Rolling Dice

  There was just nothing for me in Pineford. By the end of my sophomore year I’d pretty much stopped trying in class, and it wasn’t like I had a million friends and a busy social life I was leaving behind.

  So when Mom tentatively asked me, “Madison, honey, do you think you’ll really, really be all right if we move to Florida?” my reply was instantaneous:

  “Can I start packing now?” Because moving to Florida meant I could have a whole new life.

  My sister Jenna was the girl everyone knew back at my school in Pineford. She was on the homecoming committee, she was class president, the blonde cheerleader who got the beauty and the brains. The All-American It Girl.

  Then there was me.

  And I just … I wasn’t Jenna.

  I tried, though. And I was happy enough to keep to myself—though it wasn’t out of choice that I’d never really gone to parties, been part of high-school gossip, had a boyfriend … I didn’t make myself the lonely loser; it was a spot in high school designated for me by other people.

  But moving to Midsommer, in Collier County, Florida, was my big chance for a completely new life. Nobody was going to judge me by the standards my sister had set. Nobody had to know what I’d been like in the last couple of years.

  I could be me.

  Just, you know, a better version of me.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Beth Reeks

  Cover art copyright © Getty Images

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Simultaneously published in paperback by Random House Publishers UK and as an ebook by RHCP Digital, imprints of Random House Group Company, London, 2013.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  978-0-385-37872-7 (eBook ISBN)

  A Delacorte Press eBook Edition

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For the Fishbowl, whose endless antics will

  fuel my imagination for a long time to come

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Kissing Booth

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “Uh, a latte, please,” I say, not even looking up at the waiter. I don’t know why I ordered that. I don’t even like coffee. I’m an iced or herbal tea kind of girl.

  But sitting here in this smart café with its posh name—Langlois—makes me feel so … I don’t know—cosmopolitan? Upper-class? Cool?

  “Coming right up.”

  The waiter walks off, and I focus all my attention back on the cell phone in my hands. It’s some swanky new model—it has a slide-out keypad, 3G Internet, unlimited texts, stores tons of music … It sounds like a good phone. It looks like a good phone. The woman in the store said it was a good phone.

  Shame I have no idea how to work it.

  The manual is on the table beside me, but the spine is stiff, the book unwilling to stay open at the page telling me how to set up the Internet.

  I mean, it’s not like I know what I’m doing. Not only am I kind of useless when it comes to technology—unless it involves downloading and converting music files—I’ve never had a cell phone before. I’ve never really needed one. It’s not like I got out much back in Pineford.

  I don’t think of it as “back home.” Why should I? I don’t miss it.

  We’ve been here in Florida for ten days and counting. And I love it already. It isn’t just a chance for me to turn over a new leaf; it’s a chance for me to have a whole new life.

  A throat clears, distracting me just as I think I’ve worked this Internet thing out.

  I realize why the guy doesn’t just put the steaming white mug down on my table: my purse, the empty cell-phone box, wires, and the tiny manual are covering every inch of space.

  “Oh, sorry!” I apologize automatically. I sweep my bag off and bundle the wires haphazardly into the box.

  He sets the latte down, and for the first time I really look at him. He isn’t anything special. You wouldn’t look at him and think Omigod! because he’s so hot. But he is, I have to admit, kind of cute.

  The black uniform and dark green apron probably make him look a little paler than he really is. He has a long bony nose and really bright green eyes with thick, dark eyelashes. His dark hair is short, in tight half-curls. If he ever let it grow longer, I bet he’d have a mass of springy ringlets most girls would envy. His long limbs make him look kind of gangly, though.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Anything else I can get you?”

  “No, thanks, that’s fine.”

  I look back at my new cell, then at the manual again—I’m holding it open with my elbow. It sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, to be honest. But there is no way I’d ever figure out this darn thing by myself.

  “Do you, uh, need a hand?”

  I blink, looking up at him. I hadn’t even realized he was still there.

  “Don’t you have people to serve?” I probably sound like a stuck-up snob, but I don’t mean to; I’m just getting frustrated with the phone. I’ve been here for at least ten minutes already trying to work out one tiny thing.

  “We’re not that busy—I think I can spare a few minutes.”

  He sweeps a hand around and I see he’s right: a group of three gossiping girls, a couple tucked away in the corner, and a man typing away on his laptop.

  “Everybody’s at the beach,” he carries on by way of explanation. “Enjoying the last few days of summer before school kicks in. Usually this place is heaving.”

  I nod.

  “So—you want some help or not?” He gives me an easy, friendly smile. It’s kind of lopsided, going up higher on the left, but it looks quirky and cute on him.

