“I can’t do this,” I said, and stood up.
“Nobody expects your best work on your first day back.” Mr. Peterson approached me, his eyes wary, his tone a little too gentle to be comforting. He stopped a few feet from me, his attention turning to the balled-up test on my desk. When I made no motion to pick it up myself, he reached for it, smoothed it out between his hands, and began to read.
His lips moved silently with the words, and he flipped the paper over as the arrow I’d drawn on the bottom of the page indicated him to do. I knew what he was doing, knew the instant he turned it over for a second read that he was trying to figure out how Maddy had pulled this off. How some girl, fresh out of the hospital and still stricken with grief—the same girl who’d barely managed to pull a C in his class—had written this.
His eyes widened. A look of pure astonishment crossed his face, and I stumbled backward, knocking my chair over. Alex stood up, motioning to Jenna to stay seated when she started to follow him.
“Maddy?” Mr. Peterson laid his hand on my arm, tried to drag my attention back to him. “Maddy, this is good.”
“I know,” I whispered as I scrambled toward the door. “That’s the problem. It’s too good.”
I heard Alex behind me, saying something about taking care of it. I didn’t wait for him to catch up. I ran as fast as I could down the hall to the one place I knew Alex wouldn’t follow me, the one place in this entire building I knew of that had doors with locks.
17
The bathroom was completely empty. My only company was the sound of the old radiator struggling to pump heat. I walked to the last stall and locked myself in. Alex was at the main door, knocking and calling out my name. I half-expected him to come in. Part of me wanted him to so I could wrap myself in his arms and selfishly believe it when he promised me it’d be okay.
I chased away my thoughts of Maddy, of the accident, of Josh. My mother’s tears, the whispers that threatened to suffocate me, and the burrowing eyes of the entire school. I needed them gone.
My mind cleared slowly and the dingy tiles of the bathroom floor blurred together in a clutter of gray. I was perfectly content to sit there forever, but the bell rang, the shrill sound filtering in, growing louder as the door opened and closed in rapid sequence. Not wanting to be noticed, I pulled my feet up onto the seat and stayed silent.
I heard bits and pieces of the gossip I’d missed over the past few weeks. Jenna was vying for the title of Snow Ball queen, but I figured that. She may have been Maddy’s best friend, but I’d caught the spark of jealousy hidden behind those blue eyes.
“I gotta say, when it comes to campaigning though, Jenna’s got one amazing platform. I mean, what guy wouldn’t vote for her—”
I don’t know which of Maddy’s idiotic friends came out with that line, but she was absolutely right about Jenna using her assets to get ahead. As far as I could tell, her personality was about as deadly as the plague, so using her figure was probably her best option for gaining votes.
“She won’t win. Alex will make sure of that. Plus, Maddy’s got the pity vote. That’s gotta count for something.”
I cringed at her words, remembering a conversation I’d overheard last month. Maddy had been in the bathroom at home, her phone on speaker so she could talk and put her makeup on at the same time. She and Alex were strategizing, going over who they thought would vote for who. At last check, Maddy and Jenna were tied. I didn’t hear Alex’s plan to fix that—whatever he was saying was garbled by the sound of running water. All I heard was Maddy arguing with him, something about her last plan having gone horribly wrong.