beer. I ducked back into the bathroom and poured the rest of the bottle down the sink.

Yes, I was that girl at the party.

Buzzkill girl.

This time when I stepped out of the bathroom I was stopped by Ethan.

He grinned and touched my arm. “There you are. I thought someone else stole you away.”

My cheeks grew hot again as I shook my head.

And then he was kissing me!

My first kiss, and it just happened!

No warning. Nothing!

And it was awful.

It was like he was trying to eat my mouth and wriggle his tongue in it at the same time!

Thankfully it didn’t last long, and he pulled back to smirk at me. “Let me get you a beer. Don’t go anywhere.”

The skin above my top lip and below my bottom was wet with his saliva.

Get the hell out of here, Comet! And I listened to myself. Without thinking of Vicki or Steph, I hurried past the bodies in the crowded hallway and darted outside. Running down the steps, I didn’t even care if my Alice heels broke from my manic escape. I just wanted out. I threw open the main door to the building, and it banged against the wall. Loudly.

“Whoa!”

I skidded to a stop at the shout, noting to my horror the crowd of kids standing near our local pub, the Espy. Embarrassment flooded me when I realized it wasn’t just anybody standing there. It was Stevie and his gang of miscreants.

And Tobias King.

Tobias had his arm around a girl I didn’t recognize, a beer bottle dangling from his hand. He stared at me, frowning.

“Ye awright, Comet?” Stevie called. Alana Miller, a scary, would probably take my head off if I looked at her the wrong way, girl in the year below me had her arms around his waist.

I managed a nod at Stevie and then threw a reluctant glance at Tobias, who had dropped his arm from the unknown girl and was staring at me intently. Flushing harder, I turned from them and started to walk down the esplanade.

“What the fuck is she wearing?” I heard a girl cackle, and there was more laughter.

I hunched into myself and picked up speed.

That speed turned to full-out running once I knew I was out of sight, and I didn’t stop until I was at my front door. It was only once I was inside my bedroom that I managed to relax somewhat.

And then I slumped onto my bed and fought the urge to cry as I wiped at my mouth and shuddered.

That was kissing? That horrible, wet, slug-like act was kissing?

Every time I got to a scene in the book where the hero and heroine finally kissed, it made me flush hot in a good way, and my chest filled with this delight, this giddiness that was hard to describe.

I had yet to read a book where the heroine got her face munched on!

“Ugh.” I shuddered again.

Of course my first kiss would suck. Literally. I don’t know why I ever expected anything else. And this was exactly the reason I should have stayed home tonight—so my illusions wouldn’t be shattered by a presumptuous nineteen-year-old boy who had not received permission to put his mouth anywhere near mine!

I yanked off my clothes, only slowing to take care with my expensive boots. Just as I was slipping into my pajamas, my phone made a little jingle of a noise, alerting me to a text.

Vicki : WRU@

I sighed and quickly replied. I went home. Tired. I’ll put a key under the mat for you. xx.

Two seconds later it pinged: RUOK xx.

Yeah xx

Although I didn’t like the idea of putting the key under the mat, there was really no other way for my friends to get in the house other than for me to stay awake all night. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep so I could forget the fact that my mouth had just been attacked.

On that note I flossed and brushed my teeth. Thoroughly. And then I rinsed it multiple times with mouthwash. Staring into the mirror, I got a flashback of the feeling of Ethan’s kiss and shuddered again. “Ugh!” I made a face at myself.

Tomorrow I was going to do a reread of my favorite romance just to get this awful real-life imagery out of my head.

* * *

I awoke with a start, my heart in my throat, the blood whooshing in my ears.

“It’s just me, babe,” Vicki’s voice whispered in the dark, but it sounded thick and cracked.

“Vicki?”

Down the hall I heard water running from a tap while Vicki’s silhouette solidified out of shadow as my eyes adjusted to the dark.

She pushed the covers back and climbed into the bed. The denim of her jeans rubbed against the light fabric of my pajama bottoms, the floral perfume she wore mixed with the scent of beer enveloped me, and the soft, tight curls of her hair tickled my chin as she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her face to my collarbone.

I felt her body shake.

I felt something wet drip onto my skin.

Sleep deserted me at the realization that my best friend, who rarely cried, was sobbing quietly against me.

Concern kicked my heart into speed and something ugly twisted in my gut as I closed my arms around her and held her tight. “Vicki?” I was afraid. Afraid to ask what happened, all manner of dark suspicions lurking in my mind.

She held on tighter but didn’t say anything, didn’t relieve me of my fears.

