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

school choir rehearsals, which we occasionally skipped in favor of prowling around the synagogue. Noah was really good at charming the parent kitchen volunteers into giving us extra pieces of that mushy, pre-sliced Hebrew school challah. Even now, when I think of Sunday school, that’s what I think of. Me and Noah in the supply closet near the women’s bathrooms, rolling challah slices into bread balls and eating them like popcorn.

I stopped going to Sunday school after my bat mitzvah. I guess I could have gone on to get confirmed, but I never felt like my parents wanted to drive me. And then Noah started dating Genny Hedlund, which added this whole extra layer of weirdness. Even more so when they broke up six weeks later. Apparently it wasn’t like Anderson’s and my breakup, which ended in us crying, hugging, and vowing forever friendship beneath Andy’s eight Teen Wolf posters. All of which, I later noticed, prominently featured Dylan O’Brien’s face.

But by April, Noah was dating Savannah Griffin, and after that, Gayatri Dawar. And then Mackenzie Yates, and Eva Cohen, and Ashlyn O’Shea, and Amy Austin. He just always seemed to have a girlfriend. Or an almost-girlfriend. Or, evidently, two simultaneous girlfriends. I don’t even want to know what his deal was at ninth-grade homecoming.

Anyway, the whole thing just made Noah hard to be friends with. It wasn’t that I cared who he hooked up with. And he’s never been the type to drop off the planet when he’s in a relationship. But it almost started to feel like we were from two different species. You had Noah, flirting and kissing, bouncing from sports games to parties. And then you had me, a slick teenager with slick teenage moves, blowing my hair out to look like Ella Enchanted. Or memorizing the Wikipedia page for Lansing, Michigan. Or playing love songs alone in my room and crying. I just felt so childish compared to Noah. It’s like he moved on to French pastries, and I was still munching on bread balls.

Scene 36

It’s getting warmer, maybe a little too warm, but I’m not quite ready to head back inside. Noah’s winding up about the musical now, which is funny to watch—just hearing the phrase “intensive rehearsal” in the mouth of an f-boy. “Intensive is right. I was like, damn. Mr. D made Brandie and Laura sing the ‘hey nonny nonny’ part thirty-eight times in a row, I counted—”

“You mean Lana?”

Noah looks unruffled. “Well, yes and no. On the one hand, I know her name’s Lana. On the other hand, I have to call her Laura because she keeps calling me Nolan.”

“Fair,” I say, yawning. Sunshine always makes me sleepy. And for a minute, neither of us speaks, but it’s the peaceful kind of silence. Livy’s still on her swing, though she’s talked Noah into letting her play a game on his phone, and Ryan and Brandie are pretty much where we left them. And it’s starting to feel like a moment I could settle into. Like, so what if Anderson and Matt have plans that don’t include me. I don’t have to stress about that. I can just choose not to think about it.

After a couple of minutes, Ryan and Brandie drift back toward the picnic table, and Brandie scoots in right beside me. And I’m flooded with some kind of feeling, some preemptive nostalgia. It’s the kind of moment where I swear I feel a memory forming before I’m even done living it. Brandie must feel it too because she hooks her arm around my waist. So I do the same thing to her, and now it’s like we’re posing for a picture. It’s such a soft, sun-soaked feeling, so quintessentially Brandie. She’s like a walking, talking Xanax. I mean, it’s actually weirdly easy to picture Brandie as a grandma.

Noah yawns, turning to Ryan. “You have your thing tomorrow, right? Georgia State?”

“Kennesaw,” says Ryan. “Nine a.m.”

“Yikes,” says Noah.

Sucks to be Ryan. My parents don’t agree on much, but they’re both fanatical about college. Which means Ryan’s been doing campus tours and info sessions practically every single weekend. I think he’s pretty burned out on them. It’s weird—I never see Ryan all that hyped about college, the way most seniors are. Honestly, I’m not so hyped for him to leave either. Even if he ends up staying local, it’s going to make everything different. It’s like when my parents split. You wouldn’t think Mom moving three miles up the road would be the biggest change on earth. And it wasn’t.

It was more like a million tiny changes.

But then again, Raina says she and her sister actually got closer after Corey left for college, because they started texting more. Though Ryan’s a shitty texter, so maybe that doesn’t apply. Andy thinks I should take over his room when he leaves and turn it into a dressing room.

Except I’m not thinking about Andy. Or Matt. Or their plans.

Of course, the minute I decide that, my phone finally buzzes in my back pocket. Four times.

But when I pull it out to check, not a single one of them is from Anderson.

They’re all from Matt.

Want to come over and run lines tomorrow?

Okay anyway I’m free all day tomorrow if you want to, so just text me!

“Okay, you kind of look like you just won the lottery,” says Noah, “but also like you’re about to throw up.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.”

Noah raises his eyebrows. “Must be some text.”

Scene 37

It’s almost noon, and Dad and Ryan still aren’t back from Kennesaw—which sucks hard, because they were my top two choices to drive me to Matt’s house today. I feel weird asking Matt to pick me up at Dad’s house. It just tips the invitation too far out of the realm of casual, I think. And it’s not like I can bum a ride from Anderson, unless I want Anderson present for the line running. And I don’t. Maybe that’s awful, but I don’t.

In the