Fearless by Katy Grant

look like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol?
    â€œThanks,” I said, feeling a lot pinker than I wanted to feel at the moment.
    After Molly had danced with the redheaded boy, she found Whitney and me. Luckily, she kept her mouthshut about Ethan until Whitney got asked to dance. When the two of us were alone again, she demanded, “Why haven’t you talked to Ethan yet?”
    â€œBecause I’m waiting for him to come over and say hi to me first.”
    â€œWhy does he have to say hi first? This
is
the twenty-first century, you know. Girls don’t have to sit around waiting for boys to come to them. We can make the first move.”
    â€œI don’t want to stalk him! Boys hate that.”
    â€œJordan, so far you haven’t gotten within five hundred feet of him or even made eye contact. I’m pretty sure that stalkers tend to be a wee bit more outgoing than that. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you said hi to him?”
    I could think of about fifteen bad things that might happen. Number one, he didn’t remember me. Number two, he didn’t like me anymore because of some random, weird thing I’d said in that e-mail last year. Number three, he had a girlfriend back home. Number four, he had his eye on someone else he wanted to dance with. Number five, he was looking at me right now and thinking,
What did I ever see in that pink nightmare?
    But if I tried to explain this to Molly, she’d tell me I was just making excuses. “So you’re saying you’d bewilling to go up to any boy here and ask him to dance?” I asked her.
    â€œSure I would. Why not? What’s the worst thing he could do?”
    â€œLaugh in your face. Say no. Make up some lame excuse why he doesn’t want to dance with you.”
    â€œOh, like, ‘Sorry I can’t dance with you. I have blisters on my brain’?” asked Molly.
    â€œJust because I didn’t run right over to him the second I saw him and say, ‘I can see my future, and guess what—you’re in it,’ doesn’t mean I won’t talk to him eventually,” I told her.
    Molly put one hand on my shoulder. “Look, I know you’re afraid. But sometimes you have to face your fears. You know what would’ve happened to you if you’d been on the
Titanic
?”
    I glared at her. “Are you going to tell me I would’ve drowned?”
    â€œYes! And you know why? Because you’re afraid. A lot of people were afraid to get in the lifeboats at first. They didn’t want to be lowered hundreds of feet into the cold, dark ocean. They wanted to stay on that warm, safe,
unsinkable
ship. You wouldn’t have gotten on a lifeboat, Jordan. But I would have! Don’t you get it?”
    â€œNo, I don’t. What’s your point?” I asked. I wastotally confused by how lifeboats applied to me talking to Ethan.
    â€œMy point is, sometimes you have to face your fears and do something that looks dangerous. It just might save your life.” Molly crossed her arms and nodded at me, convinced that she’d just given me an amazing argument.
    â€œWell, you’re wrong about me drowning on the
Titanic
. I would’ve been too afraid to cross the ocean on a ship in the first place. So fear can save your life.”
    Molly sighed. “I give up. I’m going to ask that boy to dance with me. The band kept playing till the end, Jordan. Right up until the ship sank. Remember that!”
    Okay, I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I didn’t want her abandoning me again.
    â€œMolly, wait!” I yelled. But she’d already walked over and asked a tall, skinny boy in a “Rock Star” T-shirt to dance with her. How could she leave me alone like this?
    Just then I felt someone’s hands on my shoulders. A really deep voice said, “Hey, cutie. Wanna dance?”

I almost died. It honestly felt like my heart dropped out of my