Most Likely to Succeed

I listened and waited for them to come up with something brilliant. For once I stayed silent. I still smarted from Ms. Yates telling me I didn’t belong at the adult table anymore. And I wondered whether I deserved it. Lately I got so furious at Aidan, but I was probably going through an immature phase, like cold feet before a wedding. We’d known almost since we started dating that we were destined for each other. All summer we’d been planning to apply to Columbia University together. Whenever Aidan annoyed me, I needed to take a deep breath before I spoke—as my mother reminded me each time I mouthed off to her—and make sure the problem was really with him, not me.

And I knew in my heart that the problem was mine. Since the school year started, I’d been creeping toward a crush on Sawyer like peering cautiously down from a great height. The Superlatives mix-up had put me over the edge.

On the first day of school, the student council had run Superlatives elections for the senior class. We thought Harper and our school’s star quarterback, Brody, had been voted Perfect Couple That Never Was. If I’d been in charge of the elections, as in years past, that mistake wouldn’t have been made. Even though I was still the chair of the elections committee, Ms. Yates wouldn’t let me count the votes. Since I was a senior this year, I had a conflict of interest.

But without me to watch over them, the wayward juniors had screwed up the whole election. They said I’d been chosen Most Likely to Succeed with Aidan. That sounded right. He was president. I was vice president.

Here’s what didn’t make sense: In reality I’d been elected Perfect Couple That Never Was with Sawyer.

When I realized the juniors’ mistake, Ms. Yates had made me tell Brody and Harper they didn’t really win the title, since they’d started dating because of it. But I wasn’t allowed to divulge the truth to anyone else. Each person in the class could get a maximum of one Superlatives position, so the single error had created a snowball effect. Almost every title was incorrect. And since Harper had already taken the pictures and sent them to the yearbook printer, Ms. Yates wanted to leave well enough alone. Not even Sawyer was in on this secret.

Definitely not Aidan.

I was thankful Harper and Brody had been able to work through their problems and keep dating after I told them the truth. They were adorable together, even if part of what made them fun was the fact that they were so obviously mismatched.

Now I was cycling through the same feelings Harper had when she believed she’d been paired with Brody. She’d seen Brody with new eyes and longed for a relationship with him because she’d mistakenly thought someone else had told her it could work. The only difference was, this time there was no mistake. I was not Most Likely to Succeed along with Aidan.

The senior class said Sawyer and I should be together.

I’d started to think so too.

Which was dumb, because the election was just a stupid vote for yearbook pictures. Aidan and I would attend Columbia together, take a while to establish our banking careers in New York, and then get married. After three years of knowing that was my plan, letting a class election change my mind didn’t say much about my decision-making skills.

Neither did obsessing about Sawyer. On the far end of my table, he attacked his huge salad with the appetite of a seventeen-year-old, half-starved vegan. When he looked up and saw me staring, he tapped his watch, then splayed his hand, wiggling all five fingers. He meant he would meet me at the cheerleading van at five o’clock this afternoon, and we would ride to the game together, exactly as I’d promised (not).

I couldn’t wait.

* * *

I didn’t see Aidan again. Usually he waited in his car for me after cheerleading practice let out at the end of school. Today when I crossed the parking lot, his car was already gone. Angry as I was with him, his conspicuous absence left me feeling empty. I stepped into the heat of my own car and headed home.

As I drove, I decided I should have expected Aidan wouldn’t check in with me after school. The first couple of years we’d dated, he’d met me at every chance, even if we had only a few minutes together—before school, between classes. But lately he waited for me less and less. And on the rare occasions when he offered me a ride to school, I told him I’d rather take my car in case I decided to go somewhere afterward. I didn’t have specific plans, but riding with him would take some of my power away.

We never stood each other up, though, so I knew I would see him after the game, like we’d said. Normally we might “watch TV” at my house, since my parents were good about leaving us alone. But late tonight they were driving to the airport to pick up my brother, Barrett, who was coming home from college for the weekend. They were likely to return at the wrong time, tromping through the middle of my make-out session with Aidan. So instead, I was spending the night with Harper, and en route, Aidan was taking me to her granddad’s strip of beach to “watch the ocean” for half an hour before dropping me off at her house.

Thinking about Aidan, I pulled my car to a halt at a stop sign. Enormous water oaks, dripping Spanish moss, extended their arms overhead. The houses along this section of the main road through town were ugly 1970s split-levels facing a parallel street, as if turning their backs on the history of the place. Aidan lived in the house to my right. The yard was a neat, flat expanse of grass, unbroken by a single tree except the ancient oaks lining the edge. Every time I’d passed his house since he got his license in tenth grade, I’d glanced at his driveway to see if his car was home.