What's Your Status? (4 page)

La Lisse → mad_mac
Mad, avons-nous un plan? Are we getting coffee this afternoon?

Dave Gold → mad_mac
Mad, your boyfriend is being completely ridiculous. Not to mention elitist. Help me out here?

Shy Time → mad_mac
Mad?

KitKat → mad_mac
Hello?

La Lisse → mad_mac
Bonjour?

CHAPTER 1

Song: Our Song/Taylor Swift

Quote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

—John Lennon

“Hi,” I whispered to Nate as he tightened his arms around my waist.

“Hi yourself,” he said, smiling down at me. And then, in one smooth movement, he spun me around and pressed me against the brick wall that was the back of Putnam High School.

“Wow,” I said, leaning my head back against the bricks and brushing that one lock of hair away from his forehead. “Impressive.”

“Oh, I’ve got some moves,” he said, arching an eyebrow, which made me laugh. But I didn’t laugh for very long as he started kissing me again, and the rest of the world faded away.

I had been going out with Jonathan Ellis—known to me and everyone else as Nate—for almost two months now. Before him, I’d thought I’d known what having a
boyfriend was like. But being with Nate was like nothing I’d ever experienced. We fit. It just felt right, and it was
easy
. We always had something to say to each other, and he could make me laugh like nobody else. And I could make him laugh, something I tried to do as often as possible. I was, as my friend Schuyler Watson was constantly saying, a smitten kitten. Basically, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and had the plunging AP history grade to show for it.

Oh, and the kissing. The kissing was amazing. Making out with Nate could cause three hours to pass in what I could have sworn was ten minutes, tops. When we were kissing, I completely forgot about where I was and what else was happening; nothing else existed except Nate. This had led to several near accidents in crosswalks, run-ins with dog walkers, and so far, I had missed curfew eleven times. But I didn’t care. Kissing Nate was worth it. It wasn’t like when I’d been going out with my ex, Justin Williamson, and all we did was make out because we didn’t have anything to say to each other. I wanted to talk to Nate as much as I wanted to make out with him, and it seemed to be mutual. But when we
were
making out, it was incredible.

We broke apart for a moment, and Nate traced his finger down my cheek, then kissed me softly. I wrapped my arms around his neck and was preparing to start round two of the makeout session when I caught sight of my watch and sighed. “I have class in ten minutes,” I reminded him.

“Nope,” he said, leaning down and kissing me again.

Unable to argue with that logic, I kissed him back, only to be interrupted when my phone chimed, letting me know that someone had just sent me a message on Status Q.

Status Q had really taken off last month. It was part of Friendverse, the social networking site that
everybody
used. But rather than showing people’s favorite bands and their fake gardens and constantly asking you to take quizzes (Friendverse really had gotten out of hand with that kind of stuff in recent months) Status Q showed
just
status updates. Which, really, were the most important part. On my homepage, I could see my updates, but also all the updates of the people I followed. Everyone had started using it, and I used it a lot now in place of texting, as it let me reach the essential people without having to text each of them individually. If you wanted, you could post pictures with your updates, and there was also an optional GPS feature that, if you clicked on it, revealed your location along with your status. This was really helpful, especially when you were running late to meet people and could see, despite their outraged French posts, that they were actually running late as well. I’d gotten really into Status Q, and I updated my status a
lot.
But I only wrote stuff about myself, never about other people. I’d learned my lesson as far as that was concerned.

I didn’t take out my phone to check the Status Q mes
sage, but it had startled me out of the moment, and now there was no denying the fact that I was going to be late for class. “Argh,” I said, breaking away again. “I’d better go.”

“You don’t need to go,” Nate said. He kissed me just under my ear, then slowly began kissing down my neck.

Okay, that was just not fighting fair. With a strength of will that, before that moment, I had not been aware I possessed, I moved away slightly and looked up at him. “I do,” I said. “Not all of us are second-semester seniors, you know.”

Watching Nate in action had convinced me that suffering through the hellish first semester of senior year might actually be worth it. I’d been able to see him a
lot,
as it seemed that once you’d been accepted to college and May rolled around, nobody was really keeping track of whether you showed up for class or not.

