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  Anyway, I’m sitting in Mr. Gomez’s algebra class feeling restless and distracted by the beautiful day outdoors. Mr. Gomez is pointing to the quadratic formula written on the whiteboard, breaking it down for us piece by tedious piece, but he might as well be preaching the imminent arrival of doomsday, because I CANNOT FOCUS. All I can think of is Dalton and the way he kept looking at me last night. I have to resist the urge to dig through my bag for my phone and read his text message for the millionth time. What does a big shot like Dalton James want with a mere plebeian like myself?

  Sigh. If only I could break free from the oppressive cage that is high school: I’d run to Dalton’s place, probably some gorgeous mansion in the Hollywood Hills, and we’d fly off to England in his probably private jet, where he’d introduce me to his probably amaze parents, and meet the probably even more amaze queen, and—

  Wait. What was that?

  I feel a bit of pressure on the back of my head and quickly grope for it with my hands. It’s a piece of gum. Chewed gum. In my hair. I whip around to see Ashley Adler smirking at me with her stupid evil eyes and her blindingly shimmery blond bob. Ugh.

  Oh, Ashley Adler, what a piece of work. What a mean, spoiled, insecure, petty girl. See, ever since the first day of high school, Ashley Adler had been the most popular girl in our grade, the queen bee, if you will. She ignored me 100 percent, but I noticed how she’d pick on other girls; anyone she thought was weird or different posed a threat to her sense of self, so she’d try to tear them down. Why people worshiped her, I had no idea. I guess it was the royal treatment you’d get if you were on her good side, the parties you’d be invited to and the elite status you’d receive. Then I blew up on YouTube and that put me on her radar. It put me right smack in the middle of her radar, actually. Suddenly kids at school wanted to talk to me, they wanted to be my friend, they wanted me to like them, and Ashley hated it. Attention on me took attention off her, so she often went out of her way to undermine me in an attempt to take back her throne. The thing was, I didn’t even want the throne, I wished she’d just take it and leave me alone.

  “I’m sorry, but did you just put gum in my hair?” I try to stay calm and collected as I whisper at her, desperate not to attract attention but on the verge of tears. I try to tell myself it won’t be that bad, but in my mind I’m imagining the very worst.

  She shrugs. “Oops, must’ve slipped out. Sorry.” But she’s not sorry. Her group of Brandy Melville model wannabe friends snicker in the back row.

  I grit my teeth. “I swear to God, Ashley—”

  “Ladies, is there something wrong back there?”

  Ashley looks up at our teacher and smiles sweetly. “No, Mr. Gomez, we’re all chill. Right, Harper?”

  “No, wrong, Ashley.” I can’t hold back or be chill, not when my hair is involved. “You put gum in my hair. Who does that? Are you in kindergarten?” And in spite of my biggest efforts I’m on the verge of tears.

  Ashley rolls her eyes at me. “Whoa, way to be a snitch, Internet girl.”

  “All right, all right.” Mr. Gomez walks over tentatively and helplessly chimes in (even the teachers are intimidated by Ashley), “Ashley, can you try to be less of a bully? It’s getting a little tiring. And Harper, it’s just gum, so let’s try to calm down.”

  “It’s JUST gum?! Do you not know what gum does to hair? It’s like . . . it’s like . . . the nuclear war of hair.”

  “Drama queen,” Ashley mutters.

  “You know what? I don’t need this.” And I really don’t. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and hurry out of the class.

  “Harper!” Mr. Gomez calls after me. “You can’t just—oh, forget it, I’m getting too old for this shit,” I hear him say as the classroom door swings shut behind me.

  I’m racing down the hallway toward the bathrooms with my hand cupped around the gum to prevent further humiliation when all of a sudden SMACK! I collide head on with none other than Jack Walsh. Yeah, him—Mister Dream Boy from a few years and some pages ago.

  “Oh god.” I stumble backward and am about to fall, but he catches me. I shake him off me and back away, one hand still gripping the hunk of gum-infused hair. “I’m good, I got it. Thanks.”

