Harmless by Dana Reinhardt

Author:Dana Reinhardt [Reinhardt, Dana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48584-7
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

Anna

Up to this point in my life, I was sure that I'd always be Anna Ba-nana, that I'd never be part of a popular crowd. I'd go to school dances alone or not at all. I'd hear people talking about parties in the bathroom and I'd take my time washing my hands and drying them so I could gather as many details as possible about who was kissing who and who threw up in whose mom's closet, and I'd file all these details away in my sad and lonely little head. But here I was, nearing the end of my freshman year of high school, and already things were looking better for the next three years than I ever could have hoped for in my wildest imagination.

For one thing, I was pretty sure that Tobey Endo and I were flirting. I couldn't be entirely sure because flirting was new to me, but he did say hi and smile every time he saw me. He called me Hendricks, as in “What's up, Hendricks?” and “Hendricks in the house!” and even though I know addressing each other by your last name is usually something guys do among themselves, being called Hendricks felt much better than being called Anna Banana or, even worse, being called nothing at all.

For another thing, I could sit at Tammy Frost's table at lunch if I wanted to. Emma sometimes wasn't even at lunch, and when she was she didn't seem to care much if I sat with her or not, so I started making a habit of sitting at Tammy's table and listening to her and her friends talk about lipstick shades. What had happened by the river was no longer the big news on campus. Our article came out and people talked about it for another day or two, but there were other things to talk about, like lipstick shades. And boys.

I was debating telling Tammy about my crush on Tobey Endo. On the one hand, it felt against the natural order to talk to someone other than Emma about this. On the other hand, Emma seemed to be impatient with me lately and grumpy and also kind of bitchy and I wasn't sure she deserved to hear my confession or even if she'd care at all. And let's not forget that Emma was not exactly doing a great job of revealing her secrets to me these days.

Tammy had clout. She could make things happen. If I told her, and she told more people, and word got around, and everyone talked about it, maybe it would become something real. But each time I opened my mouth to say something to Tammy, I felt the all-too-familiar heat in my face and I felt the old Anna grab ahold of my vocal cords and squeeze them shut.

I decided to tell Mariah. Even if she didn't have pull with Tobey, she knew more about boys than anyone and I figured she could give me some valuable advice.

We went to the Big Cup after school, just the two of us.

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