Unwilling Nominee

 

Chapter Eight

Football season began, and Jess begged us to go to football games with her to watch Ethan play. I went a few times when Matt refused, arriving to the parties Sam told me about late. Every once in a while, Matt would show up to a game he said he wouldn’t go to�"those were the most fun, since Matt and I would make fun of the cheerleaders’ dumb cheers, the band’s all-too-obvious mistakes, and everything in between. I could tell Jess didn’t really want to be there, so I tried to liven things up by joking about anything I could think of. The other football players’ girlfriends gave Jess a wide berth at the first game I went to and sat together, shooting us pointed glances over their designer sunglasses.

The football team was better than I expected�"much better�" so by the time homecoming rolled around they were undefeated. Signs and posters went up all over the school reminding people to vote for homecoming court, making me roll my eyes. Homecoming was just as big of a deal in Fort Worth for no real reason�"it was nothing but a popularity contest.

I grabbed some pizza and a soda from the lunch line and sat down next to Sam, taking a long swig from the can. Jess had an angry expression on her face and Matt was patting her back sympathetically.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking from Jess’ furious face to Matt’s stormy one.

“I told Ethan I didn’t want to be nominated for homecoming court and he and his friends got me nominated,” she grumbled. “I don’t want to be a stupid homecoming princess!”

I grimaced. “Urgh, that sucks,” I sympathized, pushing my hair out of my eyes. “As long as you don’t campaign, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” Matt said, his face brightening. “Alana Crowley and the other b*****s will get it�"they’ve been plastering the walls with glittery crap since they found out they made the ballott.”

I nodded in agreement�"the neon orange and lime green signs covered it glitter and sequins seemed to have hung themselves up overnight during the past school week. “I’ll make sure not to vote for you,” I promised with a teasing smile. “When are elections, anyway?”

“Friday,” Jess said gloomily. “I can’t wait until all this crap is over with�"Ethan’s been pestering me since last week to put up posters or something.” She rolled her eyes and started on her sandwich, a small wrinkle between her eyebrows showing she was still pissed.

Two girls holding cameras slinked up to the table, stopping just behind Sam and me and smiling at Jess. “So, Jessie, Amy’s freaking out about her football pictures�"can you stay after school for a bit and help us print some?” the taller one asked. Sam made a derisive noise in her throat, catching the girls’ attention.

The shorter one wrinkled her nose delicately in disgust. “Ashley, we better keep this quick�"who knows what STD Sam’s carrying this week,” she said in a sickly-sweet voice, taking a step away from Sam. I turned my head enough to glare at her, clenching my jaw angrily. The chick smiled at me pityingly before turning to glare at Sam, who was staring daggers at her.

 

Jess’ eyes tightened slightly. “Sure, Ashley�"and, again, it’s just Jess,” she answered frostily. “I’ll wear a name tag, if you need a little help remembering,” she offered, her eyes wide and deceptively innocent-looking.

The girls turned to leave just as Sam grinned evilly. “By the way, Riley, how is the gonad removal going?” Both chicks glared at her evilly as she and James laughed, stalking away stiffly.

“B*****s?” I guessed, quirking an eyebrow and fighting the smile trying to creep onto my face. Jess rolled her eyes and nodded, rubbing her forehead in small circles with her fingertips. “What’s with the gonad removal?” I asked Sam. She snickered.

“We were having a lecture over the whole reproduction thing, and when Mrs. Trimble called the balls gonads, Riley raised her hand and said, ‘I thought gonads were in your throat!’” James said when Sam couldn’t stop chuckling. “Riley got pretty pissed when Trimble told her that what she does outside of class is her business.” I forced myself to swallow my sip of Coke before joining Matt and Jess in laughing�"why couldn’t I get the cool teachers, I wondered?

“And guess who has to spend time with the b***h�"in an enclosed space, even,” Jess added in a long-suffering tone.

Sam snorted. “Better you than me�"I’d end up punching her,” she said, shredding a piece of stale wheat bread with her long fingers. “I still can’t believe you decided to join the yearbook staff.” Matt scoffed, looking at Jess pointedly.

“’Decided’ my a*s,” he muttered, taking a bite of his pasta.

