What happens when an introverted, science-minded boy meets the girl of his dreams?

A whole lot of chaos.

Before Charlie Barren knows what’s happening, he’s skipping class, climbing out of windows, and crashing a stranger’s quinceañera. He is shocked by his own behavior, but he can’t stay away. He’s never met anyone like Venus.

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Available: August 25, 2025
Teen

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Excerpt

Chapter One
Charlie

Sam Birk sits beside me on the bleachers, lounging. His brown hair falls over his perfect brow. It’s been shaped by Zeus, as my boy crazy little sister would say, and has said many, many times. She’s not boy crazy so much as Sam crazy. It’s a fact as unpleasant as the side effects of having an eidetic memory, which allows me to recall someone’s words verbatim, no matter how asinine they may be. This particular part of my personality, paired with having a sister who salivates over my best friend on a daily basis while covering it up in a snarky tone, has me regarding his physical attributes in a whole new light. Her words crowd my cranium, and I cannot shove them out. It’s highly annoying.

Sam’s bottom lip juts out as he blows the offending strands from their resting place, only to have them fall back again. The sun shines on his face, giving him that golden boy glow, but he doesn’t break a sweat. I cannot say the same for my armpits. I should not have worn a sweater-vest, even though they’re my favorite. His blue eyes shine bright as he ogles the girls on the field. They jump up and down to the music, clapping their hands. I glance out at what holds his attention. Girls in tight sweaters wearing short skirts. I suppose I understand. 

Maybe I could find one of them remotely attractive if my concentration wasn’t ruined by the dark-haired girl in the second row clapping offbeat. I hate that I notice her accidental imperfection, as I myself have no rhythm. Now that I’ve noticed this dysrhythmic flaw in their synchronized dance, I can’t un-notice it.

“She’s so hot,” he swoons.

“Who?”

He throws his head back and guffaws like the whole world agrees with him. At our high school (otherwise known as an unbalanced ecosystem of torture, one in which my best friend, Sam Birk, is the top of the food chain) everyone does indeed guffaw with him.

“Exactly,” he crows as he reaches out and pats my shoulder a little too hard. “You got it, Charlie. They’re all hot. I would hook up with any of ‘em.” As usual, Sam gives me far too much credit for understanding the way his oversexed brain operates. He can’t help himself. He understands what everyone wants to hear—all the time. He can’t stop himself from being the handsome Prince of Seeberger High.

His misogynistic words burn my virgin ears. I hate how any sort of interaction with the opposite sex renders me clumsy and slow, like I’m wading through muddy pond bottoms in flip-flops and not my highly-recommended waders I received last May. That delivery was by way of USPS, the slowest system on the planet, when one is waiting for something with the same degree of anticipation a preschooler waits for Santa Claus to come down the chimney on Christmas Eve. It is my lifelong dream to become a marine biologist and someday I will achieve that dream. I will look back on every miserable second of my life at Seeberger High with a sardonic smile, because it will all be in my rearview mirror. At least that’s what Mom promises me every day while shoving me out the front door. Dad gives me a wink and a smile, telling me to look for silver linings. Yet clouds never interested me, and ponds and lakes have no silver linings.

Speaking of bodies of water (one of my favorite subjects), last summer my helicopter mother finally relinquished her hold on me and allowed me to go to nerd camp for future marine biologists. At least that’s what my sister called it, but I was too excited to care. She can call it whatever she likes, so long as I get to go to my happy place. That’s where it’s cool to search for that unknown discovery in nature waiting for me.

“She is so fine,” Sam murmurs, jolting me back to reality. The thing about Sam that I find so interesting is that every time he talks about a girl, he pretends he’s never uttered those same words about another girl just days or weeks before. Mom claims he has an addiction to infatuation. I think she’s right. Mom’s really good at getting people, including me, her quiet, introverted son with a terrible case of tunnel vision that’s plagued me since I was seven years old. That was the day I saw my first clown fish.

“Haven’t you already,” I joke (sort of) as I wave toward the group of girls. “Like haven’t you already, you know…” my voice drops off. Why do I have to be so awkward? “Like with all of them?”

Sam squeezes my shoulder just hard enough to remind me which one of us is the starting quarterback on Varsity for the third year in a row. “Only half,” he replies. Then he relaxes his grip, leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees and flexes his biceps.

My sister’s latest complaint about Sam from the other morning rings in my ears. “Sam Birk acts like he’s in a commercial or on TikTok all the time. He’s so used to people looking at him, he can’t turn it off.” As much as I hate to admit it, I’m going to miss her nurturing ways when I go off to college. What I’m not going to miss is her constant drooling over Sam Birk, but I deal with it if it means free food.

Her latest Sam Birk complaint/observation confused me at the time, but that’s nothing new. My sister Creed never shuts up about Sam, and only half of what she says makes any sense. We get along alright; but if we weren’t related, we would not be considered the same species. Once we leave home and go our separate ways, she has her world, and I have mine.

“Turn what off?” I asked as I focused on my charcoal drawing in my sketchpad.

