How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend

  I hung up and tried to muster some confidence in Dante’s chances. My friends would help me. We would figure out a way to help him win. We had to. Because that would show Jesse he’d been wrong all along.

  I lay on my bed for a long time, wishing I could sleep. I told myself I wouldn’t think about Jesse or Dante or any of it. But the thoughts stayed hovering at the corners of my mind. I’d remember how Jesse had caught up with me in the hotel lobby. “You can’t walk home,” he said. “I’ll drive you.” He hadn’t said this in a nice way. It wasn’t like he was sorry.

  “I’ll call Dante. He can pick me up.”

  “I’m driving you.” Jesse took hold of my elbow and steered me outside. “It’s not like I want to stick around here anymore.”

  I felt myself flush and was glad he didn’t look at my face. I mean, what was it with me that every time I got angry, it somehow turned into a public event?

  I got into his truck, because it seemed childish to keep protesting, but I sat stiffly on the seat with my arms folded and looked out the window. Neither of us spoke until we pulled onto my street. Then he said, “One day you’ll understand why I did this.”

  “That’s all you have to say?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Until the election is over, there doesn’t seem much point in saying anything else.”

  And then what? I was going to forget he’d chosen to be loyal to Wilson instead of Dante and me? No wonder Jesse was friends with Wilson. Apparently they had the same arrogance level.

  I tried to erase all memories of the evening. I pulled my covers tighter around me and thought of my shopping trip Monday with my friends. Daphne could pick out clothes to make anyone look like a model. She’d help me find something wonderful.

  But it wouldn’t be a prom dress. Jesse and I wouldn’t go together now.

  I took a deep breath and repeated, “It doesn’t matter,” over and over again in my mind.

  I pressed my eyelids together, trying to force sleep into relieving me of my thoughts. It didn’t help. The tears came, then turned into sobs, and I lay awake on my bed for a long time.

  Chapter 5

  Sunday passed in a blur. I spent most of the time hidden in my room doing homework. My emotions swung between fierce determination to win the election, and abject misery in losing Jesse. To tell the truth, it was mostly abject misery, but I didn’t see how I could have done things differently. Despite Dante’s calm objections that he didn’t care, I knew he did, or at least that he would.

  I couldn’t be loyal to my brother and have Jesse. Family was more important.

  Still, it was misery.

  Jesse didn’t call, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but I sat tensely in my room waiting to hear his voice anyway.

  My friends called to check up on me and offer their sympathy. Daphne told me there were other fish in the sea. Charity told me I needed to look for the silver lining in this cloud of heartbreak. And Raine told me it was good that I found out now where Jesse’s loyalties lie and not after we’d been married and he kept leaving me to go hang out with his buddies while I was stuck at home with three screaming babies and a sink full of dirty dishes. Raine probably watches too much Dr. Phil.

  Anyway, I knew they were trying to make me feel better, but I didn’t. I guess that’s impossible the day after a breakup. You can’t just pick up and move on like it all meant nothing.

  Charity and Raine both rearranged their schedules so they could meet Daphne and me at the mall on Monday. Charity had to find someone to babysit her younger brothers and sisters, and Raine got someone to cover her shift at the Bickham country golf resort. She cleans rooms at the hotel there.

  This in itself was the kind of gift that makes you love your friends.

  I planned on asking Dante if he wanted to come too, but when I mentioned at dinnertime that I wanted to go to the mall after school, Gabby calmly vetoed it.

  “I need you and Dante to clean out the garage. I’m planning on having a garage sale next weekend.”

  “But we were going to have a campaign meeting there too—you know, to help Dante.”

  “At the mall?” Gabby’s voice turned incredulous. “You want to hang out with your friends and your boyfriend at the mall and call it a campaign meeting?” She shook her head like she couldn’t believe I’d suggested it. “I need your help here. You can schedule a mall trip some other time.”

  I glanced at Dante. Apparently he hadn’t told our parents that Jesse had switched loyalties, and I didn’t feel strong enough or numb enough to do it now.

