Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (ereader with android txt) 📕

Wow, that is some f-boy self-esteem.

“So you’ll be there?” he asks.

I roll my eyes. “Obviously, I’ll be there.”

Raina looks from me to Noah, eyebrows raised halfway to the stratosphere.

“It’s a neighborhood block party,” I remind her. “Right outside Dad’s house. I’ll be at Dad’s house. Therefore, I’ll be at the block party.”

Raina flips her palms up. “Didn’t say anything.”

“You guys should come,” I say, shrugging.

Brandie says she’ll try to stop by, but Raina says she has a date.

Noah high-fives her. “Yeah you do!”

Raina rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling.

“I can’t come,” Anderson says, pausing for the barest split second. “I’ve got plans.”

Something about that pause.

He’s staring at his worksheet, but his dimple caves briefly, like it does when he’s feeling awkward. A tiny knot forms in my chest. Something like dread, maybe panic.

“Plans?”

Somehow, before Anderson even opens his mouth, I know just what he’s about to say.

“Plans with Matt,” he says gently.

And then I mostly just feel numb.

Scene 34

So, Dad’s neighborhood has a bit of a fuckboy problem.

I mean, it could be worse. I could be Brandie, who lives walking distance from no fewer than eight members of the lacrosse team. But it’s not great. We’ve got Mira Reynolds and her tween sisters over near the neighborhood pool, and there’s a whole crop of baby-jock eighth graders one cul-de-sac over.

But I actually love the Remington Commons neighborhood block party, mostly because it’s barely a party. It’s just this dorky street event the neighborhood association started throwing a couple of years ago, every September and May. Half the time, the f-boys are too hungover to even show up.

Anyway, I can’t just sit in my room thinking about Andy and Matt and their plans. So I throw on one of my mom’s old Stacey Abrams campaign T-shirts, which wins a tiny smile from my brother. He’s currently sitting at the kitchen table, eating cold pizza with one hand, and petting Camilla with the other.

Ryan sets down his pizza. “Making a statement?”

“It’s a good statement.”

“You’re not wrong.”

I grab some raisin bread and eat it standing over the counter. Then I round up the dogs, pop their leashes on, and step out into the ten a.m. early September heat.

It’s pretty quiet this early—mostly just a bunch of dads in polo shirts hanging out in plastic chairs at the edge of their lawns, drinking bloody Marys. I spot my dad in a little chair cluster at the Kaplans’ house, looking flushed and happy alongside both of Noah’s parents, plus the dad who just moved in next door. New Dad, who’s currently holding an extremely new baby, is the youngest in the circle by at least a decade.

Dad waves me over. “Peapod!”

The whole peapod thing. I should probably be mortified, but it’s hard to muster it up when it’s just a mom, three dads, and a newborn. Also, it’s pretty obvious that this is the neighborhood dork crowd. Which is probably a weird thing to say about a bunch of parents, but it’s true. All I know about the new dad so far is that he and his wife dress the baby exclusively in science pun onesies. Anna and Joe Kaplan are the type who post massive photo sets to Facebook without even removing the blurry ones. And Dad’s just there with his pants tucked nice and high, and his shirt buttons off-track. Like, basically imagine the geek table from any high school cafeteria, then age them up twenty-five years.

But the funny thing is, in some strange, subversive way, I really think that makes them cooler. Like, if you’re going to be forty-five, just be forty-five. Don’t be those parents grasping for their glory days, trying to recreate them with tennis team hierarchies and their kids’ sports schedules.

I let the dogs lead me over to Dad’s dork squad and spend the next ten minutes fielding questions about school. And running interference against Camilla, who’s apparently determined to snuffle deep into everyone’s crotches.

“Noah’s really loving the play rehearsals,” says Anna. “He was so anxious at first, but he’s really come around to them.” Anxious. Noah Kaplan. It really is funny sometimes how parents get certain ideas of their kids.

“Peapod, you know what? We should grab the karaoke machine. I was just telling Bill here that you’re a fantastic singer.”

“She gave Noah voice lessons,” says Anna.

“We could set up a whole karaoke station here. Line up some chairs or something. What do you think?”

“Absolutely not.”

Wow. Speaking of parents getting certain ideas of their kids. Dad seems to have mistaken me for someone who spontaneously performs in public. Non-theater people never get the whole emotional preparation factor. And even then, you could be courting disaster. It could be Ella-gate 2.0. I mean, maybe someone like Anderson could pull it off without the cringe, because he’s more consistently talented than I am and his voice doesn’t shake when he’s nervous. And he’s just overall slightly more badass. Maybe that’s why he suddenly has so much game now. Enough game to get the ball rolling on mysterious plans with Matt.

Saturday plans. I wonder whose idea they were.

Camilla makes a sudden move for Bill and the baby, so I quickly yank her leash back before her tongue gets involved. Then I move an open bag of chips from Charles. And then I end up just using the dogs as an excuse to leave, which is pretty much why I brought them in the first place. I’ll just take them on a quick walk around the neighborhood and go home. After all, I’m well overdue for some moping time in my room.

I mean. I’m not moping. I’m not. Maybe it resembles moping from the outside, but it’s really just rapturous excitement. It’s me being wildly, extraordinarily happy. For Anderson. So happy that I’m just going to kneel here really fast and snap a quick selfie with the dogs. Who, by the way, make terrible models—Camilla’s got one lip hooked up like Elvis, and Charles is just a blur of movement. But