The day before

chapter 1 part 2

She may have some OCD issues. In any case, it's not exactly Pulitzer-track material.
Rebecca keeps me busy, though. Which is good. For a lot of reasons. If nothing else, it means I won't be able to dwell on the real bummer about spending my summwr here in LA- being away from my friends on the Fourth of July.
Ugh, who am I kidding, diary? The bummer is being away from Archie.

Polly:
Hey, sis. You around? I wanna catch up. Also need more details about this 'Rad Brad' of yours. Sounds very... Not-Archue. Can't be a bad thing miss you.

Betty:
You too! But you can just call him "Brad" PLEASE. :) Totally not Archie. In a good way. But also not Archie. In a bad way.

"Rad Brad". That's how he introduced himself. It was so deliberately cheesy that I had to laugh, which Im guessing was the point.
I met him my second week out here. I was finally starting to get uses to the energy in LA- the insane traffic, having to sit on the freeway for hours of the day, every day, how the weather is always the same (seriously, no one here knows what to do on the rare chance that it rains. They would FREAK if they had to live through a winter in Riverdale, even if we do have enough maple syrup to keep the whole city on an infinite Master Cleanse) . .
The fact that even the regular people kind of look like celebrities, and maybe they are just celebrities-in-waiting, after all. I still felt like the small-town girl in the big city, because how could I not?
Literally all my clothes had some kind of flowery pink print on them. It was like wearing a sigm on my forehead that said TOURIST . . . Or ALIEN. But I was start8jg to adjust to the city's rhythms, and even though I felt foreign, I also felt comfortable.
Polly kept texting, asking about the guys in LA, and I kept telling her: Guys don't usually notice me. I'm the "sweet" one. The girl next door. And the guy I've wanted to notice me for ages definitely loves me . . . But probably not in the way that I want. For him, I am the girl next door.
(I don't know for sure how he feels. I've always been to afraid to ask.)
So it was a summer Friday, and Rebecca had me picking up sushi for the office (rock shrimp tempura rolls, brown rice, extra-spicy mayo on the side, and a hijiki salad-I knew Rebecca's order heart, already). But even though I'd called in advance, the host told me it would be a while, so I grabbed my ( The Bluest Eyes, favorite reread, of course) and settled on the grass at Maguire Gardens, which always has great people-watching.