Chapter 21 #2
I’m telling you, her lips said. It was Madison Oliphant.
I didn’t know what made me feel better—that her friends didn’t believe her or that her attempt to humiliate me backfired.
Really, humiliation so wasn’t Maisie’s style. Jade’s, maybe, but not Maisie’s. It had me thinking there might’ve been a different reason for her sudden sabotage, but still. I was going to kill her.
“Where’s Connor?” someone at the table asked, but I didn’t look away from my target. It was a wonder Maisie hadn’t felt the stink eye yet. I was glaring at her so hard that my eyes were starting to dry out.
And to think, if she’d been a better photographer, I would’ve been in hotter water. But, no, Maisie could solve math equations all day long, but couldn’t focus her camera to save her life. Or think of turning on Night Mode.
“Where’s Jade?”
Now I looked up, gaze automatically locking with Lacey Churchill, who sat across from me. She’d asked the question, presumedly, because it was then that I realized I was the only other girl who sat at the lunch table. Jade was absent—and, perhaps more alarmingly, so was Riley.
Lacey didn’t seem too interested in hearing the answer—she’d already turned back to her broccoli salad—but she’d caught Ashton’s attention.
“The lovebirds are out in the hall,” he said, batting his eyes at Lacey.
“Looking for your snark partner? Go ahead, get catty with Madison instead. I’ll watch. ”
Lacey didn’t even look at Ashton; it was like he hadn’t spoken.
Her eyes flicked up to mine before sweeping back down.
The longer things went on—and the more times I caught Landon looking at her—the less sure I was about Lacedon’s new relationship being because of the Most Likely Tos.
I still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure, though.
Either way, they were cute together. It made me feel bad that Jade and I had given her so much grief in the beginning.
I turned back to the table across from the cafeteria—and nearly jumped, because Maisie was rising to her feet. She grabbed her bag and began packing it up, drawing it onto her shoulder and heading for the hallway.
“I’m going to go find them,” I said to no one in particular, abandoning my tray. “Kyle, take care of my lunch for me?”
He looked up from the other end of the table. “You want me to clean up after you?” he asked, sounding more confused than annoyed.
I waved a hand at him, throwing a quick “thanks!” before barreling after my ex-best friend.
When I got to the hallway, I expected to find Maisie halfway down it, or maybe even ducking into the bathroom.
Instead, Maisie just stood in the middle of the walkway, her back to the cafeteria.
I blinked at her pink backpack, opening my mouth to call out to her, but that was when I noticed what she stared at.
Jade and Connor stood maybe fifty feet down the hall, close together in their normal Jannor fashion. Jade: angry. Connor: passive. Jade’s head was tilted up to glare him in the eye, but Connor’s was facing down the hallway, away from the direction of Maisie and me.
And Maisie was just… watching them. I wrinkled my nose at the weirdness of it.
“We’ve talked about this,” Jade said, her voice traveling the short journey down the hall. “We’re good together.”
Connor’s voice was flat. “Are we?”
Woah, hang on. This was so not a conversation to be having in the middle of the hallway. They weren’t even making sure no one was around to hear them. With how trigger-happy Maisie Matthews was with sending things to Babble, it wasn’t a chance they should take. I took a step forward.
“What about king and queen?” Jade demanded, grabbing Connor’s hand. “We need this.”
“I know,” Connor breathed out, and that was when I came around Maisie and grabbed her left arm. She fought me at first, her sneakers squeaking as I dragged her across the hall and into the bathroom. It was thankfully empty, and I whirled on my ex-best friend.
Maisie spoke first. “What the heck is with you jocks?” She harshly brushed at her shoulder. “Ever heard of personal space?”
I folded my arms across my chest. Now she had no choice but to see the death glare I’d been shooting her all lunch period. I could just imagine her up in her bedroom, peeking her phone camera through her blinds to snap the pic. “Ever heard of privacy?”
