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I rang the doorbell, half debating on leaving the packet on the mat and sprinting back to the safety of my house. If it was Principal Oliphant that answered the door, I could deal with that. She wasn’t my favorite person after today, but I could be civil. If it was Madison, though…
The last time I’d been in her house had been the day before cheerleading tryouts freshman year, and she and I had been practicing the group routine in her living room. Anyone who was anyone knew that being on the cheer squad offered an express-pass to popularity, especially at Brentwood High, and Madison wanted us to nail our choreography. We’d shoved all the furniture to the corner of the room—angering her mother when she found that the coffee table left scratches on the hardwood—and danced from the time she got home from church until my mom was calling me home for dinner.
Back then, I hadn’t cared about popularity, but my best friend had. And anything that my best friend did, I had to do too. Cut my hair the same length. Paint my nails the same color. Try out for the cheer squad.
The door swung in at the same time my stomach flipped over, because instead of Principal Oliphant, Madison stood on the other side of the threshold.
It was after six now, and though cheer practice was over, she had her blonde hair tied up into a high ponytail, still wore her royal blue Brentwood Babe cheer sweatpants. She sucked in a breath as she registered who exactly stood on her antiquated welcome mat, going from curious to shocked in an instant. “Maisie?”
“Is your mom home?” Despite feeling like I was about to hurl—which, it was seriously possible—my voice came out as intended: Icy.
“Not yet.” She transferred onto her other foot. “Why?”
“This is for her.” Stiffly, I thrust the thin packet of paperwork at her as if it were germ infested. “From my mom. For some art thing.”Just take the papers.
Madison eyed the packet for only a moment before taking it with her manicured fingers. There. Delivered in under a minute. Before I had a chance to pivot, though, she lifted her blue eyes back to mine. “How’s Jozie doing? I haven’t had the chance to check in since school started.”
Despite our friendship falling apart, Madison and Jozie stayed friends. Chatted in the hallways, went to parties together, texted here and there. Since we were all so close in age, it’d always been the three of us. “You’re both like my sisters,” Jozie had said right after it’d happened freshman year. “I can’t cut her out of my life just like I couldn’t cut you.”
It wasn’t technically a fair comparison, since Madison and Jozie weren’t blood, but I never won that argument.
“She’s fine,” I told Madison now, completely leaving out the part where I didn’t have a clue about how Jozie was doing. Fine enough to send good morning texts, anyway. “Busy.”
“You finally have a room to yourself, huh? I bet that feels nice.” She gave a simple smile. Something about her words, though, made my stomach tie back up. “But then again, I bet it’s lonely without her.”
The conversation felt a bit like a math problem that was hard to solve—I couldn’t figure out if she was making small talk or trying to actually have a conversation. “Uh, yeah, it’s a bit lonely.”
The awkward tug-of-war conversation stalled for a moment. I should’ve turned around and gone back into my house, but a thread of a thought wrapped through my mind.
The Most Likely To list. It was one thing to suspect she was behind it, but another to confirm it. But now that there was an opening to approach the topic, I found myself reeling back.
In the end, I didn’t have to come up with a gawky goodbye. Principal Oliphant turned her shiny silver SUV into their driveway, offering both of us an out. “I’ll give this to her,” Madison said, waving the papers. “It was…nice chatting.”
I turned around without a response, curling my fingers into my palm, silently cursing myself for coming over here.Nice. Next time, Mom could walk the papers over herself.
* * *
“Are you coming over after school today?” Alex asked the next day as we shuffled with the forward moving of traffic in the hallway.
The lunch bell had called every student between the claustrophobic walls, creating a wall-to-wall blockade that moved at a snail’s pace. We’d pass Cafeteria A around the next bend, though, and most of the crowd would thin as the juniors and seniors would continue onto Cafeteria B. I walked as close to Alex as I could, my shoulder brushing against his side with each step. “I have tutoring.”
“Why’d you start that again, anyway?” Alex demanded, the patience snapping out of his tone in an instant. “It sucked up all your free time last year. Why do it again?”
I studied my brown paper bag, crumping the edges between my fingers. “I like tutoring.”
“This is why you were voted for the Most Likely To list, you know,” he told me, having at least a bit of decency to lower his voice so only the ten kids closest to us could overhear. “Even in your free time, you work on math homework.”
“I was never confused whyI was picked,” I grumbled, debating for half a second telling Alex who exactly would be “sucking up all my free time.” Alex, lover of popularity and social climbing dreamer, would’ve changed his tune real quick upon hearing that my silly passion brought me close to the most popular guy at Brentwood. “It doesn’t hurt you, so I don’t know why it’s such a big deal.”
“You don’t think I’m embarrassed? Dating the girl voted Most Likely To: Marry A Math book?”
“You don’t thinkI’membarrassed?” I glared up at him, the directness of the situation causing my heart to slam in my chest. “Dating the guy who’d been voted Most Likely To: Never Get A Girlfriend?”
He stiffened at my words, going from intense to embarrassed in the time it took to blink. It wasn’t something we brought up, ever, and here I was throwing last year’s label in his face. Then again, he’d thrown my label first.
We passed the doors to Cafeteria A, where many of the students siphoned off into, and without warning, someone slammed into me with enough force to send me crashing into Alex, ricocheting off his chest until I hit the floor. I dropped my packed lunch to catch my fall, the paper back splitting on impact and scattering my lunch everywhere.
Students routed around the collision, and true to accidents on the highway, everyone slowed down to get a closer look.
