Noah Frye Gets Crushed (eBook)

Maggie Horne (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
304 Seiten
Firefly Press Ltd (Verlag)
9781915444547 (ISBN)

Infos

Best friends Luna and Zoey can't stop talking about boys and kissing, but Noah just wants everything to go back to the way it was. To fit in, Noah pretends that she likes Archie, a boy from school, even though she's not quite sure. When new girl Jessa joins their group things get even more confusing. Can Noah admit to herself who she really likes, not who she thinks she should?

Maggie Horne grew up near Toronto, Canada and studied at Oxford Brookes University, where she obtained both a BA in Publishing Media and a wife, which was a pretty good deal. She's now a writer and editor living outside of Ottawa with her family. Her writing has been featured in Catapult and on Medium's Mental Health and LGBTQ pages.

Textauszug

1.
Things I Missed About Home

1. My bed
2. The dogs
3. Luna and Zoey

It takes twenty-seven minutes on the Saturday I get home from camp to realise that something’s different.

It goes like this:

I get home at 10:22. From 10:22 until 10:32, I’m settling in. I throw the duffel bag that smells like lake and unwashed laundry into one corner of my room and collapse onto my sweet, sweet bed. My bed that doesn’t smell like all the other girls who have slept on it over the years. My bed that doesn’t have one weird spring that pokes me in the middle of the night. My bed that’s in my own room, away from the sound of ten other people snoring. My beautiful, perfect bed.

I’m getting off-topic, but my camp bed was truly awful.

10:33 until 10:37: the doorbell rings and I launch up. When we got our phones back at the end of camp, Luna had already texted me to say she was going to run to my house the second she saw my sister drive down our street.

Luna pounds up the stairs and bolts into my room, leaping into my arms. The problem is, she’s been, like, a foot taller than me for the last year and she keeps forgetting about it. She knocks both of us over and two of the pugs spring into action to try and rescue us. Unfortunately, ‘rescuing’ to Liza and Minnelli means a lot of snuffling and face licking.

‘Hi,’ I say, once I’ve crawled out from under the combined chaos of Luna’s weirdly long limbs and the dogs.

10:38 until 10:42: Luna and I sit on my bed and I tell her all about camp.

‘It was seriously incredible,’ I say. ‘We need to figure out how to get you out there next summer. I know Zoey’s gonna be doing her theatre thing, but—’

‘Ooh, Zoey!’ Luna lights up before I even have time to tell her about the best part of camp. ‘I texted her when I saw your mom’s car. She said she was just getting back, but she’d be here as soon as she could.’

10:43 until 10:47:

‘I’m sorry you were stuck here all summer,’ I tell Luna. ‘Did you manage to have any fun between, y’know, crying endlessly about the fact that your very best friend had abandoned you?’

‘Yeah, it was tough not having Zoey here,’ Luna says, and I stuff a pillow over her face until she grabs me.

Luna shoves me over and we both laugh. ‘But seriously,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t so bad here. In fact…’

‘I have news.’

Luna and I jump up from the bed and rush over to hug Zoey. Thankfully, Luna remembers her height and, instead of jumping at Zoey, she picks her up and swings her around instead. With all three of us back in one big clump, everything feels right again. I made friends at camp who I love, but nothing beats the smell of Zoey’s coconut shampoo and the softness of Luna’s favourite shirt. I don’t fit anywhere the way I fit into us.

Zoey usually has stories to tell us. She’s what our moms call dramatic and what we call fun. My sister once told me that she’s pretty sure Zoey’s going to get us on the news one day, but she isn’t sure yet if it’ll be for a good reason.

‘You have your audience,’ I say, and Zoey just nods like yeah, obviously.

‘So,’ she says. ‘Theatre camp.’

‘Theatre camp,’ Luna agrees.

‘We did 13: The Musical,’ Zoey says, and I think Luna and I are supposed to know what that is, but we both just look at each other and shrug. Zoey doesn’t even notice. When she gets into a story, there’s pretty much no stopping her.

‘I got to be Lucy.’

I think that’s supposed to mean something. I look at Luna, but she’s no help. She’s looking at me with the same expression.

‘Congratulations?’ I try.

