The Incomparable Edie Wells

“If you don't get your butt over here right now, I-”

I wave my hand in the air to cut off my best friend, Maggie, as I approach. “Jesus, calm down. We're not going to be late for anything.”

She doesn't relax. At all. Maggie is one of those people who always have to be exactly five minutes early for everything, including school. No matter how many times I've told her that we're always there with twenty minutes to spare anyway. No one ever gets in trouble for missing homeroom.

She sighs angrily and pounds her fist on the steering wheel of her decrepit car. “It's the first day of the school year, Edie! I want to be there early.”

I roll my eyes and hoist myself into the old, bright yellow van of Maggie's. It had belonged to her dad, I think, and it had been used for his cleaning company. They had an extra van last year, so she'd inherited it for her sixteenth birthday. We'd taken the logo off of the side and fixed it a little bit, but it's pretty much a miracle that that thing could make it to school and back every morning.

“You always want to get there early,” I point out, flipping open the visor of the passenger seat. It breaks off and clatters to the ground. I groan and pick it back up. “What's so special about today?”

Maggie eyes the broken piece of her car ruefully, but doesn't say anything about it. “Today is the day that The List is posted again,” she reminds me in the same you're-supposed-to-know-this kind of tone. “Don't you want to know your rank?”

The List. Everyone in our entire school is obsessed with being on the List – a database of every single student at Westbrook High, ranked based on a number of things: looks, personality, wealth... but mostly popularity. I hated the idea of it. I mean, why waste your time making a stupid list of people when you could be doing something, I don't know, useful? The maker of the List is anonymous; that way, no one can bribe or threaten their way onto it. But that really doesn't stop them from trying. All we know is that whoever does make it still goes there, and sees everything everyone is doing.

I'm the only one who seems to think that this doesn't make him – or her, though I can't imagine a girl pulling this off – comparable to God.

“Not really,” I mumble, pulling my compact out of my purse to put on my lip gloss.

Maggie sighs as she pulls out onto the road, growling something unintelligible at a passing driver. “Well, I do. Maybe I've been bumped up.”

Maggie's been obsessed with it since freshman year. She's never been Ranked above the two-hundreds, but the fact that she's even gotten there is a pretty big feat. Usually the top ranks are reserved for seniors and juniors, but Maggie scored as 298 last year, as a sophomore. I have no idea how she did it, but let's just say she spent that entire week riding on her high horse. She fell off of it the next week, but that's beside the point.

Now, she usually ranks between 350 and 400. Which, I must say, is better than my 563. Not that I'm complaining.

I let out a very unladylike snort. “Sure. Right. And maybe this year I'll end up in the Top Ten.”

The top ten slots on the List are extremely sought after. The number one spot currently belongs to – and as far as I'm concerned will always belong to – Heather Nash. She's not your typical high school Queen Bee, or anything. She's brunette, not blonde, for one. And for another, she's actually a really nice person. She's not even a cheerleader. Actually, she's kind of like me -- on the newspaper. There is a major difference, though: Heather's really outgoing. I have little to no patience for most of the people on the List, much less the Top Ten.

Maggie just glares at me from underneath the brim of her black tweed fedora.

Maggie has got to be the most fashion-forward person I know. I've seen her closet numerous times. It looks more like a dress-up trunk than a teenage girl's wardrobe, but that might be because of the fact that Maggie never really passed that phase, and her little sister Emma likes to play with her clothes anyway. Our school actually has a uniform policy, but Maggie always find ways to look good in a plaid skirt and a white polo.

I very much dislike her for that.

“Maybe if you were on the Top Ten, Levi would talk to you,” she muses, smirking.

Okay, I'm guilty – I've had a crush on Levi Smith since I was in eighth grade, and he was a freshman. I talk to him every once in a while, and he's really, really nice. The thing is, it would never work if I decided to go out with him. He's number seven – he has been since sophomore year. It would totally ruin his reputation; or it would bump mine way up. Either way, we'd be extremely disrupting the natural order of things.

I glare at her. “Levi talks to me,” I defend, pulling down my skirt just a little bit.

“Yeah, in algebra class. Which, by the way, he's been in for two years.” I huff at her. “What? I'm just saying, the boy's got nothing upstairs. If you know what I mean.”

Maggie's got this idea that I'm supposed to be with my other best friend, Parker. I've been best friends with him since sixth grade, when we both realized that we were reading the same books and continuously recommended new ones to each other. The thing about Parker is that he's kind of a dork. Not that that's a bad thing, I guess, but I've just never been attracted to him like that. He's a freaking computer genius – he doesn't need a girlfriend.