He smiled at me. “True.” He lifted my arm off his neck and looked at my watch. “Huh. Would you look at that. Apparently, I also have class in ten minutes.”

Considering that Stanwich High was a twenty-minute drive away, this didn’t seem feasible. “I have a feeling you’re not going to make it,” I said as I tried to smooth down his hair in the back where I’d messed it up.

“Probably not,” he said, seeming completely unconcerned. “But I actually should get back. I have to see the headmaster later.”

I straightened up a bit and leaned back so that I could see him more clearly. “What for?”

“Oh, nothing,” Nate said, giving me one of his half smiles, the kind that always made me feel like I was
melting a little bit inside. “More stuff about the prank.”

From what everyone had been saying, Stanwich’s recent senior prank had been epic. Nate refused to tell me any details, or even confirm that he’d been involved. Whenever I asked him about it, he just said that the less he told me, the less likely it was that I would be deposed. But from what I’d heard, the prank had involved a cow, a staircase, a thousand Super Balls, and the mascot costume of Hartfield High. Hartfield High was the rival of both Stanwich and Putnam, and every time there was a prank, part of it always seemed to involve doing something to Hartfield.

“What about the prank?” I asked, hoping he’d forget that he’d declared—repeatedly—that the details were strictly need-to-know.

“Nothing,” he said, smiling at me. Clearly, my intention had been obvious. “I guess I’m just now officially a Person of Interest. Specifically regarding the streaker.”

This caused me to take a full step back. “Streaker?”

He laughed, probably at my expression. “It wasn’t me,” he said. “But they’re now alleging that I had something to do with orchestrating it.”

“So did you?” I asked casually.

“Nice try,” he said with a smile. “But I will tell you one thing. Streakers make for the ultimate diversion. Nobody quite knows what to do or where to look. If you ever need an exit strategy, call in a streaker.”

I couldn’t help laughing at that. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You busy later?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said sadly, knowing that
later
referred to immediately after school. Whenever we both had this window free, we took it, and it was great—at least three hours to make out, or hang with his friends, or my friends, or watch a movie on my laptop in the back of his truck, or go to our rock wall by the beach and sit together and look out at the water. But today, none of that would be happening. “I have to deal with prom stuff.”

“Prom stuff,” he said, running his fingers through my hair. “Yikes. You guys all set?”

“More or less,” I said vaguely. The state of the junior prom these days was definitely falling into the
less
category. And it was being held at the Putnam Hyatt—the nicest hotel in town—this Saturday night. And Saturday was only five days away, a fact I was trying—without success—not to think about too much. But Nate and I were going to the prom together, and he seemed really excited about it—maybe because it was his last chance at one.

The Stanwich High prom had been put on hiatus after the prank in an attempt to get the people who had pulled it to come forward and confess. Needless to say, that hadn’t worked, and the prom had been canceled. So I was feeling a lot of pressure about our prom. Not only to make it good—or at least disaster-free—but also to make it good for Nate.

But while I wanted it to be a success, I was annoyed that it was taking up so much of my time. Kittson Pearson, the head of the prom committee (who was also
bound and determined to be crowned prom queen), had been transferring more and more work to me as the date got closer, to my mounting frustration. But I didn’t want to burden Nate with these details and spoil what had been a really nice lunch—even though, technically, I hadn’t gotten any food.

“Well, I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I can’t believe it’s here already.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally, pressing my lips together so that I wouldn’t be tempted to tell him all about the drama with the DJ and the gift bags and my litany of issues with Kittson.

“If there’s anything I can do to help,” he said, “just let me know.”

“Actually,” I said, seizing my opportunity and smiling up at him, “there is.”

There was only one thing about my relationship with Nate that had been bothering me—and that was our song. Or, actually, lack thereof. My Francophile friend, Lisa Feldman, insisted that it was
tres
bad luck for a couple not to have a song, and that it signified an underlying lack of commitment.

I’d been trying to bring this up with Nate for a while, turning up the volume when certain songs played in our cars and telling him how much I liked them. He hadn’t gotten any of these hints, however, and had usually just started discussing discography and influences, and after a while of this, it was usually too late to bring the conversation back around to whatever song had been playing. Not to mention that by then, I could barely
remember why I’d liked it in the first place, now that I knew what the lyrics symbolized.