Page 11 of Caribbean Crush

“It was nothing! Seriously! Come on.”

“It was eighth-grade district finals, and you cheated.”

I throw up my hands, waving them to encompass the whole observation lounge and the lap of luxury we’ve found ourselves in. “What does that matter now? Look at where you are!”

He doesn’t glance around the room. He doesn’t need to. His attention is on me for one last searing second before he states plainly and simply, in terms any dummy would understand, “No interview, Ms. Hughes, and that’s final.”

Chapter Three

CASEY

Unlike most schools where you have to watch out for the jocks with Y chromosomes, Fairview Prep was a matriarchal society lorded over by the queen bee herself: Shelby Carothers. She had an endless font of meanness in her. Her anger issues might not have been so bad on their own, but she was also the daughter of an ex-NBA player and thus a good foot taller than the entire student body. On a good day, my head crested her hip bone. She could have tossed me around like a rag doll if she had the inclination to do so. Her meaty fists could have closed over my windpipe and snuffed out my life in mere seconds. It would have happened eventually, I’m sure, if I hadn’t ingratiated myself to her from the start. I was a scholarship student at Fairview Prep. The lowest rung on the social ladder. However, I had something Shelby desperately needed: a brain full of useless trivia facts and not much going on in the way of a social life.

Fairview Prep was filled with so many bright young minds that even the bullies making fun of the nerds were nerds themselves. Everyone knew Shelby loved her beloved quiz-bowl team, and everyone also knew that Nicole Sanders had recently quit due to Shelby’s tyrannical leadership style. And now they needed a fourth player to round out the team.

When our paths crossed, the day Shelby’s vicious brown eyes landed on me and mischief sparked, I knew if I wanted to walk away with all body parts intact, I had mere seconds to act.

“I can join your quiz-bowl team. I’ll do it! You need me!”

The words had barely left my lips by the time Shelby had grabbed ahold of my collar and started to twist.

Already, my life was starting to flash before my eyes. I was too young to die! I’d never tried sushi! I didn’t know what it felt like to be kissed! I had a half-eaten Hershey’s bar stashed in the side table next to my bed!

Then she narrowed her eyes, weighing my offer like an ancient Roman emperor trying to decide my fate with the flick of a thumb. Up, I’d live. Down, I’d get thrown to the lions.

“Fine. We’ll start now.”

At lunch, Shelby invited me to eat at her table, and I could not refuse her offer. The universe reminded me of that as I trailed behind her, passing pitiable Hillary Vickers, who was standing at her locker with sopping wet hair and a soggy uniform, evidence of a prelunch swirly. She trembled as Shelby and her cronies passed by—expecting more brutality—then her eyes fell on me, and I thought I’d see pity, maybe even fear on my behalf. Instead, her eyes narrowed in confusion. Her lips parted as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Shelby wasn’t dragging me behind her. There were no threats. It looked like I was following her willingly. And I suppose in a sense, I was. Standing in Shelby’s shadow was the safest place to be at Fairview Prep. Becoming one of her minions was wrong on a moral level, sure, but I couldn’t get bogged down by lofty concepts like ethics. I didn’t have the luxury. It was about survival more than anything else. Hillary Vickers had a rich mommy and daddy who could nurse her wounds and buy her a new uniform and ease her suffering with endless therapy sessions. I had a chain-smoking grandmother who worked two jobs and thought beat-up shoes from Goodwill were a splurge for my back-to-school attire. In other words, I had no choice.

Before I joined, Fairview Prep’s middle school quiz-bowl team was mediocre at best, but in my eighth-grade year, we were unstoppable. Partly because Shelby made us practice three nights a week, and partly because I had a preternatural talent for quick buzz-ins. I mean, not to brag, but even Alex Trebek would have sat up and taken notice of my nimble thumbs.

Still, Shelby would stand at my side during practice. “Faster! Faster!”

Her mom would knock on the basement door. “Yoo-hoo! Anyone want some Cheetos Puffs?”

“Not now, Mom!”

There was only one other team as good as ours, and it was our all-male private school counterpart, Hillandale Academy.

And guess who went to Hillandale?

Phillip Woodmont.

He was the shining star on the Hillandale team, quick on the draw with his buzzer, just like I was.

I actually remember the first time I ever laid eyes on him. It was on a Saturday afternoon—a time when other kids our age were out riding their bikes, lounging aimlessly in front of the television, enjoying their lives. It was tournament day, which meant my grandmother had dropped me off on the curb of some randomly assigned public school, and I was left to rot there for eight to ten hours. The tournament experience consisted of quick bursts of action thickly sandwiched between hours of downtime.

I’m sure I’d tried to bring a book or something, but there was no way Shelby was having that. We were seated on a cold tile floor, trying to get far enough away from the bathrooms so that we didn’t have to listen to every single flush but near enough to the auditorium so that we’d know when it was our turn to duke it out in front of a crowd brimming over with tens of fans.

Shelby was forcing us to endure round after round of last-minute warm-up questions when I looked up and saw the Hillandale boys making their way toward us.

There were four in total—each one drastically different in size, so much so that it was like seeing a giraffe and a mouse in the same posse.

To say they were good looking would have been a stretch. None of us were turning heads. We were middle school quiz-bowl participants. Hello, there wasn’t a good haircut or a stylish article of clothing in the entire vicinity.

Still, though, I thought Phillip was ... cute. Maybe the way his braces glinted off the light was really attractive to my midpubescent brain. Maybe his starched uniform and the way it hung off his slim shoulders really called to me.

Whatever it was, something about Phillip compelled me to smile and wave at him as his team walked by us. Phillip caught my wave and stared down at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. His look of consternation was my first hint that I might have messed up.

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