[Cody featured above.]

Two

Apparently I'm a Movie Star

Quinn's POV

I'm just going to tell you now that panic attacks are miserable.

Seriously, take my word for it. It's not the kind of thing you want to experiment with yourself.

Theatre was fine. We played our "getting-to-know-each-other" game for the full fifty minutes and Cell Phone Girl, who was texting the whole time, forgot my name every time she was expected to call on me. When I left the auditorium to go back to the main high school building, I saw Andrew Summers again. He flicked back his brown-blonde hair, grinned at me, and kept walking.

That was all good. What gave me the worst shock of my life was when I walked into my third-period-class, English II, and saw my evil stepsister-to-be sitting primly in one of the desks.

In case I haven't painted a clear enough image of Vanessa Sloane in your head yet, allow me to explain. Her copper hair was so bright and perfect it had to be fake, and she was twirling it between her manicured index finger and thumb while wearing an expression of utmost contempt on her face. She had her legs carelessly crossed at the ankles, her long legs encased in skin-tight jeans ending with black platform wedges.

I met her cool blue eyes. She was smiling.

I tossed my backpack into the seat farthest away from her and asked our teacher in a somewhat strained voice, "Can I go use the bathroom?"

She made a sound of agreement and I hurried from the room, pulling my cell phone out of my back pocket as I walked. I was only just out of earshot of the classroom when I finished dialing my mom's number.

"Everything okay, Quinn?" she asked when she picked up. I must have been lucky—she was probably taking a break from class right now.

"No," I said, trying to keep my tone level. "Why didn't you tell me Vanessa goes to school here? Has she moved?"

Mom didn't say anything for a few seconds, which worried me. My practical, no-nonsense mother always knew what to say—but she also knew when not to say anything at all, and that was what scared me most.

"Mom?" I asked again, my voice going up at the end.

Mom cleared her throat in that maternal way that meant she was about to transition from Caring Poster Mom to Bearer of Bad News. "Well, you know the wedding's only in a few months, and your stepfather and I figured it would be hard for her to start at school at the beginning of the year, so she's moved in early. You'll show her around, won't you? Make sure she feels welcome?"

"Of course," I spat out, but I knew even as I said it that it was the most blatant lie I'd ever told. "I've got to go. I'll be late for class."

I didn't want to start yelling into my phone in the middle of the hallway, so I hung up and shoved my phone into my back pocket, then started the long trek back to English.

I love my mother—I really do. We never fight. But by inviting my "stepsister" to stay with us without telling me was something I just couldn't bear. It was bad enough to be forced to be related to her—now I had to live with her, too?

When I reached my classroom and sat in my seat, Vanessa had a serene smile on her face. She hadn't moved one inch since I'd last seen her, except now she was surveying the rest of the people in the room with an air of authority.

"All right, y'all," said our teacher, standing. "Let's get started. I'm Ms. Davis, and we're going to have an awesome year in English II."

Hooray.

~*~*~

We spent English class discussing the syllabus, which I'd read in the first two minutes Ms. Davis had begun discussing it. She was a young teacher and decidedly Southern, in a way that was both endearing and that made her draw out her syllables so that it took twice as long to go over the wretched two-page document. I'd also discovered that our new teacher had so kindly assigned us seats, and due to the nearness of the letters "R" and "S", Vanessa and I had seats rights next to one another.

By the time she dismissed us exactly at 11:15 (not a moment before or after, mind you), I slung my backpack over my shoulder and high-tailed it out of there. Vanessa was taking her time stretching and packing her backpack while having a conversation with Shane, the tall, mahogany-haired "popular guy" of our grade. They'd make the most precious couple.

I ran into Julia on her way back from English.

"Sucks that I'm not in your class," she said, smoothing back her blonde bob.

"I'd do anything to be in your class," I said. "Vanessa's here. On campus. She's in my English class. She's moved in with me and I didn't even know it."

