Free One Night That Changes Everything by Lauren Barnholdt Page B

…” Marissa starts, frowning. “I mean, how did they … ?”
    “I wrote it down,” I say. “In my notebook.”
    “Right,” Marissa says. She looks at the floor.
    Here’s the deal with Nigel Rickson: I used to be in love with him. And when I say,
in love with him
, I (obviously) mean from afar. He’s from England and he showed up at our school freshman year with this totally sexy British accent. He was into all this weird hip-hop music and he wore baggy clothes and had braces which totally somehow worked on him and made him seem very badass. Like how some rappers have gold teeth?
    Anyway, the braces are long gone, but the hip-hop clothes are still there, and Nigel Rickson and his friends still walk down the hallways at school listening to underground hip-hop on their iPods and spend their weekends scouting artists for the record label Nigel is going to start one day.
    My crush on Nigel was one of those crushes that at the time was super-strong, until one day I had Clarice ask Nigel what he thought of me, and he seemed kind of clueless as to who I was, and it made me really upset and I spent all of the next week obsessing over him and listening to sad love songs in my room.
    And after that, I was pretty much over him. Although sometimes when we’re in a class together I’ll find myself staring at him and sort of daydreaming about what it would be like to make out with him. Also, one time I kind of saw that he has a little bit of hair on his stomach, like this little trail that sort of goes from his belly button, um, down, and you’d think that would seem really gross, but it wasn’t, it was super-sexy and made my head get all wobbly and I almost passed out in gymclass. Of course, that could have been because we were running the mile that day, but I don’t think so.
    Anyway, up until Cooper, I guess you could say he was my longest crush. Like, of course I’d had crushes on guys after that and before that, but Nigel is the one who I’ve always kind of come back to. Until Cooper, and then I kind of forgot that Nigel existed.
    Isn’t that funny? Or maybe even ironic? I mean, now they want me to try to make out with Nigel, and it shouldn’t even be that scary, because I don’t like him anymore, but it still is pretty scary because it means I have to, you know, try to get him to kiss me.
    “You’ll be fine,” Marissa says. Her voice sounds confident, but her face doesn’t look so sure.
    “Where is he?” I ask. “Have you seen him?”
    “Yeah, he’s in the corner, with some of his friends. They were playing craps or something on the floor.”
    “They were playing what?”
    “Craps, you know?” She mimes throwing something. “Like with dice.”
    Oh. Great. Not only do I have to figure out a way to get him to make out with me, but now I have to compete with gambling? There’s no way I’m going to win that battle.
    “Give me your iPhone,” I demand.
    Marissa hands it over. I scroll through her apps until I find Pandora. If I’m going to do this, I at least need something to talk to him about. I’ll find a good rap artist, listen to somesongs, and use that as a conversation opener. But in my heightened state of despair, the only rap artists I can think of are mainstream rap artists. Which is fine, but I need something more impressive. Something that will make him think we have a connection, me and Nigel, two rap aficionados.
    “What are some underground Boston rap artists’ names?” I ask Marissa.
    She looks at me. “Are you seriously asking me that?”
    Hmmm. I rack my brain, trying to remember at least one person or group. I should be able to. I mean, when I was a freshman I totally spent a whole weekend scouring the internet for local Boston rap artists so that I could impress Nigel with my knowledge in study hall the next day. Of course, I chickened out and didn’t talk to him, but still. Damn. What was that one guy’s name? Mr. something. Or maybe it was a group? That’s the other