The Spinach Incident

Marcus Freeman's life ended precisely third period, right after Mrs. Henderson finished her lecture on To Kill a Mockingbird and everyone was packing up. That's when Jacey—the Jacey who'd been ignoring his texts since summer camp—finally looked at him, really looked at him, and whispered, "You've got something in your teeth."

The spinach. His mom's healthy breakfast kick. The leafy green nightmare currently wedged between his front teeth like a tiny green flag of social suicide.

He'd spent forty-five minutes on his hair that morning, trying out the new product his cousin swore by—some expensive stuff that promised "effortless texture" but delivered "greasy disaster." Now his hair was doing this weird flippy thing on one side, and somehow that mattered less than the spinach situation.

"Thanks," Marcus mumbled, reaching for his backpack. His phone charger cable was tangled around everything, because of course it was. He spent a solid thirty seconds unwinding it while Jacey watched.

"So," she said, flipping her own perfect hair. "You coming to Jordan's party tonight?"

Wait. WHAT?

"Yeah, I think so," Marcus said smoothly, despite his heart doing gymnastics. "Should be sick."

"Cool." She smiled. And then—"You should probably check a mirror before you go. Just saying."

She walked away, and Marcus died inside.

Later, his mom handed him the gummy vitamin pack she'd been obsessed with lately. "Don't forget your vitamins! Can't have you getting sick before the big game."

The football team was playing their rivals, and apparently the whole school was going. Marcus wasn't even into football, but everyone would be there, including Jacey, including anyone who might've seen The Spinach Incident.

"Mom, I'm not taking gummy vitamins, I'm fifteen."

"They're adult gummies," she said, like that changed everything. "Just take them, Marcus. Your father's bull-headedness about health didn't work out so well, did it?"

His dad. The reason they'd moved to this town three months ago. The reason Marcus was the new kid with the weird breakfast and no established friend group and spinach in his teeth.

At the party that night, Marcus found himself in a circle with Jacey and her friends, feeling like he'd stepped into a parallel dimension where he was actually someone people wanted to talk to. His hair had calmed down. He'd checked his teeth like twelve times. He was low-key killing it.

Until someone brought up the homecoming dance.

"I hate those things," Marcus said before he could stop himself. "Just people pretending to have fun while standing in a gym that smells like floor wax."

Silence. Then Jacey laughed.

"Oh my god, SAME," she said. "Last year I went with this guy who spent the whole night taking selfies. I literally hid in the bathroom for forty minutes."

The group erupted into stories about bad dates and awkward moments, and suddenly Marcus wasn't the new kid anymore. He was just Marcus, the guy who kept it real.

"You're actually funny," Jacey said later, when they'd somehow ended up on the back porch alone.

"I try," Marcus said. "Sometimes it works, sometimes there's spinach involved."

She laughed. "I remember that from camp. You had popcorn kernels in your teeth literally the entire week."

He stared at her. "You noticed?"

"Everyone noticed," she said. "It was kind of adorable."

The air between them shifted, and Marcus realized something: all those things he'd been stressing about—his hair, his weird breakfast, whether he was cool enough—none of it mattered. Not really. The right people would like him anyway.

"So," Jacey said, leaning closer. "Want to get out of here? There's this diner..."

Marcus smiled, and for once, he didn't worry about how it looked.

"Lead the way."