Don't You Wish (12 page)

I look right at him and give him a snotty look like he is all things stupid and annoying. “August twelfth, Daddy.”

So Ayla and Annie have the same birthday.

“Do you love your party?”

On the screen, Ayla just laughs, throaty and sexy, and, really, who laughs like that? “Yeah, except I really wanted to fly everyone to St. Bart’s instead of going down the street to SoBe,” she says.

Holy crap, what a bitch.

She turns from the camera as someone approaches. It’s Ryder, looking damn good. He reaches for her, and she accepts his hug, but pulls back to give him a less than affectionate look.

“Where the hell’s my drink?”

I hate that girl
.

The band starts the next song, and there’s a lot of screaming. Christofer Drew—ohmigod Lizzie would die!—gets up to the microphone.

“Where’s the birthday girl? I need some help on this one,” Chris says.

I watch in silence as Ayla takes the stage, lets Never
Shout Never sing happy freaking birthday to her, and everyone toasts with champagne.

So, okay, that didn’t happen at the Moose Lodge.

What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just appreciate being here, wherever the hell I am? Life’s great, and who cares if I’m a bitch? I don’t have to
act
like Ayla Monroe to
live
like Ayla Monroe.

But a little tendril of confusion wraps around my heart. Why am I changed on the outside but not on the inside?

What if I were the daughter of Jim and Emily Monroe? Who knows if I would still be me? Wouldn’t I have the same soul?

As the Walmart conversation with my mom replays in my head, I clutch my chest, where I always imagine my soul resides. Is that what happened, somehow?

Little sparks flash behind my eyes, and all of the answers to the questions of the last few days are right there. I am Ayla Monroe … but somehow, some way, I’ve got Annie Nutter’s soul. Now I just have to figure out a way to make these two coexist.

Holding that thought, I shower, dress—I go with Jade’s suggestion for all Dior—and apply a little makeup to my pretty face.

No, this totally doesn’t suck.

I open the door and head downstairs to find Mom. Maybe I won’t tell her just yet. Or maybe I’ll ask some questions, find out a little about her history, like when she married Jimbo and why.

Tillie is in the kitchen. “Good morning, Miss Ayla.” She hands me a crystal bowl of yogurt, and as I reach for it, I smile.

“I’m not a witch,” I whisper. “And thank you.”

“Then, why do you say ‘thank you’ after sixteen years of being the world’s biggest brat?”

“Because I’ve changed.”

That earns me some more intense scrutiny, as though she can figure out what happened by looking into my eyes. “True,” she says. “Something is different.”

“It certainly is.” I spoon the yogurt and slide it into my mouth, watching Tillie clean with competence and speed. Maybe she can shed some light on this world.

“So, how long have you worked for us?”

She frowns at me. “It’s not strawberry, Miss Ayla. I don’t need a lecture on what you eat and don’t eat. I have been with this family long enough to know what’s what.”

Yeah? Too bad I haven’t. “Where’s Mom?” I ask.

“She left for an appointment.”

Disappointment pulls at me. “She was going to take me to school.”

“There’s a limo on the way, Miss Ayla. You’ll get to school.”

A
limo
? Yes I will get there, and in style, it seems.

I swallow any questions along with my yogurt. Stop fighting the tide, Ayla. It’s time to embrace every limo-filled moment of this new life.

When the stretch pulls up to the entrance of Crap Academy, there are a few kids dotting the lawns and circular drive. But my eye is drawn to the fountain in the middle, where Charlie Zelinsky is sitting on the stone wall, oboe case at his feet, phone in his hand, geektastic fedora low over his face. He looks up as the car slows and the driver gets out to open my door.

I’m not quite ready to leave the luxury that is my very first limo ride. But I’m comforted knowing it won’t be my last. Evidently Jimbo keeps this monster stretch on 24/7 call, with Marcel, a gray-haired grandfatherly type, as the driver. I slide out, and Charlie watches, tipping back his hat, then sliding some off-brand aviators down his nose to pin me with a long stare.

He probably hates me. All the invisibles hate the popular kids; that’s the law of nature. They hate us, and they want to be us.

Us.
That didn’t take long to embrace
, I think with a wry smile.