Maisie stiffened, but she tried to hide it by shifting feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Denying it makes you look stupid, you know. Babble? The only spot that photo could’ve been taken was from your bedroom window.” I tipped my chin toward the bathroom door, raising an eyebrow. “And now you’re over here eavesdropping on Jade and Connor? What, you run Brentwood Babble now?”
Maisie wrinkled her nose, looking at me like I was the stupid one. “I couldn’t care less about stupid gossip.”
“Then why did you take a picture of Logan and me last night? Why did you post it?”
“Maybe I wanted to get back at you,” she said, voice clear and calm. Under the weight of my glare, she didn’t even flinch. “Maybe this is payback.”
Apparently humiliation was Maisie’s style.
I blinked in surprise, because I truly expected her to have a different motive.
Payback. “Maisie, come on.” I forced myself to scoff, to maintain the superiority of the conversation.
To act as if bringing up freshman year didn’t make my skin crawl.
“For freshman year? You didn’t know the choreography. ”
“Yeah, because you taught me the wrong routine.”
I clamped my jaw shut, so tightly that it hurt. I could still remember that wrong routine, too, as if the shame had burned it into my memory. “If you were serious about cheer, you would’ve made sure you had the right choreo yourself.” The words were ugly in my mouth, almost nauseating.
“I didn’t expect my best friend to sabotage me, but sure,” she went on, nodding. “Let’s make it my fault. Anything to absolve you of your guilt.”
I tried to swallow, but it choked in my throat.
The only thing that was her fault was trusting Jade and I so blindly—no, trusting me.
As soon as I thought it, I shoved the feeling down, down, gripping the edge of the sink to ground myself.
“You don’t get how big of a deal it is, being caught with him,” I all but whispered. “I could get kicked off the squad.”
The longer Maisie stood silent, the stupider I began to feel. The words sounded so ridiculous. They sounded so… peak in high school. I’d decided to go all in with Logan. I’d known the consequences. Why was I putting blame on Maisie?
Because even though I’d been the one to choose Logan, I never truly imagined getting caught.
“Maybe this wasn’t payback,” Maisie said after a beat. “Maybe it was karma.”
I straightened from the sink. “I did you a favor and we both know it.”
Maisie wasn’t interested in sticking around to hash it out further, though. She walked toward the bathroom door. “Maybe one day you’ll think the same of me,” she said, wrapping her hand around the door handle. “That I did you a favor.”
The urge to say something else rose sharply within me, because, strangely, I didn’t want her to walk away. I didn’t know exactly what I did want from her, but I wasn’t finished yet.
The door opened, but not because Maisie pulled—because Jade pushed. She all but fell into the bathroom, nearly crashing into Maisie in the process, and suddenly the bathroom was far too small. Jade’s gaze found mine first, since I was directly in her line of sight, before pivoting to find Maisie’s.
Jade’s lips thinned. “Excuse you,” she said to Maisie. “If you don’t mind, Math Book, I need to talk to my best friend.”
Maisie just snorted, and without a final look, she left the bathroom.
I stared at the door as it slowly swung closed, and for a brief, crazy moment, I found myself wishing Maisie had stayed instead of Jade.
“There’s someone else,” Jade said.
I blinked at her. “Huh?”
“Connor.” Her eyes were sharp. “He has someone else.”
“If this is about the hookup closet yesterday, I’m sure—”
“He’s never pulled back like this before.” The stress in Jade’s expression was clear, almost electric and crazed. “There’s someone else.”
“Who is he even around other than us?” I asked her, unsettled as I watched my best friend begin to unravel at the seams. I had no idea how to comfort her, either. “Connor’s only friends are in the Top Tier. We’re the only ones—”
The thought hit me without warning. Bobcats, Connor had said grandly to Maisie’s friend group at the bowling alley last week.
What a coincidence. He’d been the one to go to his car and get sweatpants for Maisie, too.
And even Maisie, pausing in the hallway to watch Connor and Jade argue.
