"Well, well, well," said a distinctly masculine voice from behind me. "If it isn't Susannah Simon."
Look, I won't lie to you. When a cute guy talks to me - and you could tell from this guy's voice that he was easy on the eyes; it was in the self-confidence of those well, well, wells, the caressing way he said my name - I pay attention. I can't help it. I'm a sixteen-year-old girl, after all. My life can't revolve entirely around Lilly Pulitzer's latest tankini print and whatever new innovations Bobbi Brown has made in the world of stay-put lip liner.
So I'll admit that, even though I have a boyfriend - even if boyfriend is a little optimistic a term for him - as I turned around to see the hottie who was addressing me, I gave my hair a little bit of a toss. Why shouldn't I? I mean, considering all the product I'd layered into it that morning, in honor of the first day of my junior year - not to mention the marine fog that regularly turns my head into a frizzy mess - my coiffure was looking exceptionally fine.
It wasn't until I'd given the old chestnut mane a flip that I turned around and saw that the cutie who'd said my name was not someone I'm too fond of.
In fact, you might say I have reason to be scared to death of him.
I guess he could read the fear in my eyes - carefully done up that morning with a brand-new combination of eye shadows called Mocha Mist - because the grin that broke out across his good-looking face was slightly crooked at one end. "Suze," he said in a chiding tone. Even the fog couldn't dull the glossy highlights in his raffishly curly dark hair. His teeth were dazzlingly white against his tennis tan. "Here I am, nervous about being the new kid at school, and you don't even have a hello for me? What kind of way is that to treat an old pal?"
I continued to stare at him, perfectly incapable of speech. You can't talk, of course, when your mouth has gone as dry as . . . well, as the adobe brick building we were standing in front of.
What was he doing here? What was he doing here?
The thing of it was, I couldn't follow my first impulse and run screaming from him. People tend to talk when they see impeccably garbed girls such as me run screaming from seventeen-year-old studlies. I had managed to keep my unusual talent from my classmates for this long, I wasn't about to blow it now, even if I was - and believe me, I was - scared to death.
But if I couldn't run away screaming, I could certainly move huffily past him without a word, hoping he would not recognize the huffiness for what it really was - sheer terror.
I don't know whether or not he sensed my fear. But he sure didn't like my pulling a prima donna on him. His hand flew out as I attempted to sweep past him, and the next thing I knew, his fingers were wrapped around my upper arm in a viselike grip.
I could, of course, have hauled off and slugged him. I hadn't been named Girl Most Likely to Dismember Someone back at my old school in Brooklyn for nothing, you know.
But I'd wanted to start this year off right - in Mocha Mist and my new black Club Monaco capris (coupled with a pink silk sweater set I'd snagged for a song at the Benetton outlet up in Pacific Grove) - not in a fight. And what would my friends and schoolmates think - and, since they were milling all around us, tossing off the occasional "Hi, Suze," and complimenting me on my ever-so-spiffy ensemble, they were bound to notice - if I began freakishly to pummel the new guy? And then there was the unavoidable fact that I was pretty convinced that, if I took a whack at him, he might try to whack me back.
Somehow I managed to find my voice. I only hoped he didn't notice how much it was shaking. "Let go of my arm," I said.
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