All's Fair in Love, War, and High School Page 5

  "Well, I wasn't thinking of rewarding you. I was thinking more of punishing me."

  I didn't insult him then, even though I wanted to, just to prove I could exercise self-control. "Fine, you'll take me to the Hilltop restaurant, where I will order lobster, and you'll stand on the school steps passing out flyers and telling everyone who walks by to vote for me."

  Logan hesitated, but only for a moment. "All right. You have a bet."

  "Fine. I won't insult anyone until"—I looked down at my watch—"four thirty-five P.M. next Wednesday, when I'll break my streak with a running commentary on your personality deficiencies. Then I'll give you flyers to hand out."

  "Don't think for a minute I'll take your word about your behavior," he said. "I'm going to employ spies."

  "Fine. Employ away."

  Mr. Donaldson walked out of his office and looked over in our direction. I said, "Speaking of being employed . . . ," and gave Logan the we-are-being-watched look. He turned and went back to the cart, and I rearranged a few books on the shelf that someone had misplaced.

  It's hard to alphabetize when you're mentally berating someone, so I replaced the books slowly. Really, Logan never ceased to amaze me. He seriously thought I'd have a hard time going a week without insulting someone. Like I have nothing better to do with my time than critique the world. I'd show him, and any and all of his spies. I would be the very model of kindness and charm for the next week. All it would take on my part was a little self-control. It would be a piece of cake—or in this case, a nice big juicy lobster.

  Chapter 6

  At school on Thursday the office announced that those students interested in running for next year's executive council needed to come to the office and pick up a petition sheet. Every candidate had to get at least fifty signatures of support from fellow students. I went to the office during lunch and picked up mine.

  When the secretary handed me the papers, I felt my stomach lurch. What if I couldn't find fifty people willing to sign for me? How humiliating that would be.

  But then again, I'd been a cheerleader for the last three years. I'd given support, encouragement, and cookies to basketball and football players for years. They owed me. If they didn't sign my petition, then next year they'd get nothing to take on the away-game buses but burnt toast. And I'd tell them that too. In fact, I'd make it a campaign slogan.

  I didn't want to walk around all day getting signatures, so I photocopied the paper and gave my friends the assignment of getting thirteen signatures each by the next day. At one point I saw Logan getting things out of his locker, and just to bother him, I went up and asked him to sign my petition. "It's only right for you to sign this," I told him, "since you'll be campaigning for me next week."

  He took the paper and pen, then surveyed me skeptically. "You haven't insulted anyone today?"

  "Well, only you; but it was in my mind, so it didn't count."

  He tapped the pen against the paper but didn't sign it. "Hmm. Do you want to chat for a while? Tell me, who do you think is the most popular girl at PHS, and do you like her?"

  I pointed to a line on the paper. "Just put your signature right there."

  "Do you think Rachel is the best cheerleader in your squad, or would that have to be Aubrie?"

  "It's not going to work. I'm the very essence of kindness, and I find it incredibly easy not to insult anyone."

  "We'll see about that," he said, but then he signed my petition anyway.

  I smiled and replaced the petition on top of my math book. "By the way, I like to order those expensive sundaes from the dessert menu."

  "I'll let Doug know," he said, and turned back to his locker. Which is another annoying thing about Logan. He always has to get the last word in. When he did take me out on a date, and I made him eat every rotten word he'd ever said about me, it still probably wouldn't be an enjoyable evening. He'd find some way to ruin it. Somehow Logan would take all the fun out of gloating.

  I wished him a cheerful good-bye and continued down the hallway.

  I hadn't heard that Logan had asked anyone to the prom yet, and it occurred to me I could make him take me there for our date. He'd have to rent a tux, buy a corsage, and have pictures taken with me. Years hence, his children would flip through his high-school memorabilia and find his prom pictures.

  "Who's that incredibly gorgeous woman you didn't have the brains to marry?" they would ask him, and then with pinpricks of shame he'd remember me and how he'd lost our bet.

