Top 8 by Katie Finn

pulled back with a bandanna, narrowed her eyes when she saw me. Clearly, she’d been hoping I wouldn’t show at all.
    It might have been better if that had happened. My first scene was with Mark Rothmann, who was playing Larry, my brother. And after I’d had to call for line three times, Mr. Allan told me to just hold the book. As I pulled out my script, face red with embarrassment, I saw Sarah smirking, and looking — was I imagining it? — kind of satisfied.
    After rehearsal, exhausted and grumpy, I stopped at Stubbs for a quick restorative latte. I wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath and forget about hackersand Friendverse and detention and vindictive under-studies and evil future prom queens.
    As I finally pulled into our driveway, I noticed there was a strange SUV in our turnaround. I remembered, as I looked at the car, that my mother had told me something about coming home early. But she really should have known that things didn’t fully sink in until I’d had my morning Stubbs latte.
    I walked into the house, noticing it was cleaner than usual and that the classical CD that only ever played when we had Company over was on. Also, there didn’t seem to be anyone in the kitchen or study.
    â€œHello?” I called, dropping my bag in the hall. I heard low laughter from the dining room and headed over that way. I pushed open the swinging door, and the conversation stopped.
    I stared around the room as my mother said, “And here’s Madison — finally — you remember her, of course!”
    Sitting at our dining room table were two older people I recognized from the Galápagos trip and, in the seat that was normally mine, the kind-of cute guy.

CHAPTER 7
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    Song: The Minute I Met You/New Found Glory
    Quote: “Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.”
    â€” P.G. Wodehouse
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    It turned out that the kind-of cute guy had a name: Jonathan. Jonathan Ellis. And that he was more than kind of. Cute, that is.
    Also, that it was incredibly difficult to eat chicken paillard when there was a kind-of-more-than-kind-of cute guy sitting next to you, and your Demon Spawn brother kept kicking you under the table.
    â€œMadison?”
    I looked up from my plate — I seemed to have less difficulty transferring food from my fork to my mouth as long as I stayed focused on the plate — to see my mother looking at me expectantly.
    â€œUm, what?” I asked, seeing Jonathan look over at me and simultaneously feeling my face get hot. And wasit my imagination, or was he smiling? Like, trying-not-to-laugh smiling?
    â€œMrs. Ellis,” my mother said, a definite edge in her voice now, “asked you a question.”
    â€œOh,” I said, looking at Mrs. Ellis across the table. Now that I’d been sitting across from them for twenty minutes, I’d remembered the Ellises from the trip — Mrs. Ellis was The Lady Who Always Asked Too Many Questions On Expeditions and Mr. Ellis was The Man Who Always Had Extra Purell. Jonathan, of course, was The Kind-Of Cute Guy Who Was Always Taking Pictures. “Sorry,” I said to Mrs. Ellis. “Would you mind repeating it?”
    Mrs. Ellis laid her fork across her plate and smiled at me. “I just asked what grade you were in. You’re at Putnam High, right?
    â€œYes,” I said, glad this was a question I could answer easily. “I’m finishing up my junior year now.”
    â€œOh,” she said, then nodded and picked up her fork. Silence fell at the table.
    Feeling the need to pick up some of the conversation slack, I turned to Jonathan, trying not to look at him too directly. “Do you go to Putnam?” I asked, knowing the answer was no. Putnam High was big, but my friends and I had made it our mission to know who the cute guys were.
    â€œStanwich High,” he said, referring to the town one over from Putnam.
    â€œOh,” I