by Marni Bates
It’s possible I would’ve felt honored if he hadn’t been completely off base. And if he had taken the time to address me by my first name, which I wasn’t entirely sure he knew. I really hated the way he called everyone (except Lisa Anne) solely by their last names, as if we were soldiers in the military waiting for our marching orders.
It always made me hyperaware of the fact that I’m the geekier of the two Smith girls.
So I took a deep breath and said, “Uh, actually, Mr. Elliot—” before I lost the ability to speak. Formulating a complete sentence seemed impossible with all eyes in my journalism class staring at me.
“What, Smith?” he snapped impatiently. I definitely should have kept my mouth shut.
Too late now.
“It’s just . . . this is my third year copyediting. And I was wondering if maybe I could . . . well, do something else?”
A frown furrowed his brow, and my stomach clenched. He was going to say no. He was going to insist that my copyediting was a vital part of the paper. I would graduate from Smith High School next year having contributed nothing more to The Smithsonian than a handful of punctuation marks.
And I’d continue being universally ignored while my two best friends flitted off to Hollywood without me.
“Listen up, everyone,” Mr. Elliot barked, panning the room. “This is what I’m talking about! Smith is finally stepping up to the plate, and we’re going to run with it.” He skewered me with one of his intense looks. “You’ve got the front page, Smith. Talk to Lisa Anne.”
My mouth fell open in shock, but before I could say, I don’t want the front page! I want to write fiction, he held up a hand to stop me.
“Make it work, Smith. Now where was I? Right, we really need to improve our advertising. . . .”
He went off on an entirely different tirade, leaving me reeling in his wake.
The front page? I had never wanted the front page. If my fiction plan didn’t work out, I had been hoping he might promote me to the cafeteria beat. Maybe let me write an article about the chocolate chip muffins—something small so that I could get my bearings on the actual writing side of things. I never meant for Mr. Elliot to send me from copy editor to front-page reporter overnight. It sounded like a Cinderella, rags-to-riches type deal, only this particular pauper didn’t know how to dance at a grand ball.
And she wanted time to learn the steps so that she wouldn’t trip over her stilettos and land flat on her face.
I had no ideas. I had no plans. I had no experience.
What I did have was an impulsive order given by an unstable teacher—and an irate Lisa Anne, who marched over as soon as Mr. Elliot finished ranting.
“What the hell is this?” she demanded. “Amateur hour! Okay, let me put this simply, Grammar Girl: Mr. Elliot might be the teacher, but you answer to me. Now, if you don’t deliver the steamiest, sexiest, most groundbreaking cover story I’ve ever seen, I will personally ensure that proofreading will be the closest you ever get to journalism. Are we clear?”
Oh yeah. She’d be a media darling . . . and a complete terror to work with when she wasn’t broadcasting. I could imagine a never-ending rotation of interns burning out under the strain of her demands.
I gulped. “Yeah, we’re clear.”
“Excellent.” Lisa Anne straightened the collar of her button-down shirt. She was the only senior who always appeared ready for a Harvard admissions interview. I thought just the number of preppy argyle sweaters she wore on a regular basis ought to qualify her for admittance: After all, she already looked the part.
“Obviously, you aren’t ready to take on this challenge alone,” Lisa Anne continued. Even though I had been thinking the exact same thing, hearing the words drip disdainfully from her perfectly glossed lips put me on the defensive.
“I can wri—”
“If I thought the matter was subjective, I would have refrained from using the word ‘obviously.’ This is not up for discussion.”
I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t contradict her. She held the power and we both knew it. Then again, Lisa Anne never doubted her abilities: She pushed until she got what she wanted. And even when she shut me down with a single sentence, I couldn’t stop myself from envying Lisa Anne’s extreme self-confidence.
Nobody would ever dismiss Lisa Anne Montgomery as the unimportant best friend.
“Scott!”
My head snapped up.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “I’ll be fine. I don’t need him. I’m good. The story will practically write itself.”
Lisa Anne raised a single eyebrow, waiting for the rest of my lies to fade out.
“Really, that’s not necessary. Please. Don’t.”
“Grammar Girl, I don’t care whether you think it’s necessary. My priority is the paper. Front-page stories require front-page photographs.” She paused and together we watched my nemesis, Scott Fraser, walk over. All five feet eleven inches of rumpled hotness in black Converse sneakers, dark blue jeans, a slightly wrinkled black T-shirt, and a gray jacket, with his ever-present Nikon in hand. “Scott, Jane is your new assignment.”
His green eyes were speckled with brown, and he made no attempt to hide his derision.
“Lucky me.”
He went heavy on the sarcasm.
Lisa Anne shrugged. “Well, you’re in charge of making sure she doesn’t bomb, since I don’t have time to babysit. The issue goes out on Tuesday. So do whatever is necessary to make this work.” She turned back to me. “Don’t forget, Grammar Girl, screw this up and you’ll never write for The Smithsonian again.” She smiled. “No pressure.”
I was so dead.
Chapter 3
“So what’s your angle?”
