One

Zach Faraday and Cameron Schaeffer showed up in Shallow Pond on the same day. In terms of excitement, it was sort of like Christmas, the Fourth of July, and the annual winter carnival all rolled into one. Yeah, not a lot usually happened in Shallow Pond. That’s why my exit strategy was already planned out.

I didn’t know, when I got that text message from Jenelle after fourth period, that my exit strategy was already in jeopardy, but I guess I should have seen it coming. History has a tendency to repeat itself, and the Buntings had already shown themselves pretty much incapable of getting out of Shallow Pond. I don’t know why I thought I should be any different.

As I headed down the hallway toward my locker, I read Jenelle’s message: Just met your date for winter carn. He is hawt! I made an attempt to text back that “hawt” was not actually a word, but texting and walking was not yet something I was skilled at. The phone was a recently won concession, a Christmas gift from my older sisters after years of begging and pleading.

I had only just gotten my locker opened when Jenelle and Shawna showed up, breathless from sprinting down the hallway. Like I said, not a lot happened in Shallow Pond. A new guy in town was certainly worth a full-out hallway sprint. I glanced down at Shawna’s not entirely practical choice of footwear.

“In kitten heels, no less,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

Shawna winced. “I think I twisted an ankle,” she said.

After that followed a frenzied string of oh-my-gods and he-is-so-hawts. Somehow in there I was able to gather that his name was Zach Faraday, that he had for reasons no one understood moved to Shallow Pond from someplace far more cosmopolitan, and, oh yes, he was the top contender to be my date for the winter carnival.

“I thought I made it clear that I don’t need a date for the carnival,” I said.

“But it would be perfect,” Jenelle said. “Shawna and I are going with our men. It would be great if you had someone too.”

I refrained from pointing out that calling Dave and Frank “men” might have been something of an exaggeration. My two best friends had both paired off in the fall. Somewhere along the way they’d stopped thinking of Dave and Franky as the dorky boys we’d known our whole lives and suddenly saw them as attractive members of the opposite sex. It all boggled my mind. It also left me playing the role of fifth wheel, and as a result Jenelle and Shawna were determined to find me a suitable guy. They’d gotten it in their heads that the winter carnival was going to be the event for which they found me a partner.

“I’ve been going to the winter carnival my whole life,” I said. “I never needed a date before.”

“But Zach’s not going to have a date,” Shawna said. “He just moved to town. You don’t want him to have to go by himself.”

“He probably isn’t going at all,” I said.

“Which is why you need to go with him,” Jenelle said.

“Just give it a rest,” I said.

“He’s perfect for you, Bunting,” Jenelle said. “He’s an orphan, like you.”

“Seriously,” I said, meaning she had gone too far with that one, but she took it as more of an oh-my-god-no-way sort of “seriously.”

“It’s like you guys were made for each other,” Jenelle gushed.

“That’s enough,” I said through gritted teeth. I slammed my locker shut. “I don’t care if this guy is the best-looking guy to ever set food in Shallow Pond. I’m not interested.”

I thought the silent reaction from Jenelle and Shawna meant that they were finally listening to me. They weren’t. They were ignoring me completely. There was something else far more interesting at the other end of the hallway. Make that someone. I turned to see what was going on, and realized that Zach Faraday was in fact the best-looking guy to ever set foot in Shallow Pond.

I didn’t know where exactly Zach Faraday had come from, but it looked like he’d stepped straight out of a magazine, and not Sportsman’s Quarterly like the rest of the Shallow Pond population, but Gentleman’s Quarterly. His clothes made even Shawna in her kitten heels look underdressed. His hair was golden-brown and seemed to glow, as if it was actual molten gold, beneath the fluorescent lighting. His eyes were an intense icy blue, and his smile had the ability to melt knees in a single flash. And you could tell just by the way
he walked, by the look in his eyes, that he knew how good he looked. So, naturally, I was determined to have nothing to do with him.

“Still opposed to taking a date to the winter carnival?” Shawna asked.

“Yes,” I said. I stormed down the hallway, careful to not even glance in Zach’s direction as I passed him.

In a town as bland and drab as Shallow Pond, it didn’t take much to stand out. Despite living there my whole life, I’d never really felt like I belonged. Perhaps part of it was the fact that, unlike most of the people in town, I wanted to get the hell away as soon as I possibly could. I knew that my oldest sister, Annie, had once felt the same way; hell, maybe even Gracie had wanted to cut and run at some point. All I knew was that both of them were still there, and I was determined not to suffer the same fate. My hopes were riding on the half-a-dozen college applications I’d mailed out two-and-a-half months earlier, right after Halloween.

I was glad Zach Faraday was around. It meant there was actually someone who would do an even worse job of fitting in than I did. I hoped that his freakishness wouldn’t wear off, but I had a feeling that come next week, he’d be sporting the same crappy relaxed-fit jeans and Penn State sweatshirts as the rest of my male classmates. Probably he would crop that thick golden hair of his to a length and style that would blend in nicely with the rest of the men in town.

I didn’t care what sort of clothes Zach Faraday wore. I didn’t care what he did with his hair. No matter what, I wasn’t going to pay him the slightest bit of attention. I had a plan for getting out of this place, and I wasn’t going to let some boy come along and ruin all that.

