The Rule of Thirds

Chapter Four

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 12 DAYS UNTIL VANTAGE POINT

“So what do you think about Callie? Do I need to worry?” I ask Dace as I toss my bag in my locker and pull out my books for first period.

Our lockers are in the main hallway—and it’s no fluke they’re side by side. It took three days and seven chocolate bars to get Hanif Jaffer to trade me lockers. Hanif’s a sophomore, and he loves Dace. But not more than he loves Kit Kats.

“Cafeteria Callie,” Dace says sympathetically, clucking her tongue. She grabs a tube of Kiehl’s lipgloss from the organizer on the top shelf of her locker and stuffs it in her pocket. “Gorgeous black hair? Curvy in all the right places? Good nail beds?”

“Yes, yes and really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Dace shrugs. “I always notice nice nails.” She inspects her own for a moment, then snaps her fingers. “Callie Garcia. You know Breanne with the glasses, on the basketball team? Callie’s her older sister. She graduated the year before we started. Yeah, she’s hot.”

“That really makes me feel better.”

“Who cares if she’s hot? He has good taste. And you know he’s not gay.”

“Part of me would rather he was gay than straight and not like me.”

“That’s ridiculous. As long as he likes girls, you have a chance. And who cares if she’s his girlfriend? That’s nothing that can’t be changed.”

“Oh no. Remember the rule about stealing boyfriends?”

THE RULE ABOUT STEALING BOYFRIENDS
1. Don’t.

“That’s your rule, not mine,” Dace says, fixing her hair in her locker mirror. “And anyway, this isn’t at all like last time.”

Oh, the last time. Thanks for bringing that up, Dace. So my only (sort of) real boyfriend so far was Reggie Stevenson in freshman year. Oh, Reggie, with his Brillo-pad hair that looked super cute but was super scratchy whenever his head rubbed against my face. He had a lot of zits but he also had a lot of freckles so they all just blended together and I really didn’t care because he was so awesome. He would put little notes in my locker between classes and call me before he went to sleep and, OK, also I just really wanted a boyfriend. I actually thought we might be together forever, things were going so well, even if they didn’t start out in the most ethical of ways.

Reggie Stevenson was Mariella Rocca’s boyfriend. They’d already been going out before they even started at Spalding. But then, in the middle of freshman year, she got to do an exchange in Italy for the winter term and Reggie came into Scoops the day after she left, which was the day after Christmas. Which Dace said was so obviously a sign. Because no one had been in Scoops all week. Because it was DECEMBER and freezing and no one wanted ice cream. He came in every single day over the break, and by New Year’s Eve, we were making out in the freezer. I felt totally guilty until he told me he broke up with Mariella and he asked me to be his girlfriend instead. Dace convinced me Mariella was probably off making out with the Justin Bieber of Italy and was all like, “Reggie who?” For months it was all butterflies and unicorns. I even believed Reggie when he said the reason he wanted us to keep our relationship a secret was because it gave us a special bond that no one could break.

We almost did it. I wanted to wait until March— three-month rule—but we never lasted that long.

Because guess what?

Turned out Reggie never broke up with Mariella. It was all a big fat lie. On the first day back after spring break—after he spent the whole week making out with me not only in the walk-in freezer at Scoops but also in my bedroom and his—there she was, back from Italia, and he went right back to