I couldn’t get over the weirdness of sitting across from Scott Fraser, as if nothing had happened between us. As if I hadn’t tried to befriend him when he transferred from some private school in Los Angeles . . . only to be stabbed in the back when he told Lisa Anne, “Jane? She doesn’t have what it takes to become a reporter.”
Direct quote.
I guess if you’re an attractive seventeen-year-old guy with a talent for photography you can blow off the geeks as soon as you get settled in. That’s probably how Scott viewed the situation, anyway. Not that I called him out on the whole “she doesn’t have what it takes” thing. Isobel was right: I’m not good with confrontation.
So I didn’t stalk over and yell: How do you know I can’t hack it as a reporter? I haven’t written so much as a muffin review! Thanks a lot for trashing me, jerk!
Instead, I did a silent 180-degree turn and headed straight to the library without saying a word. The worst part was that I had honestly thought we were becoming friends. That’s why I had arrived early to our journalism class, to see if he wanted to hang out with Corey, Kenzie, and me in Portland. I thought he might enjoy a brief respite from the boredom that is life in Forest Grove. I was just about to invite him when I overheard him talking to Lisa Anne. I fled without being noticed at all, because even in the midst of a verbal trashing, I was still a freaking master at the art of invisibility.
Too bad I felt like crap.
Still, I had wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Even though the likelihood that Scott would apologize and explain that it was all just one big misunderstanding . . . not exactly good betting odds. I mean, part of me knew that was never going to happen. Not in this lifetime.
I just hadn’t wanted to accept it.
At the time, Kenzie’s fame was skyrocketing, and it was just starting to sink in that no matter how her newfound notoriety worked out, nothing would be the same again. The American public would either love her or mock her mercilessly, but in either scenario, the spotlight would follow her every move.
Relegating me back into the shadows.
That’s why I had hoped that the whole thing with Scott had been blown out of proportion in my head. I didn’t want to believe anything bad about my one new friend—someone who hadn’t known m
e since elementary school, who didn’t care about my sister’s popularity, who never treated me like the pathetic sidekick.
I couldn’t have been more wrong about the creep.
Turns out the reason he spent his first week at Smith High School fiddling on Photoshop next to me had nothing to do with my wit, my personality, or my dimpled grin. He had only pretended to like me because he wanted access to Kenzie.
I should’ve guessed as much from the very beginning.
Instead, I was blindsided when Lisa Anne congratulated him publicly on his amazing photo of my best friend, frozen in fear, as the media mobbed her. The one he must have snapped the day I attempted to introduce them to each other.
In the end he hadn’t even needed my help to capture his front-page-worthy photo—rendering me even more obsolete than before. Unbeknownst to me, that must have been the day he completed his metamorphosis from The New Kid to the well-accepted jerk. So when Lisa Anne led everyone in a round of applause, I blanched, mumbled some excuse, and fled to the bathroom. Scott and I had scrupulously avoided each other ever since. On the rare occasion that the limited number of computers forced us to sit next to each other, we both pulled out our iPods.
It was actually kind of amazing that the two of us hadn’t been forced together sooner.
I just wished my luck had lasted a little bit longer.
Rubbing my forehead tiredly, I told myself that armed with my plan I could handle Scott Fraser. It might even have been true if Mr. Elliot hadn’t effectively derailed me fifteen minutes before.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” I muttered when I finally noticed him looking at me expectantly.
That was one way to make it clear that I refused to be intimidated on this assignment.
Not.
“I said, what’s your angle?” Scott sounded half bored, one quarter irritated, and one quarter smugly certain that I could never pull off a front-page story.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted.
He crossed his arms, and I would have loved to say something—anything—to remove that stupid smirk from his face. Unfortunately, I had a feeling he was absolutely right: I wasn’t ready for this.
“Do you have any ideas?”
“Erm . . . no?” I probably shouldn’t have let my answer sound like a question.
“Well, that’s helpful, Grammar Girl.”
I glared at him. The only time our sportswriter, Brad, had asked him to edit an article, Scott had waved dismissively in my general direction and said, “Grammar Girl can fix it.” That stupid nickname had spread like wildfire and successfully removed the necessity for anyone on the newspaper to actually learn my name.
But I couldn’t do anything juvenile for payback. I had to be the bigger person if I wanted to prove that I could do more than apply basic rules of punctuation. Then I’d be taken seriously when I suggested adding a fiction page to the paper.
I just had to nail this story first.
“Could we hold off on the animosity? I got this assignment all of five minutes ago! Just . . . give me a second!”
Scott’s smirk never wavered. “Want me to come back sometime next week? Think you’ll have processed it by then?”
I took a deep breath and pictured him as a toothy iguana that I could blow up with the help of a handy grenade. Much better.
“Regardless of what you think, Scott, I’m writing the front-page story. And since your reputation is on the line, you should want it to succeed every bit as much as I do.”
I was bluffing, of course. Our stakes were nowhere near the same. If he took crappy photos it’d be disregarded as a fluke. If I bombed I’d be Grammar Girl for the rest of high school, or worse, I might be ignored completely.
But Scott didn’t need to know that.
“You think you can mess up my place on the paper?” His grin widened as if the thought were too ridiculous for words. “Not in this lifetime, Grammar Girl.”
