Rotten Apple Read Free

hand in her tote bag, riffling through the keys, lip gloss, gum, old movie tickets, her iPod,her wallet, and the change at the bottom of her purse.
    Why did they have to make cell phones so small? Why hadn’t she carried a smaller purse?
    “I can’t find anything in here,” Apple moaned under her breath, standing still while still fishing around in her bag, feeling a million items but not her phone. “Where is the damn thing?”
    Screw it, Apple thought, as she knelt down on the sidewalk outside a store called Health Nuts. She dumped the contents of her purse out on the ground. It wasn’t like there was anything important or valuable in there, and the sidewalks at this plaza were eerily clean—just like all the spotless cars. And everyone’s gleaming white teeth in magazine advertisements.
    Apple finally found her pink cell phone.
    “Hello? Hello?” she asked breathlessly, flipping it open. No answer. Great, Apple thought, throwing her phone back into her bag in disgust. Can anything go right in my life today?
    She stayed crouched, hanging her head so her long, super-curly brown hair fell over her face, and covered her eyes with her hands, taking a moment to calm down. Maybe she should go into Health Nuts one of these days and ask about some sort of natural pill for relaxation.
    Breathe, Apple, just breathe. It’s just a missed phone call. As Brooklyn would say, “Let all your bad energies out. Think only positive thoughts.”
    “Breathe, Apple, just breathe,” she said again.
    “Bad day?” a deep voice asked above her.
    Apple looked up, surprised. She hadn’t realized she had been talking out loud. She felt her face turning pink.Apple hated how she blushed so easily. What was the point of being a private person if the feelings just seeped out of your skin and made you blush? She had to work on that.
    She couldn’t help but notice that the guy standing above her, looking directly down at her, was cute—
super
cute. His lips were bee-stung plump, turned upward in a half smile. His eyes were as blue as the ocean. He had the sweetest dimple in his right cheek.
And
he was smiling at her. Apple was mortified. There she was, crouching on the ground outside Health Nuts, muttering to herself, surrounded by an old issue of
Teen Vogue
, crumpled papers, dirty tissues, and old gum packages, like some sort of crazy person. She felt her face turning redder.
    “No, um, I just missed a call, that’s all. It’s not a big deal,” Apple answered, frantically starting to shove everything she had dumped out back into her bag. “I couldn’t find my freaking phone in this bag. It’s like an endless pit leading to nowhere.”
    “Was it an important call?” the cute guy asked, bending down to talk to Apple at eye level. Apple looked down. She wasn’t good at looking people directly in the eye. It made her uncomfortable. The cute guy started helping her pick up the contents of her bag, handing over a package of gum, which Apple grabbed and threw into her purse, along with a package of bobby pins, her wallet, and a lip gloss she had been trying to find for more than a month.
    “No. I doubt it. It was probably just one of my friends. I was supposed to meet them, like, twentyminutes ago, and I’m late. They were probably just wondering where I was. Well, I’d better go. I’m late,” Apple said, standing up.
    “So you’ve said,” the cute guy responded.
    It just figured, thought Apple—I get stopped by a super-cute guy when I’m wearing dirty, stretched-out jeans and on my way to get my eyebrows waxed. Why couldn’t I have run into him afterward, when I don’t look like Oscar the Grouch?
    “That’s it?” the cute guy asked. “That’s all I get?”
    What the heck was he talking about? Did he expect a tip or something? Apple realized she hadn’t even thanked him for helping her gather her things. She had been rude to her mother, and now she was being rude to a complete stranger who had just helped her and who