“Oh, you know you love me,” she says. She pushes the book at me again. “Now take this and go eat lunch with your boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Over there. He’s clearly pining for you.” She gestures behind us, where, sure enough, over at the Invisibles table, Tucker is chatting with Wendy. They’re both staring at me with identical expectant expressions.
“Shoo. You’re dismissed,” says Angela.
“Shut up.” I take the book and tuck it into my backpack, then head to the Invisibles table.
Ava, Lindsey, and Emma, my other fellow Invisibles, all smile up at me and say hello, along with Wendy’s boyfriend, Jason Lovett, who I guess is eating with us this year instead of his usual computer-games pals.
It’s weird, us having boyfriends.
“What was that all about?” asks Wendy, peering over at Angela with curious eyes.
“Oh, just Angela being Angela. So, what’s on the Jackson High menu for today?”
“Sloppy Joes.”
“Yummy,” I say without enthusiasm.
Wendy rolls her eyes and says to Tucker, “Clara never likes the food here. I swear, she eats like a bird.”
“Huh,” he says, eyes twinkling, because that’s not his experience with me at all. Around him I’ve always eaten like a horse. I slide into the seat next to his, and he scoots his chair closer to mine and puts his arm around me. Perfectly G-rated, but I can almost feel the topic of discussion shift in the cafeteria. I guess I’m going to be that girl who holds her boyfriend’s hand as they stroll down the halls, who steals kisses between classes, who makes the moony eyes across the crowded cafeteria. I never thought I’d be that girl.
Wendy snorts, and we both turn to look at her. Her eyes dart from me to Tucker and back again. She knows about us, of course, but she’s never seen us together like this before.
“You guys are kind of disgusting,” she says. But then she scoots her chair closer to Jason’s and slips her hand in his.
Tucker smiles in a mischievous way I know too well. I don’t have time to protest before he leans over for a kiss. I push at him, embarrassed, then melt and forget where I am for a minute.
Finally he lets go. I try to catch my breath.
I am so that girl. But being that girl has its perks.
“Ew, get a room,” Wendy says, stifling a smile. It’s hard to read her, but I think she’s trying to be cool with this whole best-friend-dating-my-brother thing by acting completely nauseated. Which I think means that she approves.
I notice that the cafeteria has gone momentarily silent. Then suddenly everything starts up again in a flurry of conversation.
“You do know we’re now officially the talk of the town,” I say to Tucker. He might as well have taken a marker to my forehead and written PROPERTY OF TUCKER in big black letters.
His eyebrows lift. “Do you mind?”
I reach for his hand and lace his fingers with mine.
“Nope.”
I’m with Tucker. In spite of my failed purpose and everything, it looks like I’m actually going to get to keep him. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.
Chapter 2
First Rule of Angel Club
Mr. Phibbs, my teacher for AP English, which happens to be—thank God!—my last class of the day, immediately gets us started on our first “College English” assignment, a personal essay on where we see ourselves in ten years.
I take out a notebook, click my pen to the write position. And stare at the blank page. And stare. And stare.
Where do I see myself in ten years?
“Try to visualize yourself,” Mr. Phibbs says, like he’s spotted me back here in the corner and knows that I’m floundering. I always liked Mr. Phibbs; he’s kind of our own personal Gandalf or Dumbledore or somebody cool like that, complete with round, wire glasses and long white ponytail sticking out of the back of his collar. But right now he’s killing me.
Visualize myself, he says. I close my eyes. Slowly, a picture starts to materialize in my mind. A forest beneath an orange sky. A ridge. Christian, waiting.
I open my eyes. Suddenly I’m furious.
No, I think at no one in particular. That is not my future. That’s past. My future is with Tucker.
It’s not hard to imagine it. I close my eyes again, and with a bit of effort I can see the outline of the big red barn at the Lazy Dog, the sky overhead empty and blue. There’s a man walking a horse in a pasture. It looks like Midas, a beautiful glossy chestnut. And there’s—this is the part where the breath suddenly hitches in my throat—a small boy riding the horse, a tiny dark-haired boy giggling as Tucker—the man is definitely Tucker; I’d know that butt anywhere—leads him around the pasture. The boy sees me, waves. I wave back. Tucker walks the horse over to the fence.
“Look at me, look at me,” says the boy.
“I see you! Hi there, handsome,” I say to Tucker. He leans over the fence to kiss me, taking my face between his hands, and that’s when I see the glint of the plain gold band on his finger.
We’re married.
It’s the best daydream of all time. I know somewhere deep down that it’s only a daydream, the combination of my active imagination and wishful thinking. Not a vision. Not the future that’s been set for me. But it’s the one I want.
I open my eyes, tighten my fingers around my pen, and write: “In ten years, I will be married. I will have a child. I will be happy.”
I click the pen closed and stare at the words. They surprise me. I’ve never been one of those girls, either, who dreamed of getting married, never forced a boy to say vows with me on the playground or dressed up in bedsheets and pretended to walk down the aisle. When I was a kid I fashioned swords out of tree branches, and Jeffrey and I chased each other around the backyard yelling, “Surrender or die!” Not that I was a tomboy. I liked the color purple and nail polish and sleepovers and writing my crush’s name in the margins of my notebooks at school as much as any other girl. But I never honestly considered being married. Being Mrs. Somebody. I guess I assumed that I’d get married eventually. It just seemed like it was too far away to worry about.
But maybe I am one of those girls.
I look at the page again. I’ve got three sentences. Wendy is obviously writing an entire book on how awesome her life is going to turn out, and I’ve got three sentences. I have a feeling they’re not the kind of sentences that Mr. Phibbs is going to appreciate.
“Okay, five more minutes,” says Mr. Phibbs. “Then we’ll share.” Panic sets in. I’m going to have to make something up. What should I want to be?