The Secret Life of a Dream Girl (Creative HeArts) Read Free

calls on you.”
    Okay, fine. If he’s going to be picky, then no. I don’t talk to anyone unless I absolutely have to. Is it optimal? No. But it makes hiding in plain sight so much easier, and right now, that’s a lot more important to me than making friends I’ll probably never see again after this year.
    I sigh and start to try to explain my reasoning to Finn. But I can tell from the look on his face that I don’t have to. He already knows.
    “That’s not going to give you the experience you’re looking for,” he says after a second. “You’re here in the singer/songwriter track, which is supposed to be all about real life. All about the human condition and experience. How do you think you’re going to pull that off if you spend the next year locked inside yourself, terrified of making a connection with anyone?”
    “I’m making a connection with you, Trouble.”
    He rolls his eyes at the old nickname. “I don’t count.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m as fake as you are.”
    And then the song is ending and he’s dipping me, down, down, down. I hold tight to him, half terrified he’s going to drop me and half terrified that he won’t and I’ll actually have to answer his allegations when he pulls me back up.
    But in the end, neither happens. As Lana morphs into Beyoncé, he escorts me off the dance floor with a hand to my lower back. Then he drops a brotherly kiss on the top of my head before disappearing back into the crowd, and I’m left staring after him as his words play on repeat in my head.

Chapter Two
    He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
    Not that that was exactly a surprise—he’d had that same problem for weeks now. Keegan didn’t know what it was about her that he found so captivating, but he’d fallen hard for Dahlia Greene the day he’d walked into senior seminar and found her laughing, her whole face lit up like the sky on the Fourth of July. Sure, the whole class had been laughing at something their teacher, Oliver, had said, but in that moment he’d only had eyes for her.
    Six weeks later and nothing had changed. In fact, his crush—or whatever he was supposed to call this weird feeling he got every time he so much as thought about her—had only gotten worse. And tonight…tonight she was all he could think about. All he could see.
    It was ridiculous considering how tiny she was—barely five feet when she didn’t have her heels on. She should have gotten lost in the sea of people milling around the gym, but there was something about her that commanded attention. A natural charisma that all but screamed look at me, look at me .
    Or maybe that was just how he saw her. But who could blame him? She was beautiful in the white halter dress that showed off her curvy body and the pixie haircut that highlighted her super-high cheekbones. Most of the other girls were dressed in bright colors tonight, their long hair flowing around their shoulders or in fancy hairdos—all of which made Dahlia’s simple beauty stand out even more in the crowded tent. Add in the way her smile lit up her whole face and the way she always asked the most interesting and thoughtful questions in class, and he was a goner.
    He’d noticed she was here alone about ten seconds after she walked into the dance, and since he was with a group of friends instead of a date, it had seemed like fate was finally smiling down on him. Like the universe had finally given him the chance he’d been waiting for.
    Still, he hadn’t headed right over to her. He’d wanted to take his time, give her a few minutes to settle in, not seem too eager. And if he was being completely honest, it had taken him a while to work up the nerve to ask her to dance—another first for him, as he was usually pretty confident with girls. But there was just something about Dahlia that made him awkward and clumsy and nervous. So nervous.
    Of course, it was probably his lack of urgency that had made the universe decide to kick him in the