The Fake Boyfriend Experiment Read online

  “Yeah, okay.” I stepped away from the keyboard, letting my fingers trail over the keys one last time. I wanted to stay and play more. I wanted to jam with the band until my fingers were so cramped they couldn’t move any more. I wanted to squeeze every last note out of that keyboard and let the music dance with Rafe’s drumming.

  But I knew it would never happen. Crusty would cut off my fingers before she’d let me waste my time and talent on an electric keyboard. With a sigh, I picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “So, um, see you guys.”

  Chris touched my arm. “Can you practice with us again? Like tomorrow?”

  “No, she can’t.” Miss Jespersen flicked his hand off me. “Lily is a gifted musician and doesn’t have time for this kind of music.”

  The welcoming expression vanished from Chris’s face. Angel looked surprised and a little offended, and the other guitarist shot me a look of pity. I felt my cheeks heat up as I tried to explain. “That’s not true, I—”

  “Now, Lily.” Crusty propelled me toward the door

  I glanced over my shoulder at Rafe. “Thanks for trying,” I mouthed to him, trying to connect with this amazing world one last time before it was snatched away from me forever.

  He nodded at me just before the door shut behind us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rafe inspired me.

  For the rest of the day and all that night, I was fired up. After a summer of torment under Crusty’s shadow, Rafe and his band had been like a spark of life. I wasn’t just Lily the piano player. I had friends and a life, and when school started the next morning, I was going to have it back.

  I’d been psyched for school before, but now I was so amped up that I was almost ready to camp out on the front steps of my house that night so I’d be halfway to the bus as soon as I woke up.

  I needed to get to school, because once Miss Jespersen had pried me away from Mass Attack, the rest of my day had been miserable. It had been relentless and merciless attempts by my mom and Miss Jespersen to strip away the piece of me that had come back to life when I’d been playing the keyboard.

  My mom had laid a major guilt trip on me for making her and Miss Jespersen think I’d been kidnapped when I’d bailed from my lesson. I was actually kind of surprised that Miss Jespersen had been worried about me. For one deluded moment, I actually thought maybe she was human, and I was even blindsided by the possibility that maybe she and my mom valued me for something other than my piano abilities.

  Until she and my mom had gone off on the audition again, brainstorming ways to help me rediscover my passion for piano, to overcome the pathetic failure and disappointment I was fast becoming. Then the conversation was all about my lackluster playing, the terrible reviews, my inability to live up to my talents.

  The time could not pass fast enough until school finally started the next morning.

  As I rushed into homeroom on Monday morning, the only thing keeping me sane was the thought of my friends. Sure, it was an all-girls school, but that didn’t matter at this point. Even the fact that the school covered grades sixth through twelfth, so becoming a freshman wasn’t exactly like launching into high school, didn’t make a difference. I was officially in high school and I was going to enjoy it!

  “Lily!” My best friend, Erin Fitzgerald, screamed my name as soon as I got inside the room. Her bleached out hair and her tanned skin were all about the summer fun I hadn’t had, and she was wearing a macramé necklace of rainbow-colored threads.

  “Erin!” I dodged desks and groups of shrieking kids, hurled my navy backpack on the floor and threw myself at her, tackling her in a giant hug. “I missed you!”

  She screamed and hugged me back, and I knew then that everything was going to be okay.

  “Oh my God, you totally missed out this summer.” Erin grabbed my arm and tugged me over to where Valerie Collins and Delilah Somers were huddled up in the corner, in a private conversation intended to keep the rest of the world out. Everyone except me and Erin, of course, because my friends were my space, the place where I owned the world.

  Val and Delilah were the other half of our foursome, though they weren’t as tight as Erin and I were. Erin and I had known each other since day care, whereas Val and Delilah had joined our inner circle when we all started attending St. Mary’s School for Girls in the sixth grade. But they were awesome, and I was so happy to see them.

