Chapter One: One of the Boys

I really am an idiot—completely and totally without any sense of all kinds.  It’s one thing to be ignorant, blissfully ignorant to the odds stacked against you and the risks, even without those odds, of a decision.  But no, I knew.  I knew totally but my mind was made up and I’m usually not a very resolute person but…it was him I guess.

There’s this thing about what I’m doing, for him.  I really am a practical person; I have to be when most of my friends—well, all except one—are idiotic teenage boys.  Ha, here I am using that word ‘idiot’ again.  Especially when they’ve made smarter choices than the one I’m making.  I’m usually the brains of the operation.  That’s why I don’t get it.

I’m usually smarter than this!

I wrung my wrists together under my blanket, staring down the offending object across from my bed.  But my anger should really be directed at myself, considering I’m the one who decided to wake up a full hour earlier than last year.  It’s a strange thing, love, what it’ll make you do. 

As that errant thought popped into my head, I almost screamed.  Why, why, why did I do it?  He should be off limits.  I never pictured myself to be the girl, who after years of friendship, fell in love with her best friend—you see, I thought there was a thin line between love and hate not love and in love. 

I pictured finding love at the age of twenty four, after college and a few years of shameless partying.  I also pictured finding a nice, stable man with a promising career ahead of him—not the resident gorgeous, womanizing, perfect (I know I’m contradicting myself, but cut me some slack; I’m obviously losing my head) king of our school.

Maybe I’ll see him today and snap out of it, but I am already pretty far gone.  It’s pretty much just wishful thinking that I’ll change my mind today. I climbed out of the bed and blindly stumbled into the bathroom.  I pushed back the shower curtain slightly and turned the nossel to full blast but on an ice cold temperature.  I’d need something to start my day—and I had read in Seventeen Magazine that cold water makes your hair shinier.

This is what I’ve come to, reading teenage girl’s magazines for tips.  I got out of the shower, dried off and lotioned up.  I pulled on an old tattered robe to straighten my hair.  I squeezed the tube of Anti-Frizz serum—who thinks of this stuff?—into my palm and worked it into my limp blonde hair.

I tried to rub my hands roughly against the robe, to get rid of the residue but it only left greasy palm sized smears.  I sighed deeply before picking up the torture device that I’d only just learned to use over the summer—the summer leading up to my senior year—and went to work.

It was funny how many new wonders the girl world, and my other best friend, had introduced to me in such a short length of time.  I thought the girls with perfect hair were just blessed with good genes.  I didn’t do hair products, safe for a dime-sized dollop of mouse five minutes before I left the house, or the various hair tools that came with them.

I came back into the room pleased with my fair hair, now voluminous and spilling perfectly over my shoulders.  I did this three times a week for three months, and it definitely paid off.  The first thing my eyes fell on were the only two pictures on my dresser.  I smiled slightly at both memories.

The first was taken the summer before we started high school, when my mother took us to our first day of Soccer conditioning.  We were both sporting cheesy grins with our shin-guards and balls propped up against our hips.  And the second was just four months ago in late May.  Actually it was at that point that I had my epiphany.  When I shot the winning goal at State, someone took a picture of him lifting me, awkwardly, onto his shoulders.

I looked into Ace’s eyes, green as a manicured lawn, and later knew.  I didn’t just love Ace; I was in love with him and had been for a long time.  Forgive me for saying this but in the way of epiphanies, it seems a bit bland.  Or at least if it had been a real amazing moment, we both would have realized it and engulfed ourselves into a passionate kiss.

So much for a perfect ending.  Instead I have to learn how to become a girl or the type of girl he usually goes for—pretty, popular, and peppy (the latter being interchangeable with petty).  And let me tell you that it is not, in no way shape or form, easy.

I, Hailey Madison Brighton, am a tomboy.  Or well, I was, but once people take one long look at me they’ll know I underwent a change.  A welcome one, my mother says.  Once she got an eyeful of all the clothes I bought in late July, she squealed like the time we bought my first bra.

But I shouldn’t start on my mother the ex-cheerleader, it’s off-topic and I’ll go on a tangent.  But as long as I’m on the subject, do you know she bought me a car?  A new one too, for becoming the daughter she always wanted.  I’m thinking she’ll buy me a yacht if I went out for the cheerleading squad. 

Not that I wouldn’t kick ass in it. But hell no.