  I don’t know if it’s the smile or just that I really do need the help, but I give in.

  “Please?” I say, laughing sheepishly.

  He scrapes out the chair opposite me, dropping into it. “What’re you trying to do?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure. It said something about having to set up the Internet before you can use it, and
there’s some kind of code on the box, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  He holds out a hand and I pass the cell phone over. I hover over the manual, wondering if he needs it, or if I’m just an idiot.

  He doesn’t need the manual, as it turns out.

  “What’s the code?”

  I read it out off the box, and after a few taps on the cell phone he hands it back. “There you go. All done.”

  I smile. “Thanks! I swear, technology has a vendetta against me. I almost broke the microwave last week.”

  It was a bit of an exaggeration, sure. I’d put it on the wrong setting and my pasta had exploded, and then the microwave shut itself off automatically.

  The guy laughs.

  That’s nice too—somewhere between a big, hearty laugh and a chuckle. But it makes me want to smile.

  Now he’s closer to me, I see there are freckles scattered all over his face, clumped around his nose and thinning out as they spread over his cheeks.

  “You’re new around here, then? I’d have seen you before, otherwise.”

  “We just moved here. From Maine.”

  “Nice. My cousins live up there. I’ve been a few times for Thanksgiving.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You prefer Florida?”

  I nod, maybe a bit too enthusiastically, since he gives a chuckle. “Better weather, for one thing.”

  “You haven’t seen the storms yet.”

  “Can’t wait,” I say, semi-sarcastic, and he smiles again.

  I’d been so worried that it would be hard to make friends here; that things would be just the same as they had been in Pineford; that people just wouldn’t want to get to know me. Especially being the new girl: that could go one of two ways, as I see it. They’d either be fascinated by the shiny new toy, or they’d shun me automatically.

  It’s not that I can’t talk to people, or that I’m not friendly. I’d just never had people interested in talking to me. Years of that makes a person a little shy, to say the least.

  But making friends is easier than I’d anticipated.

  “What school do you go to?” I ask, feeling brave. He looks around my age, but maybe he’s a senior.

  “Midsommer. I guess you’re enrolled there too, right?”

  I nod—yet again. “I’m a junior. Well, I will be, in a couple of days, anyway.”

  He laughs again. “Same.” He holds out a hand. “I’m Dwight.”

  Dwight?

  Now, that is a weird name, I think. I have never in my entire life heard of anybody called Dwight. But somehow, it fits this guy.

  “Madison,” I introduce myself, shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise. How come you’re not at the beach, then? Catching some last-minute sun, checking out the guys?”

  “I didn’t really feel like going on my own. Plus, I needed a new cell.”

  I say “new” on purpose. It’d seem weird if I told him I’d never owned a cell before now.

  “Ah.”

  “What about you?” I counter.

  “The waves are no good today,” he says, “but I had to cover a shift anyway.”

  “Waves?”

  “For surfing.”

  “Oh. Cool.” I scrutinize him a little. He doesn’t look like a surfer. I’d always pictured surfers as broad-shouldered, muscled guys with shaggy blond hair. And I’d have thought surfers would be tanned from being out in the sun so much. He looks too pale and gangly.

  I sip the latte to fill the silence a little, and can’t stop myself from making a face.

  Yup. I will definitely never order a latte again.

  “Too hot?” he assumes.

  “Uh, yeah … Thanks for the help,” I say quickly.

  “Give me a shout if you need anything else, okay? I’ve got to get back to work before the boss tells me to stop mingling with the customers.” He smiles at me again. “I’ll see you around?”

  It sounds like a question rather than a statement, so I reply, “Yeah, sure.”

  “Nice meeting you, Madison.”

  “Nice meeting you too, Dwight,” I say to his retreating back.

  Looks like you just made a friend.

  And I feel all light and bubbly inside. Maybe fitting in here won’t be so hard after all.

  Chapter 2

  Great-Aunt Gina’s death is probably the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Now, don’t get me wrong—I loved her, and I miss her now. But she had her “favorites” in the family. I mean, okay, so my dad’s brother and his family live over in Nevada, so they were too far away for an old lady to visit. But it was us who Great-Aunt Gina came to for Thanksgiving and Christmas. She’d send my cousins a check in the mail instead.

  When I was little, I’ll admit I was totally scared of her. She was eighty-nine when she croaked. A tall, bony lady with thin gray hair and false teeth that always fell out and clacked together noisily when she spoke. But when I saw the photos, I realized why she’d been some big-shot model in her younger years. Despite her scary-old-lady appearance, though, Great-Aunt Gina had been a genuinely nice person.