She shoved me. It messed with my drawing and pissed me off. I laid down my graphite and got to work with my kneaded eraser. “Dude. You messed up my operculum.” I gave her serious side-eye.

“Don’t irritate me when you’re drawing, nerd boy,” she teased, “and I won’t mess with your Oppenheimer.” For half a second, I was even madder than before. I thought she wasn’t going to answer my question. I hate it when she does that, just like I hate it when she says the wrong words on purpose just to rile me. She knows how much it bothers me to not have something answered, but she never leaves me hanging when it comes to her thoughts on Sam Birk, the hottest boy at Seeberger High. Again, those are her words. Not mine. The only thing lamer than the name of our high school is our mascot. We’re the Seeberger High Sea Lions.

“Sam Birk lives his life like he has his own reality show,” she continued.

I guess some guys would be jealous if their best friend was as popular as mine, but I don’t care. Sometimes I wonder why he continues to hang out with me, the guy whose one goal is to not be in a single yearbook photograph.

The one benefit about attending a 5A high school is the variety of advanced academic courses available to the student body. The amount of focus required for every touchdown Sam scored on the football field and every pin he made on the wrestling mats is the same amount I give to taking every weighted class that rests across the road from the biggest outdoor sculpture park in the tristate area, which does wonders for its otherwise lameass location according to my linguistically-challenged sister. My sister, who has the attention span of phytoplankton, loves to attach the word “ass” to as many words as possible.

My desires are a little more complicated than hers. I long to explore the vastness of the ocean and to discover an unknown species in its abyssal depths. I can’t logically explain my love of the water and what lies below. I only know my infatuation with ecosystems will never change.

I can still recall the exact moment it hit me. I was seven years old, and I knew from the moment I set foot in the giant aquarium house at the amusement park that I would never see anything as fascinating as all the colorful fish behind the glass floating back and forth. Their eyes were wide open, unfocused and unblinking. I wanted to know what they perceived. I wanted to see the world through their weird, bugged-out eyes. But more than that, I needed an explanation for the existence of the most beautiful and weird creatures I’d ever laid eyes upon. I needed to understand where they came from.

As I stood there mesmerized, I asked myself if they could see me as I did in my reflection: a scrawny boy in his favorite red and white striped shirt, dirty blue jeans, and messy hair with his hands pressed to the glass, staring in awe and wonder. My dream in that moment felt so real. If only my hands could reach through the glass and touch the paper-thin fin fluttering as fast as my heartbeat, it would have slowed the heaving of my chest. My insides were so big they had to come out.

It must have been too much for my mother to take, for she grabbed my upper arm and tugged me away from the fat, round glass pillar that shot straight up to a ceiling so high it went to infinity and beyond. My mind was dizzy with unanswered questions that couldn’t reach my lips. How did the fish get in there? Who fed them and how? Were they going to go back to where they came from? And where was that? As I stood there drooling, Mom teased, “Charlie. Look somewhere else before you hyperventilate.” I could make out the alarm in her voice and her pinch.

“I’m sorry,” I answered. She accepted my afterthought of an offering, even though my understanding of the apology and hers slightly differed. Fortunately for me, Dad’s one and only regret was standing between me and the great waters. While I glanced up at the banners, imagining myself as one of the scuba divers depicted, Dad released premature dreams of fields of grass with sandbags strewn here and there. They made up fond childhood memories he had hoped to share with me.

Dad is not one to complain, but there were a few times when I caught him staring out the car window with longing at a nearby stadium. He would act like a man caught cheating by ducking or changing the song on the radio before clearing his throat as if to say, “Well, that’s that. Moving on.”

So here on the bleachers, Sam basks in the sun while I roam the hallways of my short life. Our class just picked out our graduation gown colors. That must be what has me nostalgic as I take another stroll down memory lane. I glance over at Sam, who haphazardly watches Keersten’s barely-there skirt that flaps up now and then.

He peeks at her silver sparkly booty shorts while she pretends she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy perfecting her flyer pose and balancing on the palm of Kyle’s large, capable hand. I slap Sam’s knee. “Dude. You’re not even trying.”

He flashes me his signature grin. “Yeah, I know. Marzipan told me last week Keersten has a crush on me. She totally got inside my head.”

I glance at Keersten and back at Sam. “You’re so easy, it’s ridic—" And that’s when I spot a girl in the corner of my eye. She comes around the side of the bleachers. She’s an unexpected interruption to my frustrating, suffocating life. Ever since I picked out my graduation gown, I go backward and forward at the same time. I don’t want to be in either of those places, but none of that matters. Not at this moment.

I take in the most beautiful human I’ve ever laid eyes on. There was the time before I saw her, and there is now. This has to be the best day ever. I’m electrified. Every nerve in my body is on high alert. I want to get up from where I’m sitting and go to her as she stands next to Creed, whose eyes are glued to the side of Sam’s face. Sam can’t turn his head when his eyeballs are affixed to Keersten’s glittery booty shorts as she stretches for the fiftieth time in the span of thirty-seven minutes. My eyes are rolling in my head. All I want is to watch this girl for as much and as long as possible. I wish Sam and Creed would disappear.

