Excerpt
June Sproat
Author
“I wish I could give Allison 100 endless summer nights.” --Brad Stevens
“I’m gagging here!”
Leave it to my best friend Jodi to announce what everyone else was actually thinking.
I stopped reading the Wish List from the Senior Edition of Wainscott North’s high school newspaper,
Northern Lights, and pushed it across the table to Jodi.
“Yeah,” I said. Only I didn’t really think it. I thought it was kind of, you know, romantic. Not that romance was
the top thing on my mind. Currently the top thing on my mind was trying to finish my sandwich without
choking while Jodi cut down certain members of the student body who were sitting at the jock table less
than three feet away.
“I mean,” Jodi continued, apparently not noticing that I didn’t agree with her 110%, which was good
because she is my best friend, and I really wouldn’t want her to think I was weird or anything. Just because
I disagree with her doesn’t necessarily make me weird. It just means she needs to know who, what, where
and especially why I disagree. Since I really wasn’t in the mood for her third degree, I kept quite.
“If you have an endless night, doesn’t that mean it doesn’t end? So why would you need 100 of them –
hello!” she did the eye rolling thing.
“Really, how dumb!” I said, but didn’t really mean it, you know, because of the whole best-friend-who-I-want-
to-avoid- confrontation-with thing.
I had no opinion on the subject. Yes, I know, I, Kate Sterns have an opinion on everything, which of course I
always keep to myself, unless provoked to express it that is.
But not this time.
No, this time I was opinion less.
I mean, I didn’t have a boyfriend, never had a boyfriend, and at this rate probably never will have a boyfriend.
I didn’t have anyone who wanted to spend a night with me let alone an endless one! Of course not that Jodi
had a boyfriend either, but she is prettier then me so she has a way better chance.
Looking at the jock table I could tell they didn’t hear anything we were talking about, which was a good
thing, not that they would listen to us anyway.
We were just the ordinaries.
We didn’t fit into any particular group. We could easily get lost in a crowd, and mostly we were forgettable.
Or felt like we were forgettable.
“And Brad is a football player.”
“And that means…?” I had to ask.
“Just proves my theory about jocks. They may be cute and have nice butts, however, that’s all they have
going for them,” Jodi snorted, put down the paper, and stabbed her salad with her fork.