This Is So Not Happening by Kieran Scott Read Free Book Online

she wouldn’t be here for my eighteenth birthday. I took a breath, remembered my promise to myself, and lifted my shoulders.
    “That’s okay,” I said. “We can just celebrate when you get back.”
    “Yeah?” Her voice was an excited squeak. “Are you sure?”
    “Totally. It’s no big deal.” But inside, my heart felt heavy. She was already doing it. She was already choosing Gray over me.
    “When we get back we’ll do our traditional birthday dinner,” she told me. “It’ll just be a few days late.”
    “Okay,” I said, backing toward the door. I saw my father’s newly leased Taurus idling in the driveway. “Cool. But I should go. Dad’s here.”
    “Okay. Tell him I said hi!” my mom said awkwardly.
    “I will.”
    Outside I jogged to the car, feeling the weight of the conversation tug free from my shoulders. My father had the radio on, tuned to a classic rock station.
    “Tell me you have those cinnamon roll things at the shop this morning,” I said, buckling my seat belt.
    He chuckled, scratching at the stubble on his cheek. “Rough morning in the Palais du Nathanson?” he said in a French accent.
    “Something like that,” I said.
    My dad pulled out of the driveway and we cruised down the hill, past all the mansions and gated driveways and skinny women jogging with their tiny dogs, headed for town. I was just starting to relax when I saw a woman with a jogging stroller, pushing a sleeping baby up toward the crest. I closed my eyes and sunk lower in my seat.
    “Everything all right, bud?” my dad asked.
    “Yeah.” Sure. Fine. Great.
    “I was thinking, if you want to go over your applications one night this week, I could help you narrow things down,” my dad said, lowering the volume. “Maybe take some of the pressure off?”
    I looked up at him. College. Applications. Visions of brick and stone buildings, fancy school logos, and happily smiling students hanging on lush lawns filled my mind, crowding out due-date calculators and gender predictors. The future. My future. Somewhere other than here, with people who’d never heard of Orchard Hill, of Chloe and Jake. And even though I felt a twinge of disloyalty, for thinking of a life beyond Jake, my chest filled with airy hope.
    “Sounds like a plan,” I said.
    My dad smiled, and for the first time in days, I smiled too.
jake
    The doctor’s office smelled like lemon. No. Not like lemon. Like a lemon car air freshener. It had that synthetic fake-citrus smell that’s so foul it makes the hairs inside your nose itch. Every time I breathed in, I wanted to heave. It didn’t help that it was, like, five-fucking-trillion degrees in there and everyonewas staring at me like I’d come to each of their homes and personally slaughtered their family pets. The pregnant woman in the corner with the graying hair. The couple that looked like newlyweds off some reality show with the leather, the dye jobs, and the bling. Even the janitor shot me a look on her way out, lowering her sunglasses so she could really give it to me.
    What the hell was wrong with these people? Maybe me and Chloe were totally in love. Married even. Or maybe I was her brother. Yeah. Why not? God, they’d feel so stupid if they found out I was just her brother and I’d come here with her just trying to be nice. Jackasses.
    “How long is this gonna take?” I asked Chloe, my leg bouncing nervously.
    “I don’t know.” Chloe licked her lips and stared at my knee. “Could you please stop doing that? It’s making me tense.”
    I opened my mouth to say something back—something probably stupid like “I can leave if you want me to”—but the nurse saved me.
    “Chloe Appleby?”
    Chloe cringed at the sound of her own name. I jumped up so fast the nurse looked confused and kinda disturbed. Like maybe I was Chloe Appleby.
    “That’s her,” I said, pointing at Chloe.
    From the look on her face, I’m pretty sure Chloe was coming up with ten different ways to murder