My Know-It-All Nemesis - Maggie Dallen Page 0,12

the election.

Ha! As if.

Her accusing me of not having any ideas of my own.

I stared down at the blank page. I had ideas. I just...couldn’t come up with them right this second.

I sighed miserably as I crinkled up the paper and flipped to a new, fresh sheet in my notebook. Why was I even doing this?

Kate wanted this position, probably even more than me.

But it was the last thing to check off. The final edge that would ensure I’d get into the school of my dreams on my own terms, with no help from my father and his connections.

I snuck a peek at Kate on the other side of the classroom, scribbling away. We’d both been given a free period to work our speeches in the library rather than watch our fellow classmates’ presentations in World History.

I sighed as I fell back in my seat. Well, Kate was preparing her speech.

Me? I was staring at blankness, less certain of what I was going to say now than I had been before I sat down with the pen and paper. The seconds ticked by, and the sound of Kate’s scribbling was like a new form of torture that was getting inside my head and making me cringe. When the bell rang, I bolted out of my seat, but when I reached the hallway, I stopped.

I froze.

Holy crap, who did this? The hallways started to fill with students, and I reached out to tear down the giant poster hanging on the wall, but I was too late.

“What is that?” Kate was standing beside me, and my hand was still on the corner of the paper, ready to tear it down.

I glanced over at her and was horrified. Tears. There were tears in her eyes.

In all the times we’d fought and bickered and made fun of each other, I’d never once seen tears.

It just about broke my heart in two.

Then she turned those big, blue, tear-brimmed eyes in my direction. “Did you do this?” Her voice was a whisper, and I reeled backward, tearing the poster down as I did.

“Are you serious right now? Of course, I didn’t do this.”

She just stared at me.

She didn’t believe me, that much was clear.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, and I definitely shouldn’t have felt...this.

This hurt that she didn’t believe me.

“What’s going on here?” I hadn’t even seen him coming, but Mr. Gentry stopped in front of us, his eyes going from Kate’s stricken, tear-filled eyes, to my face.

Oh crap.

“This wasn’t me,” I said to Kate under my breath.

“Really?” she hissed. “Because this seems exactly like you.”

“Kate,” Mr. Gentry said slowly. “Miller.” He looked between the two of us. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” Kate mumbled, not looking at me.

I’d give Kate this—she might have been a goody-two-shoes, but she wasn’t a rat or a tattletale. She wasn’t going to throw me under the bus, even though she clearly thought that I’d done this.

I kept the poster at my side so Mr. Gentry and the gathering crowd couldn’t see the poorly drawn caricature of a half-naked Barbie wearing a cropped top that read Hot and Wild Barbie, with a chicken hat perched on her head.

“Kate,” Mr. Gentry said, his voice low and filled with concern.

I couldn’t fault him. I was worried about her too, and I couldn’t stand the girl. But watching her now, seeing her struggle to gather the happy-go-lucky demeanor everyone but me was used to seeing...it physically hurt to watch her.

You don’t have to protect the idiot who did this. That was what I wanted to tell her. But, of course, she thought I was the idiot, so...yeah. This just got complicated.

His gaze moved between the two of us. “You two aren’t fighting, are you?”

“Of course, not,” she said with a smile.

“Who? Us?” I gave him my best grin.

He rolled his eyes at both of us. “If you two can’t handle—”

“Miller and I are fine,” Kate said quickly. “We were just talking about our speeches, actually. Running them past each other.”

Mr. Gentry didn’t seem convinced, and I... I was ready to drop all pretenses. Her words from the other day wouldn’t quit. The fact that she thought I was trying to buy my way into the presidency, and that she could honestly think I’d put up a crappy poster like this to mock her.

Guilt nagged at me. Sure, I’d done something similar last spring. But that wasn’t the same at all. That was a spur of the moment joke. I was teasing her for being