The flush of the toilet brought my thoughts back to Steph as I heard the bathroom door open and her stumbling steps down the hall. My bedroom door swung open and shut, and Steph’s dark figure rounded the bed and got in at the other side of me.

Not even a minute later her drunken snores filled the room.

“Vicki...what happened?” I dared to ask.

I wasn’t sure she’d answer.

But then...

“Jordan,” she whispered tearfully. “He wanted to have sex. I said I didn’t want to, and then he said I was too young for him and...he went off with some girl from his class.”

Dipshit.

Arsehole.

Wanker!

I tightened my grip on my friend. “I’m sorry he did that.”

She cried a little harder, and I tried to soothe and hush her. After a while I felt her body relax. I was sad for her. I hated that a boy had treated her so poorly when he was lucky Vicki Brown had even noticed he existed.

Yet, there was a part of me that wasn’t surprised.

In fact, it just drove home to me why my book boyfriends were a million times better than the real thing. Tonight I’d gone to a party for someone else because I’d made a promise to try harder. However, years ago I’d made a promise to myself, and that promise was painted above my headboard.

To thine own self be true.

Be true to yourself.

Standing in the corner of a party, talking to a boy who bored me and pretending that he didn’t, allowing him close enough to violate my lips... I hadn’t wanted to do any of those things. I hadn’t wanted to go to the party in the first place! And look where it got me.

Worst night in a long time.

From now on, I did what I wanted to do.

I would remain true to myself.

Stay at home reading a lot of books and writing my poetry.

Even if everyone, including my best friends, thought it made me the biggest antisocial weirdo in Porty.

THE FRAGILE ORDINARYSAMANTHA YOUNG

7

They all want to solve you and your mystery,

But I don’t.

They want to unravel your secrets, your history,

But I won’t.

I keep lying to myself, safe from your jagged edge,

All the while my curiosity tries to lure me off the ledge.

—CC

September first was the day I decided to push the boundaries of the school uniform. Our dress code was pretty strict but over the last few weeks I’d gotten away with adding cute, kitschy brooches and pins to the lapels of my blazer. So a week ago I’d asked Vicki if she had time to make me a few pairs of knee-high socks. In black. With gold stripes. They matched the uniform! They just jazzed it up a bit. Vicki whipped them up in a week and today was the first day I was wearing them.

I thought they looked cute, but I had to admit I was a little afraid of a teacher pulling me up for them.

Being worried about wearing outlandish knee socks was the least of my concerns. But I didn’t know that when I walked into the school building that day.

I didn’t know that until English class.

After a few weeks we’d made fast progress with Hamlet. We were on Act Two Scene Two, and Penny Shaw in the year above me was reading the part of the First Player when I became aware of someone hissing something at someone behind me.

The hissing grew more frantic, followed by the sound of stuff thumping to the floor.

We all whipped around to look as Tobias King got out of his chair to pick up his books and jotter from the carpet wearing a beleaguered look on his face. I glanced at Heather to find her opting for an angry, smug expression.

“What is going on over there?” Mr. Stone snapped.

Heather and Tobias seemed to cause some kind of kerfuffle in every lesson, so I could understand why Mr. Stone’s patience was growing thin.

“Nothing, Mr. Stone,” Heather answered sweetly.

“Nothing?” Tobias huffed, still standing as he stared down at her incredulously. He turned to Mr. Stone. “You do realize I’m sitting next to someone in need of a mental health professional?”

“GFY, Tobias!” Heather yelled.

“I have a teenage sister, Heather.” Mr. Stone looked so harassed that I felt sorry for him. “I pretty much understand every text abbreviation under the sun. You can wait outside the room until the end of class and stay there until I come see you.”

“But—”

“No buts, Heather. And when you return to my class, Tobias will no longer be sitting next to you. I’m tired of the two of you causing disruptions. Tobias, grab your things and take the seat next to Comet.”

The blood suddenly whooshed in my ears as my heart rate shot up. I stared in horror at Mr. Stone, and he gave me a reassuring look.

How had this happened?

How was it possible that one little sentence had completely ruined my day? No...wait. My entire year in English class.

The seat next to mine made a rough scraping sound against the hardwearing carpet, and I stared determinedly ahead as Tobias King’s large body settled beside me. I could feel the sprawl of him, the warmth, and smell his faint spicy citrus scent.

My cheeks burned and my muscles tensed as I held myself away from him. As good-looking as this boy was, his indifference, his delinquent behavior, had taken a toll on my crush. I’d thrown him over in favor of a fictional immortal boy warrior called Noah.

