Most Likely (Most Likely #1) - Sarah Watson Page 0,12

phone interview, he won’t have any idea how old I am. Once I get my interview, I’ll run it in the Blaze. He’ll be stunned when he sees how good it is. He’ll never underestimate a kid again.”

“And this saves the park how?” Ava asked.

“One step at a time,” Jordan said.

The bell rang and CJ tensed. She and Martha both had AP Physics. They had their first quiz of the semester and CJ was nervous. Math and science had never come easily to her, and she’d been lost and overwhelmed since the first day. Martha belonged in that classroom. CJ didn’t. She was a fraud.

“Wait,” Jordan said. “I need one of you to help me create a fake online imprint.” CJ and Ava both pointed at Martha. She was good at coding. “Sure,” said Martha.

“Nothing too extreme. It’s just in case he tries to look me up. Give me a different last name. James. It’s my mom’s maiden name. She always wanted her legacy to live on. I’m thinking a LinkedIn profile and some links to clips of mine. But attributed to adult newspapers.” Ava was right. It sounded like porn when you said it that way. “Oh, and I’ll need some help researching the councilman. Past voting record. Donor lists. Everything.”

Ava and Martha both pointed at CJ. Which was fair. She was the best at research. If she could find the time. CJ thought about her already monstrously long to-do list. She had the SAT and APs to study for. College essays to write. She had an interview after school with a volunteer program. The food bank where she used to give her time had shut down over the summer because of budget cuts, and she was itching to do something worthwhile. And, okay, she also wanted it because she was worried about how the gap in her volunteer hours would look to colleges. Now, on top of everything else in her life, Jordan wanted her to do a full background check on a politician. CJ honestly didn’t know how she was going to balance it all.

Ava was usually the first person in her art classroom every morning. Mrs. Simon opened the door one hour before class started, and since Ava still hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her mom that she wanted to apply to art school, she figured it was safer to work on her application portfolio outside of the house.

As the second bell rang, Ava said a quick hello to Isla and Tobin, the class’s other star artists, before hurrying to her spot in the front row. On the first day of school, Mrs. Simon had told everyone to choose where they’d like to sit. Art was the only class where Ava didn’t mind being in the front row. It was the only time she felt okay when people stared. The classroom was divided into pairs of easels, and Ava was the only one without a partner next to her. She didn’t take it personally. It wasn’t because they didn’t like her. It was because they were intimidated by her.

Mrs. Simon paced the room and gave a few instructions before telling the class to pick up their hand mirrors and get to work. Their first project this year was a self-portrait, and Ava found the assignment a little uncomfortable. She didn’t know if all adopted kids did this, but Ava would often stare in the mirror for long periods of time and study her own face. She’d never seen a picture of her birth mother, so she could only imagine that her mother had the same expressive eyes and long lashes, the same small nose and cowlicked hair. Ava’s own face was the only clue she had about what her biological mother looked like.

Ava always wanted her paintings to be about something, so she decided to make this one an expression of the complicated relationship she had with the woman who had given birth to her yet remained a mystery. She decided to paint an image of a female figure looming deep in the background and watching her. Since she had no idea what her birth mother looked like, she would keep the image hazy—a blurred mystery woman.

As Ava painted, she wondered about a lot more than just the shape of her birth mother’s face. The questions floated through her with each stroke of her paintbrush. Was she artistic too? Was it hard for her to make her voice loud enough to be heard in