I don't answer her as she finally pulls into the school's parking lot. Westbrook is laid out like almost any school. The main office in the front, surrounded on three sides by classrooms, and a courtyard in the middle where students eat lunch. People are seated there by their status on the List, but I'll get to that later.

“Parker!” Maggie yells as she steps out of the car, eying the head on copper-colored hair that belongs to out best friend. “Parker! Cheese and crackers, don't you ever listen?!” A boy standing near her looks at her with a confused expression. “No, not you,” she dismisses, waving a heavily bracelet-ed hand.

I chuckle as Parker finally turns around, his arms laden with textbooks. His eyes widen as he sees us, and he hurries toward the always flamboyant Maggie.

“Hey, guys,” he says, adjusting his silver-rimmed glasses. “How was your summer?”

I eye him carefully. He was with his parents all summer in Cancun, so I've only seen him on web cam in three months. His hair has gotten a little longer and is a lot less red than I remembered – more of a strawberry blonde instead of fiery red. His skin even looks tan, something I thought was impossible given his Irish heritage. And, unless my eyes deceive me, I'm pretty sure he even grew a few inches over the summer.

Parker got cute. Who knew?

Well, maybe not smokin' hot, but... kind of a geeky, boy-next-door type of cute. Maggie may find him attractive now. But I'm used to Levi, who is by no means boy-next-door...

I can hear Maggie and Parker exchanging conversation, but I don't pay them any attention. My gaze quickly lands on the boy. Captain of the football team, of course, Levi has got to be one of the most handsome guys in school. He's got this really soft, curly black hair that's cut to just the right length, and his eyes are the color of molten chocolate, and his skin is just naturally tanned...

“Yo,” Maggie's voice cuts me out of my daydream. She snaps her fingers in front of my face a few times to get my attention. I blink. “Eds. You're drooling.”

I reach up to my mouth out of reflex, and then blush when I realize that she was joking.

Parker rolls his eyes as he glanced back at who I was looking at. “Levi Smith? Again?” He shakes his head in mock-disappointment. “You're still hung up on him? I thought a summer with just Maggie would cure you of that.”

Maggie just elbows him. “Hey, I'm not that – Oh, there's Max. Hey, Max!” She waves to some brunette boy who I recognize from my history class last year. Apparently he and Maggie started dating over the summer. I haven't talked to him much, but he seems like a pretty decent guy. He's not very high up on the list; maybe 146. But that's enough to catch Mags' eye.

I laugh as she runs toward him, grasping desperately onto her hat so that it doesn't fall off.

“So how was your summer?” Parker asks, shifting his books around.

I pluck a few of them off of the top and place them under my arm. “Okay, I guess. Rhett was never home anyway, so I stayed home and babysat.”

Rhett is my older stepbrother. He's my stepmom's kid. She had him when she was a freshman in college, I think. Which isn't so different from my dad, who got my real mom pregnant when he was twenty-two. They lived together for a while, until I was about three, but then my mom suddenly picked up and left, with no warning and no excuse. My dad was devastated. He wouldn't leave the house for about three years, but I finally convinced him to look for a new wife.

So he found Riley.

At the time, Rhett was ten years old. His father had left his mother, though not in the same way my mom had left. They'd just gotten divorced when Riley met my father, and... Well, the rest is history, I guess. They got married two years later, when I was nine and Rhett was twelve. A few years later they had my little sister, Grace, and a year or so after that they had my little brother, Casey.

The thing is, though, even though Rhett's twenty, he's still in high school. He got held back twice – once in kindergarten, and again in fourth grade. So now he's a senior.

Parker winces. “Ouch. Sorry.”

I shrug. “No big deal, I guess.” I glance around the courtyard to see a bunch of students either on their laptops or crowded around people who have one. “Have you seen the List yet?”

Parker rolls his eyes, but nods. “Dead last, as usual,” he informs me, setting his mountain of books on a low concrete wall. “You're 535. Nice job.”

I scoff and set the books I took from him down next to his. “Yeah. Whoop-dee- doo.”

He looks at me with a confused expression as he sits down on the wall next to his books. “Y'know, for someone who says they don't care about the List, you sure do take an interest in it.”

I glance longingly over at Levi again. He's sitting in a group of similar jocks, all of whom rank in the two twenty or so. He glances around and catches my eye for a second. And then, slowly, he winks. I sigh and turn back to Parker, hiding my now-red face underneath the mop of brown ringlets I call hair.

“I have my reasons,” I say firmly, letting Parker know that I'm done with that subject.

And I definitely do. My new school year's resolution: get Levi Smith to fall in love with me.