“Vote for Toby!” Whatever he was doing, Noah was getting progressively louder.
“Yes,” I said, answering Jack’s question. “He has an obvious death wish. He must also be a masochist, because this is going to hurt.”
My moment with Jack temporarily forgotten, I stalked off, rounded another corner, and came face to face with my brother.
He was wearing a sandwich board with my photo plastered to the front.
He was handing out buttons and flyers with my name on them.
And, unless I was mistaken, he’d gotten his friends to do the same.
“Vote for Toby.”
“Vote for Toby.”
“Vote for Toby.”
All up and down the hallway, the biggest goofballs in the class below me were actually encouraging their peers to throw their homecoming votes my way. From this distance, it looked like Chuck might have even been handing out candy.
I may be short, but it only took me three hugely angry steps to be standing directly behind my brother. I tapped him on the shoulder—harder than required to get his attention—and he turned around.
“Vote for To—” he started to say, but the moment he saw the look on my face, he changed his mind. “Hey there, big sis,” he said in a little-boy voice especially designed to remind me that I was his older sister, he was the baby, and my family had a strict no-maiming policy.
He needn’t have worried. I wasn’t going to maim him. I was going to end him.
“Noah,” I said through gritted teeth. He waited, and I couldn’t even go on. Instead, I gestured at his sandwich board, the buttons, and the various other freshmen watching our interaction, their hands full of VOTE TOBY posters.
“Explanation,” I barked, knowing that nothing he said would make this any better, but feeling as if I should allow him to have some final words other than “hey there, big sis.”
Noah said nothing.
“Now.” My voice started off low and dangerous, but it rose to a yell.
“I told you,” Noah said, his grin never faltering, even as he showed the beginning signs of preparing to run. “I’m your campaign manager.”
“I don’t want a campaign manager,” I said, stepping even further into his personal space. “I don’t want to win.”
“I know,” Noah said. “That’s why you’d be perfect!”
I grabbed the lapels of his shirt, even though the fact that he had three or four inches on me meant that I had to reach up a little to do it. “If you don’t make all of this disappear in the next five minutes,” I said, “you’ll be perfectly dead, and Mom and Dad will never miss you. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Noah replied. Then he raised his voice.
“Okay, guys. We have a no-go. That’s a no-go on the posters, buttons, and boards.”
I released him, and as he scurried down the hallway, I heard him yell one last thing.
“Proceed to Plan B.”
“Death wish,” Jack said, coming up beside me. “Clearly.”
About that time, I realized that due to the volume of the threats I’d issued to my brother, everyone had heard me sounding about as dangerous as I get. This type of behavior didn’t exactly qualify as flying under the radar and taking advantage of the cheerleader stereotype to convince people that I couldn’t possibly be anything more than I seemed.
The Squad would not approve.
“Uhhh…Go Lions,” I added. My audience let out a collective shrug and dissolved.
“How long until that hits the rumor mill?” I asked Jack below my breath.
“Seven-point-eight seconds,” Jack answered solemnly.
“But don’t worry, Zee’ll come up with something more interesting for people to talk about. She always does.”
He was right. That was part of Zee’s job, orchestrating gossip that served our purposes and stomping out rumors that hurt them. Sometimes, Jack was so perceptive that it truly freaked me out. The only thing I was sure about when it came to Jack’s family was that Jack didn’t know what his uncle did, or, for that matter, what I did. Whether or not he knew the full extent of what his father’s firm did was up in the air. Of all the people who could potentially discover our secret, Jack was the candidate whose discovery would devastate our operation the most, and he was the one person most likely to actually sort things out.
And he was my homecoming date.
“I don’t know if Zee will be able to do anything about it,” I said, trying not to let him see that his comment had really rocked me. “It doesn’t get much juicier than a cheerleader-issued death threat.”
“Oh, come on, CDTs happen all the time,” Jack said solemnly. “Usually it’s over stuff like two girls wearing the same outfit, or someone telling someone else that a third person said they were a slut, but still, cheerleader death threats are old news.”
He was trying to make me feel better, and there was a chance he was right, but those stupid VOTE TOBY posters were still plastered all over the walls, and it was hard for me to be optimistic about anything with my own face staring back at me, reminding me that the world hated me and wanted me to suffer.
“But you know, Ev, if you really want them talking about something else, I could probably help you out.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Right.”
He took my words as a challenge, pressed me to a wall, and kissed me so long and hard that even once I knew we had an audience, I couldn’t pull away.
This was wrong. There was a conflict of interest here, and besides which, he was at the top of a hierarchy I hated. Forget that I was on top, too. I wasn’t the kind of girl to go weak at the knees just because someone was…
The most incredible kisser. Ever.
His hands moved from the side of my face down my neck and to my waist.
I hated him. I hated being a cheerleader.
I hated that I didn’t actually hate him or being a cheerleader. But most of all, I hated it when we stopped kissing.
“Miss Klein! Mr. Peyton! Perhaps the two of you should invest in a room?” Mr. Corkin pushed to the front of the crowd that had gathered around the two of us while I’d been lost in my own thoughts and Jack’s lips.
“I don’t suppose you’d know where we might get one?” Jack inquired, his face a mask of civility, his tone overly polite.
Mr. Corkin sputtered.
“No?” Jack said. “In that case,” he flicked his eyes over to mine, “maybe the two of us should go to class?”