THEY BUILT HIM TO BREAK GIRLS LIKE ME
READING AGE 16+
I know exactly what kind of girl I am.I’m the one you don’t notice. The one sitting three rows back with her head down and her headphones in and absolutely no interest in being interesting to you. I’m the one who watches everything and writes it all down and never, not once in three years at Hartwell High, made the mistake of wanting something she couldn’t carry out alone.I had a plan. I had a future. I had one rule which was to make sure I need nothing and I followed it like religion.Then Clement Calloway happened.Not the way he happens to other girls. Not the slow-motion hallway moment, not the accidental eye contact across a crowded cafeteria. He happened to me the way a bad deal happens. Suddenly, in writing, with my signature at the bottom.Fake girlfriend. Reality show. Twelve weeks.I told myself I could do this with my eyes closed. He was just a boy with a good jaw and a ruined reputation and I was just a girl who needed a scholarship. Simple. Clean. Temporary.Except he chose me deliberately.He read everything I ever wrote. And then he picked me.I didn’t know what to do with that. I still don’t.This is not a love story about a girl who got swept off her feet.This is a story about a girl who kept both feet firmly on the ground and fell anyway.
Unfold
Francis Averill was nothing like I’d built him up to be.
Three years of watching him from a distance and I’d filed him under easy. The loyal second, the team’s muscle, the boy who laughed loudest and asked the fewest uncomfortable questions. The kind of person power kept close because close was safer than outside.
He was sitting alon……
Waiting for the first comment……