Most Likely to Succeed

On top of leading the committee in charge of homecoming court elections.

And leading the committee in charge of the parade float. I didn’t understand why Aidan opposed the council taking on more projects when he simply passed all the work to me.

As everyone crowded Ms. Yates’s door, Sawyer stood and stretched. Then he leaned over and said in my ear, “We make a good team. Maybe you and I got off on the wrong foot.”

“For two years?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to respond but stopped. Aidan brushed past the desk on his way out the door. He didn’t say a word to me.

Will was the last rep remaining in the empty room. He paused in front of the desk. “Thanks, you guys, for taking my side.”

“Thanks for taking ours,” I said, standing up and gathering my stuff, which was tangled with Sawyer’s stuff. One side of my open binder had gotten caught beneath his books.

“For me, this wasn’t just about the dance,” Will said. “People have been talking about it, and Tia told me what fun it was last year. Of course . . .” He glanced sidelong at Sawyer.

I knew what that look meant. Sawyer and Tia used to fool around periodically, up until she and Will started dating a few weeks ago. The homecoming dance last year had been no different. Too late, Will realized what he’d brought up.

“It was fun,” I interjected before Sawyer could make a snide comment that everyone would regret. “Come on.” I ushered them both toward the door.

“I was student council president back in Duluth.” Will followed us into the hall and closed Ms. Yates’s door behind us. Down at the end of the freshman corridor, a teacher frowned at us. Will lowered his voice as he said, “That is, I was supposed to be president this year, before my family moved. I know what the president is supposed to do, and Aidan’s not doon it. Sometimes you have to stand up and tell somebody, ‘You’re not doon it right.’ ”

I thought Sawyer would make fun of Will’s Norse doon. He might have stopped insulting Will behind his back, but he wouldn’t be able to resist a comment to his face. Yet he didn’t say a word about Will’s accent.

Instead, Sawyer grumbled, “If the storm had destroyed the gym completely, the business community would rally around us, give us money, and solve the problem for us. They’d get lots of publicity for hosting our homecoming dance. Nobody’s going to help us just because our roof leaks.”

“Leaking isn’t good PR,” Will agreed. “I signed up for the dance committee and I want to help, but I’m the worst person to think of ideas for where else to hold an event. I still don’t know this town very well.”

“Doesn’t the Crab Lab also own the event space down the block?” I asked Sawyer. “One of my mother’s assistants had her wedding reception there. Could you sweet-talk the owner into letting us use it for cheap? Better yet, for free?”

“It’s booked that night,” he said.

“That’s two weeks from now,” I pointed out. “You’ve memorized the schedule for the event space down the block?”

“A fortieth class reunion is meeting there after the homecoming game,” he said. “The owner asked me to wait tables. I said no because of the dance. I have an excellent memory for turning down money.”

Sawyer waited tables a lot. While a good portion of our class was at the beach, he often went missing because he was working. Even though he’d helped me in the meeting, I was a little surprised the dance was important enough to him personally that he would take the night off.

And, irrationally, I was jealous. As we stopped in the hall and waited for Will to swing open the door of the lunchroom, I asked Sawyer, “Who are you taking to homecoming?”

He gaped at me. “You!” he exclaimed, like this was the most obvious answer in the world and I had a lot of nerve to joke about it. He stomped into the lunchroom.

Will was left holding the door open for me and blinking at us. He didn’t understand the strange social customs of Florida.

“It would help if you could brainstorm over the weekend,” I told Will, pretending my episode with Sawyer hadn’t happened. “Ask around at lunch and on the band bus tonight. See if you can scare up ideas. Maybe we’ll think of something by the next meeting.”

“Sounds good,” he called after me as I headed across the lunchroom to the teacher section.

Aidan, Ms. Yates, and I had eaten at one end of a faculty table after the last council meeting, discussing projects like the dance. Possibly the one thing worse than spending lunch with Aidan while he was mad at me was spending lunch with Aidan and Ms. Yates, who, judging from the expression on her face, hadn’t liked how the meeting had gone down. But I was the vice president, so I straightened my shoulders and walked over.

They were deep in conversation. Trying not to interrupt them, I looped the strap of my book bag over the back of the chair beside Aidan. They both looked up anyway. I said, “Sorry. I didn’t know we were meeting, or I would have gotten here sooner. I’ll just grab a salad and be right with y—”

Ms. Yates interrupted me. “This is a private talk.”

“Oh” was all I could think of to say. My face tingled with embarrassment as I slipped my bag off the chair and beat a retreat across the lunchroom to the safety of Tia, Harper, and the rest of my friends. By the time I finally sat down with my salad, they were spitting out and shooting down ideas for where to have the dance—led by Will, who repeated how angry he was at Aidan for what he’d been doon in the meeting.