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“Hidden cameras. Everywhere.”
He snorts. I crane my neck to see what he’s writing next to “reason for tardiness.”
Attempted to dye her dress brown. Failed spectacularly.
“Is that really necessary?” I ask, pulling my cardigan tight across my dress and the latte stain that shouts here’s where my boobs are! “I was stuck in traffic. All the lights in my neighborhood were out.” I don’t tell him about the fender bender.
He checks the box marked UNEXCUSED and tears the pass from the pad—ripping it down the middle. “Oops,” he says in a tone that suggests he doesn’t feel bad at all. “Guess I have to write another one.”
“Cool. I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“Artoo, it’s our last day,” he says, holding a hand to his heart. “We should cherish these precious moments we have together. In fact”—he reaches inside his jacket pocket for a fancy pen—“this would be a great time to practice my calligraphy.”
“You’re not serious.”
Unblinking, he peers at me over the top of his thin oval glasses. “Like Ben Solo, I never joke about calligraphy.”
Surely this is my villain origin story. He presses the pen’s tip to the paper and begins forming the letters of my name again, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. McNair’s Concentration Face is half hilarious, half terrifying: teeth gritted and jaw tight, mouth scrunched slightly to one side. The suit makes him look so rigid, so stiff, like an accountant or an insurance salesman or a low-level manager at a company that makes software for other companies. I’ve never seen him at a party. I can’t imagine him relaxing enough to watch a movie. Not even Star Wars.
“Really impressive. Great job.” I say it sarcastically, but my name actually does look good in that delicate black ink. I could picture it on a book cover.
He passes the slip to me but holds it tight, preventing me from escaping. “Wait a second. I want to show you something.”
He lets go of the slip so suddenly that I stumble backward, then hops off his chair and heads out of the office. I’m annoyed but curious, so I follow him. He stops in front of the school trophy case, gives it a theatrical wave of his arm.
“I’ve been here for four years, so I have, in fact, seen this trophy case before,” I say.
But he’s pointing at one particular plaque, engraved with names and graduation dates. With his index finger, he taps the glass. “Donna Wilson, 1986. Westview’s first valedictorian. Do you know what she ended up doing?”
“Saved herself four years of agony by graduating three decades before you enrolled here?”
“Close. She became the US ambassador to Thailand.”
“How is that close?”
He waves his hand. “Steven Padilla, 1991. Won a Nobel Prize for physics. Swati Joshi, 2006. Olympic gold medalist for pole vault.”
“If you’re trying to impress me with your knowledge of past valedictorians, it’s working.” I step closer to him, batting my lashes. “I am so turned on right now.”
It’s over the top, I know, but this has always been the easiest way to ruffle this seemingly unruffle-able guy. He and his last girlfriend, Bailey, didn’t even acknowledge each other at school, and I wondered what they were like outside of it. When I thought about him shedding his stony exterior long enough for a make-out session, I felt a strange little tremor in my belly. That was how horrific I found the idea of someone kissing Neil McNair.
Just as I hoped, he blushes. His skin is so fair beneath his freckles that he’s never able to hide how he really feels.
“What I’m trying to say,” he says after clearing his throat, “is Westview High has a history of successful valedictorians. What would it say for you—Rowan Roth, romance-novel critic? It’s not quite at the same level as the others, is it?”
I’ve told Kirby and Mara I don’t really read them anymore, but McNair brings up my romance novels whenever he can. His derogatory tone is the reason I keep them to myself these days.
“Or maybe you’d graduate to writing one of your own,” he continues. “More romance novels—exactly what the world needs.”
His words push me backward until his freckles blur together. I don’t want him to know how much this infuriates me. Even if I get to the point where “romance author” is attached to my name, people like McNair won’t hesitate to tear me down. To laugh at the thing I love.
“It must be sad,” I say, “to despise romance so much that the thought of someone else finding joy in it is so repulsive to you.”
“I thought you and Sugiyama broke up.”
“I—what?”
“The joy you find in romance. I assumed that was Spencer Sugiyama.”