Had it been anyone else I might have felt bad about lying right to their face to suit my own needs. But since it was Scott Fraser . . . not so much. I leaned forward and met his gaze evenly.
“We both know you’re still considered the newbie. And a few decent photos for the paper—”
“Decent!” Scott interrupted.
“Yep. Average shots at best, really,” I lied. “Definitely not enough to prove that you’re consistent. So if we don’t deliver a killer front-page spread, get ready to say hello to the bottom corner on page four.”
Scott’s smirk vanished.
Maybe I should reconsider joining the drama club. Sure, my sister starred in every theater production before she graduated, leaving a legacy I’ll never be able to fill . . . but it might not be the worst extracurricular activity for me. If I could make Scott buy that line of total crap, then maybe I did show promise as an actress.
Or maybe I had a future as a psychologist, because I knew exactly how to maneuver Scott into helping me out. Time to pound on some of his new-kid fears and watch as his apprehension about the wildly unpredictable Mr. Elliot took hold.
At least, that’s how it would have worked with anyone else.
He gave me a look of pure, smug confidence. “There won’t be a problem with my photos. If you have a story, I’ll have a shot. Come up with anything yet?”
I tried to recall Lisa Anne’s instructions. She wanted something sexy for the front page. Something provocative. Something that positively reeked of scandal.
Yeah, I had nothing. But lying to Scott’s face was becoming startlingly easy.
“Sure. I’ve got ideas.”
He looked at me expectantly.
“I’ll—uh, I’ll just . . . go undercover.”
He didn’t even try to hide his derisive laughter. “Right. ‘Jane Smith: Undercover Girl Reporter and the Case of the Missing Lunch Money.’ ”
He had a point. Going undercover sounded exciting in theory in a spy-next-door kind of way—but it’s sort of pointless if you don’t have an objective beyond writing . . . something. There has to be a target before there can be an infiltration, which left me right back where I started: screwed.
“I can do this!” I insisted.
“Sure you can, Nancy Drew.”
“Nancy Drew was a detective, not a reporter. Get your stories straight.”
“My stories aren’t the ones you should be worrying about, Grammar Girl. You’re the one with a front page to fill. So either figure it out or scurry back to your editing cave. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t waste my time.”
I straightened my shoulders and mentally ground his precious camera into the gum-littered pavement sidewalks of Smith High School. “I’ll have something for you by the end of the day. At the latest.”
Hopefully.
He nodded. “Then I’ll see you at lunch.” And before I had the chance to veto that idea, he snagged his backpack and moved to an empty computer where he could tweak his photos in privacy.
Nothing like digging up a front-page story under the sharp photographic lens of an archnemesis while having lunch with my newly famous friends.
Oh yeah. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.
Chapter 4
“Uh . . . Jane? Don’t freak out, but I think Scott Fraser is stalking you.”
Isobel’s eyes widened in surprise when I merely tried to brush off her words with a shrug. But she couldn’t just leave it alone. Instead, her voice lowered to a whisper. “Wait, did you actually talk to Mr. Elliot today? Is that why Scott Fraser is—” Isobel cut herself off and planted her hands on her hips. “I’m missing something, right?”
I peered over Isobel’s shoulder and saw Scott standing patiently in line for a sandwich, his trusty camera slung around his neck. I scanned the cafeteria slowly so he wouldn’t think I was paying any extra attention to him. No need to inflate his already overblown ego. Although it was hard to be inconspicuous with Isobel pushing up her glasses so that she could get an even better look. None too discreetly
, I might add.
“It’s complicated. I’m sort of an undercover reporter on probation right now. Scott’s hanging around to supply the photos.”
Isobel’s whole face lit up. “Jane, that’s fantastic! Congratulations!”
I was too nervous about my ability to avoid Lisa Anne’s wrath to feel like celebrating my promotion. Not yet. Not until I had dotted my i’s, crossed my t’s, and handed my grammatically perfect article to Mr. Elliot himself.
“Thanks, Isobel. Now I just need a story. Something controversial.”
Isobel looked dubious. “Uh, Jane? You don’t do controversial.”
All of this “Jane, you can’t do that” crap was starting to seriously piss me off. Sure, I expected it from Lisa Anne and Scott, but I had hoped that Isobel would have showed a little faith in me. Especially considering that I had spoken up in class.
And, okay, I hadn’t mentioned my idea to add a fiction page to the paper. But I would . . . eventually.
“I don’t have to be controversial,” I pointed out, perhaps a bit too defensively. “I just have to find the story. Two completely different things.”
“And Scott’s going to be tailing you for the photos?”
“Yep.”
Isobel nodded thoughtfully. “Well, frankly I don’t know how you’re going to get anything done with him watching your every move.”
“You mean because he’s such a jerk?” I shrugged. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Actually, because he’s so cute. It’s distracting.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Isobel has always been the rational member of our group, who observes everything objectively.
“Nothing about Scott is cute. Trust me, beneath that thin veneer of polish lies a raging egomaniac.”
She studied him carefully, almost clinically. “You’re right: He’s not cute.”
“See!” I reached for the ketchup to add some to my french fries. Our high school cafeteria leaves much to be desired in the way of nutrition.
