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ABRAMS BOOKS - Schmidt Tiffany Schmidt

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180 pages

English

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The second book in a series where your favorite literary characters come to life, inspired by the timeless classic, Little Women! There’s no one better than the boy next door. At least not according to Aurora Campbell, fourteen, who has been in love with Tobias May since their very first sandbox kiss. The problem is, he’s in love with her older sister, Merrilee. And Merri is already dating one of his best friends. Rory is learning all about pining as her class reads The Great Gatsby, a book she doesn’t find “great” at all. Also not great—her GPA, something she needs to fix, quickly, if she’d like to apply for the chance to spend a week studying art with her hero in New York City over winter break. But when Ms. Gregoire assigns her to read Little Women for extra credit, Rory discovers more than she expected—both about herself and Toby. Maybe she wasn’t in love with the boy next door. . . but the boy next story. Love is complicated, and it’s all about to get even trickier for Rory at Reginald R. Hero Prep . . . where with the help of one quirky English teacher, students’ fantasies come true, often with surprising consequences.

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	21 mai 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683354895
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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PUBLISHER S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schmidt, Tiffany, author. Title: The boy next story : a Bookish boyfriends novel / Tiffany Schmidt. Description: New York : Amulet Paperbacks, 2019. | Summary: Rory likes Toby, but Toby likes Rory s sister Merrilee, even though Merrilee is already dating Toby s friend Fielding-and it s all about to get even more complicated at Reginald R. Hero High -Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018038523 (print) | LCCN 2018043439 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683354895 (All Ebooks) | ISBN 9781419734366 (paperback) Subjects: | CYAC: High schools-Fiction. | Schools-Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)-Fiction. | Books and reading-Fiction. | Sisters-Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.S3563 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.S3563 Boy 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]-dc23
Text copyright 2019 Tiffany Schmidt Lettering copyright 2019 Danielle Kroll Book design by Hana Anouk Nakamura
Published in 2019 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Amulet Books is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
FOR ALL THE OLDER SISTERS WHO LEAD THE WAY AND ALL THE YOUNGER SISTERS WHO BLAZE THEIR OWN TRAILS.
ALSO, FOR RASCAL-MY SNUGGLY TODDLER SIDEKICK.
SHE PREFERRED IMAGINARY HEROES TO REAL ONES . . .
-Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
1
I wasn t one of those artists who thought you had to be a tortured soul to create. I could concentrate on a painting while still remembering to eat, sleep, and shower. I liked both my ears where they were, so there was no risk of me going Van Gogh, and I was just as inspired when I was in a good mood as when I was in a funk.
But if I did require torture, I was pretty sure driving to school with the boy I loved-and the girl he loved-qualified.
Especially when the girl he loved was my sister.
Rory, come on, Merrilee called from the front hall. Toby s beeped twice.
For the first two weeks of school, I d been the one nudging her-and helpfully reminding her about things like coats, backpacks, and the annoying crossover-tie part of our uniform-but Merri had a whole new motivation for Hero High mornings: The faster she got out the door, the sooner she got to see her boyfriend, Fielding Williams.
Have I mentioned she was oblivious to Toby s feelings? And obliviously never shut up about how happy she was, dating his friend.
Come on! Come on! she called from the open shotgun seat of Toby s car. Today s the day Fielding s wearing the socks I picked out for him.
That didn t mean anything to me. Merri, my oldest older sister Lilly, and I had gone out for manicures two nights ago so Merri could fill us in on her newest boyfriend. But if she d said something about socks, I d missed it. Or it d happened while I was in the bathroom. I was still surprised I d been invited at all. Mom always said that three was the hardest number for including people- It s all points and corners -and the default duo in our house was Merri plus Lilly.
Fielding was an impressive upgrade from Merri s first emo-jerk ex, Monroe expelled-from-school-already Stratford, but I had no idea why she was excited about his socks. Maybe my sister had a foot fetish? Ew, gross.
I mentally deleted that thought as I opened the car door and slid into the back seat, passing Merri her forgotten cross-country bag. Hey, Toby.
Morning, Roar. The flash of a smile he directed at me as he turned around to back out of our driveway was better than any cup of coffee. Toby s grin was 99 percent perfect, but the 1 percent that would keep him from starring in ads for orthodontists was my favorite part: His second tooth was just the teeniest bit crooked. The type of crooked you d notice only if you d sketched it dozens of times. Like, if maybe you had a portfolio hidden in the back of your closet that contained nothing but drawings of a certain olive-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired Latino boy whose eyelashes made your heart race and whose long fingers gripped the steering wheel of the car driving you to your new school.
