And then there’s Jude.
As I step on the mat activating the automatic doors to the drugstore (just a chain store, but with a redbrick entrance and striped awning to make it look nicer than it is), my phone buzzes again in my pocket, and my hands fumble to pull it out.
Still not Jude, and my heart sinks a little.
Can you get tampons while you’re there? Aunt Vi asks, and I text her back that I will.
Inside the drugstore, the air-conditioning is going full blast, raising goose bumps on my arms and legs, and I hurriedly get the cookies and the tampons, stepping back into the sunshine with a relieved sigh, the bag dangling at my side.
I turn to head back, and as I glance up, I see two people standing by the fountain.
The girl isn’t facing me, but I’d know that hair anywhere.
Jude.
Like all my angsting over her text conjured her up or something.
Except I’m pretty sure that if I’d magically made Jude appear, I wouldn’t have also brought forth Mason Coleman.
And they for sure would not be kissing.
My heart is pounding so hard in my chest that it almost hurts, a dull roar in my ears.
They’re kissing. Jude and Mason. Kissing. By the fountain because yay, cliché, I guess, and also kissing, kissing, Jude is kissing someone, and it’s not me, and I am such an idiot.
My face hot and my throat tight, I duck my head and try to move past them as quickly as I can, tears blurring my eyes.
And maybe that’s why I don’t see the oh-so-charming old-fashioned sandwich board in front of Y Tu Taco También until I crash into it, sending it clattering to the ground.
“No,” I whisper, possibly at the universe itself.
But the universe is clearly not on my side today because I hear Mason call my name.
Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I count to three before turning to see him and Jude walking over to me, their fingers interlocked as Mason pulls her along behind him.
Of course Mason has no idea that this is weird. As far as he knows, we’re all friends. Have been since middle school. There shouldn’t be anything weird about me seeing him and Jude together, and also together.
But Jude had said we were an us.
The us-iest.
And now she seems to be us-ing pretty hard with Mason. Again.
“Hi!” I say, way too loud, waggling my fingers at them. Unfortunately, when I lift my hand, I’ve still got the drugstore bag dangling from it, and the flimsy plastic strap chooses that second to slide off my wrist, sending two boxes of Teddy Grahams and one package of Tampax onto Mason’s feet.
I hate . . . literally everything about my life right now.
Mason, to his credit, doesn’t get weird about picking up cookies and feminine hygiene products. Honestly, that just makes it worse. If he were the kind of jackass who seemed afraid of tampons, I could at least feel superior to him.
I smile, taking my stuff and shoving it back in the plastic sack. “Thanks. Those aren’t mine. The cookies or the . . . I mean, I eat cookies, and I use tampons, because duh, but I was just . . . my aunt . . .”
“No worries,” Mason says cheerfully. “I have sisters.”
“Right,” I reply, but I’m still looking past him at Jude.
She’s smiling at Mason, but I see the tightness of her shoulders, how she keeps playing with his fingers nervously.
I cannot cry here in this fake town square, holding tampons and cookies in front of a taqueria, so I nod, then jerk my thumb toward the next block.
“Well, hope y’all are having a good summer. I’m just gonna . . . head back. See you later!”
I’ve salvaged about as much dignity as a girl who just basically flung tampons at the girl she likes and the boy the girl picked over her possibly can.
I’m at the corner when my phone buzzes, and this time, finally, it’s the text I was waiting for.
But all Jude says is I’m sorry.
I don’t bother replying, making my way back to Aunt Vi’s as quickly as my legs will carry me.
Unlocking her door, I toss the bag down by the not- Himalayan-salt bowl and go into the living room, flopping myself back into the uncomfortable chair, my face still flaming, my eyes burning.
On-screen, Callum and Helena are, for once, not doing it or being threatened by evil Brits. Instead, they’re on horses, galloping over rocky terrain, craggy hills rising around them and disappearing into the mist.
Something lurches in my chest looking at them, and I think of the letter in my purse again. The school that I’d been turning down for Jude.
The phone in my pocket buzzes again.
I ignore it.
“I’d give up flushing toilets for that,” I say to Aunt Vi, pointing at the screen. “You can keep the hot dude.”
Aunt Vi looks over and blinks like she’s just realized I’ve come back, then she laughs a little, shaking her head.
“Oh, right, you and the Scotland thing. Didn’t you apply to a school there?”
I nod. We’re in full montage mode now, Callum and Helena passing through valley and vale, and there are more of those green, stony hills, more shifting sunlight behind clouds, more glimmers of a gray ocean in the background. If I were there, wandering the Highlands in 1780-whatever, I definitely wouldn’t bump into Jude and Mason. I wouldn’t accidentally throw tampons at anyone. I’d be . . . a whole new Millie, probably.
“Well, there you go,” Aunt Vi says, getting up and heading for the cookies. “You don’t have to time-travel to get to Scotland.”
She gets the box and comes back into the living room, frowning slightly as she sees I bought Actual Cookies, not those fat-free ones she usually buys. But then she shrugs and tears into the box anyway. “Literally just a plane ride away,” she says through a mouthful of cinnamon bears. “You could be there tomorrow if you had a passport and enough money.”
I stare at her for a second, then look back at the screen. She’s right. Scotland is a real place. A place that’s relatively easy to get to. A place with a school that already let me in.
“Yeah,” I say to Aunt Vi, but I’m still looking at the screen, my heart thumping hard in my chest.
Getting away from here. Not having to deal with seeing Mason and Jude kiss against lockers. Not hearing Darcy’s I Told You So, or seeing Lee’s sympathetic looks.
I could just go somewhere else.
Start over.
Me.
Scotland.
CHAPTER 4