Julia wrinkled her nose, but she didn't dwell long on the concept. "I saw Cody again in the hallway just now," she said. "I still can't believe it's him. Seriously, just look at him." She inhaled appreciatively as he walked past us, tipping his head up at me but keeping his dark brown eyes fixated on navigating a path through the lunch crowd around him. It was so loud I could barely hear Julia's long whistle.

"Please," I said. "He's just a guy. And he's no Andrew."

"All right then, I call dibs."

Rolling my eyes, I dumped my backpack down at my locker and followed her down the stairs to the cafeteria. I wanted to believe what I'd said about Cody, but the truth was, he'd morphed unbelievably in three short months. I didn't understand how he'd accomplished such a feat.

Then again, I didn't really understand how I'd changed so much, either.

Julia and I ate lunch with a crowd of girls in our grade, and I watched across the quad as Vanessa was enveloped gladly into the posse of stuck-up, annoying girls on campus, who dined at one particular table every day without a doubt. Their routine clearly hadn't changed over the summer.

"If you squint just enough, you can almost pretend their hair hasn't been keratin treated or dyed," observed Julia, taking a bite of her sandwich and chewing loudly.

"Or that those aren't fake tans," I acknowledged, even though I knew as well as she did that their tans likely were genuine. The likes of them went to Barbados or Hawaii for the summer and then complained about sunburns when they returned. Heck, I'd fly with the luggage underneath an airplane if it meant I could even catch a glimpse of some tropical island with my own eyes.

I finished my salad while trying my best to avoid Vanessa, then checked my schedule to see which classes I had in the afternoon.

"You have French, too?" asked Julia, glancing over my shoulder.

"Awesome," I said. "We can speak in awful fake accents together."

Julia pursed her lips in her typical disapproving way—it was the kind of look I always got when I mocked schoolwork. She probably wouldn't have spoken to me for the next hour except for the fact that she spotted Cody again on our way back into the building.

"He takes French, right?" she asked me as he walked a few feet ahead of us down the main hallway and towards the language wing.

"As of last year," I replied, watching as he turned into Mme. Sonatra's room.

"Quick, give me your schedule!" she squealed, rifling through my papers furiously. "Yes! We have class with him."

She probably would have toppled over in a completely un-Julia like way when she saw that the desks were arranged in a pair formation, except for the fact that the second we walked in, Cody called, "Quinn! Over here!"

I glanced at Julia, whose lips were pursed again. Before I could even ask her if she wanted to me to turn down the offer, she said, "It's fine. I'll sit with Maybelline."

I watched as she crossed the room and sat down with a girl with cropped platinum blond hair, and I was left to plop down in the desk pressed up against Cody's.

"Hey," he said.

Too afraid to seem like I was flirting and attract Julia's displeasure, I stared down at the floor. He was wearing black and white Nikes, and his feet were sort of small for a guy's.

"You gonna answer me?" he asked.

I finally looked up and met his puppy-dog brown eyes. I couldn't deny that he'd gotten ridiculously attractive over the summer.

"So, when are you appearing in your first movie?" he asked.

"Huh?"

He rolled his eyes as if I should have understood. "Your hair. And your face. And your smile. You're all done up. Like you should be a movie star or something."

I had to admit that made me turn sort of pink. "How about you?" I asked. "Your hair looks gelled."

"I swear it's not," he said. "Seriously, you can touch it if you want."

The concept of touching his hair when my best friend had already called dibs seemed a little disloyal, so I sat on my hands as he continued. "And actually, I am doing movies. I got cast for my first part over the summer."

"Really? How?"

"I'm just an extra. But it's a start, right?"

I'd never known that he'd wanted to act before. Then again, I'd spent most of last year pretending he hadn't existed, despite his repeated attempts to get my attention. How different would things be now if I'd actually reciprocated?

I busied myself with pulling a pencil, a blue-ink pen, and a black-ink pen out of my backpack and putting them on my desk. He immediately took the blue pen and began twirling it between his fingers.

"Had a good summer?" he asked as I smoothed down my skirt—not like I needed to, since nerves were making it stick to my legs again.

"Yeah," I said. "Not a great first day back, though. Vanessa Sloane, my stepsister, just started here, and I sort of hate her."

