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When school started a week later, I kneas going to be bad Jay warned ossip over the summer about what happened between Scott and me at the party But I had expected everyone to whisper behind my back at school Not so much

I wasn’t comfortable with the attention It didn’t help that I’d donated fourteen inches of hair to Locks of Love, gotten platinuhts, and had my eyebroaxed

Bobby Donaldson, varsity baseball pitcher and player extraordinaire, who’d never said a word to me in my life, approached me at my locker with one heck of a lusty red aura before school started

"Hey, girl How you doin’?"

"Um, fine?"

"I’ the purple-and-black bag over s behind my ear

"I’m not new You know me Anna Whitt?"

His eyes ran across the features of my face

"Hot daaay-um, for real?"

I forced my eyes not to roll back, and walked past him He ran to catch up

"So you hooked up with Scott?" he hollered over the din of excited first-day voices

"No, I didn’t"

I sped up, dodging other hall walkers, but Bobby stayed on o out so us

"It’s just irl that you’ve been in youth group and science class with for the past three years and never talked to All I did was go to a party and get a haircut"

"I heard you aren’t such a prude anyive a la, he tweaked my cheek with his knuckle and headed for his own class I sed down the bile ininto cry because of Bobby It didn’t ht I went to first period

By lunch it was clear that I hadn’t taken Jay’s warnings seriously enough The runore the stares and whispers, but I couldn’t pretend people weren’t cornering me for information What happened with you and Scott? He says you’re s Did you really hook up with so a party this weekend; wanna come?

I told each one of them I didn’t want to talk about it

I had one class with Scott, Spanish again He sat on the other side of the room and never looked my way Even Veronica avoided me, maybe too embarrassed about the BFF stuff They were the only two people in school not interested in talking to me