Chapter One Emily I was in the eighth grade when I met him, and I was just starting to get used to my new life as a middle-schooler. I had been home-schooled for almost all of my life, and I was finally starting to transition into a world where I would be seen and heard. The transition wasn’t going very well. I was too shy to speak up in classes, and I was having trouble making friends. I didn’t have a problem with people, but people seemed to have a problem with me. They thought that I was a snob, because I wore expensive clothes and carried around expensive bags. My mom had been giving me her old designer bags for as long as I could remember, and I hadn’t really thought much about it. That was until my classmate Alex mentioned something about it one day when we were walking home from school together. We lived in the same neighborhood, and his house was right next to mine. Our parents were always pressuring us to be friends, because they knew that our families were close. “Do you know that people think you’re a snob?” Alex asked me one day when we were walking home from school. I looked over at Alex, and my face turned bright red. I had always been shy around boys, especially boys like Alex. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He looked like he was in high school, but he was actually just a year older than me. He was in the ninth grade and he had started at the same junior high school as me that year. “Why would they say that?” I asked him. “Because of your bags,” he said. “You know that most kids don’t carry around Gucci and Prada bags, right?” I looked down at the bag that I was carrying, and I felt my face turn even redder. It was a Gucci bag that my mom had given to me before I had started school that year. I hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, but now that Alex mentioned it, it did seem kind of snobby. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “These are my mom’s bags.” Alex laughed out loud when he heard my excuse, and he gave me a look of disbelief. “I doubt that your mom really gives you her bags,” he said. “She probably just buys you new ones every week.” I looked at Alex and his baggy jeans and hoodie, and I felt even more self-conscious about what I was wearing. He definitely didn’t look like he came from the same kind of family as me. He looked like he could have been from the wrong side of the tracks. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “My mom has always been generous with me.” Alex stopped walking for a moment and turned to look at me. He gave me a once-over, and then he spit on the ground. “Your mom doesn’t even work,” he said. “She’s just some trophy wife who married into money.” I felt my face turn even redder when he said that. It was true that my mom didn’t work, but she wasn’t a trophy wife either. My dad had died when I was really young, and my mom had inherited his money. She didn’t have to work because she had money of her own. “You don’t know anything about my mom,” I said defensively. Alex started walking again, and I hurried to keep up with him. “I know enough,” he said. “I see her at the country club all of the time with her snobby friends.”

Mar 19

Scenario: a love story about a girl and a boy in junior high school. they are cousins.

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Chapter OneEmilyI was in the eighth grade when I met him, and I was just starting to get used to my new life as a middle-schooler. I had been home-schooled for almost all of my life, and I was finally starting to transition into a world where I would be seen and heard. The transition wasn’t going very well. I was too shy to speak up in classes, and I was having trouble making friends.I didn’t have a problem with people, but people seemed to have a problem with me. They thought that I was a snob, because I wore expensive clothes and carried around expensive bags. My mom had been giving me her old designer bags for as long as I could remember, and I hadn’t really thought much about it.That was until my classmate Alex mentioned something about it one day when we were walking home from school together. We lived in the same neighborhood, and his house was right next to mine. Our parents were always pressuring us to be friends, because they knew that our families were close.“Do you know that people think you’re a snob?” Alex asked me one day when we were walking home from school.I looked over at Alex, and my face turned bright red. I had always been shy around boys, especially boys like Alex. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He looked like he was in high school, but he was actually just a year older than me. He was in the ninth grade and he had started at the same junior high school as me that year.“Why would they say that?” I asked him.“Because of your bags,” he said. “You know that most kids don’t carry around Gucci and Prada bags, right?”I looked down at the bag that I was carrying, and I felt my face turn even redder. It was a Gucci bag that my mom had given to me before I had started school that year. I hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, but now that Alex mentioned it, it did seem kind of snobby.“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “These are my mom’s bags.”Alex laughed out loud when he heard my excuse, and he gave me a look of disbelief.“I doubt that your mom really gives you her bags,” he said. “She probably just buys you new ones every week.”I looked at Alex and his baggy jeans and hoodie, and I felt even more self-conscious about what I was wearing. He definitely didn’t look like he came from the same kind of family as me. He looked like he could have been from the wrong side of the tracks.“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “My mom has always been generous with me.”Alex stopped walking for a moment and turned to look at me. He gave me a once-over, and then he spit on the ground.“Your mom doesn’t even work,” he said. “She’s just some trophy wife who married into money.”I felt my face turn even redder when he said that. It was true that my mom didn’t work, but she wasn’t a trophy wife either. My dad had died when I was really young, and my mom had inherited his money. She didn’t have to work because she had money of her own.“You don’t know anything about my mom,” I said defensively.Alex started walking again, and I hurried to keep up with him.“I know enough,” he said. “I see her at the country club all of the time with her snobby friends.”

