Summer Unscripted - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JEN KLEIN is the author of Shuffle, Repeat. When she’s not writing YA novels, Jen is an Emmy-nominated television writer, currently writing on the series Grey’s Anatomy. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at jenkleinbooks.com and follow her on Twitter at @jenkleinbooks.

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Chapter 1

When the lightning strikes, I’m a bored rose between two snoring thorns. The thorns are my best friends, Marin and Sarah, who are crashed out on either side of me, and the lightning is #nofilter-perfect Tuck Brady, sauntering across the stage of our high school auditorium. I--Rainie Langdon, the bored rose--am planted in row J. It’s not a place where one usually encounters lightning.

But it’s the final week of the school year, which at Dobbs High means roughly a zillion mandatory assemblies designed to highlight talent in every discipline. Sarah delivered a science lecture on Monday. Marin was part of the art show on Tuesday. Now here it is Thursday--and, true to form, I have yet to set foot on the stage.

Today’s festival of shame is theater, which means the entire junior class has earned the endless joy of slumping in a too-warm auditorium while drama kid after drama kid trots onto the stage to deliver handcrafted monologues intended to punch us right in the angst.

It’s the worst.

Until Tuck.

He clears his throat, runs his fingers through his golden-blond hair, and turns to the audience. More specifically, he turns to me. Across the rows of disinterested classmates, through the dim lighting of the auditorium, Tuck Brady’s sky-on-a-sunny-spring-day eyes lock right onto mine.

Which can’t really be happening, because that would be crazy. If Tuck and I happen to run into each other out in the real world--say, at a gas station or a hot-dog stand--we definitely say hello, and that’s definitely it. When we see each other in the halls or the cafeteria at school, we generally don’t even make eye contact, because he’s too busy with his drama-head friends or his soccer friends or his music friends, and I’m too busy gabbing with Marin and Sarah. What I’m saying is--we do not run in the same circles, so there’s no way he’s looking at me.

Yet . . . he is.

I’ve tuned out the last six hundred monologues, so I have no idea how different this one is, but it must be different because . . .

Because Tuck isn’t just talking to me.

He’s talking about me.

“You’re a canoe,” Tuck says to me (and, presumably, the rest of the auditorium). “You’re floating. Aimless. You’re drifting. Getting knocked askew by the waves of speedboats rocketing past you. They all know where they’re going. They all have a plan. But you . . . you don’t.”

I glance at Sarah. She’s a speedboat with big plans. Neurosurgery plans. She’s got her next fifteen years mapped out to the minute. Then there’s Marin. She’s spent every summer since eighth grade at a different art program and already knows she’s doing undergrad at Pratt, and Glasgow for her master’s. Me, however . . .

Tuck is right. I’m a canoe. No effing idea where I’m going. Nary a paddle to be found.

“Floating is easier.” Tuck’s gaze drifts to the balcony overhead, and I slowly relax. I was right the first time. Tuck is just being an actor, and I’m just being my usual: the girl without a country. “You don’t have to be brave if you’re not the one steering. It’s the current making choices, not you.”

Tuck’s eyes suddenly dart back to my own. He sends a smile blazing across the seats at me, and--because I can’t believe what I’m seeing--I throw out both elbows. They connect solid with my friends. Marin only waves a hand at me and huffs a little, flopping her head to the other side and going right back to sleep, but Sarah bolts awake. “What?” she asks too loudly.

Several people shush her. One of them is me. I point at the stage, and Sarah swivels her head to look at Tuck. Who is looking at me. Looking back at him.

I am not used to all this looking.

“It wouldn’t be so scary if you had a road map, if you could see the signs.” Tuck shifts his weight and continues his monologue. “Then you would just know what path to take. You wouldn’t have to guess. You wouldn’t have to be terrified of going in the wrong direction. I get it.”

By extension--I extrapolate--Tuck Brady gets me.

Something clicks inside me. It’s a door opening, a door that has always been locked. Behind it is something desperate and wild and free, some buried part of me that wants to get out, that wants to experiment, to risk . . .

And, let’s be honest, that wouldn’t mind kissing Tuck Brady.

God, that boy is hot.

“But sometimes you can’t see the path until after you’ve walked it. The signs are there, but you don’t know where to look yet.” Tuck gazes down at me from the stage. “So take a chance.”

Sarah nudges me. “I think he’s--”

“I know,” I tell her. “Hush.”

“Risk it.” This time, Tuck takes a step forward. Toward me. Toward the future. Toward . . . dare I say it . . . our future? “If we’re not alone, maybe it won’t be so scary.” He stretches his hand out. Slowly, slowly, like he might actually be able to reach all the way out to my row and touch me. I straighten in my seat, leaning forward, starting to rise . . .

“Rainie.” Sarah grabs my wrist, keeping me in my uncomfortable auditorium chair on planet Earth. “Don’t make it weird.”

I don’t know how I could possibly be the one making it weird when Tuck is currently doing the weirdest thing that anyone has ever done, but I settle back down. It must be right, because Tuck flashes a grin at me--a blinding-white, heart-stopping grin--before walking offstage to half-assed applause from 99 percent of the audience, and to thunderous, palm-stinging, whole-assed applause from the last percent. Otherwise known as me.

Crash.

Lightning.

I’m in a daze as I follow Sarah past a row of lockers, past a group of freshmen playing cards in a corner, and past a steamy couple just rounding second base. Basically, the entire school is treading water until the week is over. We reach the art room--a place where we clearly do not belong--and plop our lunches onto a table. Marin looks up from a sketchbook she’s drawing in: an indication that she clearly does belong. “Reminder about the condiments.” Marin gives us each a stern look. “Keep it on your fries, not the supplies.”

Sarah drips ketchup over her paper envelope of French fries. “Buzzkill.”

I flick Marin on the arm. “Yeah, one mustard finger-painting incident and suddenly it’s all TSA in here.”

Marin flicks me back. “Behave,” she says as I reach toward Sarah’s envelope. Sarah swats at my hand but allows me to take a fry.

We eat in silence for a moment: Marin because she’s still sketching, Sarah because she’s trying to power through her fries before I snag the rest of them, me because I’m trying to decide if fate just stepped in to have its way with me or if I’m hallucinating. Was Tuck talking to...