Running Back to You - Softcover

Henning, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1665970170 ISBN 13: 9781665970174

Verlag: Aladdin, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A usually-honest ninth grader fibs about having been kissed then rushes to lock lips with someone before her lie is uncovered in this charming and relatable middle grade rom-com.

Millie hates liars. Ever since her mom lied to their family about the six-month affair she was having, Millie has pledged to always tell the truth, no matter what. But when her classmate Logan asks her—in the middle of study hall with everyone listening—whether she’s kissed anyone, she panics. She panics and lies, saying she has.

Afterward, Millie spirals. She hasn’t only broken her most important rule, she’s done it badly. Millie’s sure everyone knows she was fibbing. The only way out is to make reality catch up to her lies by changing her kiss status and getting a boyfriend…as quickly as possible.

But Millie’s mission keeps getting foiled by Logan, who suddenly seems to be there at every turn. Millie starts to wonder why Logan cares so much in the first place. Could it be that when he asked about her first kiss, it wasn’t to embarrass her at all?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sarah Henning is a recovering journalist who has worked for The Palm Beach Post, The Kansas City Star, Associated Press, and more. She is the author of Sea Witch, The Princess Will Save You, Throw Like a Girl, Monster Camp, and Running Back to You, among others. When not writing, she runs ultramarathons, hits the playground with her two kids, and hangs out with her husband, Justin, who doubles as her long-suffering IT department. Sarah lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Visit her at SarahHenningWrites.com.

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Chapter 1: The Kiss CHAPTER 1 THE KISS
WORD ALWAYS TRAVELS FAST AT Oread Heights High.

But this latest nugget of gossip probably shattered the sound barrier. Or at least a school record.

“MillieMillieMillie,” Hannah squeals from behind me, bouncing up and down in her Vans, giant water bottle sloshing in the side pocket of her backpack, out of breath like she’s sprinted down the hall. I eye her upside down from where I’m bent over, trading a massive geometry textbook for an equally massive biology textbook. We really need to switch to ebooks. “You’ll never guess what just happened!”

“I won’t have to guess, because you’re about to tell me.”

“True,” my best friend agrees as I zip everything up and straighten. I sling the backpack onto my shoulder, and agile Hannah artfully dodges to the side to avoid both the swinging bag and a likely concussion. “I’m about to combust. Are you ready?! Please tell me you’re ready!”

I elbow my locker shut and lift a brow. “Does it matter if I am?”

“Not in the slightest,” Hannah confirms, bright brown eyes dancing. She clamps a hand onto my wrist and points us down the hall. Logan Lockhart, a boy from my study hall, grins at me while coming from the opposite direction, and I manage a quick wave as Hannah yanks us into motion. “Walk with me.”

I laugh. “We have the same biology class in four minutes and lunch after that. Walking with you is literally what I do every day at this time.”

“Stop snarking and start listening.”

Shoulder to shoulder, or as close as five-foot-nothing Hannah Silverman-Perez can manage on tiptoes next to me—because even though I’m only fourteen, I’m taller than nearly every female teacher at the school—the gossip flows like a fire hose.

“Cassidy Briggs and Aiden Thompson were just caught making out in the janitor’s closet by the gym!”

I scrunch my nose. “The one with the extra basketballs and the pommel horse with suspiciously leathery skin?”

“No! That’s the supply closet.” Hannah violently waves a hand in front of us, knocking both of us off-balance enough to drill her shoulder into one of the Spring Fling fliers taped to the brick wall. She bounces off like it’s nothing, today’s pink cotton dress fluttering prettily. “The janitor’s closet is next to that. Anyway, do not focus on the closet, focus on the actions in the closet and the people involved. The head cheerleader of the freshman squad and the captain of the Mathletics team who is not her boyfriend were caught kissing.”

“Okay—”

“I know! It’s hard to believe, but there’s a video! Check it.”

Hannah whips out her phone and shoves it under my nose before I can ask her not to. And yes, that really is Cassidy, in full cheerleading gear, caught with geeky Aiden among teetering jugs of bleach and a few knocked-over brooms in the janitor’s closet.

“They’re not kissing,” I point out. Sure, they’re in the closet, but they aren’t actually touching in any way. They could’ve been in there conspiring to cheat on a math test or something nefarious but nonphysical. There could be several reasons they’re being marched to the principal’s office by the PE teacher.

Hannah snorts. “They obviously were. Look how disheveled they are.” Okay, they are disheveled. Cassidy’s ponytail is usually effortlessly perfect, but she’s got random pieces dangling from her bow, and her mouth is very pink. Meanwhile Aiden looks like he wants to melt into the industrial-grade school tile as he straightens his rumpled hoodie. “It’s not hard to fill in the blanks, even without independent verification from two people who were there in the hallway—which I have.”

She scrolls up, and yes, two texters on her thread confirm they were there when the door opened and saw Aiden and Cassidy in the act before they sprang apart.

Secondhand mortification turns my stomach in knots. The way Oread Heights chews through gossip, this will be everywhere soon. I just want to make sure Hannah isn’t the one hitting the button. “Please tell me you’re not going to send that video to anyone?”

“Did I send it to you? No.” She scoffs. “I waited to tell you in person.”

That’s when I notice the time stamp. “Waited? This happened barely a minute ago.”

“I know!” Hannah exclaims. “That video landed in my texts before they’d even finished their walk of shame to the principal’s office.” She thrusts both hands in the air, phone gripped tightly, triumphant. “The yearbook spy network is vast and undefeated!”

“Does that earn you some sort of award or…?”

Hannah rolls her eyes. “And now you’re one of the first to know, BFF o’ mine.”

I’m not convinced that’s a good thing. “Thank you?”

“You’re welcome. This is groundbreaking ninth-grade information,” Hannah agrees, dead serious. “Not everyone has immediate, real-time access to the most important stories this school has to offer.”

But by the time I arrive at study hall two periods and a lunch with Hannah later, not only has every single member of the freshman class heard about the kiss in the janitor’s closet, a few lightning-fast rumors have already outpaced reality.

“I heard,” Owen King whispers to our corner of study hall the second Ms. Walker slips out to refill her SWIFTEA coffee mug, “that Cooper hid an AirTag in Cassidy’s cheerleading bow and tracked her to the closet.”

“That’s complete bull,” Madison Mendez scoffs with a pop of her off-limits gum. She’s not a cheerleader, but she is on the dance squad, and so I guess it does figure that she knows more about the structural integrity of ponytails and decorative bows than Owen.

“How do you know?” Owen shoots back.

Next to him, Logan just shakes his head with a grin that actually isn’t all that different from the one he shot me in the hallway earlier. He’s Owen’s BFF and backs him in all things—including spreading rumors, apparently. Okay, Logan’s not spreading the rumor, but he isn’t stopping Owen’s nonsense either.

This is the fourth version of the story I’ve heard against my will since Hannah’s gossip ambush. Two others also involve Cooper Tsai, Cassidy’s boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?), while the final one inexplicably includes a cameo from Thelma, the ageless lunch lady who’s reportedly worked the Oread Heights cafeteria since the school’s founding fifty years ago.

For personal, Mom-shaped reasons, I hate both lying and liars to the point that Hannah has been known to call me Honest Ashford and suggest that I dress as “Honest Abe” Lincoln for Halloween. I can’t just listen as the tale spins further away from the actual truth, so I do my best to ignore the three other people at my table.

I start typing in the same quote from Lord of the Flies that I’ve been trying to transcribe for the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1665970170
• ISBN 13: 9781665970174
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande