Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,10

the city meeting. She clicked through them and stopped when she got to one of her. Logan had managed to capture the exact moment when the councilman handed her the sticker. Her head was cocked slightly to the side and frozen in an expression of bewilderment.

She’d felt so good going into that night too. She’d been wearing her vintage-style swing dress in a bright-red apple print that her little brother said made her look like a wicked queen. He didn’t mean it as a compliment, but she took it that way. The dress usually made her feel powerful. Now, looking at it in the pictures, it seemed like a childish thing to wear to an important event. Jordan was used to people not taking her seriously when they first met her. Not just because of her clothes. People loved to say that they didn’t see color, but she could read the lowered expectations in their faces. That usually shifted as soon as she opened her mouth. They would tell her that she was “well-spoken” and express awe at how smart she was. She hated that she had to be smarter, better, and more eloquent than her white classmates, and yet she loved that she was.

Councilman Lonner had misjudged her. He’d looked at her and dismissed her as just a kid. Which, okay, technically and legally speaking, she was. What he didn’t know was that she was a kid with a stack of newspaper awards. She was the reason that the school had been forced to switch cafeteria food vendors after she’d published an article taking the vendor to task for their unethical business practices. She’d won national recognition for her story about mismanaged funds within the music program. She wanted the councilman to know all that. She wanted him to look at her and acknowledge that he’d been wrong.

An idea came to her. She knew how to get her wish. It was simple and yet completely effective. She fired off a quick text to her friends even though she knew they wouldn’t be up yet. She was too excited to wait. Now that she had a plan, she felt giddy about it. Councilman Kenneth Lonner had messed with the wrong kid.

The sound of an air horn rocked Martha out of a deep and blissful slumber. She bolted upright and searched for the source of the noise. Her phone usually made a soothing bell sound when she got a text, but someone had changed it. CJ, most likely. They’d been in a cell phone prank battle since summer.

The air horn sounded again, and Martha opened the texts while simultaneously plotting her revenge. Both messages were from Jordan.

I KNOW HOW TO SAVE THE PARK!

That councilman messed with the wrong kid.

After the text was a black fist emoji.

Martha didn’t respond. She padded into the bathroom and cringed when she saw her reflection in the mirror. She hadn’t bothered to wash her face last night, and her eyes were dark with smudged eyeliner. As she scrubbed her face clean, she thought about everything the developer had said at the meeting. And how convincing she’d been. She’d talked about how the new office building would create about three hundred jobs once it was built. How that would give the local restaurants a boost and bring in a lot of tax revenue. She said it would revitalize the neighborhood. She had facts and figures to back it up.

Face clean, Martha turned her attention to her hair. She never quite knew what to do with it. Her natural hair color was a mousy brown, but over the summer, Jordan had helped her dye it a shade of black called Urban Death. Her mom had cried when she’d seen it, which made Martha like it even more. She pulled it up into a messy bun. Three hundred jobs. Martha couldn’t stop thinking about that number. Maybe her dad could get one of those office jobs. And even if he didn’t, somebody’s dad would. Or somebody’s mom. Or somebody.

Martha hated that her dad had to work a crappy loading job. It hadn’t always been that way. Martha still remembered what it was like when he was a production supervisor at the Ford engine plant. The people who worked for him called him sir. He even had his own business cards. His name and title embossed onto a shiny white card. He’d given one to Martha to keep in her backpack in case she ever needed to call him at