The Bear in the Background
Marcus pulled his beanie hat lower, practically over his eyes. Standard operating procedure for parties where he knew exactly three people and liked approximately zero of them. "Y...
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Marcus pulled his beanie hat lower, practically over his eyes. Standard operating procedure for parties where he knew exactly three people and liked approximately zero of them. "Y...
The papaya sat on my lunch tray like a radioactive alien egg, glowing in that way only middle school cafeteria food can. "Dude, you're actually gonna eat that?" Marcus leaned acro...
The school cafeteria operated like a pyramid, and I was definitely in the bottom layer—right next to the kids who played Yu-Gi-Oh at lunch. I'd spent three years perfecting the art...
Marcus's legs burned like someone had set his quads on fire. Three months into freshman year, and somehow he'd let Jordan talk him into joining cross country. Probably because Jord...
I became a professional spy at 3:47 PM on a Tuesday. Not the cool, James Bond kind. The Instagram-stalking, five-depths-deep kind. I'd been watching Jordan's stories for weeks now...
Maya stood at the edge of the pool, clutching her towel like a security blanket. Her hair—usually her pride and joy, all soft coils and perfect bounce—was currently a frizzy disast...
The bass thrummed through Maya's chest like a second heartbeat. House parties weren't really her scene—too many people, too much eye contact, way too many opportunities to say some...
The pool party of the year. That's what Maya's Instagram story called it. And somehow, here I was, standing in my cutoff shorts and an old band tee, feeling like I'd wandered into ...
Maya's thumb hovered over the send button on her iPhone, that familiar orange bubble of a text from glowing back at her: "r u coming??" It was Jordan's third message. The party had...
The papaya incident started it all. I was standing by the pool at Tyler's house, the one his parents had just renovated with money they definitely didn't have, holding this weird ...
The sun hat was my mother's idea. A massive, floppy monstrosity with a ridiculous pink bow that screamed 'I have no social awareness.' I stood at the edge of Jenna's pool party gri...
Marcus stood at the plate, baseball bat gripped tight, palms sweating like crazy. This was it—make the team or spend another summer as the backup benchwarmer for his little sister'...