  Val’s hair was brown and curly, but it fell around her shoulders like it had its own personality. She was super outgoing, so her hair totally matched her personality. Delilah’s hair was fiery red, super thick and she always had the coolest hairstyles. Today it was in a half-updo with little French braids down the front of her hairline, folded into a mass of tumbling waves in the back. They were both wearing the requisite navy pants for our school, but Delilah was wearing a new black leather cord with a turquoise pendant around her neck, and Val had a pair of giant silver hoops that made her look like some exotic gypsy.

  Huh. I fingered my tiny gold hoops and decided maybe I needed to do a little shopping. Since when did we dress up for school? We always had a pact that school was the place to be casual, since there were no boys to impress.

  “Lily’s back,” Erin announced.

  Val and Delilah whirled around, and their eyes went wide when they saw me. “Lily!” They screamed and jumped up, and I screamed back and hugged them.

  Yay! It was so good to be back! “I’m so psyched to see you guys!” Excitement rushing through me, I flopped down at an empty desk, beaming at them. Hanging with Rafe’s band had been amazing, but this was so much better, because these were my peeps, my girls, people who I didn’t have to prove myself to. “So, did you guys have a great summer, or what?”

  “The best,” Erin said. Her blond hair was so much blonder than it used to be, and I think she’d gotten even taller. She looked gorgeous, even wearing the navy pants and white shirt of our school dress code. She kind of reminded me of Angel actually, and I glanced at her feet to make sure she wasn’t wearing high wedge sandals. I relaxed when I saw her school-issue loafers. Okay, yeah, she was still Erin.

  “But we missed you big time,” Val added. As she shifted, the lights in the classroom caught her hair, and I realized that she had new highlights as well, copper streaks that made her brown hair glisten. Plus, she was awfully tan too.

  I frowned and slid a sideways glance at Delilah, who was putting on lip gloss. She had auburn highlights in her red hair as well. Clearly, I’d missed out on a “let’s get our hair done” day on the town. Not that I could have participated. Streaked hair was inappropriate for pianists. “Love the hair,” I said to everyone, trying to sound cheerful. “You guys look great.”

  Val fluffed her curls, and tossed her head with a pleased giggle. “Thanks! We got it done last week. Don’t we look fantastic?”

  “Yeah.” I fingered my boring dirty-blond hair and decided I was going to wear a hat tomorrow.

  “Lily, we need your opinion.” Val held out her cell phone to me. “So, what do you think of this guy? Cute or not?”

  I took the phone and peered at the image of a guy with short blond hair in football pads and mud. He was grinning, and he looked pretty friendly. Very athletic. “Cute.”

  “See?” Val snatched the phone back. “You have to go to the semi-formal with him.”

  “Me?” I asked. They’d arranged a date for me to the biggest event of our freshman year, which was only three weeks away? They were the best friends ever!

  “No, you goof. I’m talking about Delilah,” Val said with a laugh that made me want to crawl under my desk. “She’s afraid he’s not cute enough to be seen in public with.” She waggled the phone in Delilah’s face. “Lily thinks he’s cute.”

  “He is cute.” I grabbed the phone from Val and looked at it again. He was pretty hot, and I’d never seen him before. “How’d you meet him?” Since we all went to an all-girls school, meeting boys was high on our list of priorities and low on our list o
f successful activities. Except for Rafe, of course. He was hot, I’d met him, and life was good.

  Well, at least not as bad as it had been before he’d defended me to his aunt.

  “Delilah met Jeff through me.” Val looked smug. “The Inverness football team was practicing on the next field while I was at field hockey camp.”

  Inverness was the boys school across town that was affiliated with our school. Varsity and junior varsity teams from our school used the Inverness fields for practice. I’d never been to Inverness, but I’d dreamed about it. I looked at Val with renewed interest. “You really went to Inverness?”

  “Sure did.” She grinned. “Now that we’re in high school, we don’t practice on our small fields anymore. Inverness all the way, baby.” She held up her hand, and Delilah high fived her.

  “But that’s not the best part,” Erin interrupted. “Delilah and I went to watch Val’s practice and we met this group of guys on the football team.” She grinned and waggled her eyebrows, which were a lot thinner than they were the last time I’d seen her. My friends had gotten their eyebrows done as well? “And they’re sophomores.”

