The Trouble With Flirting Read Free Page A

them.”
    “Or not,” I say, and we wait in silence for the commercials to end.
    When we walk to campus the next morning, I can feel a difference in the air: it’s like the school has come alive in the last twelve hours. The dining hall is pumping out bready, coffee-ish smells, which make me glad Amelia scored me a meal card.
    “We’ll have lunch there today, right?” I say hopefully.
    “ I won’t be eating in the dining hall,” Amelia replies. “I ate there once, and that was enough for me. I found five hairs in one plate of food. I’m amazed they don’t get cited by the health department. But I’m sure it’ll be fine for you. Kids have stomachs of steel.”
    We go to her office, and she puts me to work for the next few hours mending a splitting seam on an enormous stage curtain. The actual sewing isn’t difficult, since I can do it on the machine, but wrestling huge armfuls of velvet into submission is hot, exhausting work, and time passes slowly. The all-female seventies folk music Amelia plays at a low wailonly increases my restlessness.
    All morning long I can hear happy voices outside in the courtyard and cars pulling up and doors banging. The students are definitely arriving. When Amelia finally says, “You might as well go—you’re obviously not focusing on your work anyway,” she doesn’t need to tell me twice. I’m on my feet and out the door in seconds.
    I stop outside and blink, dazed for a moment by the bright sunshine.
    Dozens of kids my age are milling around, greeting one another with squeals of excitement, rolling and hauling luggage across the courtyard, and running in and out of the dorm across the way and the dining hall next to it.
    I see a girl grab a guy by the arm a few yards away from me. “You have to be Jorey!” she cries. “I recognize you from your profile pic!”
    “Carson?” he says. “Carson Bailey?”
    “Oh, my God, I can’t believe we’re actually meeting after all those endless IM sessions!” She’s screaming and he’s screaming and they’re both jumping up and down. “You’re like the male equivalent of me! I totally love you!”
    “I totally love you !”
    More screaming, more jumping.
    I move through the throng, with no particular destination in mind. I’m thinking that if I can just connect with someone who seems nice, then maybe she’ll introduce me around and I’ll have people to eat meals with. I’m not going to spend myentire summer hanging out with Amelia.
    I feel funny, though: I’m not one of them. But I’m sort of one of them. But I’m not one of them.
    Like that.
    I spot a girl who’s struggling to get through the dorm door with two large bags. I race ahead to grab it and hold it for her. “Thanks,” she says as she moves through. “That is so nice of you.”
    Some other kids are coming out of the dorm, and because I’m already holding the door open, I’m stuck there holding it for them, too. Everyone thanks me, but no one stops to talk.
    There’s finally a break in the traffic, so I let go of the door. I step back without looking and almost collide with a slim boy with large brown eyes who instantly says, “Sorry!”
    “My fault,” I say.
    He shakes his head in friendly disagreement and slips around me to get into the dorm. I decide to follow him in and see what it’s like inside.
    I step into a big lobby that’s dominated by an industrial-looking stairwell. There are bulletin boards running at eye level along all the walls, which are already filled with notices, most of them of the ONLY GIRLS ARE ALLOWED ON THE THIRD FLOOR AFTER 9 P.M. variety. I wander past them and then through an archway into an enormous common room with a bunch of sofas and armchairs, a row of vending machines, a piano, and a TV.
    No one’s hanging out in there: kids stick their heads in andsay “Nice!” or “Ugh,” depending on what they think of it, but they all move on, eager to unpack or explore more, I assume.
    I head back out toward the