Girls like Ivy McWhellen did not get embarrassed. And if they ever did happen to be embarrassed, it was in an adorable way. Like in an Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he thinks I’m cute way, which was just ridiculous because girls like Ivy McWhellen knew they were cute. They were born knowing.
Which is why anyone would expect Ivy McWhellen to be doing something amazing with her summer. Like maybe sunning on the beach in Cabo. Or having some sort of whirlwind summer romance with the captain of the hockey team (if her school even had a hockey team). Or, at the very least, hanging with her best girlfriends/understudies.
One would not expect a girl like Ivy McWhellen to be trapped desperately on her back underneath a vending machine, slowly suffocating to death. Which happened to be where Ivy was at that exact moment.
It wasn’t her fault. Ivy had been, until very recently, the queen bee. Then she made a really bad decision by following the advice of every terrible chick flick ever that told her to follow her heart.
What those chick flicks never told Ivy was that hearts are bad at directions, and that following her heart would eventually lead her into the high school over summer break and right up to a vending machine. And that her ex–best friends would tip it over on her and leave her there to die.
Stupid, stupid heart.
At least there weren’t cameras. There had been some student council vote about using low-energy ones, and so the old ones had been taken out last week, and the new, not-yet-installed cameras were apparently on back order. The last thing Ivy needed was a stupid video getting stolen and going viral.
Of course, that wouldn’t even matter, if she died.
Ivy took a deep, slow breath, and the vending machine crushed her ribs a little further. And then she lifted up as hard as she could.
The hulking monster of a machine moved two full millimeters.
Ivy lay back. Maybe she should just concentrate on breathing. And try not to think about the way Klaire—who had been her best friend since that time in kindergarten when Ivy convinced her to eat paste—had laughed while Johann, the quarterback, had held Ivy down. Then his two linebacker goons had slowly lowered the vending machine onto her body.
That bitch was going to pay. And so were Johann and the linebackers.
Ivy took another deep, slow breath, and pushed upward. The machine actually moved . . . maybe an inch. And then it teetered and slid, and pain rocketed up her arm as the weight shifted. Ivy sucked in as much breath as she could and tried to scream, but she hardly had anything left in her. All that came out was a pathetic little whimper, like a dying kitten, or like Marc Selver last year when he got sucker punched in the stomach.
“Ivy?”
Ivy tried to pivot her head. It couldn’t be him. Please, God, say it wasn’t him.
He took a step closer.
It was him.
Garrett.
Ruiner of Lives.
Kisser extraordinaire.
Also known as the ex-boyfriend who had cost her everything she loved when he had the nerve to dump her . . . and then the rest of the school had decided Garrett was the Cool One, as he had officially earned the status of the Only Guy to Ever Dump Ivy McWhellen.
And Garrett hadn’t even been cool before that. He’d been, like, unseen. A nobody. But she had seen him, and gotten all of this Love Bullshit in her head, and he had ruined her entire life forever.
“Are you okay under there?” he asked, kneeling down, his stupid hipster Chucks way too close to her head. His face appeared above her, and he looked ridiculous and pudgy from this angle—like her face did when she accidentally forgot to flip the camera lens around and she surprise-selfied herself.
She wheezed throatily, and his eyes widened.
“Wait here a minute, Ivy girl. I’ll save you. I promise.”
He pushed himself up and she heard his Chucks tapping down the hall.
On one hand, yay, Ivy was probably not going to die. On the other hand, being heroically saved by the boy who had ruined her entire life was basically the cruelest thing in the entire world. Maybe even crueler than death, if she really thought about it.
“Don’t call me Ivy girl,” she tried to say, because what right did he have to use his adorable boyfriendy nicknames after basically pushing her off a social cliff? But all that came out was a strange whistling noise. The machine had probably punctured her lung.
Thank God she hadn’t been caught under one of the big vending machines in the student foyer. It was just a half-size one that, until a week ago, when it was emptied for the summer, had been filled with all the healthy snacks no one ever bought anyway: $1.50 for some shitty rice crackers? No. Just no.
A few moments later, Ivy heard a click-clicking—the light, careful tread of girls. A lot of them. A whole pack.
Freshmen. The type of girls that Ivy McWhellen would grind underneath her Louboutin heels and eat for Bitch Brunch.
