“Then why do you think Freud came up with the theory?”
I could see the cafeteria. It was only steps away. Still, I couldn’t resist answering Logan’s question. “Freud obviously hung around too many men.”
“Is that an insult?”
“Only if you consider the term men to be insulting.”
He looked at me suspiciously, but I reached the table where my friends sat and pulled out a chair for myself. I waved goodbye to Logan with a smile and called out, “Have a great lunch!”
He walked past the table, shaking his head.
“Have a great lunch?” Rachel asked. She rolled her eyes. I got my own sandwich out of my bag and glared back at her. “You could at least try to be a little bit supportive of my dilemma. Being nice isn’t as easy as it looks, you know.”
We all ate silently for a few minutes, and might have done so indefinitely if Rick hadn’t stopped by our table. He sauntered up to us wearing a T-shirt that read ANARCHY NOW
and grinned benevolently down at us. “Hi, girls.”
“Hi, Rick,” I said, because I knew he was really talking to me.
He ran one hand across his spiky, supposed-to-be-dyed-blond-but-actually-looked-more-like-florescent-yellow hair. “I’m throwing a pre-victory party at my house on Friday.
You’re all invited, of course, because I’m a good sport.”
A hundred things I could say ran through my mind, but I didn’t utter any of them. For all I knew, Logan had set this up. “Uh, thanks, Rick, but I don’t think we’ll make it.”
“Too bad,” Rick said. “A lot of your friends will be there.”
Chelsea shook her head. “Stop being such a moron and go away.”
Rick put his hand to his chest, as though wounded. “Hey, don’t get me wrong. If I could have chosen an opponent, I would have chosen you, Samantha. In fact, I have a good motto for you.” He then waved his hand as if he were placing each word on an invisible poster. “SAMANTHA TAYLOR. SHE PUTS THE CAN-I-DATE IN CANDIDATE.”
“Thanks for the help,” I said stiffly. “But why don’t you stick to your own campaign.”
And maybe you could come up with a slogan that doesn’t involve rocks.
“Oh, I’m more than happy to help you,” he said. “Because I think cheerleaders can use all the help they can get. How about this: SAMANTHA. SHE’S THE SIS WITH THE BOOM BAH.”
I smiled back at him. “How about: Rick—” I almost added, He puts the pain in campaign, but I stopped myself just in time. Then I stared up at him, searching for something that would make sense and wouldn’t be an insult. I couldn’t think of anything.
Rick waited for me to finish my sentence, but when I didn’t, he said, “How about Rick. Now that’s catchy, Samantha. You ought to go into advertising.” He laughed at his own joke and walked away.
Chelsea shook her head at me. “You sure told him where to get off.”
Aubrie reached over and patted my hand. “I’ll say it for you. How about: Rick, he’s an ultimate, supreme, pathetic jerk.”
“That was good,” Rachel said, “but lacking the Samantha signature umph.”
I picked up a potato chip from my lunch and bit into it viciously.
“All I’m going to say on the subject is this: I’m going to enjoy defeating Rick. The umph will have to come later.”
During my English class I thought about the campaign speech I had to deliver to the student body before the elections. I’d stress the need to elect someone responsible. I’d emphasize the fact that school events were not parties, and the student body needed someone without rocks in their brains to be in charge of them.
But not only did this speech start to sound silly, I began to wonder if it would actually work against me. If I emphasized responsibility, people would start thinking of Amy, wouldn’t they? She was one of those students who always had her homework neatly organized in her folder and was never late for anything.
I needed to emphasize things I was good at, like school spirit and . . . um . . . the ability to represent my school in a good manner. I mean, the student body ought to be embar -
rassed to elect someone who stuck safety pins through his ears.
I thought about this for a while, but couldn’t come up with a way of putting it into a speech that sounded good. Somehow, you just didn’t say, “If elected, I promise to work hard, promote unity, and never put sewing equipment through parts of my body.”
So after a while I just thought of all of the things I’d say to Rick after he lost the election. In my fantasies I was condescending and aloof. The only problem was, no matter what I said to Rick, his reply was always the same. He shrugged and said, “I don’t care that I lost. It was all just a big joke anyway.” And that really summed up the situation with Rick. He didn’t care. Everyone knew he didn’t care, and I shouldn’t waste my time worrying about him. Chances were he’d get tired of this whole charade before elections and drop out of the race, or be suspended from school, or, at the very least, give a really stupid campaign speech in which he promised to sell whiskey in the cafeteria and fire the teachers.
Rick wasn’t my problem. Amy was. She was my only real contender in this race, and both she and I knew it. I couldn’t afford to forget this again.
After English, I headed toward my next class. I had just walked up the stairs when Doug appeared at my side. He clutched a couple of books in one hand while simultaneously swinging his arms in a way that made me wonder if his books would, at any moment, go flying into the air. “Hey,” he said to me. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”
“At the moment, biology.” I didn’t slow my pace.
“Ahh, biology. I have that first period.” He nodded knowingly. “There’s just nothing like learning about the caribou mating habits to get your day started.” And then, right there in the hallway, Doug let forth this sound from his throat that sounded halfway between a yodel and a gorilla being strangled.
Everyone in the vicinity turned to stare at us. I walked more quickly, grasping my books against my chest as though Doug might have just been overcome with insanity and any moment now he would either pounce on me or climb up the lockers and try to fly.
He grinned, oblivious to all the hallway attention still focused on us. “That was my caribou mating call.”
Oh. How romantic. Exactly how did he expect me to respond to that? Was I supposed to yodel back or shoot him?
I kept walking quickly. “What class do you have now?” And shouldn’t you be going there instead of trying to attract caribou?
“Math.”
Dang. It was in the same direction as biology. That meant I had several more minutes of conversation time with Doug. Time in which he could put on other hallway performances.
Time in which he could ask me anything.
Did he know I didn’t have a date to the prom?
Think. Think. Think. I needed to say something, anything that wouldn’t give him the opportunity to lead the conversation in that direction.
“Math,” I said cheerily, “math is a good class. You can’t get enough of math.”
He let out a grunt. “I can.” And he trained his gaze on my eyes. “I can think of a million other things I’d rather do.”
Oops, that sentence could lead anywhere—like to us standing together in front of the prom photographer.
“Well, of course math isn’t the funnest thing. Really, when you come right down to it, English would have to be my favorite class. Mrs. Mortenson is such a good teacher. I mean, she knows all about theme, plot, symbolism—who knew books were so involved?”
As long as the topic stayed on school, I was safe, and I was prepared to talk about school nonstop, without breathing if necessary, for the rest of the walk to my class.
“You would think you’d get enough of books at your job.”
“My job?” He knew about my job? What else did he know about me?