  Dante had been talking with Dad while Gabby and I spoke, but he tuned in during Gabby’s last comment. “A campaign meeting at the mall?” he asked. “Sorry, I don’t want to trail your friends around and watch them shop.”

  “We wouldn’t be shopping the entire time,” I said.

  Gabby leaned forward, her eyes glinting. “No one’s going to the mall tomorrow. You’re cleaning out the garage.”

  I didn’t even try to appeal to my dad. I’d learned from experience that he doesn’t concern himself with these types of parenting details. Whenever I ask him if I can go anywhere, he generally answers with something horrible, like, “Well if it’s all right with Gabby, I don’t mind.”

  So I let the subject drop. But the next day I told Dante I’d pay him to clean out my half of the garage after school, and I caught a ride with Daphne to the mall. I wasn’t trying to be defiant, it just seemed like a practical solution, especially now when I wanted to be with people who cared about me. I needed it.

  If I had told Gabby about my breakup with Jesse, she wouldn’t have consoled me. She would have told me all the ways I had handled the situation wrong and then made me go clean out the garage. Besides, we’d be home before Gabby got off work, and she’d never be the wiser. But just in case, I turned off my cell phone.

  When we arrived at the food court, Charity and Raine were already there waiting at a table by Panda Express. Charity looked behind me. “Is Dante coming?”

  I shook my head. “He’s caught in a Gabby work vortex, but we can brainstorm and then tell him what we came up with.”

  Raine picked up a pencil and hovered it over a notebook. “We went over a few campaign ideas while we waited for you to get here. Exactly how much do you plan on spending for posters, buttons, that sort of thing?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Raine tapped the pencil against her notebook. “You’re the campaign manager, haven’t you talked to Dante about it?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  Raine let out a disgruntled sigh to let me know, I suppose, that I was a lousy campaign manager. “Wilson will spend a lot,” she said. “He’s got money and his family name to uphold. If Dante wants to compete, he’ll need to put out some cash.”

  “Money isn’t Dante’s image,” I said. “He’s running against that sort of thing. His posters should show he’s an everyday student.”

  “The everyday student who rides a motorcycle and wears a black leather jacket,” Charity said.

  Charity’s parents won’t let her ride on a motorcycle, because they think motorcycles are too dangerous and borderline rebellious. Dante once offered her a ride home and she had to refuse him.

  This has caused Dante to give her no end of grief about the subject. When she’s at our house, he refers to his bike as either “the death trap” or “the Demonmobile.” Sometimes he lets out a possessed-sounding cackle and pretends he’s trying to get her. At some point during her visits, she usually ends up hitting him.

  “Giovanna’s right,” Daphne said. “Image is everything. If we want to win, we’ve got to use Dante’s image to his advantage.”

  “You mean we’ll try to appeal to everyone’s sarcastic, cynical side?” Charity asked.

  Raine leaned forward across the table toward her. “Wilson is popular, but a lot of people at school resent popularity. You know, the snobbery, the cliques—how they look down on the rest of us. We’ve got to use t
hat to our advantage.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Raine.” Daphne twirled her pencil between her fingers. “No one at school looks down at you.”

  Raine let out a grunt like she thought Daphne was making fun of her height. “Yeah. No one looks down on me without a ladder, right?”

  Daphne rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so touchy. I just meant that no one looks down on any of us.”

  Daphne, I should say right now, is the most popular of my friends. She flits from social group to social group, defying the boundaries that keep the rest of us in place. We have never figured out how she does this. It may be that she seems to like everyone at school, or it may be because she’s gorgeous and has mastered flirting so well she could list it as a skill on a job application.

  Whatever it is, Daphne doesn’t quite live in the real high school world, and mostly we’re glad she still wants to hang with us, as opposed to, say, striking out for Hollywood.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” Charity suggested, breaking the tension between Raine and Daphne, “and then we’ll talk more about the elections.”