They stared at her at first. At her dark hair with blond highlights tangled on the floor behind her. At her perfect little bag on the ground, with half its contents spilled out onto the dirty tile of the main lobby.
And then the front freshman—the smallest one—put her hand to her mouth.
That’s when the laughter started.
Slow, at first, with a pathetic, high-pitched little giggle, and then evolving rapidly into heaving laughter as it swept through the group.
Those stupid little freshpeople were laughing at Ivy McWhellen.
One of them raised a smartphone and snapped a picture.
This was not how the world was supposed to work.
Ivy wanted to kill them. She would ruin her manicure to do it, and there was hardly anything she would ruin her manicure for. But this was definitely worth another set of forty-dollar gel tips.
“Ivy!” Garrett’s stupid voice rang down the hallway. “Ivy, I found Janitor Epps. We’ll get you out of here.” He jogged up, like a Knight in Shining Lumberjack Clothes, and the old janitor lumbered a few steps behind, clearly not as concerned with Ivy’s well-being.
The janitor knelt down close to her. “Better not have messed up my machine,” he muttered, so close to her ear that she could smell the chewing tobacco on his breath.
Ivy wanted to punch him almost as bad as she wanted to get out, but not quite as bad as she wanted to kill the freshmen. Who cared about the machine? Ivy was dying here. The freshmen giggled louder, and Garrett turned to them.
“A little help, please,” he said.
Ivy didn’t have to crane her neck to know the girls were practically melting into puddles of goo just because Garrett, a senior, a cool, cute senior, spoke actual words to them. Suddenly, the little bitches were all Mother Teresa.
With Garrett and the janitor at the front of the machine (and said janitor standing at an angle where Ivy could see a suspicious stain near his crotch), they all started counting.
“One . . . two . . . three!” Garrett shouted, and together they all lifted until the machine was raised off of Ivy. She scrabbled frantically at the dirty tile until she was finally clear of the stupid machine, then continued to scuttle backward until her back was against the wall and she was clear across the room, breathing delicious lungfuls of air.
Garrett sat down beside her and handed her the little handbag.
“So,” he said. “Want to tell me who did this?”
Ivy shook her head. “Machine wasn’t secured,” she said, her voice tight with bitterness. “So dangerous. I should sue.”
“Oh, right,” Garrett said. “Vending machines just randomly collapse on top of people. Happens all the time. Think it was haunted?”
Ivy smiled a little, in spite of herself. Garrett was funny. That was why she’d liked him at first. “Something like that. I never should have played with that Ouija board.” She faked a shudder and pain lit up in her muscles. The machine had done more damage than she’d thought.
“So,” Garrett said. “I’m here for a summer art course. And you decided to drop by the local high school because . . . it’s such a grand place?”
Ivy didn’t want to tell him the truth: that her parents had forced her to take a stupid, stupid psych class for credit, just because they wanted her out of the house. That she hardly did anything since Garrett dumped her.
That she’d lost every friend and follower she thought she had.
“Signing up for the summer psych course,” she said. “I want to get a jump-start on college credit and they make you submit all this extra paperwork.” She smoothed her hair out of her face. It was half true. Really, it was probably the last thing she wanted to do with her summer.
“Cool,” Garrett said. “Is that the one that Dr. Stratford is teaching at night?”
Ivy nodded glumly. Stratford was supposed to basically be the devil incarnate. Exactly how she’d planned to spend her summer—being lectured by Satan himself. How fitting. Her whole life was going to hell anyway. Might as well get some face time with the boss.
Garrett put his arms on his knees and started messing with his wristbands, which is what he did before he said something serious. Ivy would know. It was what he did before he broke up with her.
Across the room, the freshmen watched, like eager little gossip vultures.
“Ivy girl, listen—about us. I’m sorry. I know things haven’t been easy for you since we—since I—”
“No.” The word cut through Garrett’s fumbling speech. “No, Garrett.” Ivy pushed herself up, wincing, and threw the bag over her shoulder. “Listen, it was great to talk to you, and thanks for saving my life, but really—I have to go.”
He stared up at her with those pretty, soulful eyes he had, and for the first time, she turned her back on him.
And with that, Ivy walked away from everything she wanted.