My Fake Boyfriend Read online

  My Fake Boyfriend

  Sweet Mountain High

  Lacy Andersen

  Contents

  1. Mia

  2. Jimmy

  3. Mia

  4. Jimmy

  5. Mia

  6. Jimmy

  7. Mia

  8. Jimmy

  9. Mia

  10. Jimmy

  11. Mia

  12. Jimmy

  13. Mia

  14. Jimmy

  15. Mia

  16. Jimmy

  17. Mia

  18. Jimmy

  19. Mia

  20. Jimmy

  21. Mia

  22. Jimmy

  23. Mia

  24. Jimmy

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  More from Sweet Heart Books

  1

  Mia

  The old Toyota pickup shuddered and moaned as I pulled it to the curb in front of Fuller’s bar and grill. It was Sweet Mountain’s destination for anything greasy and delicious, and it was sure to have you groaning in agonizing stomach pain the next day.

  But I didn’t come for the food. It was the third time this month I’d been called here in the middle of the night, wearing my pink-striped pajama pants and my curly blonde hair in a messy knot on top of my head.

  “Mia! My sweet, beautiful, darling, Mia.”

  The passenger door swung open, and in fell a wrinkled mess of a man I called my dad, his feet unsteady as he settled himself on the bench seat. His chin was covered in a thick layer of stubble, and his dark, wavy hair stuck up at odd angles. The sharp scent of alcohol followed him into the cab, causing me to wrinkle my nose in disgust. He gave me a sleepy smile as he leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Dad, I thought we talked about this,” I said forcefully, putting the truck in drive. This was totally embarrassing. No seventeen-year-old should be picking their dad up from the bar in the middle of the night. “You promised you were done.”

  “I’m researching my next book, sweetie,” he shot back with a lazy wave of his hand. “It takes time. You can’t rush research.”

  “Okay, Pop. Whatever you say.”

  I knew this excuse. It wasn’t new. He’d been researching his next book for as long as I could remember.

  My dad had had a taste of success in his thirties. His first book had been a thriller that shot to the top of the charts and landed him spots on some popular talk shows, got him a movie contract, and a fanbase begging for the next one. But as the years dragged by, he never got around to writing the next one.

  The fans faded, the money dwindled, and eventually, my parents’ marriage ended. Mom followed a job on the other side of the state, and I stayed with Dad to finish up school. I guess the pressure got to be too much for him. And now, here we were, my dad softly snoring next to me as I drove us toward home once again.

  I turned onto the road that would take us past my school. It was lined with majestic red maples that, in the daylight, still blazed with fiery colors in the unusually warm late November air. Like a picture-perfect postcard. But this late at night, they looked more like dark shadows waiting to gobble up an unsuspecting passerby.

  With a shiver, I directed my gaze beyond the row of trees, where Sweet Mountain High sat in all its glory. It was an impressive stone-faced building that sprawled across the entire block, with the football stadium, track, and other sports fields tucked in behind it. Tidy green lawns surrounded the buildings, with meticulously trimmed evergreen bushes thrown in here or there.

  The street lamps didn’t do the trees’ and the school’s beauty justice, but they were just bright enough for me to spot three guys wearing backpacks walking a block and a half down the road. At the sound of my truck, they darted across the street and disappeared into the darkness.

  I narrowed my eyes behind my red-framed glasses and took my foot off the gas. It was midnight on a Friday. No one should be headed to school right now.

  Something was going down.

  The twinge in my belly was back. That gut feeling that told me I needed to investigate. It was something I’d been born with, and it had never failed me yet. Determined to follow that feeling, I pulled the pickup over and put it in park.

  “Dad, I’ll be right back,” I whispered.

  The soft snores coming from his side of the truck told me he probably wouldn’t even know I’d left.

  I reached for the notebook that I’d stashed on the bench seat next to me. It was about the size of my hand and had a golf pencil stashed in the spiral binding at the top. Half of the pages were covered in notes I’d scribbled about potential stories. I never left home without it.

  Some might have called me old-fashioned, but a notebook was a news journalist’s best friend. And if I was going to finally nail down the story that would get Lindsey Beck to let me into her Sweet Mountain High newspaper club, I needed every bit of help I could get.

  The dew covering the grass immediately soaked through my unicorn slippers as I snuck up the lawn of the school. The three shady figures I’d seen had gone around the back of the school, so I headed that way. Stealthy and quiet as a panther, that was the only way I’d get my story. Crouching down low and hugging the stone wall of the school, I advanced until the football stadium came into view.