Jess ignored him and said, “Yeah, well, I love taking pictures, and Ethan said it would be cool if one of my pictures was immortalized in the school yearbook, so I figured it would be a good idea. Plus, there was a good chance that the photography class would get scrapped with so little interest, so this was a good way to make sure I still got to do what I like to do.” She directed the last part at Matt with slightly narrowed eyes and went back to eating lunch.

“We were supposed to start working on that biology project,” I remembered, the plans to start our DNA project popping into my head. “Will it take you long? I don’t mind waiting here, if you want me to,” I offered.

Matt nodded, swallowing a mouthful of food hurriedly. “The library’s open for an hour after school�"we can look a few things up here while we wait,” he added.

Jess chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “It shouldn’t take too long�"if all we have to do is print pictures, then I can’t see it taking longer than an hour. I’ll go ahead and get a head start now; I’ll call you guys after school when I’m done.” She drained the last of her Powerade and stood up, waving as she threw away her trash and walked in the direction of the photo lab.

Sam shook her head slowly, looking dazed. “I’m so glad Mrs. Trimble’s too lazy to give us projects,” she said, running her fingers through her hair lazily and glancing at James, who nodded in agreement almost sleepily before putting his head back down. “James and I would never get anything done.”

James grunted affirmatively and shifted, burrowing deeper into his hoodie. I bit back a small smirk and turned my attention back to my lunch. “Well, it’s better to get these things out of the way now, I guess,” I said, remembering the due date wasn’t for just over a week. I shrugged and took another bite�"the more we worked on the report now, the more free time we’d have in the end, so I supposed getting an early start was a good thing.

The rest of the school day dragged on until finally the last bell rang. I put away what I didn’t need in my locker and walked down the stairs to the library, arriving just as Matt did. We dropped our bags onto an old, rickety table and walked through the few shelves, picking out anything related to the discovery of DNA that might prove useful. After picking a few books out, Matt and I wrote down the important information and put the books back, realizing it was twenty minutes to four.

“So, do we look for more stuff or do we just wait for Jess?” Matt asked me.

I thought about it, scrutinizing the miniscule library. “Well, honestly I don’t think we’ll find anything else here,” I admitted, gesturing to the few bookcases. “I guess we could just wait for Jess.” I followed Matt out of the library as he headed to a part of the school I rarely walked by.

I made a face at the highly decorated campaign posters as we passed, each emblazoned with the candidates’ pictures and names in huge letters. We walked past the long line of smiling faces plastered on the outside of the library’s walls, and I looked around mindlessly at the myriad of other decorations for the upcoming “spirit week” and elections, crashing into Matt when he suddenly stopped in front of me.

Matt didn’t pay any attention to my muttered apology. “Did you know about this?” he asked me quietly, his brow furrowing darkly. I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a huge neon pick poster with Jess’ picture on it, proclaiming, “VOTE JESSIE PEARSON FOR HOMECOMING QUEEN!”

My jaw dropped. “I had no idea�"there’s no way she did this herself,” I said, turning around slowly and realizing there were more posters. “Jessie? No way. I’ll bet Ethan had something to do with it, though.”

“F****n’ scumbag,” Matt ground out, stalking purposefully toward a room labeled YEARBOOK/PHOTOGRAPHY. He stepped inside, killing an animated conversation between three sophomore chicks, and knocked on a door in a narrow hallway with its doorknob missing. “Jess, I need to talk to you!” Matt called through the door as I waited outside nervously, hearing the girls whispering behind me in the main room.

Jess walked out of the room along with Ashley and Riley, looking confused. “Hey, we just finished,” she said, her curious gaze flitting from my pensive face to Matt’s annoyed one. “Did something happen?”

Matt jerked his head in the direction of the exit, striding out as Jess shouldered her bag and followed us. He stopped in front of the poster with his arms folded resolutely over his chest. I bit my lip, wondering who was going to speak first, when Jess’ gaze fell on the poster and her jaw dropped.

Her eyes narrowed angrily. “If you guys don’t mind, I’d really like to find every single poster with my name on it and tear it down.” She took a step forward and ripped the offending poster off the wall, tearing it into fourths before tossing it into a nearby garbage can. She moved down the wall and tore off another one, so Matt and I went upstairs to see if any had been posted around the freshman-sophomore lockers.

I found one poster upstairs, and Matt found two more. We trashed them and went back downstairs, looking around to see where Jess went.

“There’s one,” I said, pointing out a brightly colored poster Jess must have missed.

