“Interesting speech today,” she says from behind me.
Apparently we’re not finished here.
I slowly turn back around. “Thanks!”
“If you could even call it that.”
I shrug. “A politician’s gotta do what a politician’s gotta do.”
She makes a grunting sound. “Be careful, Ms. Sparks. Telling people what they want to hear is not the same thing as winning.”
Um, okaaay. What’s up, random cryptic pep talk from the principal?
“You’re a good kid, Ellie. I’d hate to see you go down a bad road.”
I force out a smile. “Well, I appreciate that.”
She nods and takes off around the corner. I almost want to snort aloud. Bad road? Just shows how much she knows. Right now, my road has never looked better.
My Boyfriend’s Back
3:22 p.m.
“And, in a landslide victory, claiming a whopping 82 percent of the vote, the junior class president and vice president are Rhiannon Marshall and Ellison Sparks!”
I stop walking. I’m halfway to my locker after seventh period but my feet just kind of congeal to the spot. People are hurrying past, bumping into me, tripping to get around me.
We won? We actually won?
After three days of losing, I kind of started to think that winning an election with Rhiannon Marshall as your running mate was impossible.
But today we did it!
“Nice going, Sparks!” a voice says, and I turn around to see some jock in a letterman jacket extending his fist toward me. “Awesome speech!”
Random jocks are fist-bumping me?
I tentatively lift my fist and tap it against his. He nods like we do this every day. “Yeah!” he says.
“Yeah,” I echo with significantly less enthusiasm.
What is going on here?
“Go, Ellison!” I hear someone else say. I turn around and a girl I’ve never spoken to in my life draws me in for a hug. “You killed it today. I knew you could do it!”
“Um, who are you?” I say into her shoulder.
She laughs and pulls away, tweaking my nose. “You’re hilarious!”
This is too weird.
Is this what it feels like to be popular? Everywhere you go people acting like you’re best friends?
My feet finally unfreeze and I stumble down the hall toward my locker. It takes forever to get there. Everyone in the world suddenly feels the need to say hi to me or give me a hug or a high five. Despite how strange it all is, it’s admittedly exhilarating. No wonder so many narcissists go into politics.
I mean, after Tristan and I started dating people suddenly knew who I was, but it wasn’t like this. They saw me as a threat. A challenge. A victor to overthrow. Now it’s like I’m everyone’s hero.
Just because I told a few inappropriate jokes?
When I get to my locker, Rhiannon is waiting for me. She looks positively jubilant. When she sees me approach she gives a little bounce. “Oh my God. We did it! I knew we could do it! I’m totally not surprised. Politics basically runs in my veins. Did you know my dad was county commissioner for eight years in a row? I was practically a shoo-in for president. I was a little worried after that horrific rando speech you gave—seriously, Ellie, what were you thinking?—but I could tell I reeled them back in with my speech. Good thing one of us was prepared, right? I worked on that speech for weeks, and it definitely paid off.”
I bite my tongue as I dial my combination. “I dunno,” I say casually, unzipping my bag and unloading my books. “I think maybe my speech helped.”
She leans against the locker next to mine with a sigh. “Don’t be ridiculous. It was atrocious. You should consider yourself lucky that you’re running with me. I saved you today, Ellison.”
I taste blood in my mouth. I want to grab her by her dainty little shoulders and shake her. Shake her so hard her pink headband pops right off her head. I want so badly to tell her that her speech actually sucked big-time. That it lost three days in a row, and that the only reason we won today was because of me.
But I don’t.
Because what does it matter now? We won. The rest is just semantics.
“Anyway, we should get together tomorrow and start coming up with our yearly plan,” Rhiannon says, smoothing a lock of her blond bob against her cheek.
“Sure,” I tell her. “I have a ton of ideas. Like a Battle of the Bands competition or maybe—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down. Who’s the president here?”
“Excuse me?”
She flashes me the fakest of fake smiles and tilts her head like she’s talking to a child lost at the mall. “Ellie. I’m so thrilled that you have so many ideas. Like so thrilled. But to be perfectly honest, you have no experience in politics. I do.”
“Because your dad was county commissioner?”
“For eight years in a row.”
“Wasn’t he impeached?”
A flash of horror contorts her creamy white features for a flicker of a second. “He was wrongfully accused.”
I nod. “Right.”
She stands up straighter. “Anyway, I think the best plan of action is for you to shadow me this year.”
“Shadow you?”
“Yeah, you know, like an intern. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. It’ll be great.”
I shove my bag into my locker and slam the door. “Rhiannon—” I start to say, but am immediately interrupted by a pair of arms around my waist, yanking me off the ground and spinning me around.
“Congrats, baby!” Tristan exclaims. He kisses me and I wince in pain. My lips are still swollen and chapped from our make-out session in the library earlier. “My little president.”
Rhiannon clears her throat behind us. “Vice president.”
Tristan doesn’t seem to hear. Or if he does, he’s smart enough to ignore it.
“I’m so proud of you!”
“You are?”
“Hell yeah. Politicians are hot. Making executive decisions. Wearing short suit skirts. Banging gavels. Hot. Hot. Hot.”
I laugh. “I don’t think we actually wear suits. And gavels are for judges.”
“Humor me.” He bends down and presses his mouth into my neck.
Rhiannon lets out an impatient sigh. “So, are we good? On my plan?”
I shoo her away. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
Tristan moves his lips to my mouth again, his hands pressing into my lower back. I close my eyes, listening to Rhiannon’s footsteps retreating down the hall.
I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to put up with her and her delusional power trips for an entire year, but right now I can hardly find the energy to care.
Unchained Melody
3:25 p.m.
When Tristan finally comes up for air, I’m able to tell him about the gig, and that leads to another round of kissing and whooping and spinning me around. Unfortunately, I have to extricate myself in order to make it to softball tryouts on time, although my lips are grateful for the reprieve. I think they feel more swollen now than they did when I ate that stupid banana bread.
As I peel off my sexy vixen costume and don my training clothes, I tell myself this whole attached-at-the-mouth thing is temporary. We’re just going through a period of renewed excitement for each other. A second honeymoon period, if you will. Every day in our relationship is not going to be like this. I remember the days after our very first kiss. Those long summer nights when there was nothing else to do but make out, and nowhere else to be but with each other. I couldn’t get enough of him. It was like I was gravely ill and Tristan was the cure. I was dying of thirst and Tristan was water. I was surrounded by silence and Tristan was music.
So much music.
All the time.
Streaming in my eardrums 24-7. Serenading me when I was awake. Lulling me to sleep.
Tristan was the soundtrack of my summer. The beat I walked to. The melody I breathed in and out. The lyrics I lived
by.
And now suddenly, this day, this version of this day, it’s like someone has turned him back on. Full volume. Full blast.
Like I’ve synchronized to his beat again, after falling out of step for too long.
4:09 p.m.
After crushing it in softball tryouts again, I race to the locker room and quickly change back into my miniskirt and boots. I want to try to find my sister before she leaves the middle school. I figure if I can catch her earlier, I might be able to figure out what happened to her. I stuff my training clothes into my gym locker and make a dash for my car.
The middle school is next door to the high school, so fortunately I don’t have to go far.
I pull up in the parent drop-off lane and watch the front doors. I did the math. If I saw her at the intersection of Providence Boulevard and Avenue de Liberation at around 4:30 yesterday, that means that she must have left the school right about now.
A moment later, I hear a slam and a group of five giggling girls come running out a side door, around the corner from the front of the school. My sister is not one of them. I watch as they blather on and run to a waiting car, which I assume belongs to one of their mothers.
I can’t hear what they’re saying with the windows rolled up, but they look just like the girls did when I was in a middle school a few years ago. Thirteen-year-olds trying to be thirty-year-olds. Tanned legs, barely-there shorts, too much eye makeup. I watch both the front and the side doors, waiting for my sister to come out, but there’s still no sign of her.
That’s strange.
I drive in a loop around the parking lot, my eyes glued to the exits. Finally, as I’m about to give up and head home, I see movement out of the corner of my eye. It’s coming from the empty soccer field.
I turn in my seat to get a better view and there’s my sister. Sopping wet again, running across the field in the direction of the parking lot. I get out of the car and walk toward her. She sees me and halts in her steps, wiping at her face.
“Ellie? What are you doing here?”
My mind is screaming with questions. I want to lob them at her all at once.
Why are you drenched?
Why were you on the soccer field?
Why are you at school this late?
But I know she’ll only shut down again, so I hold my tongue and pretend to not even notice her shambled state. “I dunno. I had a hunch that you’d be here and I came to see if you wanted to go knock off a candy store with me.”
She cracks the faintest of smiles.
It makes me feel like I just won the lottery.
“What if we get caught?” she asks, right on cue.
I shrug. “I’m not afraid of juvie. Are you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Good.” I point to my car in the lot. “Let’s go then.”
Hadley adjusts her backpack straps and walks to the car. I notice a slight bounce in her step.
Candy Stripers is a game we used to play when we were little, mostly around Halloween. We would write our initials on pieces of our candy stash with Sharpies and then hide them around the house. The sister with the most pieces of the other person’s candy would win the game.
The name Candy Stripers originated because we’d heard the term in a TV movie once and neither of us knew what it meant. I said it sounded like the workers who painted the witch’s house in “Hansel and Gretel.” Hadley said it sounded like professional candy burglars. We settled on her interpretation and it eventually morphed into a game. It wasn’t until much later that we learned a candy striper is actually someone who volunteers at a hospital. But by then, our definition had already stuck.
When we got a little older we started to joke that we should take Candy Stripers to the next level. We should rob (or “stripe”) an actual candy store. We would spend hours planning our heist, choosing our target (this part was easy as there’s only one candy store in town), studying maps of the surrounding area, selecting the best candy to stripe (anything gummy because it doesn’t melt in your pocket), and drafting our big plan (which usually involved one of us distracting the person at the register with stupid questions about candy while the other lifted a pocketful of goodies from the bin).
“What if we get caught?” Hadley asked me on our first “job” as we waited outside the store for the most opportune moment.
“I’m not afraid of juvie,” I told her. “Are you?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she vowed.
“Good. Let’s go then.”
We never actually stole anything. We’d always chicken out and pay for the candy, but it didn’t stop us from plotting the next job and the one after that and the one after that.
“So,” I say as Hadley buckles her seat belt. “Usual plan? Do you want to be the diversion or should I?”
She glances up and down at my outfit. “I’m going to go with you.”
I nod knowingly. “Wise choice. Maybe it’ll be a boy working the register and I can flash him a little skin.”
She giggles and I bite my lip to hide the triumphant smile that threatens to blow my cover. “Ells?” she asks after a long beat.
“Yeah?”
She appears anxious about what she’s going to say. Like she’s afraid I’ll be disappointed to hear it.
“What is it?” I ask, trying to sound as supportive as I can.
“Can we just go and buy the candy? It’s what we always end up doing anyway.”
I tip back my head and let out a laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing. I thought you were going to say something else.”
Her eyebrows furrow. “What did you think I was going to say?”
I subtly eye her soaking-wet clothes and hair and the streaks of mascara on her face. I lean over to the glove box and pull out a tissue. I hand it to her without uttering a word.
She takes it and begins wiping her face.
Maybe I went about this all wrong yesterday. Maybe nothing has to be said. Maybe no questions have to be asked.
Maybe all I needed to say was “Sure, Hads. Let’s go buy some candy.”
Because she’s right. It’s what we always end up doing anyway.
Come Together Right Now
8:16 p.m.
“This one is dedicated to the girl who got us this gig. Thanks for being so freaking awesome—and might I add hot—Ellie Sparks!”
I’m back in the front row, screaming my head off along with the rest of the crowd. As Tristan jams the opening guitar riff of “Mind of the Girl,” I use all my strength to hoist myself onto the stage. I run over and stand beside him, swaying my hips provocatively with the beat. Tristan looks surprised to see me up here—I’ve never in our five-month relationship gotten on stage with him—but his surprise quickly turns into a grin and he rubs his back against mine as he strums ferociously on his electric blue guitar.
I haven’t changed my clothes, and I have to say, it totally fits. I totally fit. Owen was right, I do belong in a music video. I feel amazing up here. Is this what it’s like to be a singer? No wonder Tristan loves performing so much. I’m shocked at how comfortable I feel. Normally, I’d be terrified of performing in front of a bunch of people, but as Tristan starts in on the first verse, my body just moves all on its own. I let the music take me over. I let it command me. Tristan’s eyes never leave mine. He sings the entire song to me. The crowd is cheering my name.
If I thought Tristan’s secondhand post-gig high was blissful, it’s nothing compared to this firsthand version. This is sheer ecstasy. I feel like I could do anything. Skydive. Sumo wrestle. I’d even eat Daphne Gray’s almond-infested banana bread again.
Where is the little boyfriend-stealer, anyway?
I peer into the crowd, scanning the first row where she was standing yesterday, but she’s not there. In fact, her entire posse appears to be MIA.
I scan the sea of faces, all singing along and swaying to the beat and feeding off this energy that Tristan a
nd I are sending out.
I spot the new girl, Sophia, somewhere in the middle. She’s dancing, too, but I notice the guy she was with last night is not there. I wonder what happened to him. I hope she’s not here to try to make a move on Tristan. Well, if she didn’t realize we were a couple in the cafeteria today, then she has to have picked up on it by now.
The song comes to an end. Tristan plays a final, powerful chord on the guitar while Jackson pounds on the cymbals. The noise from the audience is deafening, and yet it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“Thank you!” Tristan calls, his voice all hoarse and sexy. “We’re Whack-a-Mole. I hope you had a great time tonight. Come see us again real soon!”
Heart pounding, ears ringing, I make a split decision. I run to Jackson on the drums and whisper something into his ear. He nods and I ask the same question to Lance on bass and Collin on backup guitar. They both give me a thumbs-up.
I push Tristan away from center stage and pull the mic from the stand. “Actually,” I say, flinching at the sound of my own voice reverberating over the speakers. “We have one more song. A surprise song. But it’s one of my favorites and it has very special meaning.”
Tristan takes a sip from his water bottle, his eyebrows shooting up. “What are you doing?” he yells to me over the screaming crowd.
I flash him a coy grin. “You’ll see.” I grip the mic and tilt my head to Jackson. “Hit it, boys.”
Jackson kicks off the beat and Collin comes in a moment later with a cool, edgy version of the song’s original riff. I sway back and forth, my nerves threatening to close my throat.
Am I really going to sing in front of all these people?
I’ve never sung in front of anyone before. Well, except for Tristan in the shower that night of Daphne’s party.
But I can hear the first verse coming like a freight train and I’m tied to the tracks. There’s no getting out of this now.
I close my eyes, raise the mic to my lips, and start to sing.
“I don’t like you, but I love you.”
I can feel someone standing beside me. When I open my eyes, Tristan is there, bending down to share the microphone. Just like we did that night in the shower, he harmonizes the chorus with me, rounding out the sound so perfectly that chills cover my entire body.