  We went in separate directions to order food, then congregated back at the table and threw out campaign slogans while we ate.

  “ ‘Rise up against the ruling class, vote for Dante,’ ” Raine said.

  “ ‘It’s time for a party that can party,’ ” Daphne said.

  Charity took a sip of her drink. “ ‘Vote Dante, he has better hair than Wilson.’ ”

  We all stared at her.

  “What?” she said. “It’s the best presidential quality he has.”

  Did I mention Charity and Dante don’t always get along?

  We kept throwing ideas around, then Daphne came up with a phrase that really caught my attention. She said, “Oh, there’s Jesse.”

  I had heard the term “my heart leapt” before, but I always thought it was one of those clichéd metaphors like “It’s raining cats and dogs.” I’ve seen a lot of storms, and not once have I seen a downpour of poodles. But the thing was, my heart actually leapt. I felt it jump inside my chest.

  I looked up.

  Jesse wasn’t alone. Bridget walked beside him. The two strolled across the food court, talking to each other and laughing. Jesse had apparently not only picked up and moved on after our relationship, he’d dropped several IQ points as well.

  What a jerk.

  I stared at the two of them, unable to pull my gaze away.

  “Whoa, he didn’t waste any time, did he?” Raine said.

  I gulped. It felt like I’d swallowed glass. I couldn’t answer.

  Jesse and Bridget passed near enough to our table that they couldn’t help but notice us. He did a double take and she gave a little wave and went, “Howdy.” Then she stood even closer to him and smiled at me. You know, a sort of I’ve-stolen-your-boyfriend smile.

  Daphne looked up at the two. “Out shopping—or did you decide to join our meeting and campaign for Dante after all?”

  Bridget tossed her hair off her shoulder with disdain. “Not likely.”

  “We’re ordering some shirts at the T-shirt shack,” Jesse said. “For Wilson’s campaign.”

  “Then we’re meeting some people and going to a movie,” Bridget said. “You know, Wilson’s friends.” She cast a knowing glance at Jesse, but he was looking at me, not her, so he didn’t catch it.

  Daphne said, “Oh really, who?”

  Bridget counted the names off on her fingers. “Luke, Stacey, Micah Barnes, Anjie Eller . . .” Which is what you’d expect. Micah was captain of the baseball team, and Anjie was captain of girls’ basketball. Apparently Wilson was collecting captains to help him out.

  While Bridget and Daphne made small talk about who was and wasn’t showing up at the mall, Jesse continued to stare at me. “So you’re already having a campaign meeting?”

  I forced my voice to sound upbeat, as though it didn’t hurt to see him with Bridget. “I told you Dante was serious about running.”

  Jesse looked over my head and then at both sides of the food court. “Where is he then?”

  “He had other things to do.”

  “Other things besides attending his own meeting?”

  I shrugged, refusing to concede the point. “Where’s Wilson?”

  “He’ll be here.”

  “Oh, right. You came early to order shirts.” My gaze slid over to Bridget. “That’s obviously a job that takes two people.”

  A smile spread across Jesse’s face. He seemed entirely too happy about my jealousy, so I pointedly ignored the fact that he is gorgeous when he smiles.

  Jesse took a step closer to me. “I figured when buying clothes, I’d best get a woman’s opinion, and you wouldn’t be likely to help me. But if you’re having second thoughts about helping Dante . . .”

  “I’m not.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Raine and Charity. They were pretending to be engrossed in Daphne’s conversation with Bridget, but I knew they were listening to Jesse and me. I tried to sound confident. “I’m supporting my brother. He’ll make a great president.”

  Jesse shot me a challenging grin. “It’s not gonna happen.”

  “When Dante wins, you’ll have to eat every word you just said.”

  “If he wins, I’ll eat my boots.”

  I pointed a finger in his direction. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Jesse’s blue eyes glinted. “And what will you do when Wilson wins?”

