Falling for Shakespeare by Erin Butler
Published by: Swoon Romance
Publication date: September 8th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Synopsis:
Katie thought she knew where her life was going. She was dating the captain of the football team, had a BFF for life, and everyone at school wanted to be her. But then her pregnant teen sister’s pregnancy changes all that. Everyone dumps her, including her friends and boyfriend.
Hey, Katie, welcome to life at the bottom of the high school food chain. This is how the other half lives.
Then there’s Nick. He’s a straight-A student and self-professed geek who’s had a thing for her since middle school. He needs a date for the winter formal, and Katie needs something to keep her busy. Nick’s plight becomes her personal pet project. She will help him get over his insecurities and get a date. Besides, she was popular once. She knows how to get dates.
But Nick has other plans. He’s going to use these “dating” lessons as a way to win Katie’s heart.
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An Excerpt!
An Excerpt!
Chapter
Two
Nic
Katie was an anomaly of
nature. Always had been, but not in this way.
She used to shine like the dawning of a new sun over
the depleted and war-torn dystopian societies I liked to read about in my
sci-fi books. Now it was as if she were one of the down-trodden, the hindered,
the fighting masses she’d reigned over. It gutted me to see the curve in her
back from all the weight when she’d always been a pillar.
Craning my neck to get a better look, the quick
slashes of her pen over the lined notebook paper were still impossible to see. She
was biting down on her lip again, a look of concentration draining her face of
all else. But then, just as quickly as she’d brought it out, she stuffed the
notebook away.
I’d been wanting to ask her what she was always
writing down, but figured she’d tell me if she wanted me to know. If it was
five years ago, when we were still close friends, I would’ve just asked her. If
it were two years ago, back in the dark days, I wouldn’t have even known she
carried the notebook. Currently, our friendship level was teetering on the edge
of skin deep. I wanted to be bone deep. Screw that, I wanted to be marrow deep.
Marrow deep? I liked that. I’d have to file that
away.
She pinched me and I yelped. “Ow. What was that
for?”
She half-smiled around the Styrofoam cup. “You were
gone for a couple seconds.”
“A simple wave of your hand in front of my face
would suffice, thank you.”
“You’re driving. I was worried. People do crazy
things when they’re scared for their lives.”
The curve of her lips wilted almost as soon as it
bloomed and a wistful look blew into her face as she looked out the car window.
The leaves were changing early this year. It happened so quick I’d barely
noticed, but now that more and more trees were showing off their colors, they
were impossible to ignore.
Mrs. Barnes’ fire bush stood out like a road sign as
I took a left onto Maple and headed toward the school. Funny how things
changed. That bush had always been home base for any game we’d ever played at
she-who-must-not-be-named’s house and now I used it as a visual to remind me to
turn left to go to school. “You sure you’re going to be able to read all the
assigned sonnets in study hall?”
She shook her head and a tiny smile returned to her
face. “Don’t worry about me.”
The determination in her face said everything.
Sometimes it still shocked me. I didn’t know how far behind she’d gotten
herself before, but the fact that she was trying to make it up now awed me. She
wasn’t always Miss Gotta Get Into College. She was more like Miss Carefree.
“I think Mr. Henkel is going to give us the big
Shakespeare project today. Can’t wait.”
She tapped a finger to her lips. “If we get to
decide what to do, you should perform a soliloquy or something. Or get a bunch
of people in your class to act out a scene with you.”
My eyebrows crawled up my forehead. Did we somehow
beam into another dimension? She knew the dork sign I carried. She helped put
it there. No one in class would decide to work with me unless they were made
to. “Are you insane? Did Hanna keep you up all night?”
She rolled her eyes. “She keeps me up every night,
but no, I’m not insane. I think you’d be great.”
Because she suggested it, I thought about it
briefly. Very briefly. Didn’t actors have to hide their true selves and take
over someone else completely? Half the time I felt like the me knob was turned
on full blast with no power-down button. It’d be impossible to pretend to be
someone else.
Katie swirled her cup, peered into the little hole
in the cover and frowned like she always did when she noticed how little coffee
was left. If I could find a way, I’d make her a never ending cup.
We pulled into the school and as soon as I put the
car into park, a knock came on my window. Katie jumped and I reached my hand
over her. To protect her? To what? Didn’t know. When I saw who it was, I rolled
my eyes and turned the ignition off.
My friend Jackson stared in at us. He had that look
on his face that pissed me off. I started to open my door into him when he
mouthed, you’re pathetic.
Drawing on Katie’s inclination that I should be an
actor, I gave him a you-suck look and hoped the translation was clear. If his
laugh and prompt exit were anything to go by, I nailed it.