However, it was hard to remind myself of that when he was so close—so terrifyingly close—that my body hummed with awareness. I couldn’t concentrate on what was being taught. All I could focus on was the shift of his legs under our desk, the way his arm almost brushed mine as he lifted a hand to drag his fingers through his hair and the irritated sigh that escaped him.

I wasn’t the only one who heard that sigh.

“You disagree, Mr. King?” Our teacher stared at him.

Disagree about what? What had I missed?

Dammit!

“I didn’t say anything.”

I almost jumped at hearing Tobias’s voice so close to me. It had a deep, husky quality that I found pleasant despite myself. It was the accent, I tried to reassure myself. It was different, and I liked different, that was all.

Really.

“You didn’t have to say anything. The sigh was enough. If you disagree with Penny’s understanding of the scene, there are politer ways to respond, Mr. King. Why do you disagree?”

What had Penny’s understanding of the scene been? Oh my goodness, I never daydreamed in English! Damn Tobias King.

He answered with bite, “I think it’s pretty clear Hamlet isn’t referring to his mental state as the devil.”

What? I searched the text in front of me and read it, trying to understand.

“Read the passage again, Tobias. And then tell me what you think it means.”

“I don’t want to read it.”

“Do you want to fail?”

Tobias shifted in his seat, and I risked a glance at him. As soon as my gaze landed on his face, he looked at me.

Crap.

I whipped my gaze back to my text, my cheeks furnace-hot with embarrassment. Then, to my surprise—to all our surprise—Tobias began to read.

And read well.

“Play something like the murder of my father

before mine uncle; I’ll observe his looks,

I’ll tent him to the quick; if ’a do blench,

I know my course. The spirit I have seen

May be a devil, and the devil hath power

T’ assume a pleasing shape; yeah, and perhaps,

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds

More relative than this—the play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

My breath stuck in my throat as silence reigned over the classroom. It would appear that the magical something Tobias King had—that magnetism—could be used against me.

Because the boy made Shakespeare hot.

It didn’t seem possible that a teenage boy with the wrong accent could make Shakespeare hot.

I gulped.

“Very good, Tobias,” Mr. Stone said, sounding as astonished as I felt. “Now tell me what you think Hamlet is saying.”

“He’s saying that the ghost may be using his grief against him to manipulate him to take action against Claudius. So Hamlet has decided he needs to be sure and wants to use the play to get some kind of proof of his uncle’s betrayal.”

“Yes,” Mr. Stone nodded, his gaze softening ever so slightly. “That’s exactly right. Well done.”

As class continued, I struggled to stay focused. It was hard to after discovering there really was a reason Tobias King had been placed in my English class. The boy was smart. So why was he hanging out with Stevie Macdonald and his crew of miscreants?

And why oh why did he have to be the one boy whose voice made the hair on my arms stand up?

Just before the bell rang, Mr. Stone announced something that took my day from bad to worse. “Team assignment. We’re going to get your talking outcomes out of the way this year, since I know how much you love those.”

We all groaned. Well, I didn’t groan. I blanched.

“To make things somewhat easier on you, you will be working in teams of two. Look at the person sitting next to you, because they just became your talking outcome partner.”

No.

No. Way.

I looked at Mr. Stone like he’d just betrayed me, and he gave me a small smile before addressing the rest of the class. “Each of you will be given sections of the play to present on. A few of you will be sharing the same assignment, so it’ll be interesting to see what you come up with. You’ll have roughly a month to put your presentations together. I’ll provide you with your talk date and time next class. I’m coming around with your assignments now.”

Mr. Stone stopped at Tobias and me first, and I still hadn’t gotten over my shock so it was a miracle I even processed what he said to us. “Tobias, Comet, I want you to present on Hamlet’s character development through his soliloquies. Remember to pick quotes from the soliloquies to present to the class to highlight your analysis of his character evolution.” He placed a copy of the assignment on our desk.

We were silent a moment, an awkward, terrible silence, as Mr. Stone moved on to the rest of the class. I couldn’t be the one to speak. It seemed impossible. Even though I was panicking at the thought of messing up an English assignment, I was unable to turn to Tobias to arrange time to work together. That would bring reality crashing down around me.

Tobias did it for me. “So I guess you’ll want to get together to do this?” He flicked his piece of paper with the assignment on it. He couldn’t have sounded less enthusiastic if he tried.

For some reason my irritation with his tone helped clear my throat. “Yes. I don’t want to fail.”