Confident in my school status for the first time in my life, I square my shoulders, nod my thanks to Marcel as he holds the door for me, and head toward the steps, planning to cruise right by the nobody who caused me such grief in English lit.

But Charlie surprises me, holding up his hand with an easy smile. Despite my desire to glide by like school royalty without so much as a sideways glance, I hesitate. It’s the smile, I think. There’s something about his smile that’s genuine. And, jeez, kinda cute.

I mean, he might be a geek, but in my old life he’d be the object of my late-night if-only-I-had-a-boyfriend sessions with Lizzie. Of course, my standards were much lower then.

“Brighton read our stuff on symbolism to the class,” he says.

Great. Now there’s no doubt that one of us had to know what we were talking about on that assignment. Something tells me that Charlie didn’t hog all the credit, further eroding my position as a Queen Bee who doesn’t care about grades.

“Cool.” My brain wants me to move on, but my legs are like lead. No, worse than lead. They’re on their way over to him. “So, I take it we got an A.”

Why did I say that? Ayla wouldn’t care what her grade is.

His smile widens, revealing really straight teeth and one
dimple. One lone dimple that kind of grabs my heart, it’s so cute.

No, Ayla. Not cute.
Invisible
.

“Which might balance out the fact that you’re going to fail chem,” he teases.

“I am not,” I shoot back. “And how the heck would you know, anyway? I didn’t see you in my chem class.”

“And you won’t. I’m taking advanced physics.”

Nerd alert! “Of course you are,” I say, inexplicably drawn to him. “That’s why you offered chem tutoring.”

He shrugs and raises his head enough that I can really see his face under the brim. “Only if you need it.”

“Why do you wear that stupid hat?”

“Why do you wear those stupid shoes?”

I look down at the booties, admiring the buckles. “Sorry, but there’s nothing stupid about these shoes.”

“There’s nothing stupid about this hat.”

“Just the person who bought it.”

His smile disappears. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

Oh, sensitive, is he? “Sorry,” I say, softening the tension with a smile. The fact is, I’m still held like a magnet two feet away from him.

Of course, if a boy had talked to me this long and this casually in my old life, I wouldn’t have dreamed of walking away. So, chalk this social faux pas up as a noobie mistake, because I’m not used to the fact that every boy in Crap wants to talk to me.

Still, I don’t move, and neither does he.

“Why aren’t you in class?” I ask, mostly to break the beat of awkward silence.

“Why aren’t you?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?” I inch closer. Why? I don’t know, but I do.

“If I can,” he admits. “I take college classes at night, so I don’t have a full six-period day. I’m free during third and fifth. But you are officially cutting, which I know is your MO.”

“Is it? How
do
I get away with that?” I try to make it sound like a sarcastic joke, but I’m hoping he knows the answer.

He snorts a soft laugh. “Ayla Monroe, daughter of one of the school’s biggest benefactors, darling of the faculty lounge, owner of the Can Do No Wrong title … are you asking me a serious question?”

“Are you always so sarcastic?”

When he doesn’t answer, I give his arm a little nudge. I’m that close to him now. And staying. “Question with a question.”

He laughs, and so do I, and for one crazy second, we have eye contact. Long eye contact. The kind of eye contact that sends a little baby butterfly flitting around my stomach.

“Ayla!”

I spin at the sound of my name, freezing like a criminal caught in the act when I see Jade and Bliss bounding down the stairs. As much as anyone can bound in four-inch heels.

Bliss blasts Charlie with a dirty look.

“What are you doing?” she demands, like he broke the law or something. Well, I guess he did. Invisibles don’t talk to the most popular girl in the school. Doesn’t he know the immutable laws of physics?

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” he shoots back at her, flicking his gaze at me. For a flash, we share an inside joke, answering a question with a question.

The flash is long enough for Bliss to see it. “Nice lid, cowboy,” she says, walking up to the fountain, Jade right in step with her.

“It’s not a cowboy hat,” I tell her, bracing for her to say something really mangled
and
mean to Charlie. I don’t know why, but I just don’t think I can stand it after he’s been nothing but nice to me.

“You like that hat?” Bliss asks me, a challenge in her tone. “ ’Cause I think it looks kind of … highness.”

“Highness?” Charlie whispers to me.

