Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board (Weeping Willow High) Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  CONTINUE THE GAME

  ABOUT ZOE

  Light as a Feather,

  Stiff as a Board

  Weeping Willow High School Book 1

  Zoe Aarsen

  Copyright © 2013 Zoe Aarsen

  This is a Weeping Willow High School Novel

  Published by Lovestruck Literary

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Lovestruck Literary.

  www.lovestruckliterary.com

  ISBN 978-0-9856574-1-3

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.

  PROLOGUE

  Looking back now on the night of Olivia Richmond’s birthday party, my original expectations for the night were so innocent, they were pitiable. It was the second week of our junior year of high school, a week before the Homecoming Dance, and the possibility of a cute boy asking me to the dance had been my primary concern since the night before the school year began. That year was supposed to have been my year. Over the summer, the braces I had worn since the eighth grade had come off, revealing perfectly straight white teeth. And I had spent the entire summer break with my dad and his wife, Rhonda, in Florida, where Rhonda had helped me lose the twenty pounds of baby fat that had kept me shopping at plus-size stores throughout junior high and the first two years of high school. When I’d returned home to Wisconsin, my mother had studied my new appearance and had finally relented about the cost of contact lenses. I was glasses-free for the first time since the third grade, when it had been determined that I was nearsighted.

  Junior year, I was ready to shine. I had almost magically, unexpectedly become pretty. Really pretty. Almost as if someone had waved a magic wand over my head in slow motion during the summer, slowly transforming me. I was pretty enough that I knew, in the days leading up to the start of school as I was out shopping for a few new outfits with my mom, that other kids would notice. Junior year would be the year that people would talk about McKenna Brady and it would be with admiration instead of disdain.

  And people had noticed.

  During our freshman and sophomore years, Olivia Richmond would never have invited me to her birthday party. In fact, she had made fun of me on at least two separate occasions that I could remember since middle school. But everything had changed. She had glared at me in the cafeteria on the first day of junior year, confused and trying to figure out why suddenly I looked like I belonged at her table with the popular girls instead of sitting with the girls on my color guard team, and had finally approached me in the hallway to say, “I like your bag.” There was nothing at all special about my cheap faux leather bag from Urban Outfitters. But I was wise enough about the social rules of high school to recognize that her compliment had little to do with my accessory. She was addressing me, in her aloof, cool blond way, because she approved of my transformation. Weeping Willow High School was small enough that any cute new girl was cause for gossip, whether she was simply newly cute (like me), or a new arrival (like Hannah). Olivia was smart enough to know that if she recruited cute girls to her own clique, none of them would ever take her on as a rival.

  There were advantages to being the most popular girl in the sophomore class. The most enviable of the niceties that Olivia enjoyed was the undivided attention of Pete Nicholson, the star of the basketball team, tall, suntanned, and blond. The least enviable of them was that every other girl in school wanted to be Olivia, and some girls wanted to stand within the circle illuminated by her stature so badly they would have done anything just for an invitation. I had never dared to aspire to join Olivia’s ranks before my junior year and I was abundantly grateful to have been welcomed. Joining was more than enough for me. Wanting to overthrow Olivia was unimaginable.

  But it wasn’t so unthinkable that another girl might venture to dream of knocking Olivia off of her throne. Maybe a girl who was new in town, and hadn’t been around to know that Olivia had been our queen since kindergarten. A girl like Hannah, who might think it possible to slowly siphon away everything Olivia had, and enjoy it for herself.

  The role of Class President.

  Being named Captain of one of our girls’ sports teams.

  Pete.

  I’d never have a chance to become more popular than Olivia. I’d never even have a chance to try; she was dead within four weeks of the debut of my new look at school. Within a week of her sixteenth birthday. Olivia wouldn’t live long enough to coast into the Homecoming dance in her ivory lace gown, beaming her cotton candy lip gloss-coated smile with Pete’s arm around her shoulders. To be the envy of all of us.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Um, hello. You did not mention that Evan would be home this weekend,” Candace said, interrupting Olivia’s sidewalk monologue about her pursuit of the perfect Homecoming dress. The search had begun over the summer. Olivia could picture it in her head, and after having heard her detailed description twice during our after-school trip to the mall, we could all picture it in vivid detail, too. The dream dress was the color of vanilla buttercream frosting, not too yellow to be summery, and not too white to be bride-like. Ecru, or eggshell, or any pale variation on white that would show off Olivia’s glamorous tan, obtained by rowing each morning at summer camp in Canada, would do. Even my daily runs in Florida beneath the blazing sun hadn’t rewarded me with a tan as dark as Olivia’s.

