Dare You to Chase the Soccer Player (Rock Valley High 5)

This wasn’t school spirit. It was a picture of me, making duck lips and throwing a peace sign at the camera. That would’ve been bad enough on its own, but it was one of the pictures I’d taken with a bare face, my reddened and jagged acne scars visible to the entire world. With a gasp, I tore the paper down and looked in horror down the hall at the dozens of others posted in this hallway alone.

How was this even possible? That selfie had been tucked away safely on my phone. It was one of the pictures I’d taken to make myself feel better about my face. Needless to say, I’d never posted it anywhere. I would’ve died before doing that. The same person who’d

stolen that picture of Zane and me must have stolen this one as well.

A sick and painful feeling began in my stomach. This had been a massive invasion of privacy. Now, everyone in school was not only going to think I was using Zane for a career boost, but they were going to see the real me. No filters. No mask. It was my worst nightmare come to life. I shook so bad, the paper I’d been clutching in my hands slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.

“No, no, no, no.”

There wasn’t enough time before the start of school to tear all of these down and I could only assume who’d ever put them up had plastered them around the entire place. There was not enough time for damage control.

The tears that I thought I had successfully wrestled back started to blur my eyes once again. I shouldered my backpack and turned to make my escape. The sound of my sandals slapping against the floor grew louder as I turned the corner of the empty hallway. My initial goal had been to make a break for the exit, but that changed when I caught a look at the pair of long legs in a mini skirt standing halfway down the hall. Janelle, with her perfectly curled blonde hair and angelic face, was placing another one of the flyers on the wall. With a flourish, she turned toward me and smiled evilly.

“Oh, good. I was hoping you’d be here in time to see my art work.” She gestured at the dozens of fliers plastered to the wall featuring my naked face. “Like it? I call it—Girl, Interrupted Part II.”

Confusion and desperation collided inside my body, making it hard to breathe. I took a step toward her and tried to swallow down the sawdust in my mouth.

“W-why would you do this?” I asked.

I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Sure, I figured Janelle for a mean girl the first time I met her, but I didn’t know her cruelty ranged this high. I’d invited her over to my home. Alanis had even allowed me to apply blush to her cheeks the other day. I thought we’d gotten over the initial territorial thing that girls like her seemed to put up. Why now?

A single blonde eyebrow rose on Janelle’s forehead as she slowly looked me up and down. “You’re serious? You really don’t know why?”

I swallowed again. “Yeah. I’ve done nothing to deserve this.”

She laughed and then cocked her hip. “Honey, you can play the innocent card all you want, but we both know you’ve been conniving since the day you realized Zane Rees was within reach. I’ve been watching you.”

I guffawed and shook my head at her. She had no idea what she was talking about.

“You thought you were so smooth,” she said with a hiss, stepping closer, “but I saw you set your sights on him from the beginning. I can only hope I saved him before it was too late.”

“Save him? Save him from what?”

Fire burned in her eyes. “From you! Girls like you always know how to get their claws in deep. It was a good thing your phone was still unlocked when I offered to hold all of your stuff yesterday at the soccer game. It gave me front row access to your deception. And now the whole world knows it, too.”

Closing my eyes against the sight of her, I raked desperately through my hair. Was she for real? It sounded like she was accusing me of going after Zane Rees for my own gain. She had no idea.

“You know, that’s pretty rich, coming from a girl who tried to do the same thing,” I said, opening my eyes to glare at her.

Harsh lines appeared around her mouth. “Who told you that?”

“Zane did.” I gestured with my hand. “And believe it or not, I wasn’t after him because of his position. I liked him for him. And he liked me. But thanks to you, that’s over.”

She pointed at the flyer on the wall. “Maybe he liked you with all of those layers of makeup, but I can promise, he wouldn’t have liked what was underneath. You think you’re so superior, but you’re as fake as the girls in Hollywood. I did what I had to do to protect him.”

I stared unblinking at her as my heart pulsed with sadness. Janelle really had no idea. Zane did like me for me. He’d proven it over and over again. She was just too wrapped up in her own world to see it. It wasn’t worth fighting over. She’d never see the truth. And to be honest, part of me felt kind of sad for her. If she thought what she was doing was right, her moral compass had gone far off base.

“I think you should go,” I said, my lower lip trembling. I wasn’t going to be able to hold it together much longer. Not with the school bell ringing and the entirety of Rock Valley High piling through those doors in a matter of minutes. Pretty soon, all of my dirty secrets were going to be on display.

“Gladly.” Her heels clicked as she walked toward me with a superior smile. She paused beside me and tilted her head toward the fliers. “You know, that’s a good look for you. If you want to make those duck lips permanent, I have the name of a plastic surgeon in LA.”

My quivering lips somehow formed a smile as I met her head-on with a proud expression. “No thanks. I already like the way I am.”

With a disbelieving quirk of her lips, she continued on toward the exit in the rear. Only two seconds after she walked through the doors, the first of the high school students started streaming through the front door. Not ready to face that level of scrutiny, I headed back the way I came and found a side exit. The rain had stopped, throwing a deceptively cheery picture of a bright sun on the horizon and a rainbow stretching overhead.

I needed to be somewhere safe. Somewhere no one would judge me. My mom was out of town this weekend for a PR event in New York, so the next best place was my dad’s. Hopefully he didn’t already hate me. I broke into a run, as fast as my flip flops would carry me, and headed toward home.

It didn’t matter that the rain had stopped. My tears would do a good enough job of washing away all of my makeup.