“You can’t keep this contained Matt,” I said.
But he wasn’t paying attention. Matt and Suzie were both laughing over the photos he’d found and he was helping Suzie come up with a fake handle of her own so she could comment.
I could already see how this could unfold. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe I was paranoid. But then again, I’d been hopeful that the stupid humiliating hashtag would die out and look where that sort of optimism had gotten me.
But if this site fell into the wrong hands…
“You guys, this is only going to make things worse.”
My friends looked up at me and I could see that they weren’t going to listen.
Suzie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Why shouldn’t they get a taste of their own medicine?”
Matt nodded and held up his hands, all innocence. “They’re the ones who went too far with that stupid hashtag. Whoever submitted that photo probably meant it as a joke, but they couldn’t let it go.” He met my gaze. “Why should we?”
I opened my mouth but I couldn’t come up with a good answer. Why should we be the bigger people? Why should we just stand by and let the Joels and the Lukes and the Caras of the world walk all over us?
We’d spent the past six years or so letting them run this school like it was their own exclusive club. And now Matt had a way to fight back. To give them a taste of their own medicine, as Suzie put it.
My gut churned as I thought of all the ways this could go wrong. But when my friends piled into the car, still marveling over this new method of revenge—I shut my mouth and drove.
Maybe Matt was right. Maybe I was overreacting.
I let myself believe that.
After I dropped them off at their respective homes, I went to my own house and found a letter waiting for me from Brown University—my dream school where I’d applied for early admission. I tore it open…
Waitlisted.
Sweet.
This day was just stellar. When my mom walked into the house a little while later she found me slumped over the dining room table feeling sorry for myself.
Without a word my mom sank into the seat beside me and slid the letter over to read it. I didn’t try to stop her—in fact, I was glad I didn’t have to say the words aloud.
After reading, my mother said, “It’s not a no.”
I cast her a look out of the side of my eye. “It’s not a yes, either.”
My mother set the letter down and stood. “We’ll talk to your guidance counselor tomorrow.”
I stared up at her, annoyed by her frustratingly positive tone. My mom was something of a Pollyana. There was no problem we couldn’t solve with positive thinking and some hard work.
She was already off on a tangent, looking at the upside, focusing on how this wasn’t a no and how there was no doubt I’d get into my two safety schools and blah blah blah.
Safety schools. Whoopdee doo. I couldn’t even pretend to match her enthusiasm for safety schools.
By the time my father came home and my mother broke the news, I was ready for a reprieve. Since I almost always helped with the cooking, I was stuck in the kitchen as my parents discussed my future without me.
“You know what you should do,” my father said. He didn’t wait for a response. “You should get more involved at school.” He stole a carrot slice from the platter I was putting together and popped it into his mouth. “Colleges love to see school spirit.”
“I already play in the band,” I said. “I help support our illustrious football team and play at all the school events…” I trailed off because I didn’t want to think about football teams, or football players, or a very specific quarterback who happened to live next door.
I turned back to the platter and feigned an avid interest in the cauliflower. “How much more spirit could I possibly have?”
“Well…” My mother apparently hadn’t realized that the question was rhetorical. “You could take more of an interest in extracurriculars.” When I opened my mouth to interrupt, she added, “Areas other than band.”
I chopped the cauliflower with more force than necessary because I knew exactly where this was heading.
“I remember when I was in school,” she started.
I groaned softly but she either didn’t hear me or didn’t care that this was roughly the millionth time she’d told me the tale of her glory days. My mother was nothing like me in high school. Sometimes I wondered if Julia and I had been switched at birth because to hear my mother talk, she was the Julia of her school, and my father was their Jason. I’d seen the photos, I’d even tried on the queen crown which my mother pulled out for hard evidence just in case we weren’t all properly wowed by her tales from back in the day.
“I used to love spirit week,” she was saying now, her voice taking on that nostalgic note that made me want to gag.
Seriously, if I ever talked about my high school days like that, someone should just put me out of my misery.
“Your homecoming is coming up,” my mother said. “Maybe you should get involved.”
I stared at her but she was lost in her reverie, and clearly mistaking me for someone else. Maybe her former self, I don’t know. If she were talking about me, she’d recall that I’d never been to a homecoming, or any school dance, for that matter. At least not since middle school. Suzie, Matt, and I had spent homecoming night watching a Harry Potter movie marathon for the past three years straight and I saw no reason to break with tradition this year.
My mother sighed. “I’ll never forget my first homecoming dance.”
And she was off. My father and I exchanged a rueful smile.
We’d lost her again.
While my mother was lost in memory, my father seemed to have realized that I was not sold on the whole school spirit angle. “You don’t have to build floats if that’s not your thing, honey,” he said.
I flashed him a grateful smile.
“Have you thought about running for student council?” he said, his voice bizarrely optimistic for such a dumb idea.
My smile dropped. “You mean entering into a popularity contest for the ages?”