  Olivia was the last among us to turn sixteen, but none of us had our own wheels yet that September. Mischa shared a car with her older sister, who seemed to always have custody of it. Candace’s divorced parents were denying her access to wheels until she picked up her grades when report cards were released at the end of the semester, one of the few things upon which they agreed. Taking the bus home from the mall was hardly desirable, but it was less nerdish than having a parent pick up all five of us in an SUV curbside outside Nordstrom. We were in high spirits that afternoon after having slurped down sugary lattes at the mall, dropping our parents’ money on earrings and paperback novels just to have purchased something to carry back to Olivia’s house. Leaving the mall empty-handed felt strange and wasteful. I had bought a pair of chandelier earrings I thought might be cool for Homecoming, if any boy were to ask me within the next week.

  Olivia looked down the block toward her own house, where Candace’s eyes had spotted Evan’s blue pickup truck in the driveway. Her angelic button nose wrinkled, and she put one hand on her hip as if objecting to her older brother’s presence within the three-story house. “Ugh. I didn’t know he’d be here,” Olivia replied.

  “Who’s Evan?’

  Hannah Simmons was new in town. Only a girl who had moved to Willow over the summer could be ignorant of Evan Richmond’s identity.

  “My brother,” Olivia informed her with disgust.

  “Her totally hot brother,” Candace added. Candace was a brassy blond with a big chest and a loud mouth. Her last name was Cotton, which was abundant rea
son for every kid in class to crack up whenever a substitute teacher read roll call in Homeroom and announced her name as Cotton, Candy. She wasn’t as pretty as Olivia, but from a distance if you kind of squinted at her when the sun was shining in just the right way, you might believe it if she told you she was a runway model. During my two weeks as an inductee into Olivia’s popular circle, I had been endlessly humored by Candace’s gravel-voiced musings and observations. Candace suspected that Mr. Tyrrell, the biology teacher, was probably a good kisser. She had been suspended from school for three days at the tail end of our sophomore year, back when I was still the old version of McKenna, for getting caught by Coach Highland under the bleachers during gym class with Isaac Johnston. Candace said exactly what she thought and even though she was hilarious, I was a little terrified of her. It was likely that Candace thought about nothing but kissing boys, every second of every day.

  “You are so gross, Candace.” Olivia rolled her eyes.

  But Candace wasn’t alone in thinking Evan was hot. I’d had a crush on Evan Richmond since just about the second grade, way back when it was still the custom in our small town to invite every kid in your elementary school class to your birthday party. Evan was two years older than Olivia and had just started college at Northwestern. He was majoring in Sociology with the goal of getting into law school after undergrad. I only knew all of this because I had practically committed every single photograph and mention of him in my yearbook to memory. Last year, it was likely that Evan had never even noticed me any of the times our paths had crossed in the hallway at school, when he was a graduating senior, already accepted at Northwestern with a generous scholarship, and I was an unremarkable sophomore. It was just as likely that if he had noticed me, he never would have remembered me as a chubby-cheeked second grader sitting at his parents’ dining room table, singing Happy Birthday in the dark to Olivia when she turned eight.

  “I think it’s sweet! He came home for your birthday,” Mischa said. Mischa was the complete physical opposite of Candace. Mischa was petite and nimble, the school’s star gymnast, with enormous brown eyes and perfectly straight, thick brown hair that hung down her back to her waist, heavy and glossy. She was sharp-tongued and chose her words carefully, but in our two weeks of fast friendship I had gotten the distinct feeling that there was always a storm of thought going on behind her eyes.

  “He did not come home for my birthday,” Olivia corrected Mischa. “He’s probably home because of his stupid foot.”

  Evan had been on the school’s tennis team, bringing Weeping Willow High School its only state title in tennis in over twenty years. He had played most of his senior year season on a stress fracture in his fifth metatarsal, and only after he won the championship in Madison did he go to the doctor and start hobbling around the high school in a soft cast. At graduation, he crossed the stage on crutches and Principal Nylander slapped him proudly on the back. I only knew this because I’d been at graduation, even as a lowly tenth grader, as part of the color guard team. I’d held my huge white flag throughout the entire commencement exercise in the hot June sun, watching Evan Richmond a little in awe of his height, his auburn hair, his twinkling green eyes.

  I would be totally lying if I said I wasn’t pretty excited about Evan’s presence in the Richmond household the night of Olivia’s slumber party. It had never occurred to me in a lifetime of having a paralyzing crush on Evan that he would ever return an interest in me. And yet as we approached the Richmonds’ house, where we’d be setting up camp in Olivia’s carpeted basement for the night, my heart actually began to flutter at the prospect of catching a glimpse of Evan. Of having a chance to peek into his bedroom.

  As we marched across the Richmonds’ front lawn, all carrying our shopping bags from our mall excursion in addition to our backpacks, the glass storm door of the house opened and Evan stepped out onto the Richmonds’ front porch, followed by a good-looking, curly haired guy who I had never seen before.

  “Well, look who’s finally home! It’s the birthday girl,” Evan called out to us. The keys to his truck dangled from his index finger.

  “Why are you back, nerd?” Olivia asked him, thwacking him with the backpack she pulled off of her shoulder. He deflected it expertly, accustomed to their lifetime together of play fights.

