“Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes till the fair closes,” a voice announced over the loudspeaker.
“Please, please, please,” she chanted. But when she got to the table, it was empty. Frustrated, Keeley kicked a chair and it toppled over. People started staring, some even pulling out their phones to record her. Face red, Keeley bent down to right it. That’s when she spotted a black phone lying underneath the table, hidden by a patch of weeds. Yes! Luck was totally on her side today.
By the time she reached the Ferris wheel, Nicky was almost at the front of the line. “Did you find it?” Nicky asked as Keeley squeezed her way through.
Grinning, Keeley gave a thumbs-up. Nicky shook her head like she couldn’t believe Keeley’s luck. And frankly, neither could Keeley. It was a good thing she found it, too. She hadn’t programmed a password yet. Zach had told her to as soon as she got it, but she’d ignored him. Maybe she would keep this incident to herself. Didn’t want to hear the “I told you so.” She hated that phrase. Was already bracing herself because she knew she’d hear it when he handed her his summer homework. But maybe … Keeley eyed Nicky. “Soo … how’s the homework coming? You finished yet?”
A knowing smirk. “I thought you were copying off Zach.”
“I can’t copy word for word. The teachers will notice.”
“What do you have left?” asked Nicky.
Keeley’s expression turned sheepish. “All of it.” She’d been meaning to start all summer.
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Procrastination invigorates me,” Keeley insisted.
“And leaves you panicking. If you start tonight, you should finish in time. We have almost two weeks left.” Nicky never left anything last minute. She was almost as prepared as Zach.
The line moved forward, and soon they were ushered to the loading area. One by one, the cars stopped at the bottom and people were let off and on. When it was their turn, Keeley carefully stepped into the swaying carriage and settled next to Nicky. They jerked forward as the ride started spinning.
“Then what about going to the library with me tomorrow?” Keeley asked her. Maybe she could convince Nicky to let her peek at some statistics graphs.
“I have summer school, remember?”
Of course she did. It was all part of the ten-year life plan Nicky mapped out one night during a sleepover. Keeley thought it was a joke until Nicky started taking courses at the community college. Even if Nicky couldn’t help her study, maybe they could get together. Her social life had been pretty nonexistent this summer. “Well, what about getting dinner after? There’s this little café on the pier I’ve been dying to try,” Keeley suggested.
Nicky gave her an apologetic look. “I’m meeting with my study group. We’re grabbing food on campus and then prepping for the final. Why don’t you ask Zach? He’d go anywhere as long as there’s food.”
“He’s getting dinner with the team.” It was depressing knowing they both had plans while she had a whole lot of nothing. It felt like everyone was leaving her behind, and the worst part was they didn’t even seem to notice.
“We’ll get together after finals,” Nicky promised.
The ride came to an end and a bittersweet feeling swept over Keeley. Summer was almost over and now she was going to be a senior in high school. It was exciting, but also terrifying. Her future was a big question mark and she had no answer.
Later that night, she took Nicky’s advice and cracked open the books. She hoped finishing an assignment would make her feel less like a loser who had nothing to do, but it took less than fifteen minutes before boredom set in. Promising herself to start tomorrow, she pushed the work to the other side of the bed and grabbed her laptop. Nothing cured boredom more than catching up on her favorite shows. About halfway through, her eyelids began to droop.
She didn’t know how long she’d slept, but the ringing phone woke her up in seconds. Zach. The party. The redhead. Groggily, she answered, “The sex better have been worth waking me up for.”
There was a slight pause. “Now that sounds like something I’d like to hear more about.”
She blinked, then bolted upright. Squinting against the harsh light of the screen, she saw “Unknown Caller.” Alarmed, she asked, “Who’s this? Where’s my brother?” Keeley’s dog, Tucker, who was lying at the foot of the bed, popped his head up.
“I have no idea and frankly, I don’t care.”
“Then why are you calling me? And how’d you get this number?”
“I dialed it.” An implied “duh” to his tone.
She was too tired to deal with this. She should hang up.
“Hello? Are you there? Or did I lose you?” The voice paused. “Look, I don’t know what you’re on and I’m not going to ask, because I live by a strict plausible deniability rule, but you have my phone and I want it back.”
Was this guy for real? She twisted to see the clock on her nightstand. “First off, it’s one in the morning. I’m not on anything except sleep, which, I’ll point out, you rudely woke me up from. And second, I don’t have your phone.”
“Yeah, you do,” he insisted.
“I don’t.”
“That phone in your hand is mine. Not yours. Mine,” he said, enunciating every word.
This had to be a prank. “Did my brother put you up to this? Is he trying to get back at me?” Crisscrossing her legs, Keeley hunched forward and rested her elbows on her thighs. Wisps of bangs too short to fit in her ponytail fell around her face. “Unbelievable. I don’t know what his problem is.” She’d given him a fair deal for those keys.
“Would you just look through my phone?” he asked, sounding tired.
She didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy. Not when this guy was being so rude. “I want serious groveling after I prove —” She swallowed the rest of the sentence as a picture of a red race car glowed on the screen.
“You said something about groveling …?”
She refused to let her embarrassment show. “Does this mean you have my phone?”
“Is your background a picture of a brown dog?”
“That’s Tucker.” He wagged his tail at the sound of his name. Dropping her head to her knees, she wondered how this had happened. Wait. “Were you at the fair tonight?”
“Damn. Any chance you hung out at the tables by the food?” he asked.
And she’d thought she was lucky when she found the phone. What a load of crap. She flopped onto her mountain of pillows with a grunt.
“You’re not on the toilet right now, are you? Because if you are, I’m hanging up.”
“What? No!” she cried, horrified by the thought. “I’m on my bed.”
“In that case, I’m all ears. Don’t leave anything out.”
Typical guy. Zach’s friends were all the same. “How do you know I’m not some eighty-year-old woman who has dentures and wears flannel?” she asked.