Girl Wonder by Alexa Martin Read Free Book Online

myself looking directly at the face of Adorable Boy.
    â€œSorry about that,” he said.
    I wanted to say something funny and intelligent, something that would keep his hypnotic eyes focused on my face forever. Unfortunately, I had forgotten how to think or speak.
    So I simply held out his pen.
    His fingers grazed mine gently as he reached for it. An electric shiver ran up my spine. He smiled. Had he felt it too?
    â€œThanks,” he said.
    A moment later he went back to being engrossed in alternative energy, and I went back to covertly staring at him. He was gorgeous.
    But it wasn’t just his looks that struck me. Something about him reminded me of the movie Dead Poets Society —a flick about some guys at a New England boarding school. The boys in that movie were clean-cut without being dorky. They were eager to learn and eager to break the rules. You could tell my new crush had confidence in spades, not the arrogant kind, but a belief in his intelligence that he had never once doubted.
    Who was he?
    After that, the best I could say about my second morning at Shady Grove was that no one tried to kill me.
    In Chemistry we colored in pictures of atoms. In Spanish, the substitute—our real teacher had yet to show—had us practice rolling our R’s. In Language Arts, Miss Mason gave us a homework assignment: we were to write a five-paragraph essay about the scariest thing that had ever happened to us (I refrained from asking if entering Shady Grove could count).
    Due to a student ambassador meeting, Mimi had missed Chemistry. We met up at lunch—the special was reconstituted mashed potatoes with meat loaf gravy—and after assuring her she hadn’t missed anything important, I told her all about the chemistry I’d felt with Adorable Boy.
    â€œBut I’ll probably never see him again,” I sighed.
    â€œI’ve got just the thing.” Mimi reached into her overly large orange backpack. “Voilà!” she said, holding up a yearbook.
    Flipping through the glossy pages, I noticed that even the cool kids looked stupid in the pictures. You could tell the photographers were trying to impose meaning onto moments that had only ever been trivial at best.
    Amanda’s picture was everywhere. Last year she’d won the Best Dressed Rebel Without a Cause award. She’d made herself up to look like a drunk Lindsay Lohan.
    I found Adorable Boy on page ninety-three. He was a GATE, of course.
    Mimi studied his picture. “I’ve seen him around.”
    â€œNeal Fitzpatrick. What a great name.”
    â€œNot to be a downer,” Mimi said, “but I think he might be out of our league.”
    I stiffened at this. Mimi didn’t know me. Who was she to assume that I was a misfit like her?
    â€œMind if I borrow this for the afternoon?” I asked, trying not to show my anger. When she said okay, I excused myself and headed upstairs to the restroom in the GATE wing. Hiding in a corner stall, I spent the rest of lunch hunting down every picture of Neal in the yearbook.
    Here’s what I learned:
    Neal Fitzpatrick was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine.
    Neal Fitzpatrick was a National Merit finalist.
    Neal Fitzpatrick played lacrosse.
    Neal Fitzpatrick was captain of the debate team.
    Debate. This must have been what he was doing in the library.
    I tried to guess what colleges he was going to apply to. Stanford? Yale? Columbia? He was classy. I could imagine him living in a place like New York City or Boston. I traced my fingers along the contours of his face, dreaming that I was touching his features for real. No one would ever mistake him for a misfit.
    In Math, Mr. Johnson gave us a pop quiz on graphing parabolas. Luckily the quiz was easy (“This is a very basic curriculum”). I wasn’t the last to finish either. Afterward, Mr. Johnson gave us some problems to work on so he could grade our quizzes in class.
    At the end of the period he handed