  “I wouldn’t have missed your little princess party for the world,” Evan teased, looking us over. I felt color and heat rising in my cheeks under his gaze as he reviewed us, the collection of the prettiest sixteen-year-old girls Weeping Willow High School had to offer. Surely he knew Candace and Mischa from their years of friendship with Olivia. He was probably, at that very moment, realizing that one familiar face was missing from his sister’s gaggle of giggling friends: Emily Morris, the strawberry blond with the big pout had moved to Chicago over the summer. I had Emily’s parents to thank for my new status as a popular girl, since Emily’s vacancy in Olivia’s circle had created an entry point for me.

  “Yeah, right,” Olivia smirked. “So, where’s my present?”

  “My presence is your present,” Evan joked. “And besides, your birthday is tomorrow. So even if I had brought you back something really cool from campus, you’d have to wait until the morning to find out.”

  I thought about the silver earrings in the shape of ribbons that I had brought with me, wrapped and tucked away in my backpack to give to Olivia in the morning as a gift. I’d spent the majority of the money I’d gotten from my grandparents and relatives for my own birthday on them.

  “Meanie. So who’s your friend?” Olivia asked.

  Evan’s cute friend piped up, “I’m Charlie.”

  I didn’t even have to look over my left shoulder at Candace to know that she was batting her eyelashes, lowering her chin, smiling, and twisting slightly at the waist as she always did when establishing eye contact with a hot guy. Boys always liked Candace. Even just earlier that afternoon, she’d gotten a wink from the barista at the coffee shop at the mall along with her latte. She was more attainable than Olivia, who was so pretty she was intimidating, and whose heart belonged to Pete Nicholson and always would.

  “Nice to meet you, Charlie, I’m Candace,” Candace said, waving from behind me and Olivia, the plastic, studded bangles on her arm rattling.

  Charlie waved back with a warm smile.

  “This is Mischa, Hannah, and McKenna,” Olivia said, nodding her head at each of us as she made our introductions.

  “McKenna,” Evan said, repeating my name, looking me over with those green, green eyes from head to toe. “I remember you.”

  I was dumbstruck, unable to reply. Of course he remembered me; it had only been four months since our lockers were spaced twenty feet apart at school. But his tone suggested that he remembered me from before, from long before high school, from perhaps the last time I set foot in the Richmonds’ house at the age of eight. As if that chubby sophomore he had last seen in June, sweating during the commencement exercises in my navy blue color guard uniform, hadn’t been me at all, but someone else.

  “You live over on Martha Road, right?” he asked.

  This sudden attention from him was enough to make me stutter and stammer. If I had known when Olivia first asked me to spend the night at her house that Evan would be there, I might have chickened out entirely and made up an excuse about needing to go out of town with my mom.

  “Yeah,” I managed to reply, kind of curious as to how and why he knew which street I lived on with my mom. The fact that he knew probably shouldn’t have boggled me; the year that I was eight, everyone knew where we lived. Everyone used to drive past. But I guess I was surprised that he still remembered, even after so many years.

  “Cool,” Evan said, nodding without smiling. There was a moment of awkward silence, when I feared that all of us, other than Hannah and Charlie, were thinking the same thing. It was the reason why Evan might have remembered me since childhood, one that had nothing to do with prettiness or color guard. It was something no one in town spoke
of often, and something I preferred not to think about much; it was the same reason why everyone in town used to drive past our house as if they were just taking a shortcut, but weren’t really. Thankfully, no one said a word.

  You’re McKenna Brady, that girl…

  “Charlie’s my frat brother on campus,” Evan disclosed, breaking the silence. “We’re going to check out a Packers’ game tomorrow afternoon, after my radiology appointment.”

  “I knew it,” Olivia said to all of us. “See? He’s getting X-rays. He doesn’t even care that it’s my Sweet Sixteen.”

  “The guy can’t help it if football season happens to start on his little sister’s birthday,” Charlie teased.

  “Thank you, Charlie,” Evan said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Mom dispatched us to run some errands in town.”

  It was almost six o’clock on a Friday night, the early September summer sky a lazy shade of periwinkle. The weather was still aggravatingly warm, a dry kind of warm that made it impossible for me to focus in class because my brain was convinced that it was still summer break. It was warm enough that Olivia had instructed all of us to bring bathing suits to her party just in case we felt like jumping in the pool before dinner. I wondered if that was still on her mind—that dip in the pool—because although I had worn my new bathing suit a few times in Florida while down at my dad’s condo, I had never worn it yet around people who I actually knew in Willow. Debuting it in front of Evan and Charlie thrilled me, and made my heart beat dangerously fast. My weight loss was recent enough that I still kind of couldn’t believe my own eyes when I looked in the mirror. It always kind of felt like at any given moment, the pounds could just appear back on my frame in a flash unexpectedly.