Page 33 of Shy Girls Can't Date Rockstars
I push the stall door open. “Nope.”
“Which girl?” the other girl asks.
“Hello?” her friend replies. “The one Chase and Brooks said to stand ten-feet away from.”
I close myself inside the stall, hoping their gossip distracts them from the fact I’m in here.
“Oh my gosh!” one of them pounds on my stall’s door. “Is it true you’re stalking Ryder Hamilton?”
What? Who asks a person that?
“Oh my gosh, Whitney. As if she’s gonna confess.”
“You don’t know. I don’t think stalkers are very smart.”
I perch on the toilet seat, wishing they’d back away so I could hurl the nothing in my stomach. With a shaky hand, I pull my phone from the pocket of my plaid skirt. The girls are bickering outside my stall about the correct definition of a stalker, and I open my phone to messages.
“SOS,”I text Jill.“I hate my new school.”
The girls’ voices slightly fade, and then I hear running water. I sit back on the lid, raising my feet so they’re not seen under the stall door.
Would my first day be different if I didn’t have this connection to Ryder? It would be so much easier if I didn’t have him and his bandmates calling me a walking plague. Then I’d just be the sad orphan.
Wow. Any way you look at this, my life sucks.
I stand by the text message.
I hate this place.
The girls cackle by the sinks, and my skin crawls.
I hate the people at this school, too.
When lunch is over, I can’t stomach the idea of going into another classroom. I recognize the looks I get from people now. Especially after so many people crowded around Ryder and his bandmates. I can only imagine the horrible rumors the trio has spread about me.
With my head down, I wander through the first floor and find the nurse’s office with relief. I have to hold on to the door frame as I walk in. Woozy is an understatement when it comes to how much my head is spinning.
The school nurse introduces herself as Mrs. Whiteborne, ushers me onto a bed, and is quick to take my temperature. When the reading comes back as normal, she gives me a juice to drink and asks if I have any aspirin. Apparently, parental permission is needed to give a student any form of medication. I don’t want to disappoint my aunt when she’s already so thrilled about my academic record, so I tell the nurse I took some earlier.
Mrs. Whiteborne leaves me to rest in quiet. As I listen to her typing at her desk, there’s a buzz in the pocket of my skirt. I check Mrs. Whiteborne still has her back turned, and slip out my phone.
It’s a text from Jill.“Hey, I can finally have my phone out. I’m in the library because Mrs. Horton gave me extra research time for my essay. What’s happened? Why do you hate your school so much?”
Another message follows with a winky face emoji.“Is it because I’m not there?”
Oh, Jill. If only it were that simple.
How do I even describe this day to her? I should be in the library with her right now. We should be swapping notes and proofreading each other’s essays. At my old school, Jill and I hadour place. We’d grown up in Millbrook, and no one had reason to single us out. We were just Alice and Jill. The girls who got good grades and stayed home on Friday nights, watching movies and eating cookie dough.
Without the energy to recap my hostile classes, I send Jill the video link of Sky Chaos’ performance on The Jameson Late Show along with the message,“I’m living under the same roof as the lead guitarist and vocalist.”
After a few minutes, she replies with,“What???? This is insane!!!”
“I take it from the long reply, you watched the clip?”
“Ah, yeah. I was hooked. How do you know this guy???”
“Like I said, we’re living together. My aunt is his manager.”