He winced slightly and even my mother bit her lip as if chagrined on my behalf. The fact that I was not prom queen material hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice and the fact that I wasn’t popular wasn’t a subjective view. It was a fact, and they knew it as well as I did.
“Well,” my father tried again. “What about volunteering? That would be good for your resume, right?”
“I’m already tutoring,” I said.
My mom tipped her chin and arched her brows. “Somehow I don’t think volunteer tutoring for two weeks as a punishment will wow the dean of admissions.”
I pressed my lips together as I bent over the platter. She had a point.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll look into other activities this week.”
My father picked up a stack of plates and took them over to the kitchen table. “And you’ll talk to your guidance counselor tomorrow,” he reminded me. “Maybe he’ll have some good ideas.”
I nodded. Yeah. Maybe.
But I wasn’t expecting miracles.
Chapter Eleven
Jason
I knew Margo wasn’t expecting me, but that just made my surprise that much better.
I held the box in one hand as I pulled open the library door. This week had been just as bad as the last two weeks when it came to tension at school and in the locker room, but I’d been in a good mood anyway and it wasn’t exactly a mystery why.
She was sitting at the table where she always sat, nibbling on the end of her pen as she did her homework and waited for any drop-in students.
Margo looked up and blinked in surprise at the sight of me standing there.
I’d been going to tutoring each day for the past few days but today was game day—our second home game and hopefully more of a success than our first which we’d only won by a field goal. I’d told her I wouldn’t be able to keep our tutoring
date since I had to head over to lead warmups before the game.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her gaze dropped to the box in my hand. “What’s that?”
I held it out to her and she took it with a wary look like it might contain a bomb or something. “What is it?”
I shrugged. “Just a thank you for helping me get caught up in history this week.”
She narrowed her eyes at me before opening the lid. She drew her brows together as if confused by what she saw, but I caught the flicker of happiness across her features and it was all worth it. Skipping out of study hall early, racing to the bakery down the road, running back in here…
“A cupcake,” she said. “You brought me a cupcake.”
I sank into the seat opposite her like I had every other day this week even though today I couldn’t stay. Even so, I hadn’t been able to go a full day without a dose of Margo. She might’ve still been a little prickly around me but I was hooked on seeing her. I was officially addicted to trying to make her smile and the thrill I got when I succeeded.
I knew well enough now that she’d warm up eventually. Every tutoring session started off like this—with her all wary and standoffish, like she’d just finished telling herself I wasn’t to be trusted. But by the end she always thawed. Sometimes it was work that did it, she’d get all caught up in teaching me, her eyes alight with enthusiasm as she recapped the chapter and her face glowing with pleasure whenever I got a prep-test question right.
It was adorable.
And then there were times that it was just our talking that eased the tension. I could see the moment when she let down her guard and talked to me like I was her friend—not the quarterback and not Joel’s friend and not her neighbor whom she had to be civil to. She cracked jokes and made me laugh as she told me a funny anecdote about her friends or her parents or…anything. Really anything. She had a way of making the most mundane stories funny and interesting, and best of all she talked candidly.
After just a few conversations I knew that one of the things I loved best about this girl was the fact that she was genuine. She spoke unapologetically and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought.
She was a breath of fresh air in my world, which had somehow turned stale these past few years. Maybe because she’d stopped being part of it, I don’t know. All I did know was that seeing her joy at the sight of a cupcake made me happier than I’d felt in a long time. It made me feel like I’d done something meaningful with my day, ridiculous as that might sound.
Anyway, I was getting ready to tell her I had to head back out but then she frowned at the box and shoved it to the side.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “You don’t like cupcakes anymore? Because I vividly remember a certain twelve-year-old who had a hissy fit when her mom didn’t bring the right cupcakes to her birthday party.”
She blinked up at me, her lips twitching as she tried not to smile. I knew she remembered that party too. How did I know? I just knew. One didn’t forget a unicorn-themed birthday party.
“First of all, I was ten, not twelve,” she said. “And I’d expressly asked for purple icing.”
I met her gaze evenly until she winced. “Yeah, okay. In hindsight, perhaps that was not my finest moment.”
I glanced meaningfully at the cupcake. “Did the lack of purple icing turn you off? Should I go back and get another?”
She grinned so suddenly it stole the breath right out of my lungs. How anyone didn’t see that she was freakin’ beautiful was beyond me. “No,” she said with a laugh. “This one is perfect. My tastes have upgraded from purple frosting to chocolate.”
“Ah,” I said with feigned seriousness. “You have quite the refined palate these days, I see.”
Her laugh made me want to do something stupid like pump my fist in the air. I jammed my hands into the pockets of my hoodie instead. “So I, uh…I should probably head to the locker room.”
She nodded. “Good luck tonight.”
I opened my mouth and shut it, stupidly uncertain on what to say. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to just walk away. “I wish you could be there.”
Her head shot up. “I’ll be there, I just have to sit out when the band goes out on the field,” she said.