Katie was smiling out the window, watching Jackson’s
tall, lean frame walk away in a shirt that, like usual, looked like it was just
a little too small for his long torso. “I think he’s funny.”
I shot her a look and she laughed.
“What? I mean, he’s a weird kind of funny, but aren’t
we all?”
Considering she used to make fun of him on a daily
basis for his videogame t-shirts, this was quite an upgrade. I studied her
softening face. The hard lines I noticed this morning were already relaxing. At
home, she was a tight, nervous ball of energy. Away, she could let herself
relax. Her comment about Jackson was one-hundred percent proof of it. The way
her laughs came more easily and more frequent. What I wouldn’t give for her to
smile all the time. “I’d keep that praise of Jackson to yourself. He’d probably
die if he heard you say that.”
She shot me a funny look this time. “No one cares
what I think anymore.”
I was about to tell her how wrong she was when she
did a double take out the window, her face paling.
Reese Barnes walked with Katie’s old friends toward
the school. It had always been hard for me to place Katie in the same group as
the mean girls. She never quite belonged. It wasn’t really her who called
Jackson a “disillusioned gamer hack dork” in ninth grade. Or in eighth, when
she taped a feminine pad to Roseanne Gurtle’s bookbag, it must have been her
evil twin.
The not-too-distant memories hardened my insides. I
hoped she never went back to that clique again.
Reese looked over. When she saw we stared back at
her, she curled her lip into a snarl that would’ve wilted a butterfly in
three-point-five seconds.
Internally, I shrunk back. I had years’ worth of
experience of avoiding Reese. However, fearless Katie flipped her off.
And she thought Jackson wouldn’t die if she paid him
a compliment. Who wouldn’t? No one thought of standing up to Reese Barnes and
the Skeletal Crew, except Katie. Except the one who had stood with them.
Reese’s eyes flared and, like Cyclops, a red beam
lasered through the space between them and hit Katie square in the chest. Katie
put the empty coffee cup in the cup holder between us and brought up another
unwavering middle finger, all the while a tiny smile crept over her face.
I guessed we weren’t on the subtlety train today.
Reese stopped and about-faced, her hand landing on
her hip. Katie was up and out of the car before I could grab her. I’d done some
slight research over the past year and her bitch barometer never made it past a
point-five on days she had bad nights with Hanna. She usually handled the
backlash of being ostracized from the popular clique pretty well by ignoring it,
but last night must have been a doozy.
It was weird to see them like this. Enemies. Reese,
the mirror image of Katie from two years ago. Katie, a bystander, like me. Back
then, they would’ve been on the same side of the pathway, scorching down some
guy who happened to like school, or D&D, or anything else that made people
uncool. Katie belonged on the other side of that path. Not to be bitch cohorts
again, but because she was born to be noticed. She couldn’t be noticed on this
side of the path with me. Things just didn’t work like that.
They were already exchanging words, Reese flanked by
her crew and an unflinching Katie staring them all down, when I got out of the
car. The door banged shut and everybody jumped, even me. I guessed I’d shut it
harder than I’d meant to. Reese tried her butterfly-kill stare but when I was
next to Katie, I sometimes thought I might be able to stand up to them too. Like
her force field automatically expanded to shield me as well as her.
Just like with Jackson, I shot Reese my new you-suck
look. But instead of running away, she threw her head back and laughed. It was
so Wizard of Oz witchy, but worked for her somehow. My new and obviously faked
confidence waned until Katie’s hand grabbed my arm.
This cut Reese short as her bitch radar zeroed in on
Katie’s delicate fingers. I knew what was going to come out of her mouth the
second her eyes twinkled and her lips curled into a smirk.
“Congratulations, Katie. I’m so happy for you.”
It was the sickeningly sweet voice that threw Katie off
for a second, stunning her. I’d swear in front of Congress Reese Barnes was
bipolar.
“I think it’s great you two are finally together. It’s
been a long time coming.” Reese looked around and saddled up to Katie like they
were co-conspirators again. The semi-whisper that came from her was dual-edged.
It was supposed to be a whisper, but the kind of whisper that she hoped
everyone around us could hear. “I know how much you always talked about it
before. Your deepest darkest secret.”
Hope surged inside my chest. Reese wasn’t someone
you wanted to trust, but I’d take scraps from anyone.
The thickening crowd around us snickered and
everyone switched their gazes between Katie and me that read, She wanted him? How is that possible?
Katie had fallen from the very top of the social
ladder rung, but for someone like her, it was impossible to fall as far down as
I was.