Creed jerks her head sideways to catch what holds Sam’s undivided attention. “Gross,” she snorts. “What does she think she’s doing, acting like she’s in some sort of shady music video with her butt in the air? And here I thought her face was the only part of her that’s utterly repulsive.”

Sam laughs beside me. “That’s your opinion, Creed.”

I should look down. The pain in Creed’s face at Sam’s not-so-subtle drooling over Keersten’s is so obvious. But I can’t stop staring at the girl who stands next to Creed, not even when Creed glares at me. “So, anyway. This is Venus Moon. She’s new here. I’m showing her around.”

“But the school year’s already started,” I blurt.

Venus stares at me with her green eyes. I grip the side of the bleachers to be sure I’m not falling. I recall the time I pulled into the parking space at the same time someone backed out. I was so sure I was going to hit the curb at any second that a sense of panic came over me, I looked down to be sure my feet weren’t on the gas pedals. It was the most disconcerting feeling I’ve ever had. Until now. It’s as if my vestibular system has been disrupted and my equilibrium has gone haywire. I’m in a constant state of falling.

“Her mom took a job at the hospital. She’s in administration,” Creed announces, but I barely listen. I can’t stop staring, so I force myself to focus on a button on Venus’s backpack.

“The Mourning Doves,” I mutter at the same time she covers it.

“Don’t mind my brother. He’s socially challenged,” Creed comments like she has so many times before. And it’s never bothered me because I mostly concur. But it bothers me now. The very thought that this girl would see any weakness in me is too much.

“My name is Charlie,” I blurt as Creed’s still talking. Or she was. She stops midsentence. Her blue eyes bug, but Venus just smiles at me like she has all the patience in the world.

She extends her hand. I’m swimming against the tide as I release my white-knuckled grip on the bleacher to move toward her. It’s a movement that is perfectly normal, an everyday occurrence in her world, I’m sure. But not for me. Her hand is like sunshine in my palm. I want to hold onto it forever.

“There,” she chirps. “Now we’ve properly met.”

Creed wrinkles her nose. “Barf. Stop holding my brother’s hand,” she whines.

Venus lets go of me. I’m devastated. I hate my sister. I wish she would fall to the ground in a seizure. Anything to make her stop humiliating me in front of the most perfect girl. I blink. I take it back. I don’t want my sister to get sick. I am a terrible person. What is going on? “I didn’t mean it,” I mutter.

Creed rolls her eyes. “Mean what, Charlie? What are you talking about?”

I’m so relieved my seizure-inducing thoughts for my sister stayed inside my head. “Nothing.”

Sam is on his feet. He hops over two rows of bleachers like he’s a South African sharp-nosed frog. He smiles at Venus, giving her his full attention. I want to punch him in the face. I glance at Creed. By the way she glares, she agrees with me for once.

“What’s up? I’m Sam.” He points to the button on her bag as if he knows everything on the subject. “So you like the Mourning Doves, I see.”  I’ve seen Sam do this so many times. He subtly takes credit for something someone else noticed first or whatever. I’ve never cared before, but now I do.

I hate that I’m waiting for her answer on baited breath.

“Yeah. I do,” she replies. “How about you? What do you think of them?”

Sam’s smile shrinks. “Oh, I don’t know.” I feel an insult coming. When Sam is insecure, which is somewhere in the time frame between never and ever, he insults the girl to knock her down a few pegs. I’ve seen it happen a few times. “They might have had one song that could’ve been a hit, but it just couldn’t quite get there, you know.” He gives her his ingratiating smile that takes girls out at the knees. 

Venus smiles back at him, but there’s something in her smile. She has a secret. Is this really happening? Does a girl exist who is immune to Sam’s charms? What does this mean? My sinking heart starts to bob.

“Yeah, maybe,” she replies, but her answer doesn’t ring quite true. She’s not fully committed to it. She’s just being nice. I make a mental note to google Mourning Doves as soon as possible. My fingers itch to do it right now, but I won’t. Creed told me it’s impolite to fact-check people in the middle of a conversation. It’s not that I want to fact-check my best friend, even if he’s trying to impress the one girl I’ve ever been remotely interested in, and I think he knows. I mean, how could he not know? Human contact is my least favorite activity, and I just shook her hand. He knows I go out of my way not to touch people’s skin, just like he knows I rarely go out of my way to speak to strangers.

“Well. This has all been very illuminating, but Venus and I have to keep moving. We have better things to do than stand around talking to you two pervs,” Creed challenges while staring Sam down.

He gives her a wink and an even bigger smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone’s jealous.”

Creed’s cheeks turn pink. “Yeah, right. Like I would be jealous of a girl who made up a song just so she can remember how to spell awesome,” she sneers before slipping her hand through Venus’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s go.” I have to admit, my sister is pretty creative with her snark.

 

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