‘No!’ Zoey says. ‘Well, yes. Thank you, Noah. It was awesome, obviously. But don’t you get what that means?’

‘I really want to say yes,’ Luna says. ‘But that would be a lie.’

Zoey rolls her eyes at us. ‘Lucy’s the mean girl in the show. She tries to steal a girl’s boyfriend. Which means she kisses a girl’s boyfriend.’

10:48: Minute 27.

Luna gets it before I do.

‘Oh my god,’ she says. Zoey grins hugely and nods, and Luna repeats herself. ‘Oh my god!’

The two of them hug, twirling each other around. It isn’t until their second rotation that I actually realise what Zoey just said.

‘Wait, so you kissed a guy?’ I ask.

Zoey laughs. ‘I kissed literally the cutest guy in the whole camp every day for two weeks.’

‘Oh my god,’ Luna says, yet again. I prickle, just a bit. Can’t she say anything else?

But then she does say something else.

‘We’ll have to compare notes.’

‘What do you mean compare notes?’ Zoey demands. She drags Luna back to my bed and the two of them flop down on either side of me. I grin along with both of them, but there’s a sinking feeling in my stomach I can’t ignore.

‘So y’know Blake?’ Luna asks.

Do I know Blake? Blake who lives across the street? Blake who’s hung out with us since we were all little kids? Blake who ate too much ice-cream cake at my last birthday party and threw up in a kiddie pool? Blake?

‘Blake?’ I ask in shock. Maybe it’s a little rude, but, like … Blake?

‘Hey!’ Luna laughs. ‘While you two were off having your best summers ever, I got bored. Blake asked if I wanted to help him out stuffing fliers for his paper route one night. We were alone in his garage, and … yup.’

I know that and … yup means that they kissed, but there’s some part of my brain that can’t fathom it. The last time we talked this much about kissing boys, it was because we were watching reality TV in Zoey’s basement and this couple was making out so sloppily we couldn’t stop laughing at them. This feels weirdly similar. I’m sure Zoey and Luna weren’t that slobbery and weird when they had their first kisses, but it still feels off. Just a little bit wrong.

But I can’t exactly tell them that.

‘What do you mean yup?’ Zoey reaches over me to smack Luna on the arm. ‘I’m going to need a heck of a lot more detail than yup. Are you guys still talking?’

Are Luna and Blake still talking? They were giving each other piggyback rides when I left for camp. I should hope they’ve exchanged a word or two since then.

Out of the three of us, Luna’s the shy one. I always figured that, in terms of order of first kisses, it would be Zoey, me, then Luna.

I guess I missed the memo.

Luna nods. ‘Like, all the time. The other day he showed me a bunch of new clothes he got for school, and I said I liked this jacket he got, and he was like you can wear it if you ask nicely.’

‘Oh my god,’ Zoey says, yet again.

I guess that means something and, logically, I guess that means something good, but I don’t really see the connection. In fact, it kind of grosses me out that Blake thinks it’s cute to talk to Luna like she’s a little kid like that. What does he mean, if you ask nicely? Ew.

‘Y’know, at camp, I met—’

‘What are you going to do?’ Zoey asks, like Luna’s performing open-heart surgery. I don’t think she even realises that she just cut me off, but that doesn’t make it less annoying.

‘What is there to do?’ I ask, trying to elbow back into the conversation. I laugh, but it just comes out awkwardly. I never feel awkward around Luna and Zoey.

Zoey looks at me as if I’d just asked whether she wanted to bungee jump off my roof.

‘You’re kidding, right?’ she asks. When I don’t say anything, she rolls her eyes at me. It’s fond, like I’m a cute little kid. I think I would have preferred it if she’d just been outright mean. ‘There’s so much to discuss with this! Lu, are you gonna wear his coat?’

‘Not right away,’ Luna says. She doesn’t miss a beat and I peer at her to try and see what’s changed about her that hasn’t changed about me. ‘I think maybe I’ll wait until school starts. Like, maybe during lunch at some point?’

...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.5.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Jugendbücher ab 12 Jahre
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Kinderbücher bis 11 Jahre
• Schlagworte: First Love • Friendship • Identity • relationships • Sexuality
• ISBN-13: 9781915444547 / 9781915444547