Chapter one
The next day I woke up to my alarm clock blaring lady gaga music into my ear drums. I stretched my hand and turned the alarm clock on snooze. Two minutes later it went off again and I decided the alarm clock won this round. I managed to drag myself to the bathroom. I took a shower and did my hair.
I went to my room took off my shirt and grabbed my tank top. I felt someone watching me so I looked up. S***. Jake was staring at me through the open window. I forgot to close it. I quickly glared at him and closed the window not before I heard his laughter.
I quickly finished changing and ran downstairs. I heard Sydney honk her horn outside. I quickly grabbed a yogurt from the counter of the kitchen and ran out, closing the door behind me of course.
Sydney's green convertible waited impatiently on my driveway. This is why Sydney drove me to school her car is way better than my old piece of junk. The convertible wasn't brand new, but it was still pretty awesome.
I climbed into the car. “Hey,” she says as she backs out of the driveway. I catch Jake staring at me as we leave. Sydney looked at me as I ate my yogurt. “Ever heard of a spoon?” she laughed.
I rolled my eyes at her poor joke. “I woke up late and didn't have time to grab it because you were already honking your horn.”
She laughs and we drive to school. Sydney somehow always manages to get a parking spot in the front of the high school. This is good so we don't have to walk a lot.
We walked inside laughing at the joke she had just told me. “Well, well, well. If it isn't loser one and loser two,” says the unmistakable voice of Hilary. We instantly stop laughing.
Hilary is the queen b**** of the school and head cheerleader. She's a blond like her minions and wears the shortest skirts of life. I'm not going to lie that their ugly, no their really pretty but plastic. I don't just hate her because she makes fun of me but because she's dating Jake.
We ignore Hilary and continue walking down the hall. “Wow cowards too,” I hear her tell her friends Lauren and Brittany. I feel like ripping her blond head off.
Sydney see's my murderous expression. “Calm down, Bethany she's not worth it.” I listen to Sydney because she's usually right. We walked to my locker and I took out my books for the next classes. “So who's your partner for that project Ms. March is making you do?”
Ms. March is my homeroom teacher. She's so creepy. She wants to pair us up with someone from class and then we have to learn everything about the other person. It's stupid but she's making us do it. “She picks,” I say in a dull voice.
“I'm so happy that I don't have her,” she says. We start walking to our class. We enter calculus a minute before the bell rings. I sit in the back of the classroom next to Sydney and some kid named Greg. Greg talks to himself a lot, it's weird since I sit next to him.
Sydney and I start taking notes immediately. Calculus is my hardest class because it's math. I used to love math and so did Jake. I guess I started hating math because he likes it.
After two hours the bell rings and we are free to go to lunch. We ate at our usual table outside under the big oak tree that we love. Sydney leaves me at the table by myself while she went to go get lunch. I took my sandwich out of my bag and started chewing it. I read one of my favorite books while eating.
I felt someone sit in front of me. I looked up expecting Sydney. “Hey,” he says. I roll my eyes and ignore Jake. Where's Sydney? “Whatcha reading?” he asks . I look up at him he has one eyebrow up questionably.
I show him the book cover. “You're reading this again?”
“Yes, why wouldn't I?” I say.
“Because you threw it out the window when we were seven and you told me loud and clear that you were never going to read that book again,” he says and shrugs. I gape at him. How does he remember that?
I suddenly feel warm inside. Stop it, I scold myself. Jake grabs my sandwich and took a bite, then gave it back to me. “What the hell?” I say. “Don't you have your own food Jake?”
He just laughs and walks back to the popular group. He grabs Hilary and kisses her on the lips while staring at me. He raised an eyebrow in my direction. I quickly looked away. Same jerk.
Sydney sat down in front of me two minutes later. “What took you so long?” I ask.
“Bumped into Lauren and Brittany, don't worry about it.” she says quickly when she saw my eyes get wide. “There nothing without Hilary.”
That's true Lauren and Brittany are always lost without their precious leader. I stole a glance at the popular table. Jake saw me and smirked. I looked at Sydney. “I hate that kid, ugh! Why is he so complicated?” I complain to Sydney.