  It would be fitting justice. Except it meant I would have to suffer through the prom with him, and I didn't want to do that. I only had the opportunity to go to two proms in my life. I wanted both of them to be wonderful, magical—like Cinderella going to the ball. It could never be that way if I went with Logan.

  After lunch, while I got my English book out of my locker I saw Amy talking with a couple of guys. With her petition in front of her she said, "But that's the beauty of the democratic system. You can make a difference."

  "Nothing ever changes," one of the guys drawled back at her. "Student council does the same stuff every year. What does it matter who wins?"

  "Well, if you want a different agenda, treat this like a political race instead of a popularity contest. Vote for someone who actually knows what they're doing."

  What kind of slam was that?

  As if I didn't know what I was doing. Well, okay, so I didn't have any actual experience in student council, but that didn't mean I couldn't figure it out. This wasn't the Supreme Court we were talking about. This was a school election.

  Amy held out a pen to the guys. I would have loved it if they'd turned her down or at least made her explain why she thought she knew what she was doing, while everyone else was a bunch of clueless dolts, but the guys just took her petition and signed it.

  I refrained from slamming my locker door.

  I knew what I was doing. And I wasn't about to let Amy beat me.

  On Friday my friends and I stayed after school to make posters and assemble our petition lists. Since we'd made tons of posters for cheerleading, we had the whole system down to an art form. Chelsea and I did borders, die cuts, and other miscellaneous decorations. Aubrie and Rachel did lettering.

  While I laid out the poster board and the other supplies I'd lugged out of my car Chelsea looked at the petitions. She shook her head as she flipped from one page to the next. "I don't believe this. Some of these morons signed more than one of our lists. What were they thinking? Like, duh, you only get one vote."

  Rachel smirked at us. "Did you guys hit up the remedial students or something?"

  I nearly slipped up by adding an insult of my own but closed my mouth before the words came out. Instead, I said, "Obviously, some people are very enthusiastic about voting for me."

  "Well, because of their enthusiasm you now have only forty-six valid signatures instead of fifty."

  "We still have time. We'll just watch for people as they walk by."

  Rachel picked up one of the petition papers. "I'll go find some people."

  She was entirely too eager to do this. I knew she just wanted to chat with people instead of making posters, but I didn't stop her from leaving.

  Aubrie sat down cross-legged in front of one of the poster boards and pulled the lid off a marker. "Guess who else I heard is running against you, Samantha?" Without giving me time to say anything, she said, "Rick Debrock."

  "Rick Debrock?" I repeated. "Why would he want to run?"

  Rick was one of those rebel students whose extreme haircut matched perfectly with his strange clothes. On occasion I'd even seen him wear a safety pin through his ear. As far as I could tell, he never took school seriously, let alone showed any interest in executive council. His only concern about classes seemed to be getting through them so he could party on the weekends. Last year I had a class with him, and every Monday he came in and loudly told everyone about his weekend exploits. Most of his adventures consisted of drinking beer until he passed out.


  "Rick Debrock?" I said again. "Does he have a grade point average high enough to run?"

  "He must have," Aubrie said. "They gave him the paperwork. His campaign slogan is 'Party, party, party with Rick.' "

  I picked up my scissors but didn't cut anything. "Do you think he'll get many votes?"

  Aubrie leaned over her poster board and drew an elaborate S. "Most people won't take him seriously. But then again, a lot of people don't take executive council seriously, so they might vote for him just for that reason."

  "He's not that wild of a guy," Chelsea said. "He just puts on the front." We both looked at her skeptically, so she added, "My sister has gone out with him a few times. He's really pretty normal outside of school."

  Chelsea's little sister, Adrian, was going through what we all called a "freak-out" stage. She seemed intent on piercing every single part of her body and had worn nothing but black for an entire year. Her going out with Rick wasn't a ringing endorsement of his normalcy.

  "Well, I guess I can't count on votes from the goths, partyers, or anyone-who-hates-school-just-on-principle crowd."

