Lovestruck Summer Melissa Walker (top 100 books to read .TXT) 📖

that time in fi rst grade when you dressed up as a punk? Your mom tried to get you to just put your hair back in a ponytail but you pitched a fi t until she fi gured out how to get it into a per- fectly straight, pointy mohawk?”“Well, spiky hair is pretty much the make-

229 or-break for that costume,”I say, defending my six-year-old self. Raina laughs. “Yeah, but at the end of the day, did anyone really care whether your hair looked perfect?”“It’s nice if things look perfect,”I say. “And Sebastian does,”says Raina. “So what’s the issue?”“Russ,”I say, admitting it out loud. “The cowboy neighbor?!”Raina screams. “Is that dumb frat boy still bothering you?”“Yeah,”I say softly, looking out the window of Miss Tiara’s bedroom. Part of me wants to shout at Raina and tell her she sounds really judg- mental and narrow-minded. That maybe Russ does have something to offer, and just because he looks all J.Crew catalog doesn’t mean he’s an empty-minded goon. “Hey,”she says, sounding serious. “Are you upset?”“I don’t know,”I say. “I guess I think what you just said about Russ isn’t really fair. I mean, he helped me buy a car, he makes really good burgers, and he’s trying to show me Austin and new music.”

230 “Whoa—that’s the fi rst time I’ve heard you say something nice about him,”says Raina. “You do realize that I’ve never met him. I’m totally going off of what you’ve told me.”“And what I’ve told you is that he’s a loser frat boy?”I ask. “Uh, in short, yeah,”she says. I’m silent as Miss Tiara walks into the room and gives me a cocked-head look like, What are you doing in my space? I shoo her out and shut the door. Raina has a point: I have been completely writing Russ off, not to mention talking badly about him. “I’m sorry,”I say. “I’m just really confused.”“It’s okay,”she says. “But you kind of need to decide who you like. Maybe you shouldn’t idealize anyone, Quinn. Follow your instincts. Go for who you really want.”I stare out the window into the parking lot. “But Sebastian is—”I start. “He’s what you thought you wanted,”she interrupts. Raina’s right. And I think maybe I’ve been wrong all along.

231 Chapter 21 I run downstairs and don’t even stop to tell Penny where I’m going before I open the sliding glass doors and rush over to Russ and Chrissy’s patio. Chrissy’s out by the picnic table, cleaning her roller skates. “Is Russ home?”I ask. “No,”she says, not looking up. “Why?”“I need to talk to him,”I say. She sighs heavily. “What?”I ask. She squints in the sunlight as she gives me a sideways look. “Quinn, you kinda broke him,”she says. I sink down on the picnic bench across from her. “Really?”I bite my lip. “He was, like, devastated when Katie left,”

232 says Chrissy, looking back down at the skate she’s polishing. “So I heard,”I say. “Yeah, well, he got over it really quickly when he saw you,”she says. “It was like someone stuffed a lightning bolt up his butt. The derby girls wanted me to recruit him for our team with the way he was racing around, supercharged.”She looks at me and then smiles, and I can’t help but grin. “But you went for that DJ,”she says, smile fading as she refocuses on one particularly stub- born dirt streak near the top of her left skate. “I didn’t think—”I start. But I realize I’m about to say I didn’t think Russ liked me, and that’s not the truth. I guess I didn’t think I could like him, and when I picture his face with a wide, mocking grin, I can’t even remember why. The fi rst time we met I felt electrifi ed. With Sebastian, I was excited because he fi t the part. But with Russ, I felt a jolt just because of him, of who he was. “Chrissy, I know I don’t deserve your approval,”I say. And then I think of a way to appeal to her in her own language. “But I think

233 Russ and I might be like Mark Darcy and Bridget in Bridget Jones’s Diary, and all I have to do is just fi nally tell him that I feel the same way, and then we’ll be together and live happily ever after.”I can’t believe I just cast myself as Bridget Jones. She looks up at me, and stares hard. Like she’s trying to fi gure out who I am—really. And that makes two of us. But I also see her eyes start to sparkle slightly. And I know she’s giving in. “He’s working on the truck,”she says. “You can fi nd him out at Albie’s.”“Thank you!”I say, rushing around the table to give her a squeeze. Then I’m racing back through Penny’s condo, grabbing my keys, and, soon, cranking up the Festiva. As I back out of my spot, I reach down absentmindedly to tune the radio, pressing the button to seek through the dial and wishing I hadn’t destroyed Russ’s mix. I drive confi dently for the fi rst ten minutes, through town and out into the fl at plains, which look familiar in their middle-of-nowhere-ness. But after half an hour without hitting Albie’s, I

234 think I might be lost. And I haven’t seen a gas station or anywhere I can ask for directions in about twenty miles. I pull the car over to the side of the road and open the glove compartment, hoping against hope that Albie places some magical “free gift with purchase”map in the cars he sells, because I know I sure as H didn’t buy one. I lean over and reach in, but I don’t fi nd anything that feels like a map. What I’m touch- ing is a cassette case. I pull it out and turn it over in my hand. It’s Russ’s mix. The one I destroyed. The one I smashed and de-taped and completely annihilated. I look over the song list, and it’s