I still hadn’t looked at him, but I could feel his gaze on my face. The burn of it was too much, and I finally caved and returned his stare. Tobias seemed to study me for a moment and then he sighed heavily. “Fine. My house after school.”

Wonderful.

Not only, I guessed, was I going to be lumbered with most of the work, I was going to have to drag my butt out of my comfort zone and visit a boy. At his house. “Where do you live?”

“Do you know where Stevie lives?”

“Stevie Macdonald?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I don’t.” Why on earth would he think I would?

“He’s my cousin. My mom and I are staying with him and his mom for a while.” He flipped his copy of the assignment over and began to scrawl on the blank side. Finished, he shoved it toward me. “Tonight. Seven o’clock. Be there. If you don’t show, I’m not waiting around.”

I was shocked to hear that Tobias and Stevie were related, but suddenly their attachment to each other made more sense to me. Perhaps it was merely familial obligation that had brought such different boys together in friendship?

As much as I hated to say it, considering I was already anxious about the fact that I had to go over to Stevie Macdonald’s house that evening, I said, “One night won’t be enough.”

Tobias’s lips curled into an arrogant smile. “I’ve heard that before.”

It was so cocky that even I couldn’t stop my eye roll. Nor could I stop the pink blooming on my cheeks, which only made him chuckle.

Flustered, I stared studiously at the address he’d written down.

After another moment’s silence, Tobias said, in a surprisingly gentle tone, “Okay, don’t get all worried-looking. We’ll work out other times to do the assignment when you come over tonight.”

Before I had a chance to think up a reply, the bell rang for the end of class. I shoved my stuff into my bag in one sweep and shot out of my chair. A minute later—because I’d moved that quickly—I was halfway to the cafeteria.

I needed distance from the American, and I needed a few moments to gather myself before Steph and Vicki teased me about my presentation buddy.

* * *

“So tell me, does Tobias King smell as good as he looks?” Steph said without preamble as she and Vicki sat at my table in the cafeteria.

I shot her a droll look and she giggled.

“Don’t, Comet.” Vicki shook her head adamantly. “Don’t let her encourage you. Tobias King is the last boy you want to crush on. Guys like him are users.”

Hearing the bitterness in her words, I felt a pang of sadness for her. And more than a pang of anger toward Jordan Hall. Ever since he’d made Vicki cry, she’d had moments of ragey bitterness. It had been only a few weeks since the incident, and I was hoping time would heal her wounds.

“Boys can be dipshits.” She stabbed her straw into her carton of orange juice. “I’m giving them up.”

Steph looked horrified. “No way.”

Determination blazed in Vicki’s eyes. “Yes way. I need time to forget he who shall not be named, and then I’ll be cool. But I’m not falling for just anyone.”

“So...” Steph frowned, obviously not sure how to process the idea of a world without boys. “What are you going to do with yourself?”

Vicki burst out laughing while I struggled not to roll my eyes. “I’m just concentrating on me and design school. Parsons may be a long shot but the London College of Fashion is not and I’m going there if it takes all my blood and sweat. But no tears!” Vicki shook her head vehemently. “Tears just hold you back.”

Frowning at her, I really, really hoped time would heal the wound Jordan had cut into her. Until she’d cried in my arms, and the subsequent moody days since, I’d had no idea how much Vicki had liked Jordan. If he were in front of me right now, I might have kicked him in the nuts. And I wasn’t a violent person by nature.

“Well, just because you’ve given up boys, doesn’t mean the rest of us have.” Steph huffed. “We’re allowed to talk boys.”

Vicki just shrugged.

Steph turned to me and grinned. “You guys are meeting up, right? To do the presentation?”

The thought of going to Stevie’s house that evening to work with Tobias made my skin prickle with a cold sweat. Tobias King inhabited an entirely different planet from the one I lived on. It would be like trying to talk to someone who didn’t speak a language known to man.

“He’s Stevie’s cousin. I’m going there after dinner—”

“Second cousin,” Steph interrupted.

“What?”

“Tobias is Stevie’s second cousin. Their mums are first cousins.”

“How do you know that?” Vicki said.

Steph threw her a mysterious smile. “I know everything.”

“Well cousin, second cousin, whatever. The point is that I’m not crushing on Tobias,” I semi-lied. “We’re working on this presentation and that is it. Sorry. No boy talk from me.”

Her lips parted at my announcement but then they pinched together for a few seconds before she let out an exasperated, “You two are no fun.”

“There are other things to talk about,” I reminded her. “Like the school play.” Only last week, Steph had landed the part of Roxie Hart opposite Lindsay Wright, the sixth year playing Velma Kelly. And thankfully, Heather was in the chorus.

