Donut Goals, page 9
Perfect timing! I like when we can grab some moments alone before the other girls swoop in with their raucous laughter and hilarious dramas!
“Hey, tuna on rye,” I said, sitting down.
“What’s up, leftover lasagna,” she answered back.
Lindsay had tuna on rye and I had, well, leftover lasagna. We smiled knowingly at each other because it was a comfort to know someone and be known so well. We always knew what the other was having based on the day of the week.
I noticed Lindsay was jotting something on a piece of paper nearby. When she finished, she raised her green catlike eyes to me and smiled.
“I’ve been brainstorming a list of movies that we can watch this week,” she said.
“About Freedom Week,” I said. “I was thinking we could watch movies along a certain theme. What do you think of anime?”
Lindsay’s eyes slid back down to her paper.
“I have a couple animes on here but not a week’s worth. Maybe we can have an anime day. Oh how about this? Each day we have a different movie theme? We can even have a scary movie night!”
“Great idea, Linds,” I said. “I don’t know when I became such an anime fan anyhow.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Lindsay asked.
When I didn’t say anything right away, Lindsay filled in the blanks. “Let me guess… Matt Machado?” she asked in a syrupy, singsong voice.
It took me a while to admit it, but Matt Machado is legit my first crush. I had met him at sleepaway camp that past summer, and we became the best of friends.
We’re not old enough to be anything more than that, but if we were allowed to date, I wondered if we would be something more. I wasn’t exactly sure how Matt or even I felt about that.
“Okay, Matt loves anime and now I’m hooked,” I admitted, holding my head in my hands and groaning. Lindsay giggled.
“Hooked on anime… or Matt?” she asked.
I blushed and Lindsay waved it off.
“You’re hopeless. Anyhow, let me know which animes you want to watch this week to add to the list.”
“You’re the best, Linds,” I told her. “I can’t wait for our glorious week of freedom.”
“Same here. It’s my favorite time of year because of you,” Lindsay said. “I also love how we’re carrying on something that our moms started.”
A moment of silence followed. I knew it was because we were both thinking about Lindsay’s mom, who has joined the angels.
I also thought about how much our friendship could use this quality time. Middle school has been hard on our friendship, especially since I came back from camp all boy crazy and artsy—two sides of me Lindsay had never seen before.
It put us in a sort of funky space for a while, but we’d worked through things. Still, we didn’t exactly have the same level of comfort that we had before, and I was hoping that freedom week would help us to get it back.
I was also looking forward to taking my mind off Matt. He lives 10 hours away in a town called Hardwick.
I thought of him constantly… the memories we shared at camp, his handsome face burned into my mind, all the laughter we shared. From what Matt’s mom told me (I met her a few times on the phone), Matt sounded pretty into me, too. She said they talk about me all the time.
As I rattled off some anime titles for Lindsay to write down, I gazed at my oldest friend in the world. Lindsay knew almost everything about me. Almost.
While she wrote, I admired the river of reddish brown hair flowing down her shoulders.
When I say Lindsay’s my oldest friend, that’s real talk. We were born a day apart and first met in the hospital nursery. Our moms were work friends before we came along, but having babies at the same time formed a bond between them that has outlasted Amy Cooper’s death.
My mom says she can still feel her gentle, loving presence in the hallways at school. Somehow, my mom still feels really connected to Lindsay’s mom even though she’s no longer here.
Something that Lindsay and I used to have in common was our take on boys.
After all, Bellgrove boys have been grossing us out on the regular since kindergarten. Our vibe was to hate their guts until further notice.
Then I experienced something different at camp when I met Matt. He was different than any other boy I’d ever met.
First of all, he looked and smelled really good. Also, he wasn’t some undercover or outright video game addict.
Instead, he has this black notebook that he takes with him everywhere because he’s always writing stuff down that he sees, thinks and experiences. He’s really interested in a bunch of stuff, and all the adults at camp adored him because he could talk about anything.
