AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She didn’t always send me things to proof, but I think the idea of someone reading them over first gave her peace of mind. I faithfully read whatever she sent me.
“Wait, wait, so you’re starting up your tutoring?” Alex asked, eyebrows wrinkling together. “We’ve only been in school a week. Who needs tutoring already?”
I picked up a potato chip and popped it into my mouth. “I told you I was Friday at lunch.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“She did,” Ava insisted, thumbs flying on her cell. “How else would I have known?”
Alex’s lips tightened a bit now, and the bandage above his lip quirked with the movement. “You should live a little more. Do thingsotherthan homework.”
For reasons I’d never understand, Alex didn’t like it when I spent all my free time on homework. In the past year we’d been together, while I focused on academics to hold onto my valedictorian spot—R.I.P.—he’d always tried to coax me out of my introverted shell. “But Ilikehomework,” I said, wishing the words would sink in.
Just when I started to reread my Calculus question again, Ava gave a sharp, deep gasp, a dramatic noise that almost sounded as if she’d been stabbed.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Her saucer-wide gaze was focused on her phone, jaw dropped. “Did you get a new submission?”
She slowly lifted her head. “Someone sent me the link to the Most Likely To list.”
Any curiosity disappeared as annoyance took its place. Rachel let out a sudden shriek while Alex leaned forward. There was no missing the shock from his tone. “They sent it toyou?”
“To Babble,” Ava exhaled, blinking fast. “The submission asked if I could post it.”
“Post it, post it, post it!” Rachel latched onto Ava’s arm and gave it a shake. “Don’t even bother writing an article—post the link!”
Ava didn’t hesitate, because not even a second later, a colossal wave of sound cut through my concentration, a rapid-fire domino effect of noise that reverberated through the entire cafeteria. Some were beeps, some were chimes, some were fast-paced alarms. I lifted my head, as did seemingly everyone in the room, glancing around for a quick second before their heads ducked back down. Hands searched through their things.
It was straight from aGossip Girlepisode. All over the Most Likely Tos.
The Most Likely To list was an assortment of insanity that swarmed through the school at the start of every year. It was a list with fifty labels filled with digs and insults, such as Most Likely To: Never Be Kissed or Most Likely To: Get Dumped Before Homecoming. It was a sickness that plagued the mind of every student at Brentwood High, infecting everyone with stabs of vanity and ego.
The Most Likely To list was the first obsession of the school year, and each year’s list was more annoying than the last.
Despite my sweltering animosity, I could share in a little bit of Ava’s excitement. This was a big milestone for her blog, being trusted enough to distribute the list. Last year it was passed around solely on email chains.
Ava spoke first. “Nathan Tulane was voted Most Likely To: Cheat On Their Partner.”
“I thought popular kids were usually excluded from these lists,” Alex said with a frown.
Rachel scrolled through with her thumb. “And I thought he and his girlfriend broke up last week after the football game.”
Ava nodded. “They did. It was ugly, too. Maybe that was why.”
Let’s talk about integrals, I thought, staring at my worksheet as my friends slowly lost their minds.Dive into a little bit of constant functions talk. Talk derivatives to me.
My thoughts once more ground to a halt when, in unison, as if they were still possessed by the same puppeteer, all three of them lifted their heads. Their eyes went straight to me.
I let out a sigh. “Who’s on the list?”
The probability of being given a label was low. My senior class alone had over three hundred students, and since the Most Likely Tos were open to the entire high school, with only fifty labels, the odds of getting picked were slim.
However, not impossible. Last year, Alex was Most Likely To:Never Get A Girlfriend.
A lot of people, Alex included, treated getting on the list like a challenge, some sort of personal attack that they needed to prove wrong. Hence him asking me to the homecoming dance not even a month after he’d made the cut. I’d never been too worried about the sudden ask-out, though. If he had only dated me because of the list, we would’ve broken up a year ago.
“Are you on it again?” I asked him, trying to figure out what label it would be this time.
“Not me,” he said slowly. “You.”
