Page 22 of Home Field Advantage

“Cool, so, even the one guy on the team who hasn’t been a complete asshole to me won’t get in my car when he’s been stranded. Good to know.” The words roll out of my mouth before I can give them a second thought and land with a splat on the pavement between us. “Go Alligators.”

I rev the engine and back out of my spot, but reluctantly stop shy of pulling out of the lot when I see Miguel vehemently shaking his head. “It’s not that,” I hear when the sound of the engine dies down. “I swear. It’s—it’s not that.”

My “okay, whatever” drowns in the sound of another car pulling right up to us, and then a new male voice says, “Shit, I’m so sorry. I was running low on gas and the closest gas station was the one with the skinhead, so I had to drive another ten minutes out of the way. I tried to text but it’s a total dead zone—”

“It’s fine,” Miguel bites out, yanking open the passenger door to the silver Malibu. “See?” he says to me. “Cousin’s here. I’m good. But thanks.”

The driver whirls in his seat to look at me, clearly not having noticed anyone else was in the lot. Slighter and darker thanMiguel, with eyelashes so long they fan his cheekbones when he blinks and a face that’s softly rounded everywhere Miguel’s could cut glass, it’s hard to imagine the two of them share an ounce of DNA.

Of course, some cousins don’t. But the way they both eye me before they peel out of the lot is… something.

I think back to what Amber said about how their relationship isn’t real, and looking at Miguel now, I know it’s true.

But as towhythey have this arrangement… I’m starting to think there might be more to it.

Chapter Five

-AMBER-

“Ammo! Where is your focus today?”

I groan as I pick myself up from the grass, rubbing my bruised dignity as I wither under Crystal’s glare. “Sorry, Crys. I’m here, I swear.”

It’s kind of a lie—my brain has been stuck in Jack Walsh’s “bedroom” for days—but Crystal’s right to yell at me; Ihaveto do better than this. I just can’t stop thinking about how we’re sneaking around, how I’m keeping the truth about Miguel from Jack and the truth about Jack from Miguel, and all I wantis to be able to enjoy finally sharing the halls with someone who gives me butterflies.

“You okay?” Cara asks, passing me my bottle of water. “I mean, thank you for stopping just short of dropping me, but this isn’t like you.”

She’s definitely right about that, but I gratefully take the drink to avoid answering and down a huge swig. I wish a million times over that I could ask Cara for advice, the same way I’ve asked her for advice on everything from my campaign for captain to outfit choices for dances and parties. But I can’t tell her about Jack or Miguel either.…

Maybe there’s a way I can get her advice without using specifics, though, because Lord knows I need to talk tosomebody.

“Just… having some relationship thoughts. I—”

“Trouble in paradise?” she cuts in, sounding way too gleeful about the possibility of a rift between me and Miguel, which is weird because not only does she like Miguel (as far as I know), she thinks it looks good for cheerleaders and football players to date. She’d be allll over the team if her parents hadn’t strictly forbidden dating until she’s eighteen. Then again, maybe this is her jealousy talking.

“Not exactly,” I say, not wanting to give rise to this weird false hope she’s showing. “It’s just, Miguel and I don’t, uh, see eye to eye on everything.”Like, for example, being attracted to girls.

“Oh, thank the Lord,” Cara says on a sigh. “He was being so nice to her at Maggie’s, and it was driving me nuts. I waswondering if it was bothering you, too. Honestly, I’m relieved that it was, because I feel like you’ve been a little soft, especially at the pep rally.”

I’m sorry,what? “Her who? Jack?” I mean, Cara’s not wrong that this is about her, but wowwww, it is not in the way she thinks.

“Of course Jack. Everything’s about Jack now!” she says bitterly, as if she weren’t the one who justmadethis about Jack. “I can’t wait to take her down.”

It’s like watching my best friend transform before my very eyes. I’m surprised I don’t see foam gathering at the corners of her mouth. But there are no changes to her outsides as far as I can see, and I know them almost as well as I do my own—the ears she was finally allowed to pierce with basic gold studs for her sixteenth birthday, the reddish-brown hair that always smells like the two-in-one her mom buys in bulk, the scar of two parallel lines on her knee from when we gave up trying to get one of our parents to teach us how to ride a bike and struck out by ourselves.… Iknowthat girl. And yeah, she can be petty like we all can, especially when her little siblings are making her world feel too small, but this is a level of wrath that exceeds even the time her brother Christopher and his friends ate every one of the cinnamon buns we spent an entire Saturday making for a bake sale fundraiser.

I don’t know where all this anger is coming from, but that’s only one of my many questions here. “What do you mean, ‘take her down’? How much further down can she go? She hasn’tgotten her own cheer, she was iced out at the pep rally, and she wasn’t invited to the victory party.” Just listing the slights makes me sick to my stomach, thinking of how cruel it all is, for what? For Jack’s daring to be a girl? Even if Iweren’tinto her, I’d recognize that this was tremendously shitty.

So why doesn’t Cara? And why don’t the others?

AmI being soft because I have a crush on Jack? Or is this group of girls I’m supposed to be closer with than anyone actually being as horrible as I think they are?

“Oh please—that’s nothing. She couldn’t have expected we were just gonna act like she and Robbie are the same. But she doesn’t seem to be getting the hint that we don’t want her here, and homecoming is the perfect time to make that clear.”

Homecoming. Shit. Of course. The team is away again this weekend, but the week after that is one of the biggest weeks at Atherton; we’ve already been doing lots of planning for the game, the dance, and various school spirit events that’ll be happening the week leading up to it.

I just hadn’t factored “ruin Jack’s life” into the already packed calendar.

“So, are you in, or what?”

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