The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall

Author:Christen Randall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Apparently, Fran snored.

As the last girl awake, Hollis was the only one to discover this. The noise ripped out from the tiny girl at even intervals, rumbling over the newest season of Never Have I Ever playing softly in the background.

All six of the girls had decided to sleep in the living room. They crammed together, some of them on makeshift pallets on the floor, cobbled together from comforters and pillows from the unused bedrooms. Iffy had barely managed to put her pallet together before she fell asleep, exhausted from the evening or her busy week or both. Hollis had been prepared to sleep on the floor too, but Aini had campaigned for her to have the sofa. She must have rolled a high Charisma check, because that was where Hollis stretched out now.

Against the soundtrack of the TV and the sound of Fran’s snores, Hollis reflected on the evening. It sounded dramatic even in her head, but she was pretty sure it had truly been the best night of her life. Not in a perfect-prom-night way, or even a perfect-day way. She had still gone to school, and she had still been around Landon, and if it had been a truly perfect day, neither of those things would have happened.

But this—trying (and failing) to fall asleep in an apartment full of girls who she was lucky to call her friends—was as close to perfect as Hollis could get. The room around her, once such a source of anxiety, was a comfortable safe haven, all cream colors and caramelly wood and vanilla candles and deep-seated-armchair coziness. For the first time Hollis could remember, she felt like she belonged. Really, truly belonged.

It was also—and this felt cheesy, too, but she thought it anyway—the first time she’d experienced firsthand what it meant to be lifted up by a bunch of girls she liked very much. Or actually, she realized, probably loved.

She did. She loved them. Even Fran—who carried on snoring, blissfully unaware of Hollis’s late-night sentimentality.

Hollis matched her breathing to that slow rhythm, and in doing so, even Fran’s snoring became a kind of comfort. She was a good kid, Fran. And Iffy—God, Iffy was great. Even Maggie had grown on her from that first session, when she seemed so untouchable. Gloria had something to do with that; she was the bright red string that bound them all, bringing them together in so much the same way as she did the story around the oak-finish table.

And then there was Aini, who slept on the floor below her, a foot and a half away at most. Just visible over the edge of the sofa, her orange curls had grown even wilder from tossing and turning. Aini had been Hollis’s champion tonight, putting Maxx the Bard in his place and dancing with her under the flickering streetlamp in the parking lot. Hollis’s heart thudded fondest of all for her.

Maybe it was the early hour, but Hollis was reminded of the Fernglen—how it had brought them all closer together as a party, even when everything around them was falling apart.

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