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I tried to look away, shifting my gaze quickly from one face to another, and then caught Summer Garfield standing at the corner of the junior high corridor. She stood with a few of the other girls who were looking at Ryder and me, but her face wasn’t awash with admiration. Her face was brilliant with red rage almost washing out her black lipstick and mascara. For a moment, her hateful stare took my breath away, and then Ryder turned us toward homeroom, and she was out of sight, but not out of mind, at least not out of my mind.

Even so, our day started out smoothly. Ryder was talkative in all of our morning classes and was even a little friendlier toward most of the other guys in our class. Between classes, we walked together, either holding hands or with his arm around my shoulders. I could see we were the focus of everyone’s attention, especially again at lunch. I thought things were going very well. Bobby Jenkins even paused to tell me everyone was giving me credit for turning Ryder Garfield into a human being. But it was toward t

he end of the lunch hour when I realized things were not going to remain so picture-perfect. I could see it in the way other students were now looking at us. Something had occurred that had radically changed things.

As Ryder and I were heading for our first afternoon class, Jessica tapped me on the shoulder and asked if she could speak to me. I could see from the expression on her face that she was bringing me some unpleasant news. Jessica was one of those girls who seemed to feed like vampires on someone else’s misery. Whose was it going to be this time?

“Go on. I’ll catch up,” I told Ryder, and hung back. “What?” I asked, impatient. I was getting intolerant of the immature behavior and planned to say something about it, even though it might lose me friends.

“Summer Garfield is spreading very nasty rumors about you,” she said.

“What do you mean? What rumors?”

“She’s been telling girls in her class that you did everything with Ryder at their house yesterday. You did go there.”

“Did everything?”

“Everything!” she emphasized. “She claims she saw you. She says you’re just like all the other girls Ryder brought home, star-struck and easy. She’s going into disgusting detail.” She smirked. “Are you sorry you told me to keep my mouth shut about her now?”

“No. Don’t say anything about that.”

“Sydney told me she heard something. I didn’t tell her,” she quickly added with her right hand up, palm out. “You’re more important. His sister is telling these stories to everyone she can. People are believing her, Sasha. They’ve come up to me, because they know we’re best friends, to get it all confirmed. It doesn’t matter what I tell them or how I defend you. They just smile and say, ‘Sure, sure.’ ”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, obviously happy that she was doing me a favor and it wasn’t vice versa. “I’ll keep trying to do what I can to stop it.”

“No! Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything, Jessica. The more you talk about it, the longer it lives,” I said. “Just ignore it.”

I hurried to catch up to Ryder, not sure what I should do. If I told him what Jessica had just told me, I knew he would go absolutely ballistic on Summer and maybe even cause a big scene here at Pacifica. On the other hand, if I didn’t tell him and he found out what was being said very soon, which was quite possible, he might be angry with me for not warning him. Once the stories Summer was spreading reached all the boys in our class, especially a boy like Shayne Peters, they would be magnified and exaggerated. They would surely embarrass Ryder, I thought. I had no choice. I’ll have to tell him, I thought. The question was when was the most opportune time.

He smiled as I entered class. We hadn’t known each other that long, but I saw that he could see something was bothering me. Why couldn’t I be a hard read like Kiera? Why wasn’t I blessed more with the powers of deception? Why was I so honest inside, especially after the things I had been through? One would think I had been trained by experts when Kiera and her friends abused me. Why was everyone else around here but me so comfortable behind a mask? Ryder’s eyebrows dipped toward each other as he raised his palms.

“What’s up?” he asked just as the bell rang.

“I’ll tell you after class,” I whispered.

Since Jessica had told me what the topic of discussion had been during lunch, I looked around and saw from the expressions on the other students’ faces when they looked our way that Jessica was right. It was already all heard, digested, and believed by most. Of course, it made sense. Why wouldn’t they think the son of a very famous Hollywood star and a world-famous mother could get a girl to do anything? Suddenly, I was the one who was feeling abused by their fame, not Ryder.

The moment the bell rang to end class, he was at me. All during class, I couldn’t concentrate. Jessica’s words echoed.

“Well? What got you so upset?”

“Your sister is spreading rumors about us,” I said.

“What sort of rumors? Rumors about what?”

My own anger had boiled over, and try as I might, I couldn’t restrain myself.

“About yesterday, when I was at your house,” I said. I had to lower my voice because everyone was making a point of walking close to us in hopes of overhearing something they could spread.

Ryder’s face reddened. “Tell me.”

“All I heard was she’s been saying I did everything with you. She claims she saw us.”

“Everything?”

“Sexually, Ryder. Saying it that way leaves a lot to the imagination, and around here, imaginations have no limits or restrictions. According to Jessica, she’s telling everyone that I’m just another in a long line of girls you were able to take advantage of.”