New Girl in Town

Chapter 1

Do you want to know a secret?

I mean, when has the answer to that question ever been no? Even if you're sure it's gonna lead to something like doom, there's still a part of you that needs to answer yes, right? A part that wants to know more than anything else.

I know all about secrets. The good ones: Christmas presents and ditching class, hidden boxes of Funfetti mix for birthday cakes. And the hard secrets—the ones that gnaw until they work their way free of you like a scream. The bad ones that are less secret, more lie: I'm fine, Lisa (she wasn't). I'll call my therapist (she didn't). I'll be here after school (liar, liar, liar).

Once upon a time, I thought I had a handle on it. A juggling act: Mom's secrets and mine, never the two should meet. But it all came crashing down.

And now I have no mom and a dad who barely has a hold on the meaning of that word, and there are way too many things simmering under my skin. Secrets that are more like truths when you winnow them down:

I'm not like other girls.

And no, not in that bullshit way guys use to try to compliment you. Please—give me some credit here.

You watch the movies, you hear enough songs, you read the love stories, and they all tell you how it's supposed to go:

Girl is double-braided, freckled sweetness. Light-up sneakers and torn jeans as she plays and skips and twirls on the city sidewalk. Girl is unbothered. There's no gnawing question. There's no What if you're ...

So Girl grows up. Girl gets the boy next door tripping over his feet, or the football player missing his throws, or the quiet geek proving his worth (while getting hot during a makeover montage; let's be real). And then Girl marches off, arm in arm with her guy, happily ever after. The road's so well-worn there's probably a trench in the middle of it. It's the road you're supposed to choose. The one everyone expects you to travel.

But you, the girl not like other girls ... you look down that road, and it's not shiny and bright. The thought of it doesn't make you feel any of the ways ever described in story or song. And those people, they're not all lying—which means there's a secret you're keeping even from yourself. That feeling you can't—and now maybe won't—name.

You push it down. You ignore it like it's a plant that'll shrivel away. But you're the thing that's shrinking.

And one day you learn: it's not that you're not like other girls.

It's just that you've never met a girl like you.

And then, you do. You meet her.

And suddenly the songs make sense.