Out of the corner of one eye, I saw Chloe and noticed that she, too, was looking at Jack. Chloe was one of Jack’s exes. Brooke was the other. Besides me, they were the only two people who might have realized that Jack’s uncle was one of the Big Guys. Coincidence? I thought not. Both of them had dated him to gain access to his father’s law firm, our biggest …enemywasn’t quite the right word, but close enough. After the second breakup, Jack had developed ConditionedCheerleading Aversion (Zee’s diagnosis, not mine), and the only reason he’d shown interest in me was that I wasn’t like the other girls.
For instance, none of the other girls had ever tried their darnedest to avoid him altogether. None of them rolled their eyes when he went into A-list guy mode. None of them gave as good as they got.
None of them had kissed him, punched him in the stomach, and run away.
“Thank you, Chip.” Mr. J was back at the microphone. “And let me take this opportunity to say, Goooooooooo Lions!” He cleared his throat. “And, of course, Lionesses.”
Bayport was politically correct to a fault.
“I’d now like to welcome Joanne McCall, president of the Bayport High School PTA, who will read out the nominations for this year’s homecoming court.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah … wait a second. I elbowed Tara. “Check it out,” I said softly. “It’s the nauseatingly reminiscent mom from the mall.”
My very first day on the Squad, Tara had taken me to the mall to practice my spy skills, and some random mom had practically stalked us, chattering away about how exciting it was to be young and a cheerleader. Apparently, brownnosing parents weren’t all that unusual, and I’d forgotten about it (or at least tried to cleanse my mind of the way the woman had violated my personal space).
It just figured that the nauseatingly reminiscent mom was the president of the PTA.
“I cannot tell you all how pleased I am to be here,” theNRM said. “These high school years are some of the most exciting and precious years of your lives, and I’m happy to have the chance to share them with you. As I’m sure most of you already know, the homecoming court consists of the queen and king, their junior and senior attendants, and the underclassman homecoming princess and sophomore attendant.”
Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Bayport is the kind of school that has a homecoming princess. Anyone? Anyone?
“Each year, four seniors, three juniors, and two underclassmen are nominated by the students and faculty to run for the honor of being the homecoming queen.”
Did this have to take so freaking long? Who cared about the details of the process? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone to just fall down and worship Brooke now?
“The girl with the most votes will be named queen at the official homecoming game, and the remaining junior and senior nominees will be named her attendants. Additionally, the sophomore with the most number of votes will be named the homecoming princess.”
Being a logical person, I could see the flaw in this system. As a nominee for queen, if the “princess” got enough votes, she could actually beat a senior out for that coveted spot, in which case I could only assume that the runner-up underclassman would get the princess title. It would have made a lot more sense if they stipulated that the queen be a senior, but this didn’t seem to strike anyone else as off—either because the student body knew as well as I did that the race forqueen was as good as over and Brooke had as good as won, or because I was the only person at this school afflicted with homecoming-related logic.
I braved a glance at Jack, expecting him to look every bit as tortured as I felt, but instead, he was smiling. Broadly.
“The senior nominees for homecoming queen are …” Mrs. McCall paused dramatically, as if there was anyone in the room who hadn’t figured out exactly whose names would be on that ballot. “Brooke Camden, Chloe Larson, Zee Kim, and Bubbles Lane.”
The four senior members of the Squad. Color me shocked.
Across the room, Jack’s grin grew bigger and wickeder by the second. Without a word, he simply pointed in my general direction. I turned around and glanced over my shoulder. Nothing.
“The junior nominees are Tara Leery, Lucy Wheeler, and Tiffany and Brittany Sheffield.”
Okay, was I the only one in the entire school who realized that Tiffany and Brittany were actually two separate people and that, therefore, there were four junior girls nominated for homecoming court and not just three? Sometimes, the mental math at this place was depressing.
“The underclassmen nominees are …”
Across the room, Jack’s grin had settled down to a smirk, and he pointed again. A second too late, I realized that he wasn’t pointing behind me.
He was pointing at me.
“April Manning and Toby Klein.”
Not to sound like an acronym-loving cheerleader/spy, but OMG with a side of WTF.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath. Now Jack’s smile made sense. He knew this was going to happen. Everyone but me had realized it. I’d said it myself—there wasn’t anyone in this room who didn’t know whose names were going to be on those ballots. The varsity cheerleaders were called the God Squad for a reason. And yet, somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that there were exactly two sophomores on the Squad and exactly two sophomore nominees for homecoming queen.
Now whose mental math was depressing?
“I hate my life.”
Tara and Chloe both elbowed me in the stomach at the same time.