  “Lose my faith in humanity.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, if I’m eating my boots when Dante wins, you’ve got to come up with something a little better when Wilson wins.” He peered under the table at my feet. “What are those Reeboks made out of?”

  “I’m not eating my shoes.”

  “You’re not as sure about Dante winning when there’s leather on the line, are you?”

  And then I couldn’t back down. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll eat a pair of my shoes, but not the Reeboks. They were expensive.”

  Jesse’s cell phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and glimpsed at the caller ID. “There’s Dante now.” He took a few steps away to take the call in private while I stared at my shoes and wondered if it would be lethal to eat a pair.

  I mean, let’s face it. There was a much greater chance that I’d be sawing up a pair of high heels than there was that Jesse would be chewing down chunks of his cowboy boots.

  “Giovanna!” Jesse motioned me over to where he stood and pushed the mute button on his phone. “I thought it was Dante, but actually it’s your stepmom.” One of his eyebrows rose, and he tilted his head at me. “Do you have any idea why she would holler at me for being with you at the mall?”

  “She’s pretty much psychotic,” I said.

  “Could it be you didn’t tell her you were coming here?”

  “Well, that too.”

  He shook his head and handed me the phone.

  I released the mute button and held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  That’s really all I got to say. The rest of the phone conversation was Gabby screaming at me because she’d come home early in order to supervise the garage cleanup, and I’d disobeyed her and gone off to the mall.

  “Don’t think there won’t be consequences for running off with your boyfriend after I told you that you couldn’t,” she yelled. “It will be a long, long time before you go out with Jesse again!”

  See, it pays off to keep your stepmother uninformed about your love life. As far as the punishments she could have dished out, that one wasn’t too bad.

  Over the next few days I immersed myself in the election. Technically, we couldn’t start campaigning until after we’d gathered enough signatures to put our candidate’s name on the ballot. The office wouldn’t hand out petitions until next Monday, but that didn’t stop Wilson from planning things anyway. I heard through the grapevine—which generally meant Daphne—that Wilson had bought his popularity cohorts some shirts which read “WILLsonPOWER.” They were
all going to wear them during the campaign. He’d also ordered buttons and pencils with this logo.

  All this information panicked me, because I didn’t know where or how to make up buttons or any of the other stuff. In my free time I worked on posters, so we’d have a few ready. I also tried to think of a campaign jingle—which you’d think Dante would appreciate, but instead he kept saying, “Don’t you dare put my name into something that sounds like a laundry commercial.”

  Stephen and Brandon, two of Dante’s rebel friends who only went to school when it didn’t interfere with their other plans, agreed to help with the campaign. They came up with the slogan “Let’s make election day Dante’s Inferno.” Which if you ask me (and obviously no one did even though I was supposed to be the campaign manager) didn’t make any sense. Dante’s Inferno? That was some medieval book describing the levels of hell, which hopefully would have very little to do with our school elections. I vetoed the idea, but Stephen and Brandon went off and made posters with that slogan on it anyway.

  It’s hard to be in charge of rebellious people, because they don’t take direction well.

  During school I spoke to everyone I could, trying to encourage them to join Team Dante. This was excruciatingly hard for me. Since the biology room break-in, I always worry that anyone who isn’t my friend is telling Giovanna-kleptomaniac jokes behind my back. And yes, there are several.

  “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Giovanna, so you’d better hide your valuables.”

  And “What did Giovanna win when she entered a beauty pageant?” “Miss Demeanor.” I’m pretty sure Bridget came up with that one.

  Anyway, it was hard for me to go up to people and strike up conversations, but I did. Every time I talked to a cute guy, I had the vague hope that Jesse would round the corner, see me talking to some studly rival, and be wounded by jealousy. This never happened, although every time I rounded a corner I saw Bridget glued to his side.

  You’d think with all the guys I talked to, one or two of them might have shown some interest in the newly single me. I mean, before I went out with Jesse, guys occasionally flirted with me, but not anymore. It was totally depressing.