What do you mean, socks? he asked Merri as he turned down the stereo s volume and pulled onto our street. It was some movie s musical score-always. I don t think Toby owned songs with lyrics. Sometimes I recognized which film and sometimes Merri commandeered the radio. This time she clicked it off.
Didn t I tell you this story? And, just like yesterday, I got to watch from the back seat as Merri-the copilot of Toby s dreams, the girl with a permanent claim on shotgun and his heart-twisted the knife in his back. It s so cute-who knew Fielding Williams could be cute? But I don t know if it ll be funny to anyone that s not me. Or him. It s an inside thing-but make sure to compliment his socks today, okay?
She giggled. I wanted to growl.
Because here s the thing about my big sister: She was a peanut. Maybe five whole feet if she had on shoes and used her best posture. Her height paired with her personality (think sugar rush, no sugar needed), her looks (a complete checklist for adorable: freckles, perky nose, huge blue-gray eyes, pointy chin), and her intelligence (hello, Mensa) meant that she was irresistible. Merri was the type of girl people instantly loved . And it was a good thing she wasn t evil, because she would ve made an alluring cult leader. People leaned in when she talked, squished closer to her in crowds, raced for the seat beside hers at tables. Everyone got sucked into her orbit, because it was a place you felt entertained, safe, cherished .
Watching her giggle, wrinkle her nose, then reach in her backpack for breakfast bars I hadn t known she d packed for Toby and me- Yours is vegan, Rory, I checked -made me understand why everyone loved her. Why he loved her. Toby looked at the foil wrapper on his bar like he wanted to bronze it. Instead he ripped it open and took a big bite. There was a purity about Merri, a sweetness beyond all the sugar she consumed.
I wasn t bitter; I was exhausted. Because every time someone said, Merri s your sister? I love her, they followed up by expecting me to be like her. I wasn t. We had the same brown hair, but mine was six inches shorter, cut at my chin. And height-wise, I was six inches taller. I got the double take You re younger ? not just because of our heights but because I had none of the bounce and perk that radiated from Merri. She giggled; I laughed. She chatted; I fretted. She was impulsive; I was introspective. She was comfortable as the center of attention, and I was much happier standing in the corner. Preferably facing the corner with an easel in front of me.
I loved her, but I didn t want to, and couldn t, be her. No matter how much our parents, teachers, and customers at the family dog boutique, Haute Dog, expected it.
Toby didn t though. He d known us both since the day he arrived next door. Back then, Merri and I were the same height and our mom dressed us alike. His adoptive parents had joined the long list of people who assumed we were twins, but tiny Toby could tell us apart. He built sandcastles with me-and stomped them with Merri. Sidewalk art with me-hose nozzle eraser with Merri. We swung on swings and sang songs-they jumped from the monkey bars and got ice packs.
He wasn t the first person to compliment my drawings, but his compliment was the first to make me feel special. I still had, hidden in the same back-of-my-closet portfolio, a crooked three-legged green cat painted in watercolors on warped paper. In the upper left corner, he d stamped his approval with a prized Batman sticker.
Oh, we re not getting Eliza today, Merri said when Toby flicked on his blinker to turn down her street.
This day s looking up already, he said.
Be nice. Merri poked him in the upper arm and he snapped his teeth playfully at her finger.
I m always nice. Toby couldn t stand Eliza, Merri s other best friend, but he still gave her a ride every day to make my sister happy. And Eliza, she hated Toby. Though I wasn t sure she liked many people besides Merri and maybe her teachers. Eliza looked like the flippin snow queen from Frozen , which was fitting because her icy attitude was capable of giving anyone in a three-mile radius frostbite. And that was after her brains and beauty had given them inferiority complexes. I was firmly on Team Toby, but Eliza s fierce protectiveness of Merri and refusal to allow any female around her to be trivialized was pretty endearing.
I looked away and hid a yawn against my shoulder. We hadn t even gotten to school and I was already tired.
Late night painting, Roar? Toby was an artist himself-a musician-and he understood night owl creativity. But because he was practically perfect, I didn t want him to know the truth. I d been up late studying and staring at the bright yellow academic warning I d gotten in math the week before. I was supposed to have returned it on Monday. But Monday at Hero High had been mayhem. The entire school had been dealing with the fallout from the Rogue Romeo party thrown last Friday by Merri s ex-boyfriend. It was the type of party that was already part of Hero High lore- Remember that time Monroe Stratford broke into the sc