  “What’s up with you?” he asks, concerned and slightly amused. “You look kinda . . . flustered.” Three years have changed Jack, and not necessarily for the better. For starters, his vision went south and he had to get glasses, which make some guys cuter, but not him—his eyes look far away and kind of beady. Second of all, he still wears baggy skater-boy pants and puts too much gel in his hair—I mean, Dalton would never be caught dead looking like that. Third of all, for some completely mysterious reason, the smooth-guy charisma and charm he had in middle school has vanished almost entirely. Instead he’s withdrawn and almost antisocial. Except with me. When it comes to me, for the past year, he’s been suspiciously . . . interested.

  “I’m fine,” I grind out. “Ashley Adler put gum in my hair. I’m just going to the bathroom to, you know, try to get it out or whatever.”

  “Oh, damn, I’m sorry, Harper.”

  “You’d think being Internet famous would make me likable in school, not a walking target for bullies. It’s completely counterintuitive.” This has been a frustrating reality for some time now.

  “It’s because they’re jealous. They see you succeeding at something you love, and they know they’ll never amount to anything.”

  “Thanks. But I think maybe they’re just brats.”

  “I remember when my little sister would get gum stuck in her hair and my mom would have to cut it out and then her hair would be super uneven and awkward, so then she’d have to go to the Yellow Balloon to get a really short—I’m sorry, this isn’t helping.”

  “No. No, it’s not.” I try to shoulder past him. “Excuse me, I gotta take care of this.”

  “Let me help you. I know some good tricks from back when this used to happen to Marnie.”

  “Your sister with the lopsided haircuts? No thanks.”

  “Harper, I’m just trying to be nice.”

  “Great, but I don’t need nice right now. I need for you to get out of my way so that I can get this gum out of my hair before it really sets and I have to get a freaking pixie cut, okay?”

  He looks so disappointed as I hurry away that for a moment I almost feel bad for him.

  * * *

  It might seem like I’m being harsh on Jack, but honestly all I’m doing is protecting myself. I was in love with this guy for all of middle school. I would have walked a tightrope between two sky­scrapers for the chance to be his girlfriend, but guess what? He didn’t want that. And why didn’t he want that? Because I was dorky and clumsy; I had glasses and braces and bad skin and didn’t know how to handle my rapidly growing limbs, which often caused me to walk around looking like a drunken marionette. Even after Gwen disappeared and they broke up—it was all anyone could talk about at school for days—he never wanted me, even though I couldn’t have made myself more available. But now that my glasses and braces are gone and my skin has cleared up and I have boobs and a million YouTube subscribers . . . well, NOW he’s interested. I may not be old and wise, but I’m no dummy: I know I deserve better than a guy who likes me only for my looks or my fame.

  The mirrors in the girls’ bathroom look like they’re fogged up, but it’s actually just really, really old glass. With my matte lilac coffin-shaped acrylics I pick my precious strands of hair one by one out of the disgusting glob of bubble gum until all but a few stubborn pieces are still stuck. Goddammit. I remember once reading that peanut butter helps get gum out of hair, and thank goodness I just happen to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in my lunch. Now, they don’t say anything about putting jelly in your hair, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Before I know it, I have gobs of peanut butter and jelly all over my head and I’m no closer to getting the gum out. Now what?! In panic mode, I turn on the sink and bend over backward so that the water wa
shes through my hair.

  “Please come out,” I say out loud. “Please, please, let my hair be okay.”

  I stand back up and reach for the gum spot, massage my fingers through the hair around it, trying to loosen the knot. Nothing. The gum won’t move. The gum won’t move and now I have peanut butter and jelly and water running down my brand-new Theory shirt. I have no choice, I have to do the unthinkable: I take a pair of scissors out of my backpack and carefully snip through here and there, removing the gum in its entirety like a surgeon. However, just as I suspected, I am ultimately unable to save my hair from permanent damage: there is now a section of short, defiant flyaways that will take forever to grow back. Well, isn’t this day shaping up to be just peachy?

