Read Playing Keira for Free Online Page B

camera on my tail, no glances of recognition. I’m anonymous and small and insignificant.
    When I reach the block, I turn left, because I know this is the way to turn based on my map studying.
    This is where I’m starting to feel really nervous. This is where my steps slow down, heart beats fast. It feels like my stomach could be punching itself. Maybe I should have asked Garrett to come with me, so I’d be forced to hold it together to save face.
    There’s the number on an apartment building. I double-check it against the note. Yup.
    I check the time. It’s almost nine thirty. Maybe too early, still? Maybe I should go sit in that coffee shop across the street? Or just walk around the block a few times? But maybe she has plans to go out in a bit. I don’t want to miss her.
    Finally, I walk up the steps and into the vestibule of the building. I look at the directory and find the apartment number: 3B. There’s a last name on it that’s not Jones, my last name, or McIntyre, her maiden name, but I know that doesn’t mean anything. She could have changed it, or gotten a roommate.
    I take a deep breath and hold my finger over the button next to 3B. You can still change your mind , I think, like I did back at the bus station. You can text Garrett and meet up with him. You can do a million other things besides this .
    My finger, clearly tired of all this nonsense, presses the button anyway. The buzzer is loud and obnoxious.
    After a few moments, a voice says, “Yes?”
    There are so many things I can say now. But I open my mouth and state one of the few things I know for sure. It is true, even if I’m still figuring out what it means.
    “Hello. This is Keira.”

ONE
    S ometimes, I hit pause at a random moment when I’m on film and stare at my eyes, and try to figure out why they chose me.
    With the others, it’s obvious. Rory says those accidentally hilarious things, and Felix keeps bursting into song. Keira reads an advanced-level social studies textbook aloud. Then there’s Nate, with that whole Johnny Appleseed vibe. Maybe I was picked because my favorite answer to their questions was “Grrrr,” or because I wore pajamas to school three days in a row, or simply because they needed a girl with brown hair. It could have been all of these things, or none of them. So I search those eyes, those eyes I once saw the world through, and remind myself they’re the same ones I see it through now. But in all the searching, I’ve never found the spark that says, Watch this one .
    I’m guessing Ian Reid didn’t find it either, and this is why he dumped me.
    “You’re awesome, Justine,” he said as we sat in his vintage Jeep, not going inside to the party we were supposed to be going inside to. “But I feel like we’re better off as friends.”
    Translated, I’m pretty sure that means: The thought of kissing you—or touching you at all, really—makes me want to hurl, and when you look at me with love you resemble a chipmunk .
    My heart doubled over from the punch, hacked a bit, then fell to the floor of its little heart studio apartment.
    But on the outside, I just nodded and spun out words like okay and fine and cool . That was before Christmas and now it’s March, and there isn’t a single hour when I’m not thinking about the fact that for seven weeks I had someone, and then I didn’t, and how that works exactly.
    This hour, I’m pondering it while sitting on a low stone wall outside the town library. It’s snowing again, falling in bite-size chunks so fluffy they look fake. I’ve got an overdue copy of The Graduate on DVD tucked inside my parka and I’ll go in and return it, eventually. Well, yes, the stone is cold down there. Very, in fact. But this is so peaceful, with my mother at the supermarket and thus out of nagging range, and I love the way Main Street looks before the plows come through. The air feels eerie-hushed, and above me, everything is colorless, a striking shade of utter blank.
    In the