“Wait up!” I heard Shawna shout as she shuffled after me, favoring her twisted ankle. I didn’t wait.

“Babie!” Jenelle yelled. She might have been about to say something else, but I spun around and glared at her.

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

“You need to chill out,” Jenelle said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m hungry,” I said, and I resumed my brisk walk into the cafeteria. But I wasn’t hungry. Not really.

The problem with Jenelle and Shawna was that they thought this stuff really mattered. They thought the winter carnival was a big deal. They thought some new guy in town was earth-shattering news. I think they actually sort of liked living in Shallow Pond.

I bought myself a sandwich and an iced tea and headed toward our table in the far back corner. The cafeteria was filled with the kids I’d known my whole life. Dave and Frank were already at our table, their trays overloaded with food.

“You see the new guy?” Dave asked as soon as I sat down, and that pretty much set the tone for the whole lunch period. In between fawning over their boyfriends, Jenelle and Shawna repeated the same bits of gossip about Zach over and over again. Pretty much the same conversation was going on at every other table in the cafeteria. I almost felt bad for Zach. Then I noticed him at the other end of the cafeteria, at a table mobbed with people—the most popular guy in the school, at least for the day.

“I wonder what he makes of all this?” I said.

“He’s going to like it here,” Shawna said. “People are probably a lot nicer here than where he’s from.”

“You don’t even know where he’s from,” I pointed out.

“But people are nice here in Shallow Pond,” Shawna said. I wondered if that’s what my parents were thinking when they’d picked this unlikely town to settle down in.

“We think Barbara should go with Zach to the winter carnival,” Jenelle told the boys.

“Yeah, that would be cool,” Dave said.

“Maybe you guys should talk to him,” Jenelle said. “You know, get him to ask Barbara to the carnival.”

“We don’t even know him,” Frank said. Shawna nudged him hard in the ribs.

“Just talk to him,” she said.

“No, don’t,” I said. “I don’t want a date for the carnival.”

“No, we can ask him. It’s all right,” Dave said.

“I don’t even know if I feel like going this year,” I said. That’s when the four of them looked at me as if I’d just
said I was planning on jumping off the Empire State Building or something equally outrageous, but then I noticed them all turning to look at something else. I was afraid to look. I did so, slowly, and I saw Zach and his confident-cool-guy walk headed right toward our table. Crap.

I grabbed up all my stuff and my half-eaten lunch and started heading for the door.

“I just remembered I have to go to the library to look up that thing for class,” I called over my shoulder.

“Babie,” Jenelle said. I didn’t even bother turning to glare at her. I bolted from the cafeteria.

For the record, I’m not afraid of guys. I even technically had a boyfriend once, if you count the three-and-a-half weeks that me and Rob O’Dell were “going out” sophomore year. What I was afraid of was becoming my oldest sister. It’s a well-known fact in my family that when she was in high school, Annie was head-over-heels in love with one of her classmates, Cameron Schaeffer.

Annie had been accepted at a decent college and had the opportunity to leave Shallow Pond forever, but she didn’t go. She never really explained why, but I always assumed it was because of Cameron. Yes, it’s true that he went away to school, but it seemed she figured that if she stayed in Shallow Pond, she could at least see him when he came home on breaks or whatever. Only that never really happened, because it wasn’t long after he went off to college that Cameron ditched her. She became mopey and unhappy for an impossibly long time. I doubted that she’d ever really gotten over Cameron.

I never really thought I was in danger of following in Annie’s footsteps. I knew every single guy in Shallow Pond, and there wasn’t one of them I was in any danger of falling head-over-heels in love with. At least there never used to be—but then I got a good look at Zach Faraday, enough of a look to know that if I wanted to follow through on my plan to bid farewell to Shallow Pond, it would be best to avoid those cold blue eyes, that completely captivating smile, at all costs.

I went into the nearest girls’ room and locked myself in one of the stalls until the first bell rang, and then I waited until the hallways were nearly deserted before racing to English class. I stepped through the door just as the bell was ringing.

I hadn’t even sat down yet when I heard a voice behind me say, “Sorry I’m late. I got lost on the way here.”

I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. How completely unfair was it that a guy who had it all in the looks department also had a smooth, velvety voice? I took my seat and refused to even glance in Zach’s direction.

“You must be Zach,” said Mrs. Grimes, who was approximately two hundred years old. “Let’s see, there’s a seat over there next to Gracie Bunting.”

“Barbara,” I corrected automatically.

“Hmm, yes, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Grimes said. “You do look just like your sister.”

Zach sat down beside me, and I could hear all around me a twitter of gossiping going on.

“So, you’re Barbara,” Zach said. I didn’t look at him. “I’ve heard about you.”

“It’s a small town,” I said, still without so much as glancing in his direction. “My guess is that within a week you’ll know the complete biography of every resident in this backwater burg.”

“Even that of the mysterious Buntings?” Zach asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, but unfortunately Mrs. Grimes was suddenly looking right in my direction.

“Gracie, since you feel like talking, why don’t you read the passage on page fifty-two for us,” she said. I didn’t even bother correcting her.