Finding Mr. Better-Than-You Read online

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  For my friends—thank you for being you.

  Chapter 1

  “That is not art,” my boyfriend, Marc Gerber, said, pointing his paintbrush at my easel.

  “You are just jealous,” I told him, studying my masterpiece, which admittedly looked like a big red splotch on a canvas. “People will be fighting over this one day.”

  “Yeah,” our friend and Marc’s soccer buddy Todd Slocum said, leaning over to get a better look, “to get it out of their sight.”

  Marc laughed. “Right? You take it. No, you take it. No, you take it,” he said, pretending to be two people arguing over my work.

  “You know…” I dipped my brush into the red paint. “I think your painting may need a little sprucing up.”

  I took a step toward him, wiggling my paintbrush at his project.

  “You wouldn’t.” Marc’s eyes had a glint to them, almost daring me to go on.

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  I inched closer. Marc’s piece was of a soccer goalie leaping for the ball to stop the other team from scoring. My boyfriend lived for soccer. “I think some red could spice it up.”

  “Cam…,” he said, unsure of what I was going to do next.

  “Yes, Marc?”

  I twirled the brush as if I was about to make my move.

  Before I could, he wrapped his arms around me, nuzzling his head into my neck. He knew I was super ticklish there.

  I squealed as I tried to pull away, accidentally painting the side of his cheek.

  “Marc, Cam, stop it,” our art teacher, Ms. Winters, called out. “Do not make me speak to you again.”

  “Sorry.” I tried to look remorseful despite the fact that my boyfriend had a gob of red paint dripping down his face. I hoped I at least got some points for containing my laughter.

  “Me too,” Marc said.

  Ms. Winters let out a sigh and handed him a cloth to wipe off the paint. Then she turned her attention to me.

  “Didn’t you say you had a guidance counselor’s appointment this period? Why don’t you just go now?”

  I still had time, but I wasn’t going to push it. She wanted me gone.

  I was not exactly my art teacher’s favorite student. Yesterday alone, she’d snapped at me eight times to stop talking and focus on my painting. It was only the first week of school, but Ms. Winters was already all business, determined to keep the class on track. And apparently, I wasn’t making that easy.

  I started cleaning up my station.

  “What’d you do?” Todd asked me.

  “Huh?”

  “To get called to guidance.”

  I shook my head. “No idea.”

  Marc still had a tiny bit of paint on his face. He looked so cute, but I decided to be a good girlfriend and help him out anyway. I wiped the smudge away with my thumb, and, after checking to make sure that Ms. Winters was facing the other direction, I gave him a light peck on the lips.

  Todd rolled his eyes at me. “I bet that has something to do with it. They probably figured out you lied to get in this class just to be with Marc.”

  I hadn’t lied. Not exactly. Okay, I had. But it was for a good reason. I was not going my whole senior year without a class with my boyfriend.

  “You don’t think that’s it, do you?” I asked.

  Todd shrugged, but it wasn’t his answer I was looking for. I wanted to know what Marc thought.

  As if reading my mind, Marc squeezed my hand. “Relax, it’s probably nothing.”

  I hoped he was right, but that word probably dug at me as I sat in the guidance counselor’s office.

  Why did Todd have to get in my head? I hadn’t been nervous at all until he opened his mouth. But now I was semipetrified. I’d never been called to the office before—not guidance’s, not the principal’s, not even the nurse’s.

  I couldn’t get in trouble: It was my senior year, and my transcript couldn’t afford it. It needed to stay perfect if I had any chance of getting into Columbia, and I really needed to get in.

  I stared at the clock on the wall. I’d been waiting to see my guidance counselor, Ms. Vail, for twenty minutes. Much longer and last period would be over.

  Finally her office door opened.

  “Thanks again,” a tall, blondish girl said, walking out alongside Ms. Vail.

  “No problem, Lissi.”

  My ears perked up. This was the infamous Lissi Crandall? I craned my neck to get a better look. Everyone was talking about her. Not that I could blame them. It wasn’t every day Brooksvale High got a new student, let alone at the start of senior year. Lissi was practically a celebrity in our little Connecticut town. She’d started attending the school’s volleyball practices this summer, and from what I’d heard, she’d made quite the impression. Loved by some, hated by others—this latter group included one of my BFFs, Grace Kim.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Ms. Vail told her, then turned her attention toward me. “Camryn Roth?”

  The sound of my name made Lissi’s face snap in my direction. Her eyebrows rose and her blue eyes widened. Did she know who I was?

  We didn’t have any classes together, but I guess it was possible she’d heard about me. We did have people in common. I hung out with the soccer guys, and they were all about Lissi. She’s so hot; she’s so funny; she’s so perfect. I gave them more than my fair share of eye rolls over it, but I could sort of see what they saw in her. Lissi had that whole I can command a room without saying a word vibe.

  “You can come with me,” Ms. Vail instructed.