  "Maybe if we revamped your image a little you could appeal to those crowds." Chelsea waved her pen in my direction, as if she were a fairy godmother transforming me from a scullery maid into an acceptable candidate. "Try snarling a little, and repeat the words to all the heavy-metal songs you know."

  I returned my attention to my poster. "Most people won't vote for Rick Debrock. He's probably so inebriated he can't find the school half the time, let alone try and run it."

  From behind me a voice said, "Would that be an insult?"

  I didn't have to turn around to tell Logan stood behind me. I clenched my teeth together. How long had he been lurking around, and more importantly, why didn't my friends tell me these sorts of things? I trimmed the corners of the poster board and kept my voice even. "That wasn't an insult. It was merely an observation."

  Logan plopped his backpack on the floor and sat next to me, nearly glowing with happiness. "It sounded like an insult to me."

  "Well, I suppose that's one more area in life we disagree on."

  He leaned toward me and, in a voice so low only I'd hear it, said, "Stop trying to weasel out of this, you cheater. You lost our bet."

  "It wasn't an insult. Rick drinks a lot. It's a substantiated fact, and one of his main campaign themes. So how can that possibly be counted as an insult? I didn't lose the bet."

  I picked up a few star-shaped die cuts and glanced over at my friends. They quickly shifted their gazes from me to their posters, bending over them with intent concentration as though they weren't eavesdropping, but I knew they'd grill me about this little encounter as soon as Logan left. It was just one more ray of sunshine he was adding to my life.

  Logan tapped his fingers on the floor. "I suppose it's possible you don't understand the definition of an insult. After all, you've been hurling insults around for so long you probably don't even notice them anymore. Sort of the same principle behind all that perfume you wear."

  "I see," I hissed out. "Maybe you can clarify things for me then. For example, if I were to tell you . . . say, to drop dead, would that be an insult or simply an instruction?"

  "See, you can't even go three seconds without starting up again."

  "I didn't lose."

  He held up one hand in protest and then let it drop back onto his lap. "All right. I'm willing to let this infraction slide, but you have to start all over again. You have to go a full week from today without insulting another person."

  "I'll go two weeks," I said, just because I hated his patronizing tone.

  "Fine. Two weeks."

  I immediately regretted I'd volunteered for an extra week, but I didn't try to take it back.

  "Let's set some rules," he went on, "just so you and I agree on the definition of an insult. If it isn't kind, and it isn't something you'd want someone saying about you, then it's an insult, and you lose our bet. Agreed?"

  I wanted to tell him what he could do with his rules and his stupid bet, but he would never let me live it down if I did. He'd still be calling me a cheater and a weasel at our ten-year reunion. My pride was riding on this bet now. "Agreed."

  "So, where do you want Doug to take you on your date?"

  He was fishing for insults, but I wasn't about to be taken in so easily. "As long as you're sitting here, why don't you help me with these posters. After all, you'll be working on my campaign soon enough anyway."

  "I can't. I've got tons of homework to do." He picked up his backpack and stood up. I watched him go, and when he was almost out of earshot, I said, "Reverse psychology is a wonderful thing." It wasn't really an insult. Not technically anyway.

  As I suspected, Logan hadn't been gone thirty seconds before my friends started in. "What was that all about?" Aubrie asked.

  I pressed another star onto my poster. "Just some stupid bet we have going. He thinks I can't go two weeks without insulting someone."

  "And you took the bet?" Chelsea asked—which just goes to prove what she really thinks of me.

  "Yes, I took the bet. I can do it."

  Aubrie and Chelsea looked at each other, then both started laughing. I chucked one of the stars at them.

  "I can do it," I said again.

  Aubrie pursed her lips together in a teasing smile. "I think he was flirting with you."

  "When? When he called me a cheater, or when he told me I wear too much perfume?"

  "No," Aubrie said slowly. "It was the way he looked at you.

  "Doubtful. He just wants me to go out with Doug so Doug will set him up with some chick named Veronica."