  “Wow. Really?” I felt a glimmer of jealousy flicker through me, and my smile got kind of stiff. “I met the Governor this summer when I—”

  “Keith is having a back-to-school pool party on Saturday,” Erin interrupted again.

  “Keith? Who’s Keith?” I asked. I felt like my head was spinning trying to keep up with all these names and guys and things my friends had done.

  Delilah poked Erin’s arm. “You know he’s having the party only so he can make a move on you.”

  Erin’s cheeks turned red. “No way! He likes you.”

  “Nope. Jeff already asked me to the semi,” Delilah said.

  “No way!” Erin screamed. “When?”

  “Last night. And he said Keith wants to ask you, and Hugh’s going to ask Val. If you guys go, I’ll go.”

  Val sucked in her breath. “Hugh? Really? He’s going to ask me?” She leaned back in the chair. “He’s so hot.”

  I stared at my friends as they gossiped, feeling more and more left out. I had no clue what they were talking about, and they didn’t even seem to remember I was there. Suddenly, I was getting the feeling that they hadn’t spent as much time this summer thinking about me as I’d spent missing them. I tapped Val on the arm, trying to get in on the conversation. “Who’s Hugh? Is he one of the football players?”

  “Hugh’s cuter than Jeff,” Delilah groaned. “That’s so unfair that you get Hugh and I get Jeff.”

  Who did I get? Anyone? I drummed a pencil on the desk and tried to get noticed. I cleared my throat extra loudly. “So, are you guys going to fill me in? Who are all these guys?”

  They stopped talking and stared at me, like they’d forgotten I was there. It was Erin who recovered first. “Lily! You need a date for the semi-formal, too! You have to come on Saturday to the pool party. I’m sure Keith could find another friend so there would be four guys there.”

  “Really? You could get me a date?” My bad mood faded as I sat up in excitement. My first real date! How awesome would that be?

  Delilah’s head bobbed in agreement. “We definitely could. We’ll go to the semi as a foursome.”

  Val flicked an unseen speck of dirt off her manicured nails. Not neon green, but a sparkly orange. Close enough. “We should move fast though. The semi’s only three weeks away. I bet a lot of the cute guys will be snatched up soon.”

  “That’s okay,” Erin said, waving her hand dismissively. “Lily will take anyone. It’s all good.”

  Oooh, I didn’t like the sound of that. I frowned. “I’m not going with a loser.” I mean, yeah, maybe I didn’t come with a full stable of hot guys to pick from, but I did have standards.

  “Well, no, that’s not what I meant,” Erin said, patting my arm. “It’s just that you never meet anyone because you’re always practicing, so it’s not like you’ll find someone on your own. Any guy will be better than no guy, right?”

  My scowl deepened. “It’s not like I have no life. I met lots of great people on my tour this summer.” Yeah, okay, so none of the Mueller-Fordham students I’d toured with had exactly become my best friends, and none of the guys had been dating material, but it wasn’t as if I was a loser. Yet.

  But if I ended up in NESM secondary school program for winter term, then they’d be absolutely right. My life would be over. After three months away, I was already sliding out of the group. I could feel my friends slipping out of my grasp, moving beyond me.

  “Oh, come on, Lily.” Delilah rolled her eyes. “What hot guys did you meet this summer? Some gray-haired mayor of a tiny town in western Mass?”

  “Or, I know,” Val chimed in. “A geek who plays the violin and drools whenever he has to talk to the opposite sex.”

  “What about that really skinny guy who plays the flute? He was on tour with you, wasn’t he? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind leaving the argyle sweater at home for the dance,” Erin giggled. “Can you imagine if you went with him? I love you, but I so wouldn’t be able to associate with you in public.”

  Dismay washed over me as my friends made fun of me and my life. “Howard’s not that bad...”

  “Oh, wait, you guys.” Erin sat up. “You two have to come to Lily’s next recital at Mueller-Fordham. You won’t believe the losers who play music. I mean, if you threw a football at one of them, they’d probably run away screaming. Even Jeff looks like a Greek god in comparison to those geeks.”

  I scowled, my throat tightening up. I thought Erin had come to my recitals to support me, not to laugh at the other kids and make fun of my life. “So, you’re saying I’m a geek?”

