My Secret Boyfriend by Lurlene McDaniel

One

    “J ordan! Jordan Starling! Over here!” At the sound of her name, Jordan searched the swarming halls of students. Everyone was early for the first day of the new school year at Martin Junior High School. The students were all babbling and comparing notes on summer activities. Jordan caught sight of the familiar red curls of her best friend, Laurie Wilcox, and pressed through the crowd toward her.
Being an eighth grader has a certain appeal
, she decided. The shier, more timid seventh graders moved aside for her as she walked through.
    When she reached Laurie, she gave her a big hug. “How are you?” Jordan squealed to her best friend. “You look fabulous!”
    Over the summer, Laurie had lost some weight. She had a new hairstyle and had shed her glasses in favor of contact lenses.
    “I’m sorry I didn’t call last night,” Jordan continued, “but I didn’t think we’d
ever
get home. A month in the Rockies is too long to be away from Dallas. We started back in plenty of time, but then the dumb car broke down in the middle of nowhere. It took three days to get it repaired. By the time we got in late yesterday afternoon I had all this unpacking to do, and with today being the first day of school and me having no earthly idea of what to wear or. . .”
    Laurie held up her hand to halt Jordan’s flood of words. “No problem. I’m just sorry we couldn’t get together before now. I’ve got a zillion things to tell you. And I want to hear all about your vacation. Did you meet anybody new? Did you have fun? What did you do?”
    What did she do? How could she tell her best friend that she’d spent four weeks trapped in a rustic cabin with her parents and her ten-year-old brother? She had done nothing but hike, fish, cook, clean, and read.
    “Forget me,” Jordan hedged. “Tell me all about this guy you wrote about in your letter.”
    “His name is Wade,” Laurie said dreamily. “Wade Matthews. He goes to our school. We’ve already met and compared class schedules. Our lunch periods overlap so we’ll be able to sit together every day.”
    Jordan thought hard for a minute. The only Wade Matthews she could remember was a short, skinny kid who used to sit next to her in sixth grade.
    “We literally bumped into each other at the skating rink. I wasn’t watching where I was going and
bam
, we collided. At first I started to get mad, but when I stared into his adorable brown eyes . . .” Laurie pressed her band-new notebook to her chest and sighed.
    Jordan had felt that fluttery feeling once in seventh grade over a handsome student teacher assigned to her math class. It was a funny feeling that started in the stomach. Sometimes, it made your head light. It was an awful and wonderful feeling, all at once. But Jordan couldn’t imagine feeling that way over Wade Matthews.
    “ . . . and Jennifer added another drooling boy to her list.” Laurie’s half sentence brought Jordan back to the crowded hallways of Martin.
    “Who’s the poor creature?”
    “Glen Lockwood.”
    Jordan groaned. Jennifer had been Jordan’s rival for years. In almost every area, Jennifer and Jordan competed—honor roll, friends, parts in plays, president of their fifth-grade class, choral soloist in seventh grade—everything!
    “Guys can be so dumb,” Jordan remarked. “You’d think a guy as popular as Glen could find a girl in the ninth grade to care about.”
    “I guess not.”
    “I’ll have to get the whole story from her,” Jordan said, sighing.
    “You might as well get it over with as soon as possible. Oops! There’s the first bell. We don’t want to be late for homeroom.” Laurie started backing down the hall as she spoke. “But I really want to hear all about your vacation and any neat guys you met. Okay?”
    “Sure,” Jordan said, forcing a smile. But there hadn’t been any neat guys. What was she going to tell her best friend? That she’d read six books and couldn’t remember the plot of any of them? That