Out of My League - Sarah Sutton Page 0,31

of my head in a perfect end to our show, and I found myself basking in the heat his body provided, in the comfort his nearness gave me. “You can try to convince me to like reading.”

I couldn’t even explain why this moment made me feel so calm, so quiet on the inside, but I couldn’t shake it.

I just found myself nodding, hoping he was serious.

Chapter Nine

“‘Some schools prefer football, but at Bayview High, they like to play ball. And they’re good at it.’” I stilled, the pen cap caught between my teeth. “No, maybe not. Um, ‘Though football is the choice of many, baseball still remains America’s favorite pastime, as well as Bayview’s’—ugh!”

Nothing was coming out right. No combination of words had the right flow when I wrote them down. Not even in the slightest. Or maybe I was being too hypercritical of myself, judging every tiny thing. Maybe I just needed to write everything out and see where it led me.

If I’d had my writer’s notebook, I was sure things would’ve come out smoother. Those pages were magic. But, instead, I was writing in some crappy journal with no stickers and no clippings, and I didn’t have a single ounce of inspiration.

The sheet of bar graphs that I printed off sat off to my side, numbers highlighted and sticking out at me. One of the most important things about information articles was to have actual facts. I couldn’t get proof of bias in any other form than this, with the athletic funding bar shooting through the roof. I’d researched what Fund Modification meant, and all my searches gave me the answer of “a transference of funds between other non-specific funding accounts.”

That sounded shady, right? Wasn’t that what certain accounts were for? And again, Ryan taking that money from Taylor was super sketchy. For a graduation gift? Yeah, I really didn’t think so.

I had my outline nailed down, and it looked good from the bullet points. Since the whole goal of the article was to prove how toxic the baseball team really was, I had to focus on its most atrocious parts. But translating my bullet points into concise, catchy paragraphs felt harder than usual. Usually this stuff came easily to me.

I blamed it on baseball. It was near impossible writing about something I hated.

“‘Though the choice is inconsequential, Bayview High students’—nope, that sounds a little offensive, doesn’t it?”

For my mental roadblock, however, I blamed Walsh. After we left the party the other night, he let me pull my book from my purse and read it to him in the car, parked in front of my house. The conditioned air filtered from the vents as he tipped his head back, listening to my words.

And he was listening. He’d interject almost every time the main boy spoke—“Oh, come on, she falls for that line about how her eyes shine brighter than the sun? Ridiculous”—but judging by the way his shoulders slumped when I told him I had to go inside, I had a feeling he enjoyed our little book club.

Or maybe I was just projecting onto him because it was the best fake-date I’d had.

But a night like that made writing this article hard.

I shouldn’t feel guilty. The school board was changing around the funding. Seeing that the article written might spur them to give me back my class, rather than face backlash.

Okay…so that sort of sounded like blackmail, but it wasn’t. Not really. It was the key I needed. The blockade keeping me from my future would be removed, and I could go back to happily knowing at least one thing in my life was set. My relationship with my parents was still crazy, but I had my writing class and the opportunity to build my résumé. Article, internship, career in journalism.

A good reporter is unbiased, I told myself, steeling against the icky sensation. Just keep going.

“So if everything’s organized from least scandalous to most,” I said aloud, tracing my pen along my bullet points, trying to reorganize my thoughts, “I need to figure out a way to smoothly connect them all. Teacher bias leads into school board bias, then money wiring—”

Again, I cut myself off, dropping my pen onto the piece of paper. Why was this so hard? Why was nothing feeling right?

I slouched in my chair, expelling a harsh breath. All my ducks were in a row, but nothing was coming out right. Garbage word after garbage freaking word. What was that about? Me, Sophia Wallace, having