Page 25 of Enemies to Prom Dates
There was a knock on the door loud enough for me to hear over my not-so-calming music.
“What?” I called out as I took one of the buds out.
“Are you okay?” my mom asked. “The girls said you were upset about something that happened at the party.”
I’d said nothing about the list to Kit and Lyd. Mostly because I didn’t want to see their excited reaction when they learned they’d been specifically targeted among the entire female freshman class.
They would think it was funny and sign of their attractiveness and popularity instead of what it actually was.
A signal to everyone in school that my sisters, Star’s sisters, were senseless girls ripe for the attack. No one would have put Star’s name on a list. She was too sweet and good. No one would dare put my name on a list like that, either. I was too smart to be duped by something as silly as a seduction.
Mary, sadly, was too unobtrusive to warrant anyone’s attention in that way.
But Kit and Lyd…they were fools and, in turn, they made the entire family look like fools. At a time when our own father had chosen to abandon us.
I wanted to hit something again.
“Seriously, Beth? Are you all right?”
“Fine, Mom,” I called out. “Sorry, I was listening to music.”
“You can talk to me,” she called through the door. “If you were upset about something.”
No, I couldn’t. My mother could not handle one more ounce of stress. If she thought her daughters were under some kind of attack from sleazy upperclassmen, it would only send her deeper into a tizzy. A worry that somehow the family itself was being held up for ridicule.
“Not upset,” I said loudly. “You know the twins exaggerate.”
“Okay. I’ll leave you alone. Heard the Bulldogs won. They said Fitz was amazing.”
Of course he was. He was brilliant, athletic and he knew how to make a woman come. Beyond that, he was on a quest to save the honor and integrity of freshman girls everywhere.
Then why did I want to punch him in the face?
And why did I have this crazy idea that, at some point tonight, he’d been thinking about kissing me. Or had I been thinking about kissing him?
“Damn it,” I whispered so my mother wouldn’t hear.
This was a new complication in my life I wasn’t certain I could handle.
After all, there was a lot on my plate.
A – Deceive everyone I knew about my father’s abandonment and our current money troubles.
B – Keep up my grade point average while taking on an after-school job.
C – Find the person behind the Freshman Bait List. Stop him and anyone else from betting on my sisters’ lost virginity.
D – Add AP Spanish to my course list to make Fitz suffer.
Where, in all that, was I supposed to find time to kiss Fitz? Or not kiss Fitz?
Stop thinking about kissing Fitz!
* * *
Lunchroom
Monday
