Page 20 of Heartthrobs Don't Date Wallflowers
I frowned. “He’s in a boyband.”
“Okay, well, as much of a loner as he can be,” Megan clarified. “I mean, the other guys are just so loud and outgoing, and Zach tends to just keep to himself. He’s pretty quiet. I don’t really know that much abouthim, honestly.”
“How did you meet the boys?” I asked curiously. “I mean, did you know them before they were famous or…”
Megan laughed. “Heck, no. We only met them when they started at school here this year.”
“Well…” Sloane said with a pointed look in Megan’s direction. “It wasn’t entirely because they started here. You met Hudson a few times before that.”
Megan flushed and glared at her friend. “We don’t need to get into the full story now.” She looked at me again. “Ignore her. The band moved here in September and that’s when we met them.”
“So you’ve only been dating Hudson for a couple months then?”
She grinned. “You don’t follow the band, do you?”
Would she be offended that I wasn’t into her boyfriend’s band? That seemed like a rude thing for me to say. But if I tried to lie and pass it off like I did, then they might try to talk to me as if I knew anything about the band, which I totally didn’t.
“I’m not really much of a music fan,” I mumbled. A half-truth.
Megan laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not a fan either.”
My eyes shot up to meet hers. “But you—you’re dating…”
“Okay, I guess I’m a fan now,” she corrected. “But I didn’t know anything about them before that.”
“She hated them, actually,” Sloane added.
“I did not hate?—”
“You told Hudson?—”
“Okay, yes but that was diff?—”
“All right, class!” The teacher called from the front of the room, cutting off Megan and Sloane’s argument. I slid around to face forward again, praying that she wouldn’t tell everyone about how I was a new student and ask me to come up and introduce myself. I’d already done that twice today and I was not looking to repeat it a third time—especially since most of the people in this class were probably in at least one of my earlier classes. But instead, she tapped her marker on the whiteboard and said, “All right, let’s jump right into today’s lab. Pair up, and I’ll be handing out materials.”
A wave of relief washed over me. No awkward introductions. Thank goodness.
“The three of you can be a group,” she said as she came around to give us materials.
“Uh, what’s the teacher’s name again?” I whispered to Sloane as we gathered our supplies.
“Oh, that’s Mrs. Keller,” she replied, pulling out a pair of goggles and tossing them at me. “She’s super chill, don’t worry.”
“Oh, here,” Megan said, leaning to mutter it to me while Mrs. Keller answered somebody’s question at the front. “Give me your number. I’ll add you to our science group chat.”
“Oh, uh…” I hesitated for a second but took it from her. First, Jude asking for my twitter and now her asking for my number—I’d never been this popular on my first day of school before.
Megan smiled as she took her phone back, her fingers quickly flying across the screen. “There. Now you’re officially part of the group. We usually help each other out with assignments, but we also just talk sometimes.” She shrugged casually, like it wasn’t a big deal. To her, it probably wasn’t.
I nodded, trying to seem nonchalant, but inside, I was relieved. Maybe this would make it easier to navigate the whole new girl thing. Not that I was expecting to suddenly become best friends with Megan or Sloane, but at least I wasn’t completely on my own.
My phone dinged immediately and I glanced at it to see that I’d been added to a group chat, but I tucked it away quickly as Mrs. Keller came around again. But immediately the phone kept buzzing with new texts, like the group chat was active even though it was the middle of the school day. It should have been annoying but given that I was sure I was going to make it through this day without a single new friend, it made me smile.
six
From the momentMegan added me to the group chat, my phone did not stop buzzing for a minute. I had no idea people were so passionate about science here. I mean, sure, this was a private school where a lot of the kids seemed serious about academics, but this seemed a little excessive. Especiallyduringthe class.
I didn’t risk pulling out my phone mid-class—I really didn’t want to get a reputation as someone always on her phone by the teachers—and right after class, I was too busy trying to find my way back to my locker to be able to pull out my phone, so I couldn’t actually see what anyone was talking about until I was leaving for the day. I wandered down the street slowly, hoping I was going in the direction of the house, as I looked at it.
