Summer absentmindedly
slid the nail polish brush over her toe nails. She was thinking. About Seth. A
couple of months ago—a couple of weeks ago that would have been laughable to
her. Now it wasn’t.
She kept replaying the
events of Tijuana, how she had actually had fun with him, how he had
comforted her that night at the hospital. How much she had liked being in his
arms.
Summer shook her head as
if to rattle those thoughts out of her brain. What was going on with her? She
couldn’t have a thing for Cohen. That would just be all kinds of wrong.
When he had stopped her
earlier that day, she’d almost greeted back, pleasantly even. Then she had
remembered who she was and more importantly where she was. She couldn’t
have people thinking that she was actually friends with him, she couldn’t have
Seth thinking that either. Just because she had briefly let down her guard one
night didn’t mean that things were going to change. They weren’t. Not if she
could help it.
A knock on her door
snapped her back to the present. “Yeah,” she called.
Her stepmother popped her
head in the room. “Summer, I need you to get ready. Remember we’re having everyone
over for dinner.”
Summer rolled her eyes.
“Mmhmm,” she mumbled and her step mom left the room. She’d almost forgotten.
Her uncle, aunt and cousin had decided a couple months earlier to move down
from New York. Her uncle had gotten a better job or they were tired of that
horrible snow or something. Summer didn’t remember. All she knew was that she
was being coerced into helping her cousin, Julia, fit in.
Summer snorted as a
picture of a nine year old Julia popped into her head. A tomboy with blue eyes,
mousy hair and those ungodly braces. Summer wondered if she’d have to offer
advice on makeup and clothing as well.
She would try to be nice
to the girl but she wasn’t going to go above and beyond to help her fit in,
that wasn’t her job. Her thoughts wandered again and settled back on a curly
haired guy with a boyish grin. She huffed in frustration until a thought hit
her. She’d introduce Julia to Seth, and kill two birds with one stone.
That settled, she went
back to finishing her nails.
…
Frantic fingers punched
at the keys of a telephone.
“Hello.”
“Coop?”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“The bitch is gorgeous.”
“Umm, what? Who?”
“My cousin, Julia. You
know gawky Julia with the overalls. Overalls, ew. Anyway, she’s like a totally
different person.”
“Oh, I see.” Marissa
grinned as she listened to Summer ramble on about her cousin. Summer didn’t
like competition and if Julia was as beautiful as she said then she was going
to have a lot of it.
“Don’t worry,” she said,
finally interrupting Summer’s tirade. “The guys that will go after her you’ve
already had in someway or other, or like, rejected. So, all she’ll have is your
leftovers.”
“Yeah, you’re totally
right,” Summer said smiling. “You always know what to say, Coop.”
“No problem.”
“So, you totally ignored
Chino today. Are you just going to shaft him for the rest of the year?”
Marissa sighed. “No, well
I don’t want to but…I feel really dumb for even admitting this, I feel like
he’s going to come down hard on me for being with Luke after everything and I
don’t think I can deal with that.”
“Well, I don’t—shit.
Coop, gotta go. I sneaked out in the middle of dinner to call and dad’s calling
me back down. Talk to you later, ‘kay?”
“Yeah. See ya.”
Summer hung up and left
her room. As she walked down the hall and back to the dining room where her
beautiful cousin sat waiting, she wondered if God was laughing at her.
…
Summer frowned as she
watched Julia eat up the attention that was being given to her. All the kids
were hanging outside on their lunch break and Julia was in the centre of it
all.
Marissa turned to her and
whispered, “You’re right, she’s gotten way prettier.”
Summer rolled her eyes. “Whatever. She’s not that special.”
Marissa hid a grin at her
friend’s obvious frustration at Julia’s popularity.
The ringing of the school bell a few minutes later finally put Summer out of
her misery. Grabbing her purse and books, she stood up to go back into the
school.
“Summer, wait up,” Julia
called as she and Marissa headed towards the walkway.
She turned and waited for
Julia to finally catch up and as soon as she did, Summer continued on her way
back inside.
“So everyone’s been
surprisingly cool,” Julia remarked as they climbed the stairs into the
building.
Marissa seeing that Summer
wasn’t going to respond to the comment felt the need to inject some reply.
“Yeah, I think you’ll like it here. Anyway, this is my class,” she said,
pointing to a room. “I’ll see you in History, Summer.”
Summer nodded and watched
her walk into the class. She continued walking and Julia followed as they had
the same class that period.
“So, there are a bunch of
cute guys in this place,” Julia said eyeing the student body as they walked
down the hall.
Summer shrugged. “They’re
all right.”
Summer waved to her
friends, as they walked into their French class and walked over to sit beside
them. Julia followed closely behind.
Julia was starting to
irritate Summer with the shadow act but she kept a rein on her temper and
didn’t even roll her eyes when Julia sat directly beside her.
She was opening her
notebook, poised to actually write notes if it meant not having to talk to
Julia, when Julia leaned across and whispered to her. “He has to be the cutest
guy I’ve seen so far. Definitely.”
Summer followed the direction
of Julia’s gaze and her eyes widened incredulously. Seth Cohen shuffled into
the room and took a seat at the back.
She shifted her
incredulous gaze back to Julia, who was following Seth’s every movement with
her big blue eyes. “Seth? Seth Cohen?”
“Is that his name? Seth?”
His name rolled off her tongue. “I like that. Introduce me to him.”
Summer couldn’t believe
her ears. Julia wanted to meet Seth. She thought he was hot. Finally the
initial shock wore off and Summer realized that this was exactly what she
wanted. So why then did she suddenly feel so put out by her cousin’s interest
in him?
“Yeah, whatever. It’s
your social suicide.”
Julia snorted and flicked
her wavy, chestnut brown hair over her shoulder. “What is he uncool or
something?”
Now it was Summer’s turn
to snort. “Putting it mildly.”
Summer waited for Julia
to respond but realized that her cousin had already stopped listening to her
and was watching Seth surreptitiously under her lashes. “Whatever, that means
no competition. Definitely introduce us,” she finally whispered to
Summer before she turned completely to the front and started listening to the
lecture.
Summer felt like she had
stepped into an alternate universe. Where was she? Who was she?
What the hell was going
on?
*