  She’d lived in Florida, in a big house by the sea. And when she died, she left us everything.

  And I do mean everything. A massive inheritance, her house, and all the vintage clothes and jewelry.

  At first we weren’t sure what to do about it. Sell the property and maybe upgrade to a nicer house in Maine? Keep it as a vacation home?

  I still don’t remember who suggested moving to Florida. But whoever it was, I owe them big time.

  Dad looked into it. He found a private clinic near the beach where Great-Aunt Gina’s house was, and they were looking for a new doctor. Mom found a nice three-bedroom house with a big garden, and even a small pool, in the suburbs, near a high school. Being a teacher in elementary school, my mom didn’t have too hard a time getting a new job in Florida.

  Jenna, my older sister, was already out of Maine by then; she currently attends NYU, and she didn’t care if we moved from Pineford, Maine, or not. She was out of there, and she planned to stay out.

  “It’s so boring. Nothing happens here,” she’d told Mom and Dad when they asked why she didn’t apply to college closer to home. “Besides, the course looks better in New York. Plus, I want to get out, see the world. That’s not happening if I stay in Pineford.”

  The only thing that might’ve stopped them from going ahead was me. And I could not wait to move.

  There was just nothing for me in Pineford. By the end of my sophomore year I’d pretty much stopped trying in class, and it wasn’t like I had a million friends and a busy social life I was leaving behind.

  So when Mom tentatively asked me, “Madison, honey, do you think you’ll really, really be all right if we move to Florida?” my reply was instantaneous:

  “Can I start packing now?” Because moving to Florida meant I could have a whole new life.

  My sister, Jenna, was the girl everyone knew back at my school in Pineford. She was on the homecoming committee, she was class president, the blond cheerleader who got the beauty and the brains. The All-American It Girl.

  Then there was me.

  And I just … I wasn’t Jenna.

  I tried, though. And I was happy enough to keep to myself—though it wasn’t out of choice that I’d never really gone to parties, been part of high-school gossip, had a boyfriend … I didn’t make myself the lonely loser; it was a spot in high school designated for me by other people.

  But moving to Midsommer, in Collier County, Florida, was my big chance for a completely new life. Nobody was going to judge me by the standards my sister had set. Nobody had to know what I’d been like in the last couple of years.

  I could be me.

  Just, you know, a better version of me.

  I pick up the little spoon that rests on my coffee saucer and turn it over in my hands, angling it so I can see my distorted reflection in the back of it. I’m still getting used to s
eeing a stranger when I look in the mirror.

  When I realized I could build a whole new life for myself by moving here, I also realized that this was really the perfect time for a makeover. Because that’s what people do, right? They move someplace new and re-create themselves to be a whole new, better person, don’t they? So that’s what I wanted to do.

  Okay, I didn’t have to do anything too drastic. Fatty Maddie had disappeared over a year ago—it was just that nobody had cared enough about me to notice. I lost the braces last Christmas. I’d had contacts since February too, and lost those hideous glasses.

  But when people have this opinion of you, it’s very hard to change it. They’ve judged you, and they like to label you, and they like you to stay with that label forever. You’ve been allocated a place in their society, and that’s where they want you to stay.

  So even when I lost weight, even when I had my braces taken off, even when I started wearing contacts simply because they were more convenient than glasses, nobody cared. People can be shallow and superficial, but sometimes they’re too selfish to care about you.

  It got to the point where I stopped caring. Once you build up walls, it’s hard to tear them back down.

  Now, though, I do care, for once, what people are going to think of me.

  The new Madison is cool, spontaneous, daring.

  Looking at my stretched-out reflection in the spoon, I can kind of believe I’m on my way to the new Madison.

  I touch a hand to my hair—not out of vanity, but because I’m still getting used to having, like, no hair. It’s a pretty drastic change, actually: I had long hair my whole life. On anyone else—like Jenna—people might’ve envied it. But considering my hair was a bland shade of dishwater blond, and I didn’t even have layers or bangs to liven it up a little, you can see why I cut it all off.

  Well, not all. But close enough.

  Mom flipped when she saw what I’d had done at the little salon in our town. She went all bug-eyed and gawped at me. “I thought you said you were just going a little bit shorter!”

  But now I smile at myself in the tiny silver spoon, because I love my new hair. I opted for a short bob, the hair longer at the front so that it frames my face. I got some lowlights as well as highlights to try and make it look a bit less dull. Oh, and the sweeping side bangs that almost obscure my left eye give me a kind of “rock-chic edge,” according to Bobby, my hairdresser. I took his word on that one.