But, you see, my mom didn’t bargain on having three sons.  And on the last pregnancy, she was joyous when a girl popped out.  But when I opted for soccer instead of cheering for Pop Warner football she was a smidge disappointed.  She did force me into gymnastics, which I still do on account of the fact that I know she lives on the hope that one day my love of floor mats and balance beams will steer me towards the cheerleading team.

And now…I’m kind of thinking about it.  But maybe that’s taking it too far.  He has dated four cheerleaders during our high school years so…

Ugh, my brain screamed “Sellout”!  And I agree wholeheartedly.  Something is happening to me, seriously.  I feel like my heart thumps against my ribcage whenever he comes near and I’ve started blushing around him for no justifiable reason.

It’s a crime, a terrible injustice that one person’s presence can make me feel like a car’s engine sputtering to a stop in the middle of the highway.  Like my brain is riding on a tidal wave or maybe I’m standing at the shore of an island in Southern Asia—during the middle of monsoon season of course.

I pulled on the pale gray skinny jeans—and again, who brought these back?  Who wants their ankles constricted; give ‘em some breathing room please?—and a plain lavender slim fitting tee.  Allie picked my outfit for the day because she was sure I’d end up throwing on a pair of old soccer shorts and my favorite lime-green and squash colored Nike shocks.

“Ease him into it,” she’d said last night, “You don’t want him to think it’s a joke.  No skirts or frills on the first day.”

I do love that girl; I wouldn’t have known where to start without her. 

I glanced at the clock again and checked my schedule.  Ugh, my least favorite part, makeup.  I sat down at my, unused until a few months ago, vanity and poured the contents of the sleek silver makeup bag Allie had donated across it.

I smirked bitterly at the post-it notes she’d tacked to the mirror.  I finished step one quickly, buffing with the powder in a circular motion but number two I skipped.  I’d been blushing enough these days, I didn’t need any extra.  Then I picked up the next item, sure to be the bane of my existence for the next school year, eyeliner.

It took me five minutes, at least, to smear the dark brown pencil across my bottom and top lids.  Mascara I was best at, so it didn’t take long.  I heaved out another sigh once I was done and went to find my shoes.

I ran around the room frantic, searching for the gladiator sandals—with little purple stones that tinkled when I took one step in them, which sort of pissed me off because they weren’t functional at all. 

I paused in front of the mirror, wishing I could compare a before picture.  My usually dull blue eyes stood out brightly with the addition of eyeliner and my hair was perfectly smooth.  Not to mention the fact that I was wearing an outfit that actually outlined my body, so you could see the real shape of it. 

Huh, Allie really was right—your chest does look better if it’s not hidden underneath ten tons of sports attire.  Although I couldn’t be sure if I liked it or not; I felt a bit unsecure without a sports bra on. And hips! God, who knew I had hips?

My head popped up suddenly, I’d forgotten about Allie’s obsessive compulsive traits.  Last night she packed my bag for school, a brand-spanking-new Kate Spade purse, and placed my shoes next to them by my door.  I shook the purse after sliding on my shoes and heard my keys jingle.  The purse did sort of make me cringe, two thirds of the preppy girls at my school have Kate Spade purses.

But, at least the black and green tote was functional.  And it wasn’t Coach. Good grief, looking at all those carefully placed and brightly colored C’s all day might just send me over the edge.

I slipped my ratty black Kipling messenger bag over my shoulder and trudged downstairs.  My mom was still sleeping, since she had no suits that she had to arrive in court for today and my brothers had both left for college two weeks ago, so the house was silent.  And I needed out.

I headed to the door to drop off my bags in my car before coming back to make a few pieces of toast.  I slipped around the island in the kitchen, through the den, and into the foyer.  I adjusted my bag on my shoulder and swung open the door carelessly.

And my stomach may or may have not fallen straight down through my butt and gone splat on the marble tiles on the foyer floor.

I blinked a few times and bit my lip blushing.  Why was he here, way ahead of our scheduled meeting in second period Sociology, “Hailey, I was thinking since it’s the first day could you…?”

He stopped and his thick wavy black hair fell into his eyes as her appraised my appearance.  I could tell he’d just made it home from a run—his hair was shaggy and little beads of sweat sprinkled his face, “Why are you…?”

“Um, I—,” I started and my hand was still clutching the doorknob, “What are you doing here?”

He still stared wordlessly at me while my face grew warmer and warmer.  Oh, god please let him say something—anything.  Then he watched my face for a few immeasurably long moments and his wide bow-like mouth curved into a smile, “Hailey—”

But I pushed the door closed right back on his face.  Oh no, I was definitely not ready for that.