I won’t let that happen. If I can get people to buy tickets to attend this charity dance, raising money won’t be a problem. Derby Bookshop is a piece of this town’s history that I care about.
It’s the motivation I need to step out of my comfort zone. Everything about the event has been a lesson in challenging myself—talking to vendors, being in charge of the plans, petitioning the school to let me use a banquet hall on campus for the dance. All of it has stirred anxiety in the pit of my stomach throughout the process of preparing my Ballgowns for Books benefit.
Maybe Dad will let me hang some flyers around The Landmark. A lot of Heston students go there. It’s a start. Small steps will get me up any hill that seems insurmountable.
I’m absorbed in a mental checklist as I navigate my way through campus. Keeping my head down is a mistake I don’t realize until it’s too late.
Everything clutched in my arms goes flying when I collide with a solid wall of muscle that towers over me. The colorful advertisements for the dance scatter the pavement along with my books and the journal with all of my important event planning notes. It falls open to the page with the final stages of organizing everything and I focus on it rather than the snickers sounding around the scene.
Large hands steady me. A thanks that will probably tangle on my tongue with the apology ready to follow dies when he speaks first.
“Finally ready to throw yourself at me, Lainey Brainy?”
Every muscle in my body freezes.
Not this again. Not today. Nothim.
I squirm, intent on shoving myself back to get distance between us. Mike’s fingers dig in. He chuckles, holding on a beat longer before releasing me. Being around him makes mefrazzled. I swallow it back as he drags a hand through his hair, flashing his buddies observing the scene a smarmy grin.
The urge to run rises within me, but it would mean leaving my notebook behind. Weeks of hard work is in those pages.
Watching me with a smirk, Mike kneels at the same time as me, reaching for my notebook. I grip the end of it, tugging uselessly against the huge football player.
The only athletes on campus I can’t stand more than the hockey players are the football team. Namely, Mike River.
“Give it back,” I say.
He pretends to consider my demand. “I don’t think so. Say please.”
I push my glasses up, ignoring the nervous thrum of my pulse. “Thank you for picking it up. I’ll be taking it now.”
He rips it from my grasp with an easy jerk. Flicking through the pages and glancing at the flyers covering the ground, he frowns. “When are you going to forget about these dusty old books? You’re wasting your college life on this crap.”
“That’s Brainy for you,” one of his friends says. “Books are all she’s got going on in that big head.”
Leave it to the jocks enrolled at Heston in the athletic track to not understand anything outside of their fans, their parties, and their sport. All things I don’t care about.
Anyone who doesn’t fit in with that lifestyle is labeled different. Strange. Despite college being a place where students explore our diverse interests and prepare for the next stage of adulthood, there are still too many people who put far too much stock in the importance of popularity like some social experiment gone wrong.
Rolling my lips between my teeth, I ignore Mike’s question. Books are my escape from everything, but he doesn’t deserve to know.
“Ballgowns for Books. Enjoy an evening of stepping into your favorite fairy tales to support a good cause,” he reads, then snorts. “Oh, Brainy. No one’s going to this dorky shitshow.”
His dig hurts, but I smother the sting. My research suggested that a formal dance was the best way to attract attention. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s the one I went with. It doesn’t sit well with me that there’s a possibility I’ll fail to help the bookshop because I made a mistake.
I gather the flyers and my other books before shooting to my feet, aiming for a calm, direct tone when I hold my hand out. “I’ll take my notebook, please.”
His football buddies create a blockade around me, making escape impossible. I do everything in my power to avoid running into these guys, but today is all kinds of bad vibes.
“You’re not trying to run away?” Mike cocks his head, rising to his full height. I purse my lips, caught out. “Nah, you’re too smart for that, Brainy.”
One of the guys coughs the wordnerdinto his fist. Original.
After a year and a half of sharing a campus with them, I’m used to Mike and his friends making it their mission to taunt and humiliate me at every opportunity. If I stay quiet and out of the way, they usually get bored and move on.
Mike’s cutting laugh makes me tighten my hold around the books I picked up. Any minute now. When they’re still snickering, closing in on me instead of leaving me alone, I glance up and immediately regret it when he catches my eye. It’s the same look he’s given me since a freshman class we shared last year.
He’s had it out for me because I turned him down when he asked me out to some frat party I had no interest in. Talk about tiny dick energy if his ego is that fragile because he’s incapable of fathoming a world in which girls might not want the self-absorbed football player.