  “Not at all.” Erin put her arm around me as she laughed. “But you’re the only non-geek at the place, you have to admit.”

  I sighed. Except for Rafe, they were right, and I doubted Rafe or anyone in Mass Attack was actually a student there. They probably got Miss Jespersen to arrange cheap practice space since she was Rafe’s aunt. “So, you think I’m cool, then?” Gah, that sounded a little pathetic, didn’t it?

  But then I felt pathetic as well, when Erin’s smile slipped and something like pity flickered in her eyes. “Of course you’re cool, but, it’s not like you really do much besides play the piano, you know?”

  I stared at her, grim horror welling up inside me. Erin did think I was a loser. She was my friend, yes, but somewhere along the line, she’d decided I didn’t measure up. “I do other things,” I protested.

  She raised a brow. “What else do you do?”

  “I...” Crud. I couldn’t think of a single thing. “I eat.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Val said. “We’ll get you a date for the dance.” She fingered my hair. “Maybe you should get some highlights, though. Did you get out in the sun at all this summer? Maybe try some spray tan before the party because you look like you’ve been sick or something.”

  I flipped her hand off, resentment beginning to boil inside me. “I don’t need a charity date. I’m—”

  “It’s okay, Lily,” Erin said. “You don’t have to pretend with us.”

  “Pretend what? That I have a life?” The identical expression of pity on all their faces infuriated me. “I can get a date. A hot date. Not a leftover who isn’t cute enough for you guys.”

  “Good.” Erin grinned. “Then come to the party on Saturday and pick who you want.”

  “I will.” I sat back in the chair and folded my arms, determined to prove to them I could be as cool as they were. I could jump right into their little clique with their new boys…

  Then I remembered I had a recital on Saturday. I couldn’t go to the party. Not fair!

  Erin sighed at the look on my face. “You can’t come, can you? Piano thing?”

  “I have to do a recital for a senior citizen banquet thing in Portland, Maine,” I muttered.

  Val raised her eyebrows, Delilah sighed, and Erin patted my shoulder, shaking
her head as Val started to say something.

  And that’s when I realized how they all saw me. Despite their claims, I was the ugly, loser friend with no life. They took care of me because I was too pathetic to fend for myself, not because they loved me or saw me as one of their inner circle.

  I had become an outsider with the only friends I had. While I was gone, they’d gotten tight. They had the boys, they had the dates, and I was baggage. All because I’d spent the summer on tour instead of hanging out with them. They didn’t need to see that picture of me in the Globe, because that’s how they perceived me already. Ugly loser.

  But they were wrong. They had to be. For my sake. “I can get a date,” I announced. “A hot guy.”

  They all looked at me with the same doubtful expression on their faces. “Name one cute guy you know,” Erin said.

  “Rafe.” The named tumbled off my tongue before I could stop it.

  “Rafe? Who’s Rafe?” Val looked skeptical. “A guy at the gas station who filled your mom’s car?”

  “No. He’s sixteen, and he’s a drummer at Mueller-Fordham. He’s way hotter than Jeff.” All that was completely true, and I felt better immediately. How could I have forgotten about Rafe, my handsome protector? I smiled, going all warm inside as I thought of the way Rafe had looked at me after we’d finished playing our song. Yeah, he’d noticed me as more than a loser.

  Delilah wrinkled her nose. “Everyone’s hotter than Jeff.”

  Erin gave me this doubtful look, like she felt sorry for me that I had to lie. “Have you even met this guy, Rafe? Or have you just passed him by in the halls?”

  “Of course I’ve met him,” I said haughtily. “I’m dating him.” Oh…oops. How had that slipped out? I quickly tried to change the subject. “So, what time is the party on Saturday? Maybe I could find a way to squeeze it in.”

  My three friends stared at me as if I’d gone insane. “You’re dating a guy?” Erin asked skeptically. “Your parents would never let you date.”

  “Well, he’s a musician,” I mumbled, turning away to retrieve my backpack. “They like that about him. Does anyone have an extra pen? I think I forgot mine.”