Most Likely to Succeed

Abruptly, I sat up and rolled my chair back.

He straightened more slowly, smirking. He knew exactly what effect he’d had on me.

Bewildered, I breathed, “How did you do that?”

“It’s a gift.”

His cavalier tone ticked me off, and I regained my own voice. “That’s what I would worry about. During study hall, you give me the ‘gift’ ”—I made finger quotes—“but you’ve moved on to the next girl by lunch. No thanks.”

His face fell. “No, I—”

Aidan sashayed in, greeting the crowd as he came, already starting the meeting.

Sawyer lowered his voice but kept whispering to me as if nothing else were going on and Aidan weren’t there. He said, “I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t cheat on you, ever.”

Aidan turned around in front of the desk and gave us an outraged look for talking while he was making a speech. Sawyer didn’t see it, but I did. I faced forward and opened my student council binder, cheeks still burning.

Sawyer had complimented me, part of a strange new trend.

He’d dropped the playful teasing and blatantly come on to me, a brand-new pleasure.

And he’d gotten upset at my tart response, like he actually cared.

I leaned ever so slightly toward him to give the electricity an easier time jumping the arc from my shoulder to his. His face was tinged pink, unusual for Sawyer, who was difficult to embarrass. I was dying to know whether he felt the buzz too.

Apparently not. I jumped in my chair, startled, as he banged the gavel on the block that Ms. Yates had placed on her desk for Aidan. “Point of order, Mr. President,” Sawyer said. “Have you officially started the meeting? You haven’t asked the secretary to read the minutes.”

“We don’t have time,” Aidan said. Dismissing Sawyer, he turned back to the forty representatives crowding the room. He hadn’t argued with us about who got Ms. Yates’s desk, after all. He didn’t need to. Instead of presiding over the council from here, he simply reasserted his authority by running the meeting while standing up. Sawyer and I looked like his secretarial pool.

“We have a lot to cover,” Aidan explained to the reps, and I got lost in following him with my eyes and listening to him, fascinated as ever. About this time of year in ninth grade, he’d captured my attention. Previously he’d been just another dork I’d known since kindergarten. I’d preferred older guys, even if they didn’t prefer me.

But that year, Aidan had come back from summer break taller than before, and more self-assured than any other boy I knew. That’s why I’d fallen for him. Confidence was sexy. That’s also why, until recently, I’d felt a rush of familiarity and belonging and pride whenever I glimpsed him across a room.

After years with him, however, I was finally coming to understand he wasn’t as sure of himself as he wanted people to believe. He was so quick to anger. He couldn’t take being challenged. But as I watched him work the room like a pro, with the freshman reps timidly returning his broad smile, I remembered exactly what I’d seen in him back then.

Sawyer looked bored already.

“We’re entering the busiest season for the council,” Aidan was saying, “and we desperately need volunteers to make these projects happen. Our vice president, Ms. Gordon, will now report on the homecoming court elections coming up a week from Monday, and the float for the court in the homecoming parade.”

“And the dance,” I called.

“There’s not going to be a homecoming dance,” he told me over his shoulder. “I’ll explain later. Go ahead and fill them in about the homecoming court—”

Several reps gasped, “What?” while others murmured, “What did he say?” I spoke for everyone by uttering an outraged “What do you mean, there’s not going to be a dance?”

“Ms. Yates”—he nodded to where she sat in the back of the room, and she nodded in turn—“informed me before the meeting that the school is closing the gym for repairs. The storm last week damaged the roof. It’s not safe for occupancy. That’s bad news for us, but of course it’s even worse news for the basketball teams. The school needs time to repair the gym before their season starts.”

Will raised his hand.

Ignoring Will, Aidan kept talking. “All of us need to get out there in the halls and reassure the basketball teams and their fans that our school is behind them.”

I frowned at the back of Aidan’s head. He used this bait-and-switch method all the time, getting out of a sticky argument by distracting people (including me) with a different argument altogether. Basketball season was six weeks away. The homecoming dance didn’t have to die so easily. But hosting the event would be harder now, and Aidan didn’t want to bother.

I did.

“Help,” I pleaded with Sawyer under my breath.

Aidan had already moved on, introducing my talk about the election committee.

Out in the crowd Will called, “Excuse me.” An interruption like this hadn’t happened in any council meeting I’d attended, ever. “Wait a minute. My class wants the dance.”

I couldn’t see Aidan’s face from this angle, but he drew his shoulders back and stood up straighter. He was about to give Will a snarky put-down.

Sawyer watched me, blond brows knitted. He didn’t understand what I wanted.

“Complain about something in the book again,” I whispered, nodding at Robert’s Rules of Order. “Ms. Yates hasn’t stopped Aidan from railroading the meeting. She obviously doesn’t want the dance either, but they can’t fight the book.”