Say Yes Summer - Softcover

Culli, Lindsey Roth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0399552340 ISBN 13: 9780399552342

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

Perfect for fans of Morgan Matson and Netflix/Hallmark Channel rom-coms, this is the story of a girl who decides to give in to the universe and just say yes to everything, bringing her friendship, new experiences, and, if she lets her guard down, true love.

"I would say yes to this adorable love story again and again. It is an instant dose of happy." --KASIE WEST, author of P.S. I Like You

Rachel Walls has spent most of high school saying no. No to dances, no to parties, and most especially, no to boys. Now she's graduating at the top of her class, and for the first time in her life, there's nothing stopping Rachel from having a little fun--except herself.

So when she stumbles on a beat-up old self-help book, a crazy idea pops into her head: What if she just said yes to . . . everything? And so begins Rachel's summer of yes--yes to new experiences and big mistakes. Yes to scooping ice cream alongside Miles, the guy she's known forever; yes to spontaneous road trips with her longtime crush, Clayton; and yes to seeing the world in a whole new way.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

LINDSEY ROTH CULLI writes books for teens and people who used to be teens. She holds a degree in journalism and an MFA. She resides in Maryland with her husband and a hodgepodge of two- and four-legged creatures.

lindseyrothculli.com
@LRothCulli

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

The middle of delivering your valedictorian speech is a terrible time to have an existential crisis.

“I, uh . . .” I glance down at the damp, wrinkly index card clenched in my hand, my meticulously typed notes blurring together until they look more like alphabet soup than the speech I’ve spent every available moment of the last month perfecting--skipping my lunch period to work on my draft in the library, revising in my head in the shower at night, chanting the words over and over as I sprinkled shredded mozzarella on pizzas in the steamy kitchen at my parents’ restaurant. I can feel my cheeks heating now as sure as if I’m standing directly in front of the five-hundred-degree oven, a salty band of sweat beading on my upper lip. 

I force my eyes up at the crowd in the auditorium, my classmates gazing back at me with a mixture of boredom and what I’m pretty sure is grim anticipation, all of them wondering if I might be about to choke and go rushing off the stage: Tricia Whitman, whom I know from her many #cruiseclothes Instagram posts, is spending the next two weeks on a luxury ocean liner somewhere in the Caribbean. Henry Singh, who had a huge fight with his boyfriend in the middle of the diner a couple weeks ago and dumped an entire Caesar salad onto the guy’s lap before storming out into the parking lot. Cecily Johnston, the only person at our whole school who scored higher than me on the SAT. 

I’m not friends with any of these people, to be absolutely clear. The truth is I’ve never even talked to most of them. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what they’re like, even if the vast majority of them probably saw my name in the program this morning, turned to their neighbor, and said something along the lines of Who the hell is Rachel Walls? 

I wince at the thought of it, imagining their furrowed brows as they tried unsuccessfully to place me: Was I that foreign exchange student who was only here for one semester, maybe? The weird theater girl who always wore shapeless black dresses and a netted veil? An unexpectedly brilliant janitor who snuck into Ms. Ali’s math room late at night to do complicated calc proofs on the whiteboard? 

Then, vague recognition slowly dawning as I stepped up to the podium: Oh . . . her. 

The gunner. The wet blanket. The prude. 

Get a grip, Patatina. I hear Nonna’s voice inside my head in the instant before I finally spot her with my mom and stepdad near the back of the auditorium, her neat gray bob cocked slightly to the side as she waits for me to continue. I take a deep breath, getting a lungful of forced air and perfume and polyester-graduation-robe BO for my trouble, then clear my throat one more time. After all, just because I’m not exactly about to be voted most popular in the yearbook--that would be Clayton Carville, he of Westfield soccer stardom and a criminally beautiful jawline--doesn’t mean I haven’t earned this. The opposite, actually. In fact, the choices that have rendered me utterly invisible to these people are the very same ones that have led me here, to this moment and what comes next. 

That is, delivering this damn speech and then getting the hell out of town so that my real life can finally start. 

Pressing my hands against the lectern, I continue. “If you go out to Oval Beach today and build a sand castle, then go back tomorrow, you’ll find it washed away. That movement toward chaos--in science it’s known as entropy--is inevitable. Nothing escapes its relentlessness. In a closed system, left to its own devices, disorder or chaos always increases. Always. 

“Order, then, requires effort. Energy. Boatloads of it. And our successes here at Westfield have been no exception. Debate clubs like ours don’t make it to the National Tournament without practice. Soccer teams like ours don’t win the State Championships without collaboration and teamwork.” I glance at Clayton here--and okay, it’s possible I added the soccer line specifically so I would have an excuse to look at him, sprawled in the second row with his long legs slightly spread--before continuing. 

“Fellow graduates, we didn’t get here because of randomness. We’re here today because of hard work. Because of diligence. Because we expended energy and made sacrifices. And while the accomplishments of the last few years should be celebrated, this is called a commencement ceremony. Commence, as in ‘to begin.’ Today we mark the ending of high school and the beginning of something new.” 

I glance up at Clayton again, my gaze drawn to his lithe, lanky figure even without the benefit of a handy contextual excuse, and almost drop my notecards altogether when I realize he’s looking back at me. Which, fine, yes, intellectually I know that makes sense--after all, I’m actively delivering his high school graduation speech--but then he grins, all dimples and mischievous expression, the split-second catch of his tongue between his straight white teeth. 

Can you get pregnant from a smile? Asking for myself. 

It’s not until Principal Howard steps forward, says something into the mic, and the entire auditorium erupts in cheers that I figure out I must somehow have finished talking. Out in the audience everyone stands, takes off their caps, and throws them into the air. Not me, though. Frankly, my hand-eye coordination is nothing to brag about even when I haven’t just immaculately conceived Clayton Carville’s smile-baby. There’s no way I’m about to risk it now. Watch it land six rows away, leaving me stuck with somebody else’s cap--and sweat, and hair product, and dandruff.

Gross.

Instead I tuck the thing beneath my arm and clap politely, returning a few random high fives before I start to make my way through the thick, noisy crowd. I’ve just spotted the back of my stepdad’s head--he’s got a bald spot there he keeps trying to cover up by combing his hair all different ways, but the truth is he isn’t fooling anybody--when Ruoxi grabs my arm. 

“Rachel!” She’s holding her cap, too, which probably explains a lot about why exactly she’s my best friend. She’s also technically my only friend--unless you count Miles, which I emphatically do not. This doesn’t change the fact that other than Nonna, she’s basically my favorite person on the face of the planet. I have no idea what I’m going to do without her this summer--or, for that matter, at Northwestern in the fall. “Good job, lady.”

“Thaaaank you.” I bend down to wrap my arms around her short, slight frame. “And thank you for not passing out from boredom even though you’d already heard the whole thing ten thousand times.” 

“It got better with repetition,” she says, scooping her thick, wavy hair off the back of her neck and fanning herself a little. Even in her cork-heeled sandals, she’s a full head shorter than me, her hot-pink toenails bright against her dark skin. “Like a Justin Bieber song.”

“That’s me and the Biebs,” I tell her. “Shaping young minds. Inspiring the youths.”

“Exactly.” Ruoxi takes a step closer, casting a dirty look over her shoulder as some lax bro jostles her from behind. “So, here’s a thing that happened,” she says, lowering her voice. “I was sitting next to Paul Haberman during the ceremony, right?” 

“Can I ask you a question?” I blurt out, thinking back on my midspeech meltdown. Paul Haberman writes for the Westfield Courier and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399552340
• ISBN 13: 9780399552342
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland