Beauty and the Geek Boy

Chapter 19 (Part 1)-Ellie

*Beauty*

Gemma came over to my house at five on Saturday to get us ready for the festival.

I stepped back as Gemma, Layla and Madison squeezed through the door, taking turns to hug me.

Gemma perused me with narrowed eyes. "What. The. Heck. Ellie Kent, don't take this offensively but you, girl, look like a sack of potatoes."

I gave a half-hearted shrug as I glanced down at my baggy sweats. I did look like a sack of potatoes.

If my mom saw me like this, she would murder me.

"Are those eyebags?" Gemma said, her voice high with shock.

I shrugged again. Late night study fails could do that. Especially when you don't talk to your seven-year-crush who kissed you last Friday

To add to it, Will hadn't jogged past my house this morning. A first. In the time since he'd started jogging, he had never once missed a Saturday. Till today.

The message was loud and clear.

Gemma grabbed my hand. "Come on. We need an emergency make-up session like stat. You can't go like that to the festival. It's like the biggest event of the year," she waved her fingers, "besides my parties of course."

I rolled my eyes as she dragged me up the stairs. Layla and Madison giggled in response.

The moment we were in the room, Gemma dumped me on a chair as Layla and Madison perched on my bed.

As Gemma tied my hair back, my mind drifted to Will. What was he doing right now? What was he thinking about? I doubted he would be at the festival. I'd seen him there once a few years ago, a tall fourteen year old boy embedded in a crowd of enthusiastic visitors. The excitement that had coursed through my veins then, the anticipation that made me stretch to look above the crowd, was unrivalled.

Until he kissed me.

"How do you have this?"

My gaze jumped to Gemma who was casually flicking through our middle school newspaper from years ago. The very newspaper I'd been swooning over a few minutes before they'd arrived. Layla peered over her shoulder as her eyes scanned the page.

Layla stopped on a bookmarked page.

Madison frowned. "What's this...?"

Abruptly I stood up, snatching it from their grasp before tucking it under the bed, mentally reassuring myself that I would put it back into the designated Will compartment once they were gone.

They looked at me as if I was crazy.

"Just some stuff," I mumbled.

No need to mention that it included an interview Will had done a few years ago for the school paper. Or that it had a very cute picture of him smiling in it.

Downside was that Catherine was the journalist.

Layla and Madison were still looking at me as if I were crazy.

I calmly sat back down in front of Gemma and waited for her to continue.

It took an hour of my constant complaints and Gemma's insistence that she wasn't putting on too much make up (which she was) before Gemma finally declared she was finished.

My mother chose that exact moment to waddle in. And by waddle, I mean waddle. My mother had been hiding her pregnancy bump for the last three months but now she made a point to move as if the small bump on her stomach was double the size. She also made a point of stroking her stomach to make it blatant that she was pregnant.