"Really?" he asked. "She was an extra in the same movie I was. She seems nice."

I bit down on my lip, hard, and focused on watching the rest of the class filter into the room without replying. A girl teetered in on high heels that were way too tall for school. A guy walked in wearing a shirt clearly against dress code which said "I'm a rebel" (as if I couldn't tell).

Once all the desks were filled (the rebel guy sat down beside the girl wearing the sky-high heels), Mme. Sonatra made her way to the front of the room. I recognized her from French I—she hadn't been my teacher, but she'd been the head of the department.

"I'm passing out maps of France," she said. "And I want you to label the provinces as accurately as you can with your partner. This isn't graded—it's just for fun and to get into the swing of things for the new year."

This would be a joke—I'd barely even studied the French provinces, even when we'd had a test of them last year.

Mme. Sonatra passed out papers to Cody and me, and I scribbled my name on the top before sitting back and crossed my legs. "So," I said. "Any advice?"

"There's a map right behind you," he said. "And I can see it if I pretend I'm looking at what you're writing."

"I like your way of thinking," I said, as he craned his neck and began studying the map of France with his tongue just barely sticking out in concentration.

I wrote down what he wrote down, and we were the only two people in the class to get a perfect map.

Who was I kidding? Julia was too good for him, anyway.

"So what's your secret?" asked Julia as we walked out of French. I had World History II next and she had Chemistry. "You got a perfect score on your map."

I didn't exactly want to make Cody seem any more appealing to her, but I also didn't want to admit I'd used less-than-honorable methods of obtaining the answers. "Cody just sort of knew what he was doing," I said, careful not to tell an outright lie.

I reassured myself that it wasn't for a grade, so it wasn't like I was directly cheating. Anyway, Cody had looked so cute as he'd focused on pretending like he wasn't focusing on the map so that he'd gotten confused and mixed up Bretagne and Pays de la Loire.

Andrew Summers, I reminded myself, hitching my backpack higher on my shoulders.

Julia and I split at the staircase, and I went up an extra flight of stairs while she hurried down the hallway. As the door to the stairwell shut slowly behind her, I watched her stride purposefully towards the science wing, not looking back.

I hopped up the first four steps two at a time and then kept walking, not looking back, either.

After World II, I found myself in Geometry seated next to Cody again. He was flipping through his textbook when I walked in, and he looked up to smile at me as I collapsed in the seat beside him.

"I ran into Vanessa in the hallway just now," he said as I set my backpack down at my feet, "and I have to agree with you. She's really stuck-up."

I didn't want to tell him how much his casual comment actually meant to me, so I just settled for a smile and pulled out my calculator.

Mr. Arellano, our math teacher, strode to the front of the room. I was actually really lucky to be in his class—he was funny and one of the school's favorite teachers.

"Hey guys!" he exclaimed, adjusting his bowtie. "Some people might have told you that Geometry is a detestable subject, but I'm here to disprove that—which you will learn how to do mathematically be the end of the semester."

Only one guy got the joke—some kid sitting towards the front of the room with a buzz cut. I figured he was new, because I didn't know his name.

"Pull out your pencils and clear your desk. Don't worry—I'm not giving you a pop quiz. I'm just passing out these worksheets that I want you to help me fill out today."

When I got my worksheet, I put my name on the top and refused to look at Cody, even though I could feel him staring at me. If we were going to have a repeat of Chemistry, it was going to be a long class.

But why was it that I turned around to stare at him right back, and when I did, I couldn't help but notice the way he'd scribbled his name at the top of his sheet in his sloppy handwriting and was now drumming his fingers on his desk in a way that should have been annoying but was actually endearing? He smirked at me, and then I smirked back, and then his face broke out into a full grin which I couldn't help but reciprocate.

"Quinn and Cody, don't make me separate you two lovebirds," said Mr. Arellano in his quirky way which should have me laugh but instead made me turn bright red.

Cody put his finger to his cheek: You're blushing. I could almost sense his teasing tone.

I reached up my hand and ruffled his hair. Gelled, I mouthed back.

He just laughed.