“I think she means ‘heinous.’ ”

He stifles a laugh, and that makes Bliss’s eyes flash in anger as she marches closer.

“You have a lot of nerve laughing at me,” she says to him.

“I’m not—”

She snags the hat right off his head, and he tries to grab it, but she’s too fast. In a second, she’s got it on, copping a pose while Jade hoots.

“How do I look?” Bliss asks, hand on her hip, diva-style.

“Cut it out,” I say, an old, familiar heat rising up from my chest. I’ve seen this a million times, only I’ve never had the nerve to talk back to a kid doing this.

“Give it,” Jade demands, reaching out.

Bliss flips the hat to Jade. Charlie is up, but they’re way too fast, scampering around the fountain with heels clickity-clacking, and he obviously doesn’t want to look like a fool running after them.

“Over here,” I say, enough play in my voice that I hope they’ll fall for it. Because the minute I have that hat, I’m giving it back to its rightful owner.

But the hat flips between Jade and Bliss again, high in the air.

I steal a look at Charlie, seeing his whole face and hair for the first time. Funny, he doesn’t look too much like a science geek who takes college classes in eleventh grade. Not as cute as Ryder, obviously, but kind of a young, in-need-of-a-makeover Ashton Kutcher. Only skinnier and not as tall. And not as sexy.

So, not Ashton Kutcher.

“Hey!” he says as the hat narrowly misses a fountain spray and the two of them giggle like banshees.

There’s got to be a better way to handle this. I round the fountain and get in Bliss’s face, gearing up to deliver a deadly warning and underscore it with The Look.

She hesitates under my gaze, but the hat’s sailing her way. I reach up to catch it, but I miss, instead sending it right into the fountain.

Charlie swears under his breath, and the hat bobbles in the water behind me.

“Nice one, Ayla,” Bliss says, offering a high five.

Jade scampers around the fountain, tossing long black hair over her shoulder like she has just finished a hard afternoon’s work. “You gotta quit socializing with the invisibles, Ayla,” she says, her voice low in warning.

“Why?”

They both stare at me, but Bliss’s expression shifts and softens.

“You’re right, Ayla. Talk to all the losers you want, whenever you want. It’s fine.” She gives me a nudge. “We were going to hit Miracle Mile. You comin’?”

I turn to see Charlie shaking off the hat, which is drenched. He won’t even look at me, and my heart sinks a little. He thinks I knocked the hat into the water on purpose.

“Or would you rather stay with your new friend?”

Bliss’s question is swaddled in sweetness, but I know better than to trust her. Of course, if I’m caught so much as talking to an invisible, I could lose my perch on the pile of popularity, and guess who is ready to hoist herself up and fill in the vacancy?

“Let’s go,” I say quietly, without even looking at Charlie.

The fleeting connection is gone anyway, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I head off with my friends without looking back. They might not be the greatest girls in the world, but they breathe the rare air, and I still want my lungs full of that, too.

The boutique- and restaurant-lined street in the heart of the Gables is packed with tourists and shoppers, and as we navigate the crowds and sip caramel macchiatos, my friends grill me.

“Why do you suddenly find it necessary to befriend the homeless?” Bliss demands.

“Don’t you mean the hopeless?”

“No, I do not.”

Jade steps in between us, where she is metaphorically most of the time. But this time, I think she’s siding with Bliss.
“Honestly, Ayla,” she says, “you could really ruin our rep by talking to people like that jerkwad Zelinsky.”

Do popular kids really think like this? I mean, I’ve been watching them from afar since whenever “popular” happens—so, what, fifth grade? I know the lessers certainly know their lives can change on a dime with even a nod from the popular kids, but is it vice versa, too?

“He’s just a nice science geek,” I say, still determined to defend him, but my voice has grown weak. Along with my conviction. Cutting class and drinking coffee with the most popular girls is by far better than flirting with nerds. “He’s going to help me in chem because I helped him in lit.”

They both stare as if my hair has changed color.

“Yeah, about that freak accident in lit,” Bliss says, accusation in her voice. “It’s been all over the school. I assume you SparkNoted that book, right?”

“Duh. Like I really read
Lord of the Flies
.” I sip my coffee, averting my eyes. “So I’m going to let him make sure I don’t fail chem.”