My Know-It-All Nemesis - Maggie Dallen Page 0,18

escape it—escape her—while at football practice.

But my buddies were falling into step beside me, and they showed no signs of letting this go.

“Seriously, dude, I heard she’s coming to your party?” Cal said. “I didn’t even know she knew how to party.”

Tim was shaking his head. “I’ve definitely never seen that girl party.”

I picked up my pace toward the locker room. If I could just stop hearing about Kate Andrews for five seconds, maybe I’d stand a chance of forgetting about her. But nooo. Everyone in this school seemed determined to bring her up every time I turned around.

“So, does this mean you two are friends now?”

I turned to give Cal an unimpressed look, and he laughed. “Okay, okay. Not friends, then.”

“So this is you playing nice, huh?” Logan said, laughter in his voice.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” That’s what this was. It was all this was. It was me taking pity on a wounded grizzly bear, and I had no doubt that my efforts would only end in her lashing out at me the moment she found her footing again.

But she hadn’t been able to say no in front of Mr. Gentry, and I suspected she hadn’t even wanted to.

Oh man, she must be hating this.

I found myself grinning down at my feet like a fool at the thought of it.

“Incoming!” one of the guys called out.

“Don’t look now, but your new party planner is heading this way.” Logan’s comment was all the warning I got before she was right there, in my face. Arms crossed, and prissier than ever, Kate had her chin tilted high as she faced me.

“We’ll, uh…” Cal patted my shoulder. “We’ll see you in there.”

And just like that they were gone. The freakin’ wusses. They might all love their cute, cuddly little Kate, but even they went running when they knew she meant business.

I snatched a towel from one of the freshmen who was carrying in the supplies and used it to swipe at the sweat dripping down my face as I stood across from Kate. When I dropped the towel, I saw her nose wrinkled up in disgust.

“Never seen sweat before, princess?” I meant it to sound teasing, but it just came out…unpleasant. I held back a sigh. It had been a long day, a long week, a long semester.

And now I had a party to get ready for and a campaign speech to write and a candidacy to announce…and I had to do it all while playing nice with this girl, who was eyeing me like I was some leper and my sweat might give her the plague.

“Why do you still play?” she asked.

I blinked. That was…not what I was expecting. “What do you mean?”

She shifted from one foot to the other, and I noticed that once again she was wearing a skirt that tucked in at her waist and a tight-but-not-too-tight sweater on top. “I mean,” she gestured toward the field. “You’re not first string, right?”

I sucked in a deep breath. The funny thing was—from anyone else that might have been a dig. An insult, even. But when I looked at Kate, I saw honest confusion, and I knew exactly what she meant.

If I wasn’t a star, the team leader, the top of the crop, so to speak—why do it?

I lifted one shoulder, wondering how honest to be. In the end, her even stare made it impossible to lie, or even to hedge. “I needed a sport on my applications,” I said. “You know…well rounded.”

She nodded instantly. Well-rounded was a sort of buzz word around here. The only thing colleges seemed to like better than a perfect GPA was a well-rounded student. That was why Kate and I were always trying to nab the highest positions in every committee and join every club. I knew it, she knew it—why pretend that football was any different?

She hitched her lips to the side. “That’s a big-time commitment for an extracurricular.”

I nodded. For a second there, it almost felt like we had a truce going on. For one split second I realized how nice it was to be talking to someone who got it. One of very few people in this school who was as hungry to succeed as I was.

Oh sure, there were some other kids who were vying for valedictorian, but I wasn’t sure anyone was going after the after-school activities with the same kind of strategic, precise tactics as me and Kate.

Between the two of us, we basically ruled this school.