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Holly frowned. “Headquarters?”
“Oh, Room 31B,” said Kami. “We’re calling it the headquarters now. Well, okay, I’m calling it that. But I’m sure it will catch on any day. Or, ah, you guys could have lunch together and you could do the interview yourself if you wanted? You’ve been doing all the running around after him; I think it’s only fair. And I don’t want to be in the way of your lunch with the guy. You said you thought he might be fun.” There. She’d chosen her words carefully and well, as a journalist should. Giving Holly her due and not a hint of being judgmental, plus she was helping Jared with his floozy ambitions.
What is wrong with you? Jared demanded. I thought we were having lunch. She hadn’t realized that Jared had meant he’d be canceling lunch with Holly. Possibly he’d been too distracted by the thought of Holly’s hotness to make himself clear.
You are just never ever happy, Kami told him severely.
Holly snorted explosively, making her curls fly up as if in a sudden gust of wind. “The Vale’s full of guys. I’d much rather have lunch all together. Would it be okay if you did the interview? I could watch and learn how to do it right. I don’t want to mess up the paper. Because the paper is awesome.”
“You’re so right.” Kami beamed at her, and took a chance to prove Jared wrong. “Uh—do you want to sit together?”
Holly lit up as if she had a lightbulb under all that hair. “Absolutely.” She made an imperious motion at Eric Dawkins, who was looking at her longingly, and he hastily went and sat beside Amber Green.
Amber, despite having had a boyfriend since she was five, looked delighted. Kami began to darkly suspect Amber Green of being a floozy. Of course, she felt generally gloomy about the fact that Jared might have been right. She made for a desk in the front, and Holly slid in beside her, still glowing.
“So, what do you think about the Lynburns being back?” Kami said. “My mum doesn’t seem too thrilled.”
“My parents aren’t either,” said Holly. “I don’t blame them. My uncle Edmund, I don’t know if you’ve heard about him?”
“My dad said he used to go out with Lillian Lynburn,” Kami offered cautiously.
Holly nodded. “He left town and left her. The Lynburns did not take the insult well. My dad’s not all that rational on the subject, but the way he tells it, you’d think the Lynburns made his crops fail. They definitely called in debts and took a lot of our land.”
The Prescotts lived on a small struggling farm outside of town. Everybody knew that Holly’s father drank; Kami had put the struggles down to that.
“Not the nicest people in the world, then, the Lynburns.”
“I can see why everyone’s afraid of them.” Holly shrugged. “They’ve got money and they own half the town. You don’t get away from that in a couple of generations. People still see them as having all the power. I know my dad does.” She glanced up at Kami. “You’re not going to put this in the paper, are you?”
“And alienate one of my best reporters?” Kami said. “No way.”
Holly laughed. “Thanks.”
“How are you at English?” Kami asked. Maybe she could get rid of all this guilt with tutoring.
“Scored an A last year,” Holly said with pardonable pride. “How about you?”
“Uh, a B plus,” Kami confessed. “But Miss Stanley is really harsh. Who was teaching your class?”
“Miss Stanley,” Holly said with a little smile.
“Ah.”
Kami decided to be enraptured by her pencil case. It was worse than being an idiot. She felt like a jerk.
You’re not a jerk, said Jared.
Are you in class? Kami demanded. Go to class!
If he did not go to class and concentrate, she did not know if she could. She felt so restless, his feelings all mixed up with hers, as if they were two rivers that had crashed together and now no separate course was possible. Kami pulled a hand through her hair and told herself she could fix this.
Holly leaned against her a bit to get her attention. “Lunch together,” she whispered. “Should be fun.”
Kami tried to put herself in Holly’s shoes. Holly—who’d had curves by the time she was eleven and all the attention from guys and hostility from the girls that went with them—looked happy, about a simple lunch. Kami felt more like a jerk than ever.
Well, she could sit around torturing herself or use the time to make up for being a jerk. She nudged Holly back and grinned. “Should be.”
“Oh no, oh no,” Angela moaned as soon as she walked into the headquarters at lunchtime. She drew Kami into a corner away from the others. “What are these people doing here, Kami? You know I don’t like people.”