  "That's probably a front," she said.

  I nearly called her crazy, but figured that might classify as an insult.

  At this point, Rachel traipsed back over to us. "I got six more signatures just to make sure we have enough." She dropped the papers by me, then sat down and stretched out her legs. "Did I miss anything while I was gone?"

  Aubrie winked over at her. "Just Logan Hansen hitting on Samantha."

  "He wasn't hitting on me. He was trying to make my life difficult."

  Chelsea smiled and tossed Rachel a marker. "Some guys don't differentiate between the two."

  "Oh!" Rachel held up one hand, as though just remembering. "Amy and her friends are upstairs making campaign posters. It looks like vandalism on poster board. I mean, they're just writing stupid stuff."

  She turned to me for some commentary, and I tried to think of something that wouldn't be unkind nor would I mind if someone said it about me. Rachel waited, her puzzlement growing with my silence. Finally Chelsea said, "Don't mind Samantha. She's on an insult-free diet."

  I rolled my eyes at Chelsea because Logan hadn't said anything about facial expressions in his rules.

  Aubrie looked over at Rachel and told her, "Logan bet Samantha she couldn't go two weeks without insulting anyone."

  "Oh," Rachel said in a sad sort of way. "I hope you don't have a lot riding on it."

  I put the last star on my poster, pressing it down so hard that glue squeezed out underneath the edges. "Your faith in me is so touching."

  It was really beginning to bug me that no one thought I could win this bet. After all, it wasn't like I insulted people all of the time. I didn't. Well, at least I didn't insult people any more than everybody else insulted people. "Back to the issue of posters," I said. "How many do you think we should make?"

  "I think we should make a ton of posters and take all of the good hall spaces," Aubrie said.

  "I think we should wait to see where Amy puts her posters and then put ours next to hers," Chelsea said. "That way everyone will be able to make the comparison between good and trashy."

  "Let's just take Amy's posters down when we see them," Rachel added. "We'll call it introducing Amy to the constituents in the garbage can."

  I slid my poster over to Chelsea so she could do the lettering. "That wouldn't be fair."

  "Samantha's
right. That wouldn't be fair," said Aubrie.

  Chelsea shrugged. "You know what they say: All's fair in love, war, and high school."

  "We'd get in trouble if we got caught. I'd probably be kicked out of the race."

  "So you won't take them down," Rachel said, "and we won't get caught doing it. It'll be easy."

  I hated to tell them no. After all, they were my friends, and they were trying to help me. They had just taken time out of their schedules to make posters for me. Still, I knew ripping the other candidates' posters down wasn't right. "I don't want to run a mean campaign. I don't think I have to. I can beat Amy and Rick on merit alone."

  My friends exchanged glances, but didn't offer opinions otherwise. "Okay," Chelsea said. "We'll be nice. At least for now."

  All in all we made six posters, which was good for our first day. And they looked crisp and professional. Mine would be the nicest posters. Rachel had already said Amy's were lousy, and Rick wouldn't come up with anything good. Rick probably didn't even know how to spell two of the three words in the sentence "Vote for Rick."

  We hung up the posters around the school hallways, and then I told everyone I'd clean up the art supplies so they could go home. I felt bad making them stay any later on my account.

  I stuffed what I could into my backpack, stacked up what I needed to carry, and then picked up all the scraps of paper to throw away. Cassidy walked by as I was hauling stuff to the garbage can. She stopped when she saw me.

  "Hi, Samantha."

  "Hi." I dropped the last of the scraps into the garbage can and tried to brush off some dried glue stuck on one hand.

  "I saw some of your posters. They look really good."

  "Thanks. Were you here helping Amy with hers?"

  "Yeah, but our posters aren't nearly as nice as yours. You ought to be glad I didn't help you after all."

  If she hadn't said this, I probably never would have brought up the subject, but somehow seeing her standing in front of me smiling and chatting, like she was really my friend, just irritated me to death.