Six Months Later

Six Months Later - Chapter 5

Chapter Five

There are serious advantages to being popular. Having people magically appear after every bell, happy to chitchat all the way to my next class, is really handy when you have no clue where to go.

The downside? Maggie wasn’t one of those people. Not even once.

I dig through my purse for my car keys and thank whatever forces might be listening that Blake has some sort of sports practice after school. Because I’m not ready for another dose of him.

Just as I start the engine, someone taps on my window. I glance up, forcing a smile to my face.

Abigail Binns. Star of 42nd Street last year and high-flying, hand-springing cheerleader since junior high. I like Abbey. We’re not friends exactly, but she’s been on my bus route through three schools now. It’s hard not to like someone who volunteers at the children’s hospital and bakes cookies for her neighbors at Christmas.

I roll down the window. “Hi.”

“Hi, Chloe. I’m so sorry to bother you. My brother was supposed to pick me up, but he got stuck at work. Is there any way you could drop me by my place on the way home?”

“Sure,” I say.

Abbey flashes a million-dollar smile and hops in the passenger side of my Camry. My dad bought the car when I was born, and I think he’s determined to make it last until I die.

“Thank you so much,” she says, pulling on her seat belt as I start backing out.

Someone strolls right behind my car, and I slam on the brakes, coming way too close to hitting him. All I see is a charcoal gray hoodie pulled all the way up. It’s more than enough to send my pulse into a sprint. Adam drops the hood back and flashes me a look I can’t read. It doesn’t settle my heart down at all.

Abbey shakes her head. “Not an ounce of common sense in that guy.”

“Tell me about it,” I say, but I crane my neck to watch him walk away all the same.

“I still can’t believe he’s in so many AP classes,” Abbey says.

I tear my eyes away from the rearview mirror to look at her. “He is?”

“Well, yeah. His GPA this quarter is a 3.98.” Abbey covers her mouth the moment she finishes her sentence, looking shamed. “I shouldn’t have said that. I overheard it in the office. Honest, I wasn’t trying to be a snoop.”

I smile my first genuine smile since this whole thing started. And why shouldn’t I? The walking Gossip Girl of Ridgeview, Ohio, just landed in my car.

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “It wasn’t like you divulged some dirty secret.”

She giggles. “He probably thinks his grades are a dirty secret. I’ll just never understand. So did you hear about James and Kelsey?”

I drive as slowly as possible while Abbey fills me in on all the latest social happenings of our school. She’s got juicy stuff on absolutely everyone, which would be sort of fun if she wasn’t so determined to put a positive spin on every last bit of that dirt. Also, she might look seventeen, but after listening to her talk, I’m pretty sure she is an eighty-five-year-old widow who attends church three times a week.

“Bless her heart, we all make mistakes. It’s really a shame those two can’t work it out,” she says as I turn onto Belmont Street.

Cookie-cutter two-story and Cape Cod houses like mine give way to sprawling historic giants. Mom calls them the Belmont Beauties. She’s not wrong.