The Last Dreamer Read Free

and sister start to flirt in the kitchen, while Jeff tries to get his pal to take an interest in a can of soda, a bag of chips, or the basketball stats in the newspaper, the way he usually does. But today, the friend asks the sister to go for a walk, and the two of them leave the house. The camera then switches to Jeff shooting baskets alone on the driveway and missing every shot, while an announcer declares, “There’s no going back. Reese Jeans.”
    Iliana rushed home every day after school that spring, doing her homework while keeping an eye on the TV, waiting for the Reese Jeans commercial. She was certain that Jeff was just like the character he played in the commercial—a loner, an outsider. She was sure he would understand her better than anyone else, since she was an outsider, too.
    The transition to sixth grade that year had been hard for her. The middle school drew from two elementary schools, hers and another one on the wealthier side of town—and her best friend from elementary school had moved to the fancier area over the summer. Iliana was shy to begin with, she didn’t make friends easily, and it was painful to watch Lizzie embrace a whole new group of girls that Iliana had nothing in common with. They talked about fancy designer clothes they intended to buy and argued about whether the skiing was better in Snowbasin or Copper Mountain, places Iliana had never heard of. When one of them showed off her new tennis bracelet at lunch, Iliana was baffled. It looked like a fancy bracelet to her—what did it have to do with tennis? Still, with nowhere else to sit, she went to the same lunch table as Lizzie and her new friends every day, pretending that she belonged. And as she sat there, she daydreamed about Jeff Downs. She imagined what he would do if he were to visit her school during lunch one day. She was sure he would find the girls at the table mean and shallow. He would turn away as they gushed over a new blouse or bracelet. He’d look at her as she sat quietly at the end of the table, and he’d tell them, “I want to know what Iliana’s thinking.”
    That July, Iliana read in Teen magazine that the “Reese Jeans guy” had joined the cast of a new TV series about four high school buddies who form a band called the Dreamers. Knowing that the show would launch in September made it easier for her to accept the end of summer and the prospect of a new school year, the likelihood of finding no welcoming faces anywhere in the lunchroom, and having to sit again, ignored, with Lizzie and her rich friends. In August, she checked the shelves at the candy store daily, and was the first to pull a copy of the new issue of Teen —with a full-color photo section all about the new show—from the rope-bound stack. The photos were mainly of the show’s biggest star, Terry Brice, whose California tan and white-blond hair had made him a regular on sitcoms and commercials. But it was the one close-up of Jeff Downs that held her attention. She loved that he was looking down at his guitar, and not at the camera. Was there any better confirmation that he was just what she had imagined—modest, deep, and a little brooding? She was convinced that he allowed himself to get close to only a few people.
    People like her.

    The next morning, after making sure that Matt and Dara were getting dressed, Iliana slipped downstairs and turned on her computer. Sure, it was just a stupid TV show, and an old one at that, but she kept hearing Jeff’s advice to the girl over and over in her head— You just gotta put yourself out there, you know?— the same way she used to hear him as she went through the motions at middle school each day. Opening her email, she read her draft to Stuart, made a few revisions, added a concluding sentence expressing the hope that they’d talk soon, and pressed “Send.” There was no point in hesitating; it was time to put herself out there.
    But no sooner had she dropped the kids off at