Alex is my cousins. when we left home and went to county town school, we are living in an apartment off campus.“Those aren’t her friends,” I said. “Those are my aunts.”Alex stopped walking again and looked at me with his mouth open. He was completely speechless.“Aunts?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”I didn’t know what to say to Alex. I wasn’t supposed to talk about my aunts. Nobody in my family ever talked about them, and I didn’t even know if they knew that my mom and I existed. It was kind of a secret that I wasn’t supposed to know, but for some reason, I knew that I could trust Alex with the information.“My mom has three sisters,” I said. “They live in a small town about two hours from here.”Alex’s jaw dropped, and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. He knew exactly what that meant, and so did I.“Your mom has three sisters?” he asked me.I nodded and stared at Alex, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t.“Are they still alive?”he asked me after a long pause.

Chapter 4 - I Can Never Date YouI shrugged. “I think so. I’ve never met them before.”A few weeks before, my mom had gotten a letter in the mail. She got lots of letters because she was always ordering things from catalogs, but this one was different. It had no return address, and it was just addressed to Mrs. Davenport. The letter inside the envelope said that my mom’s sister had died and that they were sorry for her loss. The letter made my mom cry, but when I asked her who had died, she wouldn’t talk to me about it.Even though I didn’t know the name of the sister who died, it was clear to both Alex and me what this meant.My whole life, I had grown up with just my mom, who was an only child, and my grandparents. My dad’s parents died when he was a kid, and they were killed in a car crash. My mom’s dad died when I was a baby, and then her mom died when I was four years old. The only people who were left in the family were my mom, me, and her three mystery sisters.“I know their names,” Alex said suddenly as we continued walking toward school.I could tell by the look on his face that he was trying to keep himself from grinning from ear to ear.“Bridget, Deirdre, and Celia,” he said.I nodded. “Bridget is the one who died,” I said quietly. “She’s the one who sent the letter.”The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together in my head, even though a part of me didn’t want to accept it.

I couldn’t believe how easily the words were spilling out of my mouth.Alex was looking at me strangely out of the corner of his eye. “You met her?”I shook my head. “My mom just got the letter a few weeks ago. When did she die?”“About six months ago,” he said. Then he stopped walking, putting his hand on my arm. We were just a few feet away from the entrance of the school. The warning bell was going to ring any second now. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”I didn’t answer him. Instead, I pushed open the door and went inside.When Alex came into the classroom a few minutes later, Ms. Fields was already standing at the front of the room. She was holding a stack of papers in her hands. It was a pop quiz.Ms. Fields hated Alex. He was always late for class or falling asleep during lectures. She had gone out of her way to make sure that Alex failed every single one of his quizzes and exams. But this time was different.As she handed me the paper, she whispered, “Good luck.” Then she quietly told Alex, “You might want to sit this one out.”“What?” he said, looking up at her. “Why?”“Just do it,” she said.Then she went back to her desk and sat down.Alex looked at me again with a strange look on his face as if he knew why this was happening.But I didn’t know why Ms. Fields had given me a free pass on the quiz, and I didn’t have time to think about it either.The bell rang about five minutes after we had all gotten settled in our seats, and then the principal came over the loudspeaker.“Good morning, students,” he said in a bored voice. “We have an emergency drill this morning. Please go directly to the auditorium and take your seats.”