She laughs. “We all hate him, your just too stubborn to let go of the old him,” she says. Then she looks around to make sure no one is listening. “Bethany forget him. He's not the same boy you fell in love with when you were younger.”
I knew she was right but I just couldn't loose hope that maybe the old Jake was somewhere inside the new Jake. “I know I should just forget about him, I just can't.” I say.
“Whatever, so you going to the party on Friday?” she asks.
I raise an eyebrow, “What party?”
She rolls her eyes. “Girl stop day dreaming, Sam is throwing a party at his house. Something about his parents being out of town.”
“You were invited?” I ask. Sam is one of the football players, very popular in this school. She nods. “By who?”
“Danny,” she says.
“My brother invited you?” I ask, surprised. My brother was a very popular student at our school. Hiss college is right here in our town so he visits the high school all the time. Nobody knows we're related, except Sydney and Jake.
“Yeah, he told me today in the morning to tell you to come. You wanna go?” she seemed like she was dying to go. Sydney has the biggest crush on my older brother it's hilarious.
“Sure.”

Chapter two

“Bethany! Bethany! Where are you?” yelled Jake. I giggled behind the bush. Oh-oh. I froze. I heard him start walking in my direction. His footsteps got closer and closer. I held my breath. He stopped in front of the bush.
I froze there, waiting for him to catch me and make me count. After what seemed like an eternity he left. I waited making sure his footsteps where gone. When they were I jumped from behind the bush. I made a bee-line for my house, which was base.
“Gotcha,” he said and poked me on the arm. Where did he come from? I was five feet away from base and he caught me. “Ha, now you have to count.”
I rolled my eyes at him and went inside to count. As I was counting I noticed his wallet on the kitchen counter. Nosy me, grabbed it and looked through it.
Then I saw it. The picture of Lauren, the b**** that made my life miserable at that time. Why did he have a picture of her? I suddenly grew furious, not because he was dating another girl but because he was dating my enemy.
“What are you doing?” asked a voice behind me. Jake. I turned around he had his arms crossed over his chest. I quickly put the wallet back. He walked to my side and snatched it. “What did you see?”
“Your dating Lauren?” I accuse.
“Yeah, what's it to you?” he says. I felt hurt inside, he never talked to me this way.
“But she's terrible, evil,” I say. It wasn't true, Lauren's leader was the awful one.
“So your not the one dating her, are you?” he says with a smirk. What's wrong with him? Why is he being like this?
What I said next shocked both of us. “Either you break up with her or you leave me. Which will it be? That b**** for a girlfriend or me for a best friend?” I demanded an answer.
“Fine, I guess I'll find another best friend. No need having you around if you don't like the girls I go out with.” with that he walked out the door and became the jerk he is now.
I cried over him for a month until I met Sydney. She helped me stop crying over Jake. But it didn't help that I was in love with him.

“Bethany?” asks a familiar voice. I quickly forget about the memory and looked up at Ms. March.
“Yes?” I say. I noticed the entire class was staring at me. I suddenly felt self-conscious.
“Your partner will be Jake,” she says. The moment his name leaves her lips the world froze. I was stunned. Why Jake? I noticed Jake staring at me from the other side of the room. I heard kids whisper 'lucky' or 'I wanted the football player'.
I raised my hand to get the teachers attention. “Yes Bethany?”
I can't believe I'm going to say this. “Can I get another partner?” I ask putting on my puppy face. The whole class gasps. They are so dramatic.
“Why?” she asks.
I gulp and quickly think of a response. “Well the whole point of the project to get to know the other person, right?” she nods. “Well I already know everything about him.”
She nods. “Okay then, what's his favorite food?”
“Pizza.” I caught Jake with his mouth open surprised I remembered that.
“Color?”
“Purple.” the class laughs at that.
“Is your favorite color purple?”she asks Jake. He nods.
“See?” I say trying to convince her.
She shakes her head, “That's not enough. He has to know these things about you too.” She turns to Jake and asks, “Do you know anything about Bethany?”
He smiles. “Her favorite color is orange because it's sorta like her eye color amber. She's afraid of heights. She loves to eat hotdogs. She also had the biggest crush on-”
“Shut up!” I throw a pencil at him, which he catches. I can't believe he remembers that. He laughs but doesn't finish the sentence. I look at Ms. March. “See?”
