Free The New Guy by Amy Spalding Page A

don’t say the rest of it, which is that I’ve done plenty of Googling, and my sheer existence must have been really expensive. I once overheard Mom and Darcy say to Paige and Ryan, Sadie’s parents, that if it had been financially feasible,
of course
they would have had another baby, but it seemed more important to give me the best life they could. Me! So I have to turn out to be better than average. I don’t want to be irresponsible. I want to be worth the money.
    “You’re the most responsible person I know,” Mom says, which makes Darcy furrow her brow. “Sorry, hon, you’re fifty-one. You’re supposed to be responsible. Relatively speaking, Jules is much higher-ranked.”
    “If we had a discussion about all the irresponsible things the two of us have done in the name of love,” Darcy says, “you’d never finish your homework. So you’ll have to trust us that you’re in good company.”
    My face flushes. “Don’t say
love
.”
    “In the name of
like
, then.”
    The name of
like
actually seems like a good place to be.

CHAPTER NINE
    “You look tired,” Sadie says as she sits down next to me in women’s history on Friday morning. “Also, hi.”
    It’s not the greatest way to be greeted by your best friend, but she’s not wrong. “I was up too late last night,” I say.
    “Ooh!”
    “We were just texting,” I say, which is true but also only a tiny glimpse of what that actually means. When it’s nighttime and you’re in your bedroom and you’re manually tapping out messages, even about unromantic topics like Topics in Economics and rescue dogs and cafeteria nachos, you can feel really close to a person.
    Before Sadie can ask another question or Ms. Cannon can take roll call, the TV in the classroom turns on automatically. Because the classroom door is open, I can tell that this is happening throughout the school. It’s programmed to be possible in case of emergencies or other major news, but no one panics because it’s apparently pretty easy to hack. Last yearthe TVs turned on throughout the school during finals week, and it was just someone’s butt. The mystery was never solved, because school administration couldn’t just ask students to show their butts to prove it wasn’t them.
    But this time it isn’t a butt. It’s a face. Specifically, it’s Natalie’s face.
    “Welcome to TALON,” Natalie says, and then the eagle logo and TALON appear on the screen. This doesn’t look like the videos Sadie and I used to film at her house with her mom’s iPhone. The logo and word look much sharper and better designed on-screen than they did on the flyers. Natalie’s wearing a navy pin-striped blazer and a crisp white shirt, and she looks like a real newscaster.
    “It’s 2016,” Natalie continues, as if that fact is news, “and it’s time to get all the news that matters to you and your Eagle Vista classmates in a way that fits your life. Go to WeAreTalon.com or the WeAreTalon channel on VidLook to find out more.”
    “What?” I say aloud, and everyone else is paying such close attention to Natalie that it’s like I spoke out of turn in a library. Meg Hartzman even literally shushes me. I look to Sadie for support, but her eyes are on the screen.
    I know that back in the eighties someone donated some camera equipment to the school and they tried to make a news program, but according to old issues of the
Crest
, it lasted only a few weeks before imploding. I thought Eagle Vista Academy had learned a lesson from the eighties. EagleVista Academy supposedly honored tradition.
We honor tradition
, it reads on the front page of the official website.
    Natalie recaps the first week of school details, like the names of new teachers, the changes made to the school lunch menus, and the upcoming dates of the first events of the year. These are the details we’ll be listing in the issue of the
Crest
that comes out next week.
    And now, do we even need to? We’ve been scooped.
    “Now I’m going