Logan folded his arms and shook his head slowly at me. “So tell me, do you just naturally flirt with every guy in the vicinity? Is it some sort of compulsion that you can’t help?”
“I don’t flirt with you.”
“Then you’re saying you think about it beforehand. You lay out your web like a spider waiting for its prey.”
I bit my lip before I could tell him what species in the animal kingdom he was most like.
Compliments . . . compliments . . . one quick shove and he’ll go flying down the stairs . . .
I marshaled all my self-control. “How come I can’t insult you, but you have no qualms about insulting me?”
“Well, I guess that’s because we didn’t make a bet that I couldn’t go two weeks without insulting people.” He smiled, showing a set of perfectly white teeth. “You still have ten days left.” He started down the steps himself. “You know, it’s gonna be a fun ten days.”
CHAPTER 8
I thought about Josh off and on at school the next day.
I especially thought about him in between classes while I was avoiding Doug in the hallways.
I would have preferred to run into Josh here and there around town and wait for something to happen between us. That’s how romances ideally develop, but the prom was coming up. I needed to be bold.
Only I wasn’t quite sure how to go about being bold. Did I text him and chat, then see how he responded? Ask him outright? Maybe drop by the office-supply store Josh worked at and casually buy thousands of Post-it notes while I worked up my courage? What did one say to a guy who had rejected you the year before?
The confident approach: “So, are you any smarter about women this year?”
The witty approach: “So, I see you’ve changed a lot of things about yourself. Did you change your mind too?”
Or perhaps I could just go with the desperate approach: “Please tell me I’m not second-best anymore.”
When the last bell rang, I followed the throng of students out the door, still contemplating it all. I never made it to the parking lot. Rachel and Aubrie intercepted me halfway down the school steps.
“There you are,” Aubrie said.
“We have to talk.” Rachel looked around as if trying to assess the best place. “Let’s go back inside.”
“What is it?”
Neither of them answered until we went back up the school steps and stood by the gym, away from the main flow of students. Then Rachel unfolded a piece of yellow paper for me to see. “Someone put flyers on all the car windshields.”
In large handwriting it said:
Vote for Samantha Taylor?
She got an 810 on the SAT
Be smart and vote for someone else.
As soon as I read it, I swear, my stomach jumped up and grabbed on to my throat. I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there gripping the flyer and repeated “Oh, no!” about seventeen times.
Before I made it to the eighteenth, Rachel said, “Who did you tell about your SAT
score?”
It wasn’t hard to pick the culprit. “Cassidy Woodruff.” Rachel put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at me. “And why would you have been stupid enough to do that?”
“I trusted her. I thought I could convince her to come over to our side.”
“How? By letting her know you’re an idiot?”
I crumpled up the flyer, trying to smash the words off the paper. “You don’t need to rub it in.”
I stepped over to a hall trash can and shoved the flyer inside. As I did, Rachel took my arm and tried to stop me. “Hey, wait, we need that as evidence.”
It was too late, though. I’d already put the flyer in the trash, and I was not about to put my hand in there to retrieve it.
“Don’t worry,” Aubrie said glumly. “There are tons more of them outside.”
I groaned. My stomach had not only grabbed on to my throat, it was now trying to climb up. Aubrie and Rachel headed back outside, and I followed after them. We spent the next few minutes taking the flyers off the cars that were still in the parking lot. Which wasn’t many. Most of the students at PHS didn’t stick around long after the bell rang.
Ripping flyers off windshields was a totally humiliating experience. Each time I saw my name on those papers, it caused a jabbing feeling in the place my stomach used to be.
How many students saw this message? And what would they think of me now? Would I be remembered not as a leader, but just as some stupid cheerleader? I wished I had never run for president. I wished the next time Cassidy gave someone that phony smile, her face brok e in half.
After we finished with the windshields, we started on the rest of the parking lot. Flyers lay scattered from one end to the other. I assumed most people just pulled them off their windshields and left them on the ground—which, in a way, was a good sign for me. At least it meant no one took them home to keep as treasured mementos. Maybe some of the kids didn’t even read them. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal at all.
I clutched the stack of flyers in my hand. Who was I kidding? This was war, and I’d just been dealt an ugly, ugly blow. Only I wasn’t about to declare this battle over. Oh, no. I’d just begun to fight. I regretted I only had but one life to give to my cause . . . and whatever that other war saying was . . . something about torpedoes. An yway, if Amy wanted a fight, I’d give it to her.
After we’d collected all of the flyers, we sat down on a grassy hill by the parking lot to plan our counterattack.
“I say we take these flyers into the office and have Amy busted,” I said.
Aubrie shook her head. “They won’t do anything about it. We can’t prove she was the one who did it.”
“They could match her handwriting.”
Rachel grunted. “That’s not Amy’s handwriting. She wouldn’t have been foolish enough to write them herself.” She held up one of the flyers to inspect. “Besides, it’s a guy’s handwriting.”
Now I examined one of the papers. It did look like a guy’s writing. The lettering didn’t flow. It just stuck up in tall, uneven lines—like whoever wrote it was in a hurry. Guys’
writing always looks that way.
So Amy must have had a friend, or a brother, or some lowlife from her criminal double existence write it for her. Someone untraceable. Still, I studied every single letter on the flyer in hopes I’d be able to recognize it if I ever saw it again.
Most of it could have been anybody’s writing, but the e’s were distinctive. Their loops pointed up in skinny juts, almost like they were sloppy i’s. I’d watch for those e’s again, probably for the rest of my life. Someday I’d be in a nursing home and notice that the old man sitting next to me wrote those kinds of e’s. Then I’d reach over and smack him with my cane.
Rachel nodded toward the school. “I say we rip down all of Amy’s posters.”
I thought about it for a moment, but only for a moment. Those speeches on fairness and how I didn’t want to run a mean campaign seemed very far away, their words faint. Much fainter than the handwriting in front of me. “Yeah,” I said softly. “That would make me feel better.”
We left the parking lot and walked back to the school. A few people still straggled down the stairs. How many students and, more importantly, how many teachers were inside?
If my stomach hadn’t already gone AWOL, it would have fled now. I wished Chelsea was here with us. She wasn’t afraid of anything, and I could have used some of her courage.
But she walked home every day and must not have seen the flyers. I envied her ignorance.
I whispered to the others, “We’re just getting stuff from our lockers. Act casual.”