I knew that. I’d watched her at last week’s game. She’d come decked out in her band uniform and had sat there like a trooper while she served her probationary sentence which, apparently in the band world, meant sitting out during their performance. “Still, it sucks.”
Eloquent, that was me. But I hoped she knew what I meant. It sucked that she was paying for somebody else’s idea of a dumb joke. It sucked that she couldn’t do what she did best out there on the field.
She pursed her lips and made a funny face and I knew she was just as uncomfortable with where this was heading. Since that first day of tutoring earlier this week we’d successfully avoided all talk of Joel and the photo and the ensuing hashtag war.
I started to back away. “I’m glad you’ll be at the game, even if you don’t get to perform.”
She shrugged. “What kind of leader would I be if I didn’t show up for my bandmates?”
It was her shrug and the nonchalance behind her words that really struck me. Like it was a no-brainer that whether it was humiliating to sit on the sidelines or not, whether it was a bogus punishment or not—she would be there.
Something in my chest tightened and I focused on that stupid cupcake rather than meet her gaze any longer. “You’re seriously not going to eat that? Don’t tell me you’re on a diet,” I teased.
She rolled her eyes. “No, but I probably should be.”
“You’re not serious,” I said.
To my amazement she actually started to blush. I don’t know that I’d ever seen Margo blush, but when she ducked her head and gave a short humorless laugh I knew why. “Oh come on,” she said. “I think you and the whole school know just how much weight I have to lose.”
Her sentence sounded unfinished and I could practically hear her say thanks to your friends.
I struggled with what to say. I mean, how do you tell a girl she looked hot in a bikini without sounding like a perv? I cleared my throat. I didn’t know how to tell her she was the hottest girl in our school—in my eyes, at least—but I didn’t want her to feel bad about herself either. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
Her blush deepened. “Yeah, well. That’s easy for you to say.”
Actually, no. It hadn’t been easy to say, and I still hadn’t said the right thing. I took a deep breath and was ready to try again but she beat me to it as she mumbled under her breath. “You’re not the one whose pooch was on full display for all the world to see.”
I blinked. “Pooch?”
She tilted her head to the side and pursed her lips as if daring me to deny it. I was pretty sure my face gave away my complete and utter confusion. “Pooch,” she repeated, glancing down at her body. “You know, like my big belly.”
I struggled not to smile, and I definitely knew not to laugh. “Trust me, Margo. No one noticed your pooch.”
Her cheeks were pinker than I’d ever seen and I was torn between a protective, possessive instinct to go around and brainwash any guy who’d dared to see her in a bikini when they hadn’t the right, and a totally different type of urge…one that made me want to pull her up out of that seat and into my arms. I drew in a deep breath as I realized that I wanted to kiss her. Hard. With passion. I wanted to kiss her so thoroughly that her eyes were dazed and she forgot all about pooches and practical jokes.
I swallowed thickly and saw her gaze turn curious as she watched me.
“Don’t worry,” she finally said with a sigh. “You don’t have to stand here and make me feel better.” She shook her head. “Seriously, Jason, sometimes you’re just too nice for your own good.”
I found myself hating the word nice because it sounded so incredibly lame. So feeble and sycophantic and…that’s not how I wanted her t
o see me. “I’m not all that nice.”
One side of her mouth twitched up a bit. “Oh no?”
“No.” I’m standing here thinking about how I want to kiss you senseless. Does that sound nice to you?
I couldn’t say that. Maybe because I was too nice, I didn’t know. No doubt Luke would have known the appropriately cocky thing to say that would make her forget all about nice.
She nodded toward the pastry box. “You brought me a cupcake.”
Now I was the one feeling embarrassed as I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “Yeah, well, I wanted to thank you.” Not exactly true, but it helped salvage my pride. “My parents have been on my case about grades this semester and it made them feel better to know you’re all over it.”
That was true. My parents adored Margo, they always had.
She studied me as she leaned back in her chair. “Are you sure you’re not just trying to assuage your guilt?”
I met her gaze. No. I went to say it but couldn’t quite get it out. It was like Margo’s honesty was contagious. It was hard to meet her frank nature with a load of BS. I held back a sigh because I hadn’t even admitted it to myself, but there was a hint of truth to it. “Maybe a little bit of that too.”
I still wasn’t sure how I should have handled that Joel disaster or if I still ought to do something, but I knew that I hated that I’d hurt her—whether it was intentional or not.
My honesty was rewarded with a little grin. “Guilt cupcakes, huh?”
I shifted in front of her. “It wasn’t just that.”
She bit her lip and I got the feeling she was trying to hold back another smile. Her eyes danced with laughter. “That’s right. You also wanted to thank me…for doing my job.”
I wanted to make her smile again. I would have given anything to see that smile. The truth just kind of tumbled out again. “Maybe I just wanted to make you smile.”
That shocked her. I could tell by the quick widening of her eyes before she caught herself, a little less certain as she toyed with the edge of the box. “Well, thanks for this but I still can’t eat it.”
Love at First Fight (Geeks Gone Wild Book 1) Page 9
