Page 56 of Enemies to Prom Dates
I plopped down next to them and pulled my lunch bag from the satchel I used to carry around my laptop and notebooks.
“What’s the matter with you?” Janie asked. “You look like someone just knocked you on the head. OMG did you get pushed around again?”
I shook my head and closed my eyes as if that might remove the no doubt witless expression I was wearing.
Except when I opened them both Janie and Reen were still looking at me like I was a math problem that needed to be solved.
“I’m going to Chas’s party this weekend. With Fitz,” I blurted.
They both sat up straighter, while I was suddenly relaxed now that I’d thrown that bomb on the table.
“Go on. Say it,” I told them. “Tell me that this is some sort of game he’s playing with me. That I’m the mouse to his cat.”
Janie’s lips quirked. “Games are meant to be fun.”
I glared at her.
“How does this fit in for our plans for revenge?” Reen wanted to know.
I shrugged. “I’ll get my revenge on the Snobs by having the last laugh with one of the most popular guys in school? You know Anne will bust a nut when she sees me show up with Fitz. In fact, they all will. This is stupid. I don’t even like parties. They’re cramped and loud and everyone is drunk within seconds and slurring their words.”
“And you end the night running from the police while your legs get torn up by bushes and branches and shit,” Reen added.
She’d had that happened to her freshman year when she’d escaped from the police at a Woods blowout that got a little out of control. Since then, she’d always mapped out an escape route any time she went to a high-school event where there would be drinking.
“Or, you know, you could just go and have fun,” Janie pointed out. “No agenda. No looking for the shoe to drop. You could talk to Fitz. Really talk to him.”
“Janie, are you high? What on earth do I have to talk to Fitz about other than how I’m going to crush him academically this year and leave him howling like a baby in the corner? That is not party conversation!”
I loved how I was covering up the fact I’d already shared with him my deepest secret, something even Reen and Janie didn’t know, with such righteous indignation.
Apparently, I was a much more competent liar than I realized.
Or maybe Janie had been right. Maybe I was too much of a coward to face what I was actually feeling, and I was suffering from self-delusion.
Wait. What was I actually feeling?
“So don’t talk to him.” Reen smiled and gave her sexy pout. “You could, you know, do other things with him.”
I wanted to slap her. I wanted her to take that sexy look off her face. I wanted to her to immediately retract any idea I might be sexually interested in Fitz.
Instead, I asked, “You think…you think Fitz is into me? Like that?”
“Duh!” Janie said, slapping a hand to her forehead to make a point about how thick I was being. “He’s been into you like that for a while. I think he’s finally figured it out and decided now is the time to make his move.”
“Shut up!” I said. “You’re making that up. Look where we sit in this room.” I reminded her. “He’s not crossing over to the right side of the popularity line for me. Trust me. No, he’s got some other agenda.”
Janie shook her head, but Reen at least understood where I was coming from.
“Well, the only way to find out what his agenda is is to go with him to the party,” Reen said. “And if you have to seduce him to get him to reveal his secrets, that’s just what you’re going to have to do. You can borrow some of my seduction clothes.”
“As if I would know how to seduce anyone. That’s your area of expertise.”
Reen wiggled her eyebrows as if confirm my statement. “That’s why I’m willing to lend you my clothes.”
I could not wrap my mind around seduction clothes. Fortunately, Reen presented me an opportunity to change the subject.
“Speaking of your latest conquest, you should know something about Locke.”
