More Than This by McLean, Jay (best books to read for teens txt) 📗

not at all what you would imagine best friends to be. We were polar opposites in almost every way. She was the head cheerleader with the smokin’ hot body, shiny long blond hair and sparkly blue eyes. She played boys, and boys were all for it. Megan knew who she was, and she used it to her advantage. People tended not to take her seriously, she played the airhead role to perfection but she was so much more than that, and I was one of the lucky few to see that side of her.

I met her when we were in fifth grade. She had just moved here for her mom’s job. I remember sitting in front of her in class while she chatted with everyone around us. All I could hear was her talking about her stationary. Girls love stationary. I was facing the front of the class trying to concentrate on the puzzles we were meant to be doing while she was giggling along, talking to whoever would listen about how she had two of everything. Emergency things she called them, emergency ruler, emergency eraser, emergency sharpener , etc. By that point I had lost focus and turned in my seat to glare at her. She just looked at me and smiled, a full teeth baring smile. I huffed and turned back to face the front fishing through my pencil case for a ruler to mark the margins of my next page, only to find that I didn’t have one, I must have left it in the book I was reading during lunch. I raised my hand, “Miss Spencer?” The teacher looked at me from her desk, over the frames of her glasses. “I uh… I don’t have my ruler… Can I um… May I please go to my locker to get it?” Before she could answer, there was a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a ruler inches from my face. I looked at Megan questioningly, she just smiled back. “For emergencies,” she shrugged.

We became best friends.

***

The summer before freshman year, we were hanging out eating popsicles on Megan’s roof, that lead to her bedroom window. We were working on our tans, apparently that’s what high school girls did.

“Do you think people will make fun of us because we don’t have boyfriends?” she asked out of nowhere.

I hadn’t even thought about boys that way, I guess I was a late developer. I shrugged.

“I’m going to have a boyfriend within a month,” she declared, more to herself that anyone else. Then nodded once as if agreeing to it.

“Ok Meg, just don’t go dragging me into any of that, I’m happy with the way things are,” I said, rolling my eyes at her.

She snickered, “As if I’d even consider it. Do you think I don’t know you at all?” she mocked hurt in her voice and held her hand to her heart.

“I just don’t want to be one of those girls that has serious relationships through all of high school. It’s so not my thing, and when it’s over, I don’t want to do that whole… ‘where are you going to college? Should we go to college together? Who’s hopes and dreams are more important?’ blah yatta blah.”

She looked at me for a second then shook her hand, standing up, she started prancing around the roof dreamily, “Well, Miss ’15 going to 50’… I want to fall in love…LOTS… and I want to break hearts… LOTS, I want to have so many awkward first dates and first kisses at my front door, with lots and LOTS of boys. I want to chase and be chased. I want to hold hands down the hall with some amazingly gorgeous guy and have girls jealous because that guy only has eyes for me. I want to live high school. And I want to love in high school. And I want to have sex. Oh my god, like… so much sex!”

I stared at her, my mouth open in shock. She looked at me and broke out in a fit of laughter. It was a joyous sound that to this day still has me cracking up whenever I hear it. We sat on that roof and giggled like the innocent girls we were for what seemed like hours, but in reality was only minutes. Our laughter broke off when we heard a beeping noise. We both looked over to where the sound was coming from, over to the house next door and the U-haul truck reversing into the driveway.

“Oh, god,” Megan sighed, “The house has finally sold. I hope they’re not sucky neighbors. I couldn’t think of anything worse! Like old people that collect random shit to hoard, and they have to call the fire department to clear the house, only to find like,” she looks to the sky as if thinking “…a 5 billion pound woman stuck under a pile of empty snack sized chocolate pudding tubs, and then a crane has to come to lift her body out of the house like on ‘Gilbert Grape’, and they take her to a hospital so they can pump all the fat out of her body. Then 3 years later, some random kid emerges from that house, knocks on our door and asks, ‘have you seen my baseball?’”

I look at her for a second, then burst out laughing. Uncontrollable laughter that has the sides of body aching. I laugh so hard I’m pretty sure colored snot from my popsicle is oozing out of my nose. Hot right? I hear her quietly laughing with me, and then, “Holy shit, Mick… what the hell is that?”

I stop laughing abruptly and follow her eyes to see what the heck she’s talking about, and then I see him, and I think, “What the hell is that?”

It’s a boy. A boy better than any other boy I’ve ever seen before. He could be our age but he’s built bigger. Like, not an “I work out,