Louise Rozett - Confessions Of An Angry Girl

ROSE ZARELLI, self-proclaimed word geek and angry girl, has some confessions to make...

1 I’m livid all the time. Why? My dad died. My mom barely talks. My brother abandoned us. I think I’m allowed to be irate, don’t you?

2 I make people furious regularly. Want an example? I kissed Jamie Forta, a badass guy who might be dating a cheerleader. She is now enraged and out for blood. Mine.

3 High school might as well be Mars. My best friend has been replaced by an alien, and I see red all the time. (Mars is red and “seeing red” means being angry—get it?)

Here are some other vocab words that describe my life: Inadequate. Insufferable. Intolerable.

(Don’t know what they mean? Look them up yourself.)

(Sorry. That was rude.)

“Thanks for the carnation. It’s pretty.”

“You’re welcome,” Jamie says with that slight smile that makes the back of my neck tingle with warmth.

I don’t want to be just friends with Jamie Forta.

What would happen if I leaned over and kissed him? Do I have it in me to do that? Would he stop me?

I suddenly hear myself breathing too hard and too loud. I start to feel stupid, dumb, needy. Fifteen minutes ago, Jamie Forta said we were just friends, and so what do I do? Fantasize about kissing him. It’s crazy. This whole thing is crazy.

Confessions of an Angry Girl

Louise Rozett

www.miraink.co.uk

For Alex Bhattacharji,

who helps me—in so many ways—to do the work I love

Thanks to The Feedback Pack—Alex Bhattacharji, Jean & Ron Rozett, Michael Rozett, Lynn Festa, Spencer Kayden, Elisa Zuritsky, Tim Brien, Rachael Dorr, Monica Khanna, and Becky Sandler. You’re all so darn smart.

Special thanks to Barb & Sean Patrick, for arranging a phenomenal day for me at Fairfield Ludlowe High School. And of course, special thanks to Hamden High School, and to all the great teachers and wonderful friends I encountered there who helped make high school everything it should be. (Truly!)

Super special thanks to Natashya Wilson of Harlequin Teen, who challenged me to find out what was really making Rose Zarelli so mad, and to Emmanuelle Morgen of Stonesong. Thank you both for taking a chance on our angry girl—and on me.

Contents

Prologue PROLOGUE THIS, DEAR READER, is a tale of the hell of high school. Of being dropped into a world where it seems like everyone is speaking a foreign language. Where friends become enemies and enemies become nightmares. Where life suddenly seems like a string of worst-case scenarios from health-class movies. This is a story about a girl with a stellar vocabulary who is four years away from college and a year and a half away from a driver’s license. About a girl trapped in a hostile universe where the virginity clock is ticking down—relentlessly—with zero consideration for her extenuating, traumatic, life-altering circumstances. This is a story about death. About the occasional panic attack, the inability to shut up and high school in the suburbs without a cell phone. Read it and weep.

Fall FALL

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Winter

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Spring

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Preview

PROLOGUE

THIS, DEAR READER, is a tale of the hell of high school. Of being dropped into a world where it seems like everyone is speaking a foreign language. Where friends become enemies and enemies become nightmares. Where life suddenly seems like a string of worst-case scenarios from health-class movies.

This is a story about a girl with a stellar vocabulary who is four years away from college and a year and a half away from a driver’s license. About a girl trapped in a hostile universe where the virginity clock is ticking down—relentlessly—with zero consideration for her extenuating, traumatic, life-altering circumstances.

This is a story about death. About the occasional panic attack, the inability to shut up and high school in the suburbs without a cell phone.

Read it and weep.

FALL

plummet (verb): to fall suddenly, sharply, steeply

(see also: to start high school)

1

“JAMIE. YOU GONNA eat that? Jame. That bagel. You gonna eat it? ’Cause I’m really hungry, man. My mom threw me out before I could eat my cereal. And she didn’t give me a dime.”

Jamie slides the half bagel dripping with butter over to Angelo without looking up from drawing on the back of his notebook. Angelo is silent for thirty seconds, and then he’s on the make again, looking for someone else’s leftovers. The PA system screeches with feedback, and the din gets louder as everyone tries to talk over it.

“Good morning, Union High. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.” The brightly colored riot-proof seats welded to the cafeteria tables left over from the 1970s creak as period-one study hall drags itself to its feet to say words that we haven’t thought about and don’t understand—or can’t make ourselves say. Jamie stays seated, his pencil slowly tracing the lines of his drawing.

“Forta, is that your assigned seat?” Jamie nods at Mr. Cella, the gym teacher who would probably rather be anywhere other than chaperoning first-period study hall. “Then get out of it and join the rest of us in pledging allegiance to this fine country of ours,” Mr. Cella says kind of sarcastically as he moves on to the next table.

Jamie looks around and sees that people are in the middle of the pledge. By the time he stands up, everyone is sitting down already.

“Jame, you got any money? I’m still starvin’, man. I just need another bagel or a piece of toast or something. I’ll pay you back tomorrow. I just need, like, a dollar. You got that? Could I have it?”

Jamie reaches into his pockets for change, coming up with a quarter. He hands it to Angelo, who looks majorly disappointed.

“This all you got, Jame?”

“Here. Here’s seventy-five cents.” The slightly sweaty freshman girl in the blue cotton sweater at the end of the table, also known as me, reaches out three quarters, glad to have made it through another pledge to the flag without throwing up. I don’t exactly feel like swearing my allegiance to America these days, and I probably won’t for a long time, if ever.

Angelo looks at the quarters suspiciously. Maybe he’s unsure why I’m suddenly talking to him after not speaking for the first three days of school. He probably thinks I’m a snob, but I’m really just afraid to look up from my books. I just survived the worst summer of my life, and I don’t remember how to talk to people. Plus, I just started high school—this guy has probably been here for more than his share of four years.

The PA system squawks, “Have a good day,” before shutting off. Angelo takes the quarters from me slowly.

“Thanks. Do I gotta pay you back?”

“Um, not if you…can’t.”

Angelo stares hard, keeping his eyes on me as he swaggers backward over to the pile of bagels on the counter. He picks one and then smiles at me. I quickly look back down at my books, thinking I might have made a mistake, being nice to one of the vocational-technical guys. Especially one of the older “vo-tech” guys. He pays and makes his way back to the half-empty table for six, sitting across from Jamie. His jacket is too small for him, and he wears a ratty Nirvana T-shirt that looks like it belonged to an older brother when Kurt Cobain was actually still alive.