When he didn’t deny it, I went on with indignation. “And you accuse me of being shallow? If you had any sense of integrity, you would have died before you let me go out with Doug.”
“Yeah, yeah. If I’d been trying to protect your dating schedule with my life, I would have been dead in the eighth grade.”
I glared at him. It was just so easy to do.
He held out his hand to me. “So where are the flyers?” When I didn’t say anything, he said, “Really. I’ll do a good job. I won’t draw little mustaches on your picture or anything.”
“I’m not passing them out today.”
“Tomorrow then?”
I tried to find my place in my book. “I don’t know.”
Instead of leaving, he sat down by me. He leaned over and said, “Would this have anything to do with the fact that you made posters for Amy?”
I still stared down at my book. “Who said I made posters for Amy?”
He sighed, then took the book from my hands. I grabbed for it, but he held it to his side, away from me. I would have had to crawl over him to get it, and I wasn’t about to do that. I looked at his face to see why he was being so difficult, and when I did, he said, “I’ve known you for forever, Samantha. I recognize your handwriting. I see it on every book order you place.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t counted on this possibility. I wondered who else would recognize my handwriting and if I would be answering this question all day. What would I say to all the people who asked me why I’d made posters for my competitor?
“Well?” he asked. He wasn’t waiting around for me to come up with a well-thought-out explanation.
“I did it because . . .”
“Because you were the one who tore down Amy’s posters?”
“Who told you that?” Was it common knowledge? Had everyone known all along that I’d done it? The thought made my heart pound in my chest. Everyone thought less of me.
Logan smiled like it was a silly question. “I figured it was either you or Rick, and it’s your handwriting on the new Amy posters.”
“Oh.” I blushed at being so easily caught. Slowly I said, “It was in retaliation for making those flyers about me. Only I just found out it was Rick who actually made the flyers, so I . . .”
“Made new posters for Amy.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.” He handed my book back to me and said softly, “For what it’s worth, you have my vote.”
He smiled at me then, and it’s funny, but that smile meant more to me than anything had for a long time. He stood up to go, but before he walked off, he said, “We’re still on for dinner on Saturday, right? You’re not letting me off on that part of the bet are you?”
“Naw,” I said back. “I still have a craving for lobster.”
After fourth period, instead of walking to the cafeteria like I usually did, I walked over to Cassidy’s locker. She was just pulling her lunch bag out.
“Hi,” I said, “do you have a minute?”
She shut her locker door. “Sure.” She said the word tightly, as though she wasn’t pleased about talking to me for even sixty seconds.
I gripped my own lunch sack tighter. “Cassidy, I owe you an apology. I just wanted to let you know I’m sorry about everything. I was wrong.”
She stared at me with surprise. “About Josh?”
“Well, I was talking about those flyers; but sure, now that you mention it, I was wrong about Josh too.”
“What do you mean you were wrong about Josh?” Her voice was edged with anger, like she thought I might be insulting him.
“I just mean it was wrong of me to go out with him when he was so clearly interested in you.” A mistake I wouldn’t repeat if for no other reason than my ego couldn’t take more of that type of abuse.
“Oh.” Relief softened her face, but a moment later it was gone. “He’s only interested in me now because there’s no one else around.”
“Thanks. I was around.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that, well . . ." She took a deep breath, and I could tell she wasn’t sure whether she should say more—that she wasn’t sure whether or not she could trust me with her feelings on the matter—but then, perhaps because I’d just apologized to her, she said, “When Josh was at college surrounded by other girls, he didn’t want a long-distance relationship with me. That wasn’t good enough for him. But now, now that he’s home for the summer, he’s being nice to me.”
“You don’t want to be second-best. I know the feeling.” And suddenly it seemed almost funny that Cassidy and I had something in common. We could have formed the Rejected by Josh Club. Only I suppose since neither of us wanted to be second-best, we would have had a hard time deciding who should be vice president.
Cassidy nodded. “It’s like he just wants a summer girlfriend. Once school starts again, it will be all over, all over again.”
Part of me wanted to nod in agreement and say, “Yeah, men are horrible creatures, and Josh is especially horrible because he never liked me.” Another part of me, the better part, felt obligated to say something else.
“If he just wanted a summer girlfriend, he could have chosen anyone, and I can testify that he’s not the least bit interested in me. I think he’s being nice to you because he likes you.”
She smiled, then forced it away. “Well, maybe it’s not his choice this time. Maybe I don’t want to be his girlfriend again.”
“Uh-huh. He’s gorgeous, premed, and can’t take his eyes off you when you’re in the room.”
“Really?”
“I’d tell you all about the prom, but I’m trying to repress that memory.”
“He couldn’t take his eyes off me?”
I laughed. It felt nice to talk to her. It felt easy. As we turned to walk to the cafeteria I said, “I give you approximately one week till you’re back together.”
“Definitely not. My pride can hold up at least two weeks.” She bit her lip. “Well, maybe a week and a half.”
My friends were already eating their lunches when I arrived. They all looked at me with uncertainty as I sat down, so I knew Chelsea had told them what happened between the two of us at the prom.
“There you are,” Rachel said. “We were wondering if you were at school today.”
“I had some biology stuff to do this morning, and I was late to lunch because I went to talk to Cassidy, you know, trying to make amends.”
Aubrie leaned in closer and shot me a wide-eyed look of sympathy. “What did you say?”
“Basically that I’d been wrong, and I was sorry.”
Chelsea winced, and then put her hand near mine on the table. “Really, Samantha, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. It must have been awful.”
“Not in the way you think. She was nice about it.”
“I bet she really laid a guilt trip on you, didn’t she?” Rachel said.
“No, she was nice about it.”
“Like right,” Chelsea said. “Just wait and see what happens the next time she’s out campaigning for Amy.”
Rachel nodded in agreement. “She puts on such an act of being sweet. You’d think her main goal in life was to be sprinkled on the top of breakfast cereal.”
“She was nice about it,” I said again, this time more firmly.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Chelsea asked.
“She’s still on her no-insult kick,” Aubrie said.
Rachel looked over at me. “Wasn’t that supposed to be over on Friday?”
I shrugged as I took my sandwich out of its bag. “Maybe I’m just tired of being so critical. Maybe we all could stand to be a little nicer.”
Chelsea opened her mouth as though about to protest, but then didn’t. She probably still felt so guilty about the flyers she would have supported me even if I’d just suggested that we all take up clogging.
Rachel leaned back in her chair and took a bag of chips from her lunch sack. “Oh, come on.”