Reese winked at me. My stomach knotted. She used to
do that when we were little, but back then, I was in on the joke. Now I was the
joke.
“Careful, Nic,” she said, her voice louder now, “When
you do your research about how to have sex, pay close attention to the section
on protection. Katie comes from a fertile family and the last thing the school
administrators need is another teenage pregnancy statistic to pass on to the
state. Disgusting how they’re all from the same family too.”
Katie stepped forward but I clasped my hand around
her fingers still circling my arm. Reese wasn’t in front of us still anyway.
Once she delivered the final blow, she left. That was her MO. And a good one
too. It ensured she always got the last word and, with Reese, it was most
likely the last laugh too.
Katie’s eyes were closed when I looked at her. I
uncurled her fingers from my arm and brought our hands down between us and
squeezed her small fingers. Her eyes fluttered open and her lips curled into a
half smile.
Squeezing her fingers again, I said, “Did she just
insinuate I wouldn’t know how to have sex unless I looked it up first? She does
realize I’m far smarter than her, right? My IQ is probably double.”
Her face broke into a smile that warmed my insides.
The first real smile all day. If I had balls instead of brains, I’d pull her
toward me and show everyone, including Reese’s crew, just what I really thought
of Katie Ross. If she kissed me back, the scene would probably turn into X
territory really quick because I’d combust inside.
But I couldn’t shut my brain off and my brain was
always telling me what everyone else’s looks confirmed. It was impossible for
Katie to feel the same way about me. It would bend the rules of physics and
everyone knows physics can’t be bent. Facts were facts. And fact was, girls like
Katie didn’t like guys like me. Guys like me were quarantined to the friend
zone.
Right on cue, Katie said, “You’re a good friend.”
And though I smiled and nodded, deep, deep down, I
wanted to maim the person who invented the word friend. That guy was probably never stuck in the friend zone with
someone for years. I wanted outside the zone. I wanted to be so far outside the
zone I couldn’t see the property line.
Katie was quiet as we walked toward the front
entrance to the school. Somewhere between the showdown and here, she’d dropped
my hand, and it was currently wallowing in the empty space between us.
When we walked through the double doors, it was like
any other day. Reese and Jer, Katie’s ex-boyfriend, made out near the hallway
that led into the cafeteria. The rest of the Skeletal Crew left the first lunch
table one-by-one on the arms of guys in letter jackets. Soon, most everyone was
cleared from the hallway except for the group around Jackson’s locker. My
group.
Katie was an implant to the group since Reese dumped
her at the beginning of last year. She still didn’t quite fit in fully, but I
got the sense it didn’t bother her that much.
As we walked toward them, Katie said, “Do you have
any Shakespeare revenge quotes in your arsenal?”
I waved to Jackson who’d just spotted us. “I don’t
know, but it’d probably come from Hamlet. He’s one pissed off character.”
Thoughts seemingly somewhere else, she pulled on my
sleeve before we reached my friends. “I’m going to go to the computer lab
before homeroom. I’ll see you later?”
I couldn’t keep myself from frowning. “Yeah. Yeah,
sure. See you later.”
She pulled her book bag up higher on her shoulder
and walked away.
When I turned back, Jackson was smirking. My brain
started firing scenarios to me all at once and not one of them left me feeling
easy. Jackson would say something about Katie. I would get pissed off. It
wouldn’t end well.
Instead of walking up to them, I raised a hand and
said, “Check you guys later,” then walked in the opposite direction Katie had gone.
About the AuthorErin Butler is lucky enough to have two jobs she truly loves. As a librarian, she gets to work with books all day long, and as an author, Erin uses her active imagination to write the kinds of books she loves to read. Young Adult and New Adult books are her favorites, but she especially fangirls over a sigh-worthy romance.
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or @ErinButler on Twitter!
Goodreads | Website | Twitter | Facebook
She lives in Central New York with her very understanding husband, a stepson, and doggie BFF, Maxie. Preferring to spend her time indoors reading or writing, she'll only willingly go outside for chocolate and sunshine--in that order.
Erin is the author of BLOOD HEX, a YA paranormal novel, HOW WE LIVED, a contemporary NA novel, and the forthcoming YA contemporary romance title, FINDING MR. DARCY: HIGH SCHOOL EDITION. Find out more about her at www.erinbutlerbooks.com or @ErinButler on Twitter!
Goodreads | Website | Twitter | Facebook
Thanks so much for having FALLING FOR SHAKESPEARE on your blog today, Hadassah! I really appreciate it!!
ReplyDeleteM pleasure! ♥ :D
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