Steph’s face lit up, and Vicki shot me a grateful smile. For the rest of our lunch we sat and listened patiently to our friend as she divulged the trials and tribulations of putting on a grand show.

Although all the while angry butterflies fluttered wildly in my stomach.

* * *

All I could do was stare at the building. I willed my feet to move but it was proving difficult. Stevie lived on a street that bordered Portobello and Niddrie. It was a good thirty-five-minute walk from my house on the beach, and our situations couldn’t have been more different. While I lived in a midcentury seafront home, Stevie and Tobias lived in a drab building that housed six flats. Stevie’s flat was on the ground floor. The gray pebble-dash render on the building, along with the overlong front lawns and toppled rubbish bins, gave the place a depressing feel.

It bugged me that Tobias lived here, and I couldn’t explain to myself why that was. I wondered why he and his mum had to live with Stevie. What happened to them back in the US?

And suddenly Tobias was there, standing in the open entrance to the building. His face was in shadow, but I knew it was him by his height and the way he held himself. He wore only a T-shirt and joggers, no shoes, just socks, and he had his hands stuck in his pockets. “You plan on coming inside anytime soon?”

I jolted at his question, and to my everlasting mortification I blushed again, before finally making my feet move toward him. “I wasn’t sure I had the right house,” I lied.

He smirked. “Right. You’re one of the smartest girls in school but you don’t know how to read a street sign.”

I ignored his sarcasm. “How do you know I’m one of the smartest girls in school?”

“Stevie told me. Plus, you can’t exactly get into the classes you’re in if you’re stupid.”

“True. So why do you pretend to be?” The question was out of my mouth before I could even think about it.

Tobias looked as surprised as I felt. He also did not deign to answer me. Instead he led me inside the ground-floor flat, and the lingering smell of Chinese food hit me as I stepped into the narrow hallway. I followed him, dodging the several pairs of shoes that were strewn in the hall near the entrance.

As we passed an open doorway, I glanced in and saw two women lounging on a couch. There were empty Chinese takeaway containers on the coffee table in front of them. One of the women was thin with wispy fair hair. Her neck was bent at an awkward angle, and it appeared she’d fallen asleep. The other woman met my gaze as I passed. I got an impression of pale skin and dark hair, but we were moving too quickly down the hall for me to observe anything else.

“Tobias, where are you going?” The woman’s voice rang out just as he put his hand on the knob of a door around the left-hand corner at the end of the hall.

“Room,” he called back. “I told you I have an assignment to work on.”

“Well, I’d like to meet your friend. Where are your manners?”

He shot me an exasperated look like it was my fault. If only he knew I was even less inclined to meet the person I was guessing was his mother. The less I knew about Tobias King, the better. He gestured for me to go back the way we’d just come, and I drew to a halt at the sudden appearance of the tall brunette from the couch. She had big, sad, dark eyes and chin-length dark hair, pale skin and freckles across her nose that, along with her trim, slender physique, made her look too young to be the mother of an almost seventeen-year-old boy. Appearance-wise there was very little of her in Tobias. I wondered if he took after his dad. And then I wondered where his dad was.

She looked at Tobias and raised an eyebrow.

He sighed heavily, as if she were forcing him to do something unpleasant. “Mom, this is my English presentation partner, Comet Caldwell. Comet, my mom.”

“Hi, Mrs. King,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Call me Lena, please.” She spoke with a Scottish accent muddled by an American one.

“Okay.” I smiled, but it faltered as her gaze drifted over me in an assessing manner and I suddenly realized I should have perhaps dressed more conservatively for coming to Tobias and Stevie’s flat. I was wearing a dark green velvet skirt with a black-and-green striped top with arms that were tight at the wrist and then puffed out in balloon sleeves. On my feet were green flats with an oversize yellow bow on the front.

Not giving away her thoughts, Lena turned to her son. “Carole is worn-out. Try to keep it down.”

“Where’s Kieran?” Tobias asked.

If I remembered correctly, Kieran was Stevie’s little brother. He was around six or seven years old.

“In Carole’s room reading. I’ll keep an eye on him. You just get your homework done like you promised.”

“That’s what Comet’s for,” he said.

Ass.

His mum seemed to think it was a crappy comment, too. “Don’t you leave all the work to Comet. Promise.”

“I could make that promise, Mom, not keep it and you still wouldn’t do jack about it. That’s what you’re good at, right? Being a liar and doormat.” He didn’t wait for her to answer, just turned and bulldozed his way into the room behind us.