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may or may not be my acquaintance someday, I'll see you tomorrow."
    "See ya tomorrow." I watched him run toward Lori's car. She gave me a very short wave and hopped in the car before Matt got there.
    I stood there, frozen in my tracks. When I was a freshman, Lori Taylor had been my idol. I loved seeing her clothes choices, her hair style. She had been the girl I looked up to, admired, envied, and yes, wanted to be. After she graduated, I got stuck with Kendra… lovable Kendra.
    In her high school years, Lori had never talked to me, nodded, or even waved. And here she was… waving. Add it to the list of remarkable things that had happened today. I should probably persuade my mom to buy a lottery ticket. I felt lucky.
    After Matt got in the passenger's side, he threw up his hand in a wave as the car drove off.
    Shut the front door .
    When my legs started moving again, I made my way through the soggy ground to my mom's waiting car. Her car was a simple light green hatchback with two doors and dark gray fabric seats. She kept it very nice and clean, though. My dad promised to take her out car shopping when he got back into town. I hoped they would save the hatchback for me.
    I got in and instantly felt her eyes on me. I didn't have to look to feel the sparkle in them. Oh yeah, she'd totally noticed the cute guy. "So…"
    Here it came.
    "How was tutoring?"
    I dragged out putting my seat belt on longer than I had to. She made me go to tutoring; I thought it only right to drag her anticipation out. An eye for an eye as it were. "Fine."
    "Fine? That's it?" She pulled the car to the stop sign and looked both ways. A few seconds later, we were out on the street headed home.
    "That's it."
    She took a second to peek at me and back to the road. "So you're not going to tell me about the cutie walking with you?"
    "I don't know what you're talking about." Laugher sputtered out of me at the expression on my mom's face.
    "Ha. Funny. Make mom pay for signing you up for tutoring, huh?"
    "May-be." I dragged it out just to annoy the lady who forced me into tutoring in the first place.
    "And may -be you should spill. I'm dying here."
    I sighed overdramatically and put my bag on the floor between my knees. "It went very well. How's that?"
    "Aggravating." She smiled and tapped the steering wheel to the Christian music blasting through the radio.
    I was nothing if not nice, so I decided to throw my mom a bone and tell her everything. "That cutie, as you so weirdly called him, was Matt Taylor."
    "Quarterback Matt Taylor?"
    "One and the same."
    "And he's your tutor?" As if football players couldn't tutor…
    "That he is."
    She got quiet for a second and a strange hmmm sound came from her lips.
    I couldn't take the quiet. "He's really nice."
    "Is he now?" She looked at me and kept on driving. I had to yell at her before she ran over some poor lady's mailbox.
    "Yes, he's nice, and smart and funny and all of those other clichés girls swoon over."
    "You swooning?"
    I nearly choked on my tongue. "Seriously? Me? I'm not a swooner."
    "You seem like you're swooning."
    "I'm not." Was I? "Besides, I'm not his type."
    My mom stopped at the red light at the top of a little hill. "Why not?"
    It was my turn to stare at her. My mom wasn't dumb. She knew the ways of the world. In her day, she had been a knockout, not that she was too shabby now. For all intents and purposes, I looked a lot like her. We had the same dark hair and round face, only mine was the supersized version. Twenty years ago, my mom had been Miss Carter County when she was in high school. Cheerleader. Popular. And I was told, not by her, that she had been a guy magnet.
    The thing about my mom was that she never made me feel bad for not being that person. Sure, I saw it in her eyes sometimes when we watched pageants on TV. Her beauty queen dreams faded for me when she entered me in the Little Miss Carter County pageant when I was three. Apparently, I embarrassed her terribly, though I can't