  I followed her into the office, thoughts of the new girl quickly evaporating. I had much bigger things to think about.

  “Have a seat,” Ms. Vail said, shuffling through some files on her desk until she found the one that read CAMRYN ROTH. “Sorry for the delay; the last meeting went longer than expected.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Then I waited as she flipped through my transcript. She frowned as she turned to one of the pages. I was pretty sure she even shook her head slightly, but that could have been my imagination. My right knee started shaking, moving up and down at a rapid pace. It had a mind of its own. I pressed my hands down to stop it, but it wasn’t doing any good.

  Ms. Vail still hadn’t said anything.

  “I really, really appreciate you switching me to that art class,” I sputtered, trying to get ahead of the situation. “Sorry for all the emails and voice mails about it this summer. But I think it will definitely help my college applications. Can’t get enough culture, I always say.” I didn’t always say that. I’d never said that. Well, except when I was trying to convince my counselor of something.

  In the case of this past summer, it was getting Ms. Vail to move me into my boyfriend’s class—although I never mentioned the boyfriend part to her. I may or may not have bugged her about four dozen times to get switched into Ms. Winters’ last-period art class.r />
  After the first dozen correspondences, she wrote me back with “good” news. She had managed to move me to Mr. Tobin’s second-period art class. But good to her was sucktastic to me. I’d been trying to get into Marc’s class so I could be near him, not to learn about pointillism and other things that made my head spin. So I doubled down, saying that the only reason I wanted to take art was to work under Ms. Winters’ esteemed tutelage. Yes, I laid it on thick, and often, but I had an agenda: taking at least one class with my boyfriend.

  I couldn’t only see Marc at lunch. That wasn’t happening. So I did what I had to do.

  I mean, it wasn’t like I gave up physics for him. I scrapped a persuasive-speaking class, which clearly I didn’t need, since I was able to convince Ms. Vail to rearrange my schedule. Or so I thought. Sitting in the office had me wondering if maybe the class would have sharpened my skills.

  Ms. Vail must have found out the true motive for my request. Ms. Winters probably tipped her off. I was going to be in trouble. A detention or—worse—switched out of Marc’s class. They’d probably want to make a point that what I did wasn’t acceptable. I couldn’t imagine the school looking too favorably on changing a student’s schedule due to their relationship status.

  “What? Oh.” Ms. Vail waved her hand at me. “That wasn’t a problem.”

  I sat up straighter. If that wasn’t the issue, what was?

  She turned a piece of paper toward me. “I actually wanted to talk to you about your college applications.”

  I let out a sigh of relief. That’s it? I’d worried over nothing.

  “I’m all set with that. I already started.”

  Now it was Ms. Vail’s turn to let out a breath. “Camryn—”

  “Cam,” I corrected her. Unless I was getting grounded, no one ever called me Camryn.

  “Cam,” she continued. “You remember the assembly last year?”

  I nodded. The juniors had been called into the auditorium for a lecture about life after high school, what to look for in a college, and so on. It was pretty boring, but it got me out of precalc, so I was all about it.

  The guidance counselors made us fill out a questionnaire and encouraged us to set up an appointment to talk about options. The only person I knew who had actually signed up was Grace. I guess now that it was the start of senior year, they were circling back to all of us no-shows.

  She pointed at the paper in front of me. “That’s the form you turned in.”

  Scanning the questions, I couldn’t help but smile. I definitely remembered filling it out. The whole college section had hearts drawn around it. I traced one with my finger.

  “I’ve been going over everyone’s files, and your answers concern me,” Ms. Vail said.

  I knew it wasn’t so much my answers, plural, as my answer, singular. The questions read:

  What is your dream school?

  What is your reach school?

  What is your match school?

  What is your safety school?

  I wrote Columbia for all of them.

  “I wasn’t ignoring the assignment. I just know what I want.”

  Ms. Vail folded her hands together and leaned forward. “Camr—Cam,” she said, softening her voice, “it’s good to have a reach. I just think you need to keep your options open. Columbia University is extremely competitive. I’ve gone over your transcript, and I’m worried you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s important to have backups.”

  I wasn’t only going to apply to Columbia (my parents had vetoed that idea), but it was the only place I wanted to go. It was part of the plan.

  “My grades are good. I got all As last year, my SATs are way above average, and I’m writing a kickass essay.” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Could you say kickass to your guidance counselor?

  “Your grades are good, but you’re not in AP classes,” she said, unfazed by my language, “and your SAT scores are impressive, but they’ll be comparable to most of the people who apply there. You need something that makes you stand out, and your lack of extracurriculars has me concerned.” She glanced back down at my file. “There’s nothing here since freshman year. Not one club, team, or activity. Schools look at things like that.”

  “I have stuff.”

  She waited for me to continue.

