to let me go to State in Philadelphia this winter.”
“Might snow on the roads?” Molly adds a smile to her joke, but that does little to ease the sting of the truth.
“Yeah, and she pulled out the drunken-bus-driver line.”
“Always.” Molly nods with pity, long aware of my mother’s obsessive nature and the reason behind it. She was next to me on those dark days after Conner’s accident, and she knows I live with the specter of a lost sibling. Of course, she doesn’t know … everything. No one knows exactly why Conner went down to that storeroom. No one except the person who asked him to go … me.
“It’s still a big deal,” she says.
I pull myself back to the conversation, stuffing guilt and grief into their proper boxes. “To get a scholarship to Columbia? No kid—”
“To make the list!” She sighs, exasperated with me. “Kenz, enjoy the moment, will you? You’re a year from even applying to college, and that is going to be the very year you reign on the list.”
“Reign?” I snort out a laugh. “It doesn’t make me some kind of princess, Moll.”
“And fifth! Not tenth, Kenzie.” She’s totally not listening to me. “You are hotter than five other really hot girls. Big names, too.”
“Oh, yeah, Chloe Batista and Olivia Thayne are virtual celebrities. Watch out for all the paparazzi in the junior parking lot.”
She ignores my sarcasm. “You got more votes than Shannon
Dill.”
“Dumb as a rock, that one.”
“And Bree Walker! They’re superpopular, pretty girls. And we’re …” She trails off and I have to laugh.
“We’re not,” I finish for her, stating the obvious.
“Well.” She manages a laugh. “We’re nerds.”
“Speak for yourself. I’m not in the band.”
“You’re the president of the Latin club, take four AP classes, and tutor calculus. Card-carrying nerd.”
So I’m a little geeky. “I don’t see how a stupid list changes that.”
“You’re fifth!” she exclaims again, like she just can’t say that number enough. “I mean, you are right after Kylie Leff and Amanda Wilson, captain and cocaptain of the varsity cheerleading squad, and homecoming princesses three years running.” She recites their positions like she’s reading their resumes.
“Together on the list as they are in life. Don’t those two ever separate?”
“Don’t change the subject. You know our lives are about to change.” She throws me a grin. “Yeah, I said ‘our lives.’ I hope you don’t mind me riding your coattails to popularity, ’cause I’m totally on that train.”
“By all means, climb on the train of mixed metaphors.”
She shrugs. “Joke all you want. This is big.”
“I guess you’re right,” I concede. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been text-bombed last night.”
“Really?” She repositions herself in the driver’s seat like a bolt of excitement has just shot through her. “Anybody good? Read me some.”
“Some … interesting.”
“Like?”
“Just, you know, kids.” I’m not sure I want to read that weird Latin one to her. But last night, before I went to sleep, I read every single message, and that one was still the most bizarre.
Caveat viator, Quinte.
Sent from a number that didn’t show up on Google, anywhere. An area code I couldn’t even find in the United States. It had to be some bonehead in my Latin class. But why was “the traveler” warned right after I had an accident?
Ignoring the full-body creeps that shudder through me, I reach into my backpack on the floor to get my phone.
“Let’s see,” I say, scrolling through the list. “I got texts from, oh, mostly the lunch crew and Latin club members. Drew Hickers said, ‘Grats, girl.’ ”
“Grats?” She gave a good guffaw. “Who says that?”
“Icky Hicky,” I reply, calling up our seventh-grade name for the first boy I ever kissed. “It’s mostly everyone trying to hide their utter amazement and not insult me with a ‘how did this happen’ even though we all know someone probably miscounted the votes and I got three. Counting Hick-man.”
“I don’t know. I heard the vote tallying is closely watched. But who knows? That list is shrouded in secrecy.”
“ ‘Shrouded in secrecy’?” I choke out a soft laugh. “Who says that?”
“Well, it is. Do you know who counts the votes?”
I don’t answer her because I’m still scrolling. I’ve been through the whole list and can’t find the Latin text. I start from the top again.
“I heard that the guys really get pressured to vote,” Molly says. “Like there’s hazing or something if they don’t cast a ballot.”
It’s gone. The text I read first after the accident is gone.
“And someone once tried to start a movement