Dear Diary [ON HOLD]

2

September, Wednesday 17

Dear diary,

Howie Campbell is officially a cool kid now.

After a hectic breakfast and an even more hectic ride to school (during which Mom relented and let Robby drive since he's got his learner's permit - which turned out to be a terrible idea - and Kenny kept screaming because he thought we were all going to die in a tragic car accident and Roxanne kept telling Robby to step on it or they'd miss the morning assembly at the highschool), I finally made it to school just as the warning bell rang.

When I finally arrived in homeroom, sweaty and out-of-breath from running, I started looking around the room to find an empty desk. I noticed someone at the back waving to get my attention and looked up. It was . . . Howie? Only he looked like a completely different person. He'd gotten taller in the two months he'd been gone on vacation to Spain, almost as tall as Roberta Guerra, the tallest girl in the seventh grade. His usual shaggy mophead was gone, replaced with the trademark cool-kid undercut. He'd gotten a tan too, and instead of his usual khaki shorts and band T-shirts, he was wearing a black hoodie and stonewashed jeans.

"I saved you a seat," he said as I walked up to him, dumbfounded.

"Who are you and what did you do with Howie?" I asked.

He blushed a little. "What are you talking about?"

"You look like a whole new person! How much did you grow?"

"I dunno. A couple of inches, I guess." He grinned crookedly as I sat down, still staring at him. "Do I really look that different?"

"Yeah. Dead sexy." I said it jokingly but his blush deepened to tomato red.

Howie Campbell has been my best friend ever since he moved into the house down the street from mine when I was six. I was a rambunctious tomboy back then (Mom's words, not mine), so we'd gotten along just fine. Up until now, he'd been a geeky delicate-looking kid with thick-framed glasses and ears that were always a little too big for his head. He still had the glasses, but he'd grown into his Dumbo ears somewhere along the way, something I hadn't really noticed until now.

I wasn't the only one who'd noticed his transformation. Justine Finchley, who I absolutely cannot stand, was ogling Howie from across the room like she'd never seen a boy before.

When it was lunchtime, she came over to our table and spent the whole lunch period talking to Howie, which was weird. Justine Finchley is the kind of girl the boys all look at - long fair curls, big brown eyes, pouty cupid's-bow lips. Like a doll, really. Just last year, she used to make fun of me for having a flat chest whenever we were changing in the locker room after PE, which Howie knows about (not the flat chest part, that would be weird) so I didn't know why he was still talking to her. Howie and I usually use the first lunch break of the year to talk about the cool stuff he did over the summer. His family is pretty loaded so they always go somewhere nice for the summer. I used to get jealous whenever he'd talk about all the places he'd been, but I grew out of it. I think.

But today was different. Turns out Howie and Justine had both gone to Spain this year, and they spent all of lunch talking about all the fun they had jetskiing and tanning on beaches and drinking virgin piña coladas. I tried to butt in once and Justine raised her eyebrows like, what do you know? She didn't say it but I heard it loud and clear. After that, I just sat there and listened to them talk and ate my peanut butter and honey sandwich in silence.

When the bell rang for lunch over, Justine finally got up to leave and said. "Oh, and by the way, I'm having a birthday party on Thursday. You guys should totally come."

"Sure," Howie chirped.

When she left, he nudged me in the side with his elbow as we got up to return our trays. "Off to a good start, eh? This year's gonna be a good one. I can feel it."

"I'm not going to her stupid party," I deadpanned.

"Oh come on, Riley, it'll be fun. We've never been to any of her parties before."

I frowned at him. "I thought we'd both agreed that Justine Finchley was a terrible person?"

"That was last year. She's . . . different now."

I shook my head. "You can go if you want, Howie. I'm not going."

I walked out of the cafeteria and started heading down the hallway to my locker, but he caught up to me in a couple of strides. "Okay, fine, I won't go."

I didn't say anything. He waited while I got my books out of my locker and then as we walked down the hallway to our next class, he said, "Wanna hang out after school?"

"I can't. I'm grounded."

"Oh. Well, I can come to your place then."