I turn back to the piano, determined to keep the rest of the day on track when there’s a knock on the classroom door.
My head snaps around so fast I get dizzy. Please don’t let it be the principal again. Then I freeze, heart lurching into my throat.
That face—I’d recognize it anywhere, even though Logan is in full incognito getup with a baseball cap pulled low, dark sunglasses, and—new addition—a face mask pulled up to his nose. He looks like he’s preparing for allergy season.
Every alarm in my body blares at once as I make my way toward the door. “I’ll be right back,” I tell the kids, stumbling over a backpack. “Keep practicing.”
I rush outside and pull the door halfway closed behind me. “Are youinsane?“ My eyes sweep the hallway from left to right. “How did you even get in?”
He tugs down his mask, revealing that infuriating smirk. “I used to cut class through the back entrance all the time. Remember?”
“Good point,” I mutter, then quickly shake my head to clear my agreeing with him. “You shouldn’t be here. Do you have any idea what’s going on? This place is swarming with reporters—and Victoria Delacroix showed up out of nowhere and—”
“I know.”
My eyebrows lift as high as they can. “Youknow?“ I blink at him, processing this bombshell revelation. “How?”
He shrugs with the nonchalance of someone discussing whether it might rain later. “I hid in the bushes when it all went down.”
“Youwhat?“ My voice spikes, and I frantically scan the hallway to make sure I didn’t just invite unwanted attention and force it back down to a whisper. “And you just left me there to fend for myself?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he says, his eyes suddenly full of regret. “If I revealed myself, it would’ve made things worse.”
“So you hid in shrubbery and watched me get interrogated.” My body gets hot with a potent mixture of indignation and disillusionment.
He nods solemnly. “It was very dramatic. You looked like a woman on the edge.”
”Iwasa woman on the edge. We’ve got problems, Logan.”
He shifts his weight nervously and pulls his phone from his pocket. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He swipes a few times, then holds it out for me to see.
I grab it—and my stomach bottoms out like an elevator with cut cables.
There we are. At the mini golf course. Me laughing, head tipped back, while Logan stands mid-swing, both of us looking far too couple-y for this to be dismissed as friends hanging out. The lighting is terrible, slightly grainy—clearly taken from a distance.
“How did this happen?” I ask, zooming in to make sure it’s real, hoping to find evidence it’s been photoshopped.
“I don’t know,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “We were careful.”
“I told you those stupid disguises wouldn’t work.” I hand back his phone, dredging the sure-to-come appearance of my face on front page news. A bitter suspicion rises. “Is there something going on with you and Victoria that you haven’t told me?”
His mouth opens to answer, but before he can get a word out, a classroom door creaks open at the end of the hall. My heart leaps with terror, and I instinctively grab his hand and yank him inside my classroom, shutting the door behind us.
Twenty-three unblinking pairs of eyes glance at us, the student’s little mouths falling open in perfect, stunned synchrony.
Oh no!
I know that look—wide eyes, twitching lips, little bodies on the verge of bursting.
They’re about to scream.
“Shhh!” I hiss, throwing my hands up like I’m trying to tame a raging bull. “We don’t want Principal Hargrove to come back, right?”
The warning is enough to bring them all to heel.
Every kid in the room immediately clamps their mouths shut and looks around with silent panic, as if Principal Hargrove might materialize through the wall like a ghost at any moment.