“Yep, I see. But you too still have to do the project together. I want you to learn more about each other,” she says as the bell rings. Oh god this is going to be hell. I walk out of class and go to my locker to wait for Sydney.
“Nemo,” whispers a voice in my ear. I punched whoever was that close to me. Then I saw who it was.
“Ow,” he murmurs. He was rubbing his jaw where I had hit him.
“Oh my gosh! Jake I'm so sorry! You know you can't sneak up on me!” I whisper. He's covering his chin with his hand. I pulled down his hand, which took a little of force because he didn't want me to see. “Let me see,” I say. When I removed his hand I saw that I left a bruise on his chin.
“Damn you still hit hard,” he says.
“Your the one that taught me how to punch. It looks really bad Jake. You need to put ice on it immediately,” I say. He nods still in pain. I notice others kids looking at us as they walked by. I grab his wrist and and drag him outside.
“Looks like I can't drive so you have to drive me home,” he comments and throws me a pair of keys. I catch them and look at him warily.
“Can't your girlfriend drive you or something?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nope she has her own car.”
“I didn't hit you hard enough for you not to be able to drive,” I accuse.
He grabs my wrist and starts dragging me to his car. “You do the crime you pay the time.”
“What crime did I do exactly?” I ask raising an eyebrow.
He stops walking and opens the driver seat of his red mustang for me. I get in and see him walk over to the passenger seat. “You punched an innocent boy who was trying to tell you something.”
“I'm just glad you didn't say it front of the entire class,” I say. I've never driven his car before so this is new. I drive out of the school with ease and get on the highway that leads to our neighborhood. I wonder what he would do if I crashed his car?
“I wouldn't have gone that far, I'm not a total jerk.” I look at him to see if I heard right. He was looking out the window.
“You were about to tell everyone I was in love with Nemo when we were eleven,” I say and look back to the street ahead.
He laughs, “Yeah I remember, you bought everything Nemo. Shirts, shoes, and jewelry. I even bought you a fish that looked like Nemo!”
I laugh with him remembering the memory. I was the only eleven year old in the world who loved Nemo. “At least I didn't have a crush on Dory!”
“Hey she was way better looking then Nemo!” he punches me on the arm too much like the old times. I park in the driveway of his house and get off.
I haven’t been to his house in ages. I opened his door and took him to the kitchen. The house was so familiar; I dragged him to the couch. He sat down while I went to his kitchen and grabbed an ice bag from the fridge. I went back to the living room and saw him putting a movie in the DVD player.
I throw him the ice bag; he catches it and puts it against his skin. “Well I better go, see ya.” I start to walk to the door.
He grabs my arm and brings me to the couch. “Stay and watch the movie, you'll love it I promise.”
I sighed and sat on the couch. He sat down next to me, a little too close. I looked at the screen. I gasp, he remembers. The little mermaid. My favorite movie of all time.
“I knew you would like to see it,” he says. I look at him and see that the bruise is turning yellowish. We watched the entire movie. When the movie finished, I groaned and stretched on the couch like a cat. I grabbed my book bag and walked to the door.
Once again he grabbed my arm. This time he pushed me back to him. I looked up at him. Our eyes locked, his eyes looked intense. He inched his face closer to me. He was about to kiss me. My first kiss with the boy I love.
“MY MOMA TOLD ME WHEN I WAS YOUNG WE ALL GOING TO BE SUPERSTARS SHE PULLED MY HAIR PUT MY LIPSTICK ON...................” my phone rang super loud. I broke away from his eyes to answer my phone. I heard Jake curse under his breath.
“Hello?” I ask to the person that interrupted my special moment.
“Bethany! Girl I looked for you everywhere! I thought you were kidnapped!” Sydney practically screamed at me on the phone. I'm sure Jake heard everything.
I covered the speaker and told him, “Hey got to go, thanks for the movie.” I quickly shut the door behind me and run to my house. “Whoa, calm down please! I'll tell you everything in a sec. Can you come over,” I ask her hoping she'll say yes.
“Okay, I'll be there in twenty minutes.” she hung up and I ran inside my house and waited for her to come.