  I twisted my charm bracelet around my wrist. “I did volleyball part of my freshman year. And I would have done some clubs, but sophomore year on, I got stuck babysitting my sister after school.” My mom used to work from home, but she got a new boss that year who decided everyone needed to come into the office. My sister was too young to be left alone, so I had to watch her until one of my parents got back. “I shouldn’t be penalized for that—it’s not fair.”

  Ms. Vail nodded. “You can definitely include babysitting, but what about other activities? Like writing for the school newspaper or the literary magazine, volunteering to plant trees on the weekends, being an office worker during your study halls, signing up for the cleanup committee for the school dances? There are plenty of options that don’t involve staying after the last bell.”

  I hadn’t even thought of those things. My heartbeat quickened. I was busy all the time; there had to be stuff that would qualify as an extracurricular. “I’m at almost every nighttime soccer game,” I said, letting the words tumble out, “and a ton of the volleyball ones. And now that my sister is older, and I don’t need to be home, I’ll be going to the afternoon games, too. I even have one today. I’m like their number one cheerleader.”

  “But you’re not a cheerleader, you’re a spectator, and that doesn’t make for a compelling application.”

  I didn’t need to be on the cheerleading team to show I had school spirit—anyone who saw me at the games knew that—but Ms. Vail clearly disagreed.

  “Okay then, how about this. I, um, helped at the soccer team’s car wash. I manned a booth at my synagogue’s Purim carnival. I…” I couldn’t think of anything else. Unless hanging out with your best friends and your boyfriend a ridiculous amount counted for something.

  “Cam…”

  “Oh,” I said, clapping my hands together, “the yearbook!”

  “You were on yearbook?” she asked, flipping through the pages of her CAMRYN ROTH file.

  “Not technically, but last year they told people to send in their photos, and I’m always taking pictures, so I submitted a bunch. They used a few, and they would have taken more, if there had been seniors in them instead of my group of friends. But I can still write down yearbook photographer, right?”

  Ms. Vail pursed her lips. “Cam, I’m not the admissions board. I’m not the one you’re going to need to convince. I’m just trying to prepare you. The way things look now, I think you need to seriously consider some other options. I’m afraid you may not be able to get into Columbia.”

  The bell rang, interrupting us, but I didn’t get up. I didn’t budge. I was frozen to my chair. I could hear students racing out of classrooms with that rush of excitement that comes with leaving school on a Friday—and not just any Friday. The first Friday of the school year.

  “Can you stay a few extra minutes?” Ms. Vail asked, once the ringing stopped.

  I nodded. I wasn’t going anywhere, not until we fixed this mess.

  “Reading,” I said, reaching into my backpack and pulling out three books I had stashed there. “I do it all the time. I took these out of the library right before lunch. I’ve probably taken out more books than anyone at this school. Ms. Chakrabarti can vouch for me—I’d bet she would even write me a recommendation.” I knew I was grasping at straws, but how come kicking a ball counted as an extracurricular, but reading—which was so much more mind opening—didn’t count?

  I droned on and on about my favorite romances to my friends. I’d pretty much given a dissertation about the differences between the book Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and the movie Love, Simon. They’d tuned me out, but maybe, possibly, that counted as a book club? I’d take any so
rt of win at the moment.

  “I don’t want you to worry,” Ms. Vail continued. “There are plenty of excellent schools you can get into. Why don’t we take a look at some of those?”

  Because I didn’t want any of those.

  Columbia had been my dream forever.

  I was so ready to leave this small town and be in a big city. Ever since my aunt took me to Manhattan in fifth grade, I’d wanted to go back. I hadn’t had a chance, thanks to my parents’ fear of me traveling to the city sans chaperone, but by some miracle they were okay with me applying to school there. I couldn’t wait, and Columbia seemed like the perfect school for me.

  Marc was the one who first got me excited about it. He was a legacy. His grandma and both of his parents had gone there, and his older brother was enrolled now. The way Marc talked about the campus, the classes, the prestige, and the city had made me fall in love with it—enough that I’d worked my butt off to get straight As so that I could get in.

  Ever since freshman year, the two of us had planned to go to Columbia together. It was a pact sealed with a kiss. Cheesy, I know, but the thought still made me grin like a fool. Marc was a shoo-in to get accepted. Not only did he have the family connections, but he didn’t have any extracurricular deficiencies. Marc was a star athlete, on the student senate, and took all AP classes—which he aced. Apparently, unbeknownst to me until a few minutes ago, I was the slacker.

  I was the one jeopardizing everything.

  No. I shook my head. I wasn’t giving up. I had worked too hard to not get into my dream school.

  “I still have time. I can fix this,” I told Ms. Vail. She knew how persistent I was; she’d gotten a taste of it over the summer. Now I was going to multiply my efforts tenfold. Sure, this squashed any hope of applying early decision, but that was okay. The extra time would help get me where I needed to be. “You’ll see. I’ll get incredible recommendations, keep my grades up, and find some extracurriculars. I’ll do whatever it takes. I can make this happen. Columbia will be laying out the red carpet by the time I’m through.”