Maisie never would’ve cared about Jannor drama. So why did she stop in her tracks?
“Why—” I had to clear my throat. “Why didn’t Babble post about Connor being in the closet? Someone… had to have submitted it, right?”
Jade shook her head absently, rubbing her palm into her forehead. “I guess that photo was more important.”
Even though I knew, I found myself whispering, “Photo?”
The photo Maisie took of me in my driveway. The photo Babble deemed more important than whoever Connor had in the hookup closet. Had Maisie posted me as revenge…
Or save herself?
No way. That was the only thing my brain could muster. No way, no way, no way.
Jade’s focus returned, eyes sharpening again on me.
Even though Maisie had left, the bathroom felt impossibly small, like there was no space left to cower into.
She’d been serious before, but now her eyes were crystal clear, and focused solely on me.
“Who do you think it is?” she asked. “The girl in that photo with Logan Castle?”
You could’ve heard a pin drop in the bathroom. “W-What?”
“You had to have noticed, too, right? His jersey number?”
Jersey number. His name had been partially cut off, but she knew Logan’s jersey number.
“We could ruin her, too,” Jade went on, and her voice was smooth. She reached out to rub a lock of my hair between her fingers. “Her and whoever the girl in the closet was.”
Not yet. The two words were a whisper in my mind. Just a little bit longer. Not yet.
“I don’t know,” I said as calmly as I could. “Crazy… that he switched to someone else so fast.”
In my peripheral, I could see my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Was it just me, or did my nose seem longer?
Jade chuckled once, a soft, barely there sound that almost sounded like a scoff. “Right?”
For some reason, when Jade turned to walk out of the bathroom, Maisie’s voice echoed again in my head.
I didn’t expect my best friend to sabotage me, but sure, let’s make it my fault.
She’d trusted me without wavering, not second-guessing me once, and I’d stabbed her in the back.
And for some reason, staring at Jade’s spine, I couldn’t help but wonder. “Jade?”
She looked over her shoulder. “What?”
“In Expresso’s that day. You recognized Noah.”
Jade seemed to pause before answering, like she was surprised of the sudden topic. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t recognize Logan?”
Jade hadn’t been surprised when I pointed out that Noah, who’d been in his Expresso’s uniform, had been a Bulldog. No, she knew. She knew him as the quarterback from the year before. And when Logan had walked in, Ashton knew him, too. Been a while, hasn’t it?
If Ashton recognized Logan, and Jade recognized Noah, and Logan and Noah were best friends, it wasn’t a far jump that…
Jade fully turned around then, tilting her head in a way that had me stiffening. “Are you asking me if knew Logan was from Jefferson all along?”
Hearing her speak the sudden suspicion aloud had me freezing.
The thought had crept in so easily, so naturally, as if some dark corner of me was waiting for a reason not to trust her.
And now, guilt crept in just as easily. “No,” I said, backing down before the doubt could root itself any deeper. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Don’t you think, as your best friend, I would’ve told you if I knew?”
“Of course.” I closed my eyes, shaking out the stupid thought. “Of course you would’ve. You wouldn’t have let me date him if you’d known he was a Bulldog.”
I felt like I was drowning beneath a crushing wave in the middle of the bathroom, wanting nothing more than to pull the words back and sink through the floor.
Jade wasn’t the one betraying me. She wasn’t the one keeping secrets.
In my head, she blurred into Maisie for a second—someone who’d trusted me without question—and the thought of that made my stomach turn.
She hadn’t accused me, hadn’t demanded answers.
A sharp pain throbbed in my chest, heavy and relentless. What is wrong with me?
Jade crossed the short distance and picked up my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. “You know I’d trust you ’til the end, Mads.”
Her faith felt like sunlight and a blade at the same time, warming and cutting. The knife in my chest twisted. I was replaying freshman year over again—Jade was Maisie, and I was too selfish to stop. “And I’ll follow you,” I said, the lie tasting metallic. “’Til the end.”