Matt strode over and pulled it down, tearing it in half just as we heard footsteps behind us. Matt threw the poster away and we turned around, expecting Jess.

I almost flinched when I turned and the short skinny chick I’d been expecting turned out to be a tall, built football player. Ethan glared at us, then at the trash can. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Rodriguez?” he challenged, taking a threatening step forward.

Matt stood straighter as I felt my muscles tense, saying, “I’m doing what Jess asked me to do. You have no right putting these up when she didn’t even want to be on the ballot.”

Ethan’s jaw clenched tighter, his teeth grinding audibly. “She is my girlfriend, Rodriguez, not yours. What I do for her is none of your business.”

Matt inhaled sharply as I bristled, my hands curling automatically into fists. “When you do what she doesn’t want you to do, it becomes our business,” I hissed, taking a step forward and jutting my chin out stubbornly.

Ethan fixed me with an icy warning glare before smirking coldly. “And how would you know what she really wants? Am I supposed to trust your judgement? It doesn’t seem to be much if you think it’s perfectly fine to be with a s**t like Samantha Dawson,” he growled.

“Sam has nothing to do with this, Ethan, so leave her out,” I snapped, taking a deep breath to calm down so I didn’t just launch myself at him.

Matt stepped up to Ethan so that they were nose-to-nose, staring each other down. “Leave. Jess. Alone,” Matt said angrily. “She’s not someone you can just mold into your perfect mindless girlfriend�"I’ll make sure of that.”

“Ethan? Matt? What the hell is going on? Get away from each other!” Jess said, appearing around a corner and running forward, wedging herself in between the two. She pushed them apart as best as she could before I helped her pull Matt back, who kept staring threateningly at Ethan. She whirled around to face Ethan with a stormy look on her face.

“Come on, Matt. He’s not worth getting detention, “ I said, forcing Matt to take another step back.

“I didn’t ask for your help campaigning, Ethan,” I heard Jess say quietly. “I don’t want this. I don’t care about homecoming.”

Ethan stared at her disbelievingly. “What else do you have to set you apart, Jess? You’re an okay student with okay grades, you’re not a cheerleader or an athlete�"what else can you possibly do to beef up your currently boring college resume, huh?” he ranted. Jess shrank back, making my anger flare again and I reached out and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her back.

“Don’t you ever f*****g talk to her like that!” I yelled heatedly, pushing Jess behind me and stepping up to Ethan, getting ready to throw a punch.

“EXCUSE ME!” a low voice boomed, making us all jump. Mr. Berkeley walked over to us quickly with a pile of papers under one arm and a cup of coffee in the other hand. I stepped away from Ethan, glaring at him once again. “What is the problem here?” Another teacher in a florid dress rushed toward us, a stern and disapproving look on her face.

“Mrs. Everhart!” Jess breathed, turning to the woman. “Are you in charge of the homecoming elections again this year?”

“Yes, why?” the teacher answered, looking a little flustered by the abrupt question.

Jess smiled slightly, glancing almost guiltily at Ethan. “The whole problem was a campaign I didn’t ask for and a nomination I didn’t want,” she answered, turning to also address Mr. Berkeley, who was watching Ethan and me shrewdly. “Can you take me off the ballot, please?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ethan’s hands ball into fists. I glowered at him threateningly, drawing Matt’s attention to Ethan’s reaction.

“Well… If you’re sure, Jessica…” Mrs. Everhart replied, shuffling a few papers in her hands. Jess nodded resolutely and, sighing, Mrs. Everhart jotted it down on her papers. “I’ll take care of it in the morning�"you won’t be on Friday’s ballot,” she said, satisfied with the situation and walking away.

Mr. Berkeley warned us not to fight and let us go, keeping Ethan behind to put some distance between us. Jess bit her lip and stayed quiet most of the way out to the student parking lot.

“So… Are we still going to work on our projects?” she said lightly, a slight crack in her voice showing how shaken she actually was. “I really don’t want to go home right now,” she mumbled, glancing at the double doors leading outside apprehensively.

“We’re going to my place,” Matt announced. “He still doesn’t know where I live. “

Somberly, we got into our cars and filed out of the parking lot. I glanced in my rear view mirror as I pulled out, seeing the door open and Ethan stepping into the sunny area just as I disappeared around a corner.