The Jock Trap

Chapter 1

There were a number of places I would've chosen to be on Friday afternoon. 

There were even more places I would've chosen to be on a Friday afternoon in late September, when lazy sunshine was streaming through the window, and the last hints of summer still lingered in the air. Lying on a beach somewhere, for one. Or even just lying on my couch, with a video game and the voice of my Swedish best friend in my headset earphones, with no real reason to move. Either one sounded good.

One of the places I definitely didn't want to be, however, was stuck in possibly the hottest classroom in the world, hunched over a test paper that our biology teacher had been cruel enough to give us last period.

Which, coincidentally, happened to be exactly where I found myself that Friday.

I was sure even that had to be breaching at least one of my human rights. It couldn't be humane to shove thirty sweaty students into a classroom, cram them into desks way too close together, and then, on top of it all, force them to answer questions about photosynthesis. There had to be some kind of international law against it.

But not only did my school seem to show complete disregard for these regulations, it also wanted to make the worst out of a bad situation, with one more thing in store.

The person who my desk happened to be crammed next to in the tiny classroom was Finn Alford.

I hated Finn Alford.

Saying this, I had to point out it wasn't an opinion I'd come to lightly – definitely not. This type of realization had been years in the making, stewing longer and more uncomfortably than any hours spent in the biology lab. It stemmed right back from our middle school days, gnawing at me constantly, until now – my senior year – when the fact had never seemed quite so obvious. Or so justified.

I really did hate him.

My ten-year-old self would've been horrified. If you had tried telling sweet little fifth-grader Meredith that her best friend in the whole wide world was going to grow up to be the bane of her high school existence, she never would've believed it. She probably would've sworn on her beloved Barbie Dream House it would never happen.

Then again, eleven-year-old Finn had made ten-year-old Meredith enough friendship bracelets to reach both elbows. Senior year, an acknowledgement would've been out of the ordinary.

It wasn't like he'd ever been mean to me – at least not outright. We didn't have an argument; there had never been any kind of cliché screaming at each other in the pouring rain moment, or even a physical scuffle. The whole thing happened quietly, with so little drama that nobody ever turned a head. And maybe that was what made things worse.

We had been friends all through elementary school. At first, it started with play dates each other's houses, mostly because our parents were neighbors and shoving us together was an excuse for them to catch up. Before long, though, it turned into more than that. By the time we started school, we had become an inseparable pair, the kind of boy-girl best friends that were exclusive to that age. We would play out on our bikes every afternoon until one of my dads called me in for dinner, and on Saturday night sleepovers I'd be tucked into a camp bed by his mom, who kissed us both on the forehead like we were siblings. In class, he didn't shoot spitballs at me, but instead we teamed up, sending them flying at the popular girls and acting confused when they turned around. Things were simple, and I was naïve enough to think it would last.

The summer before middle school, Finn went to camp. He spent two whole months in Yosemite, having the time of his life, though he continued to insist in his letters that he was missing me 'to the moon and back'. That August, I expected him to come back with camp stories.