This Is So Not Happening Read Free Page B

CAN I COME UP?
    Her face appeared at the window. I lifted a hand. She held up one finger. Not the bad one, thank God. She was telling me to wait.
    So I did. The crickets were so loud back here it was like they were assaulting my brain. I tried to wring some of the water out of my shorts, but all I managed to do was wrinkle them. When it was clear that I wasn’t making myself look better, I tipped my head back and stared up at the stars. There were thousands of them. Millions. I wondered if there were any other planets out there with alien people on them, looking up at me. If only I could be wherever they were instead of here.
    I heard a door click and slide open, and I squinted. Ally stood at a side door I’d never noticed, waving me down. I jogged over and slipped past her, stepping inside a small room with dozens of shelves, a work desk, and boxes piled everywhere. Luckily it was pretty dark, so she didn’t notice my muddiness. Yet.
    “Where are we?” I asked.
    “It used to be Quinn’s mom’s gift-wrapping room or something,” she whispered. “We have to be quiet. My mom and Quinn are in the theater having a wedding-movie marathon. She’s trying to get ideas.”
    Ally’s mom was getting remarried in the spring, to the guy they were living with, Gray Nathanson. Quinn was his hot, but kind of annoying, daughter. “You want me to go so you can hang with them?”
    She shook her head. “I watched Sixteen Candles with them last night, so I did my daughterly duty,” she whispered.
    “Yeah, but you love that movie,” I said.
    Ally’s eyes flicked over me, surprised. She’d told me once that her mom made her watch it with her every year on her birthday and that she secretly looked forward to it.
    “I can’t believe you remember that,” she said.
    I remembered everything she ever told me. Because I was in love with her. I just hoped she was still in love with me. Finally she broke eye contact.
    “Come on.”
    I followed her out the door. She held up a hand to stop me and listened for a second. I didn’t hear a thing. Then she turned, tiptoed through the kitchen, and raced up the back stairs. I followed her quickly, my heart pounding. She didn’t look at me again until we were finally inside her room.
    “What happened to you?” she asked, her face scrunched.
    “I tripped.”
    I sounded like a caveman.
    “Oh.” She sat down on the edge of her bed, almost exactly like Chloe had before. “So. What happened?”
    “I went to Chloe’s,” I said, pressing my fist into my palm. “She’s a wreck.”
    “I can’t believe this is happening,” Ally said. She hugged herself hard. “I can’t believe you had sex with her.”
    “It was one time!” I whisper-shouted desperately.
    Ally swallowed.
    “And I used a condom, I swear,” I pleaded.
    She looked away.
    “It was so, so, stupid, Al,” I said, walking over to her. I almost actually knelt at her feet to get into her line of vision, but stopped myself. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I waspissed off about you and Cooper and she was upset about …”
    About Will , I’d almost said. But then I remembered what Chloe had told me. That no one could know about Will.
    “About something else,” I said. “And it just happened. I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t—”
    “Oh my God. Stop!” Ally said, holding her hands up in front of her face as if I was trying to pummel her. She got up, forcing me backward, and walked toward her desk. “I just can’t believe you actually did it with her . Why her?”
    “But it was just one time,” I said, sounding whiny. “And it’s not like I cheated on you. We weren’t together.”
    Ally let out this laugh that sounded more like a snarl. “Okay, fine. What if I told you I slept with Hammond?”
    My face burned to a crisp. “What?”
    She took a couple of steps toward me. “What if I told you that down the shore this summer, Hammond and I were hanging out a lot and one night it just sort of happened? He