Wren Snow and Jamie Verona have been best friends since preschool. Now juniors, they're the two coolest kids at their private high school.
Wren just wants to cut class and make out in the back of her Mustang with the top down. Jamie doesn't want to...
I am bored out of my skull in calculus. I sit in the back row with my arms crossed, while all the preppy kids around me furiously copy everything Mr. Prue chalks on the board.
My best friend Jamie Verona is supposed to be here, but he's M.I.A., and with his seat empty in front of me, there's literally nothing to do.
I wish I'm in a 50's movie, specifically that I'm James Dean's girlfriend and that I can leave class whenever I want and go smoke with him outside—because, you know, that was the time before smoking killed you, or at least the time when no one cared. It was also the time before AP tests and the Ivy-League-frenzy, when people would sleep in class instead of memorizing everything about everything for no reason.
Right now I'm stuck in something like Ferris Bueller's class, but for some reason half the kids around me actually want to be here—or at least think they do. They're just a bunch of neo-liberal drones. The real Walking Dead.
But Wren, you're probably thinking, you're there too. If you really didn't care so much, wouldn't you up and leave class, or go to sleep right there? "Be the change you want to see in the world" and all that.
Good point, Gandhi.
There is one major reason to stay in calculus class today, and it's got nothing to do with derivatives and limits.
What am I looking at instead of derivatives and limits?
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Flynn Grayson.
Okay, okay, so he's not topless (he's in our uniform) and, yeah, he's chewing on his pen cap instead of an ice cream cone, but it's still sexy enough for me to wish he had something else pressed on his mouth. Something closer to home. When did he grow out his hair and get those muscles?? My stomach flutters.
On the blank page in my notebook, and I write Flynn a note. Wanna go make out?
I look down at what I wrote and cock my head. Too forward?
I look up at Flynn. He's putting his wavy hair up in a bun now, and when he slides the elastic off his wrist and around the looped strands, I'm going to die it's so hot.
The note is fine. I quietly tear it out and fold it into a neat square.
I poke the girl next to me. Big square glasses and frizzy hair: like Mia Thermopolis, pre-makeover, in the first Princess Diaries. "Mia" looks startled, a geeky deer-in-headlights.
"Hey," I say. "Can you give this to Flynn?"
Mia Thermopolis scowls. She turns back to her notes.
"Come on, please," I say, "It'll only take a second. We could've been done by now!"
I notice, while I'm imploring Mia, that several of the boys around me look up from their notebooks and watch me. A little audience for my little show. Joe, Brandon, Anthony: my main "groupies." They play lacrosse, take AP everything, and star in all the plays, and they all think they're going to be the one boy who I'll fall in love with and actually date, but 1) NO and 2) we'll get into THEM later. When I flick my eyes to Joe, he immediately drops his gaze.
