She lifted sample after sample in the air just as Leo appeared at the end of the pizza line, struggling to balance his tray with two slices of pepperoni and a chocolate milk—the combination that always turned Angeline’s stomach. At the cashier, he tried to steady the end of the tray on his hip and snake his good arm into his back pocket for his wallet. The tray started to tip, and a freshman girl, a doe-eyed blonde with sun-kissed white skin, rushed over. But not before a different freshman, a long-legged, brown-skinned girl with lush dark curls, beat her. Lush Curls cradled his tray while Doe Eyes tossed Leo’s backpack over her shoulder.
With a sheepish grin and cheeks tinged pink, Leo extracted his wallet.
“All right, all right. Who’s crying now? Milk it, Torres!” Tad Marcus strutted over and shot his arm up for a high-five. “And may the gods let me break something!”
Tad’s hand hovered, waiting for Leo’s.
Leo surveyed the room, eventually settling on Angeline. He held her gaze, and she could feel the entire cafeteria watching. Because they were running for student council against one another—Ask an Angel and Big Man on Campus Leo, former Acedia power couple whose breakup had been so very public, every step of the way. Angeline shook her head, gently, and Leo’s attention left her, focusing somewhere behind her.
She turned to see Sammy in the cafeteria doorway. She was surprised to see him without the red plaid shirt tied around his waist. He looked smaller without it. Sammy had taken their breakup hard. She’d hurt and embarrassed the big brother he idolized.
She hadn’t meant to. It just sort of happened. Partly because Leo used to help her. Not only with research, but also serving as her test subject on everything from beard softeners to best head angles for a first kiss.
His appearances in her episodes were sparse. Yet super effective, as hooking Evelyn proved. But running for Congress had made Leo’s mom hyper image conscious, and she demanded Leo stop. He told Angeline she couldn’t run any of the recorded footage she had of him. A request she technically honored by live-streaming him instead.
Unlike Angeline, Leo didn’t do things without fully thinking them through. Her spontaneity was something he lived vicariously. But now, Leo’s eyes traveled from Sammy to Angeline to the entire cafeteria to Tad’s twiddling fingers.
Tad, who’d backed his truck into a telephone pole because he’d angled his rearview mirror to check out his abs while doing seated crunches behind the wheel.
Leo pushed his wallet back into his pocket, lifted his hand, and smacked it against Tad’s.
“All right, all right, that’s my man!” Tad said. “Feel good to not have that angel on your shoulder, Torres?”
Fighting dirty wasn’t Leo’s thing.
Yet he faced Tad and smiled until his stupidly cute dimple appeared. “Think you mean devil, don’t you?”
A bunch of Tad’s friends hooted, and a few girls eyed Angeline, realizing Leo really was on the market for the first time in his high school career.
Angeline’s on-camera training helped to keep her expression neutral. “Shea butter.” Her voice came out weaker than she’d like. She arched her back and projected, “Coconut oil, blemish blocker. And who’s into yoga?”
Meanwhile her stomach churned, and all she wanted was to take everything back and for everything to be as it was, without Leo humiliated, without her standing on this chair fighting for something she didn’t even want, fighting him for something she didn’t even want. Something she was sure he didn’t want either.
He hated politics—anything even remotely connected to it. They both loved this town, complete with its questionably poor taste (see the abundance of shark-eating-swimmer Labor Day floats) and high cornball factor (see lobster and crab stencils at every crosswalk). But he wouldn’t even vote in the “Mayor for a Day” contest that was part of the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Politics had taken his mother from him. And opening up about how much that hurt was what had taken him from Angeline.
She’d wished she could take it back the moment it happened—while it was happening. How could she have known she’d be so successful in delivering the promise of “How to Get Him to Open Up”? She hadn’t archived the video, and it was gone from her channel the same day. But not before thousands had seen and some had captured their own videos and screenshots.
Now he was here with Doe Eyes clinging to one arm and Lush Curls on the other. Seemed like maybe he’d found his silver lining.
Leo aimed for the table whose underside held their joined initials when he noticed Chelsea Anders. A junior, Chelsea had been in a wheelchair ever since a horseback-riding accident in eighth grade. Leo took his tray from Lush Curls, set it on the nearest table, and pulled out a chair to sit beside Chelsea.
Angeline tore her eyes from Leo and worked to compose herself as a string of girls flowed toward her, including ones peeling off from Emmie.
Natalie Goldberg led a group of the most popular junior girls. She styled herself like a walking Pinterest board, a different mood for every day. Today was boho chic with a loose, flowered skirt and gold scarf in her hair. “Are these, like, Ask an Angel certified?” she said.
“Not all of them.” Pride swelled, confirming why Angeline had started her YouTube channel in the first place. Her viewers trusted her; they needed her. She was the big sister they never had—becoming what she never had herself. “But I could use volunteers to serve as a focus group.”
A dozen hands shot up, and Angeline swiveled her neck, wanting to ensure Emmie was witnessing Angeline’s reach. But Emmie was climbing down from her chair, helped by Ravi Tandon. Angeline’s eyes darted around the room, looking for Cat. Of course she wasn’t there. Her sister would be squirreled away, alone, in her newsroom, not here with her classmates, not here to see Angeline securing her position.
“You’ve got that facial rejuvenator from ‘better’?” a girl with red hair and freckles said. “I’ve been dying to try it.”
And die while trying it, you might.
“Here, take two,” Angeline said.
“You’ve got my vote,” the girl said.
Angeline smiled, but all she heard in her head was Cat: “You really have no line.”
7
When Cat Struts Her Stuff
24 DAYS TO THE ELECTION
3 DAYS TO THE PRIMARY
Cat perched herself on the edge of her chair in the center of the newsroom. With her pencil poised above her notebook, she asked, “Can you spell your name for me?”
Angeline rolled her eyes. “We squatted in the same womb.”
“I’m a professional.” Cat tilted her head toward Grady, sitting in the back, jotting down his own notes, just as she’d instructed. “I take my job seriously.”