  * * *

  At lunch, I find the Jessicas where they always sit: in a tight circle under the biggest oak tree on the front lawn. Ever since I met Ellie, my friendship with the Jessicas has started to seem somewhat . . . lackluster. Don’t get me wrong, they’re cool girls and great lunchtime companions, but I just don’t click with them the way I do with Ellie. They only ever want to talk about high-school-related gossip and what colleges they want to go to and fad diets that they want to try or are afraid to try or are currently trying (there’s lots of trying involved, obviously). In the year and a half that I’ve known them, I’ve never really gotten to a place where I feel I can be myself around them. And now that I have mega followers, they’ve started walking on eggshells around me, always trying (here we go again) to say the right thing, as if my small amount of fame has made me into a different person. Or maybe it’s that they think my videos are lame and they’ve lost all respect for me. Who knows?

  Either way, hanging with the Jessicas has lost its charm.

  Today when I approach them, they treat me extra delicately.

  “Harper!” Jessie jumps to her feet when she sees me. “Are you okay? We heard what Asshole Adler did to your poor hair!” One awesome thing about the Jessicas is that they hate Ashley and her posse even more than I do. Before I met them in high school, they all went to middle school together. Apparently Ashley spread rumors that they stuffed their bras, and made a habit out of telling the boys they liked that they were lesbians.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. I just have this gnarly patch of botched hair now. Bu it’s a small patch. And hair grows back, right? So no biggie.” I take a deep breath and sit down, and then Jessie follows my lead.

  “You’re so brave!” Jessa says, stroking my arm. “I can’t believe she did that to you.”

  “So immature,” agrees Jess.

  “Well, joke’s on her because now I have a great excuse to skip the rest of the day and go shopping.”

  “You can’t skip. We have SAT prep fifth period,” Jess reminds me.

  “Dammit. I completely forgot.” I think it through for a moment. “I’ll probably just skip it anyway.”

  “But you skipped last week.”

  “So?”

  “So you need a lot of practice if you want to get a good score.”

  “But I don’t even know if I’m going to take the SATs. It seems sort of unnecessary to practice for something I’m not going to do.”

  “Harper, if you don’t take the SATs you will never get into college.”

  “But I don’t want to go to college!”

  “You don’t?” Jess stares as if I’ve just told her I’m visiting from Mars.

  “No, I want to have time to work on my videos and focus on developing my career. See how far I can take this whole YouTube thing.”

  “You’re so lucky.” Jessie sighs.

  “I’m not lucky. Any one of you could do it too.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Jessa says. “My parents would kill me if I didn’t go to college.”

  “And besides,” adds Jessie, “not just anyone can become a YouTube star. You have to have the right personality and the determination. You gotta have star power. You have that, Harper, we don’t.”

  I have to laugh. “Me? Star power? You’re definitely wrong.” How anyone could see me as anything other than a clumsy, unhip mess is beyond me. I suppose Internet fame has helped me develop a certain amount of likability, but star power? I never thought I’d hear myself be described with those words.

  “We’re not wrong,” Jessa says. “It’s your star quality that makes people want to watch you. One million people! You can’t deny it. If you didn’t have star quality, you wouldn’t have followers, trust me.”

  “Maybe,” I say, not because I agree but because all this attention is making me uncomfortable and I want to change the subject.

  Jessie practically swoons. “I think it’s great you don’t want to take the SATs. You walk to the beat of your own drum and you don’t let other people tell you how to live your life.”

  “Jessie,” Jess scolds her, “stop enabling her. Harper”—she turns to face me—“they’re right, you’re special and successful and beautiful, but you’re also really smart, and as your friend I can’t let you turn away so easily from the possibility of getting an education. The truth is, you don’t know what you really want yet. You don’t know what’s best for you. None of us do. That’s why we have to go through the motions of life until we figure it out. Not to mention college could really help you grow your brand. How else are you going to get educated in marketing and business? As your friend, I really think you should come with us to SAT prep today.”

  “Or what?” I ask.

  “Or I’ll cry! You don’t want me to cry, do you?”