He looks up stuff he wants to learn about and doesn’t try to act dumb or tough to fit in like other boys.
Matt’s also in touch with his feelings. I remember him getting pretty emotional when he talked about when his mom married his stepdad years back. That’s when his last name legally changed to Machado.
Also, Matt’s biracial, just like me. This is something we had in common at camp which drew us closer together right away.
His biological dad, who left when Matt was a baby, was white, and his mom is black from the Caribbean. My parents, however, are the reverse: my dad’s black and my mom’s white.
Besides my sister, Matt’s the only person who I know totally gets me for me.
The lunch room was beginning to fill up. I knew we wouldn’t be alone at this table for much longer. Lindsay had to raise her voice in order for me to hear her.
“Matt sounds like a pretty cool guy, I’d love to meet him someday,” she said.
“Yessss! That would be fire! We should call him on video chat sometime,” I said, excited at the thought.
I wanted Lindsay to understand just what I saw in Matt, and I wanted Matt to put a face and a voice to the BFF I so often spoke about back at camp.
“Cool!” Lindsay agreed.
Even though I’m just about the only thing Lindsay and Matt have in common, I pictured them totally hitting it off.
Lindsay loves meeting new people. Unlike me, Lindsay’s the type of small town girl that wants to someday leave Bellgrove for big city life and melt into the crowd and make a name for herself doing some awesome and unpredictable things.
It took Lindsay a little while to adjust to my changes.
Even though she accepts Matt’s place in my life, I still catch her giving me these looks when I do certain things or when I bring him up a lot. Like when my phone lights up with a text message, and I snatch it up like it’s my favorite candy bar that suddenly appeared out of thin air.
I never used to do that before this summer so it was pretty obvious to Lindsay that it had to do with Matt.
I guess to her I must look pretty obsessed. It was also kind of embarrassing because Matt hardly texts me anyhow. At first I thought it was because he had lost interest in me, but that turned out to be some fiction I created in my mind.
After weeks of not knowing what was up with this boy and his late one-word responses to all my texts I finally caught up with him one night and we texted for a good while.
That’s when I found out that he was thinking about me every day too. He was just super busy and was always getting his phone taken away by his mom for disciplinary reasons. So it wasn’t what I had thought at all!
After we had texted to clear the air, we started talking more on video chat. One Sunday morning, Matt and his family called during our Sunday brunch. It was fun but super awkward at points. Matt’s mom and mine got along so famously that they ended up exchanging numbers soon after.
Now that Matt and I had come to a better understanding, and I was reminded by his amazingness, I began to miss my friend more than I did in the first place.
I guess that’s when he officially became my crush.
The rest of our friends showed up to our table, so it was too late to spill my guts to Lindsay.
I was hooked on Matt more than I wanted to be, and I needed some advice on how to cure myself of this boy disease. It was no use bringing this stuff up to any of my friends who all saw boys as annoying creatures.
My sister was the only one who would really understand.
Even though I try not to run to Gabby for every single thing; she’s basically my personal guru about life matters, and she always teaches me so much.
I haven’t gone to her in a while about anything and this conversation was long overdue. I made it a point to go see her when I came home from school.
I couldn’t wait until the school day was over.
Continue Reading…
Donut Delivery!
Coco Simon
About the Author
From cupcakes to ice cream, and now… donuts! Having written more than thirty books about middle-school girls, cupcakes, and ice cream, Coco Simon decided it was time for yet another change, so she’s switched her focus from ice cream to another favorite treat, donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults.
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Coco-Simon
Simon Spotlight
Simon & Schuster, New York
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT
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This Simon Spotlight hardcover edition August 2021
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Text by Mary Tillworth
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Designed by Ciara Gay
Jacket design by Ciara Moriarty
Jacket illustrated by Joanie Stone
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2021 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-5344-9598-2 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5344-9597-5 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-5344-9599-9 (ebook)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2021940291
Coco Simon, Donut Goals
