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Brand.”
    â€œHow’d you do it, dude?”
    â€œWhat’s it feel like?”
    â€œHey, man, ya wanna hang out?”
    Some of them I knew. Some were just faces from around school.
    And then Kayla was alongside of me. She grabbed my arm. “Brandon, you look like you’re about to faint.”
    â€œI’m a little dizzy.”
    â€œSorry I hung up on you.”
    â€œI must have deserved it”
    â€œNot really. I overreacted.”
    â€œNo, you didn’t. I heard myself. I sounded like an asshole.”
    â€œWell, maybe a little,” Kayla admitted.
    â€œLike my grandfather used to say, ‘There’s more horses’ asses in the world than there are horses.’”
    â€œYour grandfather really said that?”
    â€œYeah. It was his explanation for just about everything.”
    â€œI would have liked your grandfather,” Kayla said, guiding me to my locker. I’d been away from school for a few days and everything did seem different. It was like unknown territory to me. And everyone kept looking at me. I was feeling pretty spaced.
    At my locker, I swallowed hard and looked at Kayla. “What do I do?” I asked. “I’m not sure I know how to handle this.” I really was nervous about all the attention. And it might only get more intense.
    â€œJust be yourself.”
    â€œI’m not sure who that is anymore.”
    I looked at Kayla. We’d been friends for a long time.
    She looked worried. “Just go to class. Try not to draw too much attention to yourself.” She nodded at the masses swirling around us. “They can’t help themselves. You’re their hero now because you won.”
    Hero? What the hell had I done to be a hero? All I did was get lucky. Nonetheless, I found myself smiling at those who were walking by. Especially the girls who were eyeing me. This was too much. I smiled and nodded at the girls from some of my classes who probably hadn’t even known my name until this past weekend. Smart girls. Hot girls. And there I was, standing by my locker with my pudgy-faced girl buddy who liked to climb trees.
    That was when I discovered I could actually give eye contact back to some of those young women walking by. I mean real eye contact. I was beginning to think that I’d turned some kind of corner in my life. I had stayed away from school for a few days and returned to an alternate universe where Brandon the Invisible had turned into Brandon the Magnificent. Maybe I was going to like this after all.

chapter eight
    Kayla followed me to my first class—English. She squeezed my hand and then rushed on down the hallway, late for her own math class. I was a little shocked at what was going through my brain right then. I even hate to admit it, but this is what I was thinking: I’m going to have to ditch Kayla if I want some of those girls to come up and talk to me.
    Yep. That was the plan. At the time, I wasn’t even thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking about our friendship and the fact that she had saved my sorry ass when I fell out of the tree. I was just thinking about me. The new me.
    Which is why I didn’t notice where I was going. As I was walking down the aisle between the desks, Grant Freeman had his leg out. Maybe he did it on purpose. I don’t know. But I tripped.
    My books and papers went flying and I went down hard, smashing first into Brittany Michaels’ desk, making her scream. Then a proper face plant onto the linoleum floor. Gravity was clearly not my friend these days.
    Everyone laughed. They were laughing at me. Not that it was the first time. It’s just that before I would have brushed myself off, felt embarrassed, and shuffled to my seat. But now, thanks to winning the money, well, like I said, I was starting to change.
    I now had an ego. Or at least I was working on one.
    A teenage male ego.
    I didn’t like being laughed at.
    I wasn’t going to take