  I didn’t want her to cry. I mean, I didn’t believe she actually would, but I didn’t feel like taking a chance. Plus, I liked that Jess had dropped the kiss-Harper’s-butt act to do what she thought was best for me. It meant she was a real friend.

  * * *

  That’s how I’ve come to be sitting in fifth-period SAT prep, taught by none other than Coach Flanders, head of the boys’ water polo team. I regretted my decision as soon as I sat in my seat. The classroom is in the basement of the language building, so there is no source of natural light and no fresh air to breathe. There are chalkboards on every wall, so not only is the squeaky sound of chalk a constant, but also the air is always thick with chalk dust.

  “How kind of you to join us this week, Miss Ambrose,” Coach Flanders teases as I take a seat behind the Jessicas. “Decided there might be more important things than YouTube, did we?”

  There are two types of teachers, in my opinion: the type that get into teaching because they find pleasure in educating and making a difference in a child’s life, and the type that failed at everything else until the only option left was teaching. It’s not hard to spot which is which. Coach Flanders is the latter. He resents his students, and more than that, he resents success.

  “Sure,” I say, not wanting to give him any more ammo than he already has.

  “Okeydokey.” He grabs a stack of test booklets and starts handing them out. “You’re here for the next two and a half hours whether you like it or not, so you might as well accept it. We’ll start as we always do, with a quick practice run. Then we’ll score our tests and go over the right answers so we can see where we went wrong.” If you ask me, the booklets are more like full-on books, thick and daunting. I can’t see how this could possibly be a “quick” practice run. He sets the timer and I open my “booklet” to the first page. Math. Great. So that you can understand my dread in the moment, here is what the page looks like:

  1. If 2x + 2x + 2x + 2x = 2(16), what is the value of x?

  2. The lengths of two sides of a triangle are 3 and 8. What is the greatest possible integer length of the third side?

  3. The coordinates (x,y) of each point on the circle above satisfy the equation a2 + a2 = 50. Line M is tangent to the circle at point C. If the x-coordinate of point C is 3, what is the slope of M?

  Oh, boy. Math has never been my thing; my brain just doesn’t work that way. So naturally I can feel the beginnings of a small panic attack rolling in on the horizon. It
’s okay, I try to tell myself, you’re only here so Jess doesn’t cry. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the answers. But I can’t help but feel a pang of shame, as if not knowing (or caring) how to solve these problems is a reflection on my incompetence as a human being. I flip away from the math section and to the vocabulary. I figure this should make me feel better about myself, and it does. I know the definitions of practically all the words:

  1. Abhor: hate

  2. Counterfeit: fake

  3. Noxious: poisonous

  4. Placid: calm, peaceful

  5. Talisman: lucky charm

  6. Abrasive: rough, coarse, harsh

  7. Replete: full

  8. Tangible: can be touched

  I fly through this section, wishing there was such a thing as the vocabulary-only SATs. I close the booklet and close my eyes. Finally I have a moment to myself to breathe and dip back into the memories of last night: Dalton’s hand on my shoulder, Dalton’s classic British accent with that perfect amount of bad-boy flare . . .

  To distract myself from the events of the day (the Great Hair Disaster and the Math Catastrophe), I take out my phone (careful to hide it beneath my test ‘booklet’) and type Dalton James into the search bar. Don’t be a fangirl, I tell myself, don’t be a fangirl. But I can’t help it. I hit search and there’s no turning back. I start by diving into his Wikipedia page and casually scrolling through. Dalton Edwin Robert James (born 13 June 1997) is an English actor and model. Yep, knew that. James started his career in theater at age seven when he played the titular role in Oliver Twist at the Queen’s Theatre in London. Yep, knew that. He then moved to America and had several small roles on various sitcoms, including Kelly Life and Newton’s Laws. Yep, knew that. In 2012 he got his big break when signing on to play Bobby Malone in Regina Clark’s Sacred Trilogy. Yep, knew that. All of this info is pretty basic and getting kind of dull, so I go back to Google and click on a TMZ link that reads: Trouble for Dalton James? The article goes like this: