One
Zara
“Your kingjust moved in next door.”
My mind barely registers that my sister Jackie is talking to me, and it certainly doesn’t comprehend the words she just said. I am entirely too busy trying to evenly space out the words on my tri-fold presentation board to pay attention to my older sister. I know it’s just marketing class, and everyone considers it an easy elective, but I still like to make my work shine. Presentation poster boards are one of my favorite class assignments.
“Hello!”Jackie says, stepping in front of my face and waving her hands in front of my eyes. “Did you hear me?”
I thought I’d miss her when she went off to college two years ago, but since her university is only an hour and a half away, she comes home all the time. Almost too often, if you ask me.
“What is it?” I say, flashing her an annoyed look as I drop the printed words onto the foam board. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“This is way more important than that.” Jackie walks over to my bedroom window and points. But I live on the second floor of the house, and I don’t need to get up from my bed to see that the only view out there is the roof of the neighbor’s house.
“So?” I say.
“Your king just moved in next door!”
She says this weird sentence as if I’m supposed to understand whatever the heck she means. “King?” I say, lifting an eyebrow. Maybe I heard her wrong. But I didn’t—she said the word king as clear as youcansay the word king.
Then it hits me. The only time my family says words like king or queen or royalty is when they’re discussing one very important subject in my household—and I don’t mean England.
I mean homecoming at Brazos High School.
I’m pretty sure American high schools all have some sort of homecoming football event, which is a tradition where one game per season is dedicated to welcoming back the schools’ alumni, but here in Texas we do it differently. We make a big ol’ spectacle out of it. The homecoming dance is on a Friday, but the entire week is filled with pep rallies, parties, and special theme days at school. Any senior is eligible to become king or queen and many people start campaigning for the position right when school starts. During homecoming week, we all vote for the winners. The homecoming king and queen are crowned at the dance, and then honored during the halftime show at the homecoming football game on Saturday.
To most people, homecoming isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just an excuse to get dressed up for the dance and then party at a football game. But to my family, homecoming is a huge deal. My mom’s entire business is based on homecoming, which makes the fall football season her busiest time of year. There’s also this teensy little fact that my sister was crowned homecoming queen her senior year.
And my mom was also homecoming queen her senior year.
And so was my grandma.
And my aunt.
It’s kind of a thing in this family. Every girl in my family gets crowned homecoming queen. Which means I’m next, whether I want the honor or not.
I stand up and walk over to the window. As expected, I can only see a roof. The neighbor’s house is one story, so there’s no second floor with windows you can peek into or anything. When I look out my bedroom window, all I see is just a roof, a chimney, and some pine needles in the gutters.
“What are you pointing at?” I ask my sister.
She plops down on my bed, sending my carefully printed out words sliding all over my foam board. Ugh. Her dark eyes widen and her heart-shaped face bursts into a smile. “You’re never going to believe who just moved in next door.”
“My king?” I say, rolling my eyes. “There are, like, five guys right now who could all be king. We won’t know the winner until the dance, and that’s still a few weeks away.”
Jackie shakes her head, her lips pressed together in this annoyingly know-it-all kind of way. “None of those guys will be crowned king.”
I put my hands on my hips. “And you know this how?”
She smirks. “Because Zane Warren just moved in next door.”
I quirk an eyebrow. The name is familiar, but I’m not sure how. “Zane Warren...” I mumble, glancing back out my window which is pointless because there’s nothing to see there. It’s not like this guy will be sitting on his roof waving at me. I turn to my sister. “Who is that?”
“Zane-freaking-Warren!” Jackie says.
“Saying his name again won’t suddenly make me know who he is.”
Jackie heaves a sigh, then reaches for her phone from her back pocket. “You should seriously know these things,” she says, scrolling through her phone. Then she turns it to face me and I see a news article featuring a guy in a red football uniform. “He’s only the youngest Varsity player in the state! He’s famous in the football world. He’s being scouted from a dozen colleges….”