  Muffled male voices came from up ahead. I spotted the perpetrators loitering near the school garden shed. All three of them wore black masks over their mouths and noses like they were some kind of ninjas. They’d abandoned their backpacks next to the shed and were gesturing at the school as if in heated argument.

  That feeling in my gut urged me to find out what they had in the bags. It had to be something good. These three looked like nothing but trouble.

  Creeping a little closer to hide behind a bush, a low groan escaped my mouth when I recognized my targets. I should’ve known the moment I saw them. No one else in Sweet Mountain would be stupid enough to pull off a prank on school property.

  Jimmy Alston and his gang of troublemakers were at it again.

  Jimmy was a senior at Sweet Mountain High and notorious for causing trouble. The only reason he got away with half the things he did was because of his wicked two-seam fastball that carried the baseball team through the district championship rounds last year.

  He got away with the other half of his crimes because of his ability to charm the socks off the ladies in the school administrative office. All it took for a full pardon was a hand raked through his wavy black hair and a twinkle of his green eyes. Seriously, the guy knew he was good looking and took every opportunity to use it to his advantage.

  “Jimmy gets-away-with-everything Alston,” I muttered to myself, scribbling down in my notebook.

  But I had his number—ever since middle school when he’d tried to drop a stink bomb in my locker. He hadn’t expected it not to bust open that day. And he definitely didn’t expect me to find it and toss it in his gym bag on my way out of school. His baseball gear had reeked for months!

  Point for Mia Jackson. Zero for Jimmy Alston.

  Ever since that epic day, he’d basically avoided me.

  But I couldn’t get lost in remembering old times. Not when it seemed like things were heating up near the garden shed.

  Jimmy had pulled down his mask, revealing his hard jawline and dimpled chin in the low glow of the flashlight he carried. He had a slightly annoyed edge to his voice as he gestured at the other two.

  “Come on, guys, we have to get this set up now if we don’t want to get caught.”

  Andy Carlyle and Taggish Morton scrambled toward the discarded backpacks and ripped them open. They were Jimmy’s catcher and first baseman—the three of them causing trouble pretty much since they first joined L
ittle League together. I squinted into the darkness, trying to see what they were pulling from the bags. Their tiny flashlights illuminated flashes of red and blue on cylinder-shaped objects. Prickles of excitement ran down my spine when I realized what they were.

  Fireworks! Illegal fireworks, most likely.

  This was good. Too good. I pulled out my phone to take some shots. Illegal activity on school grounds from three of the school’s top athletes was bound to finally get me published. This was the story I’d been waiting for.

  Thank you, bad boys of Sweet Mountain High!

  Jimmy pulled a bolt cutter out of his bag and snapped the lock on the garden shed. He swung the door open, allowing Andy and Taggish to take their hauls inside. Disappointment blossomed in my chest. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see or hear them anymore. I had to know what they were up to. I needed to move closer, even if it meant getting caught.

  Journalists didn’t become famous by staying on the safe side. They got in the middle of the action. They marched with the troops. They ran toward the sound of disaster. They sniffed out every story.

  There was no way I was missing this.

  Shimmying through the trimmed bushes, I darted across the small patch of grass between me and the garden shed. Pressing my back up against the building, I strained my ears to hear inside. There were a lot of muffled words, but I could make out a few.

  Fireworks.

  ACTs.

  Saturday.

  Scratching on my notebook with my pencil, I wrote down the only conclusion I could come to: Jimmy and his gang planned to cause a commotion for the Saturday morning ACTs testing in a few hours. It was totally their MO. Cause some disruption and chaos, but keep it harmless enough to fly below the radar. Still, it was newsworthy. At least worth a column on the second page of The Prowler. So I made my notes, my brain already whirling with ideas on how to write the article.

  A sudden burst of curses coming from the shed caused my pencil to pause in midair. Their voices grew louder until I could finally make out all of the words.

  “Andy, put that thing out,” Jimmy said forcefully.

  “No one’s gonna see,” I heard Andy shoot back. “I just want to test one out.”

  My ears strained to hear more as my gut twinged again. Something was going down. This wasn’t the end of the story.

  There was another curse and then the thud of footsteps across the floor.

  “That’s the gas tank for the mowers.” Jimmy’s growl reached my ears. “If even one spark lands in there—”

  His voice was cut off by the pop-pop-pop of firecrackers going off. And then, a whoosh, as if someone had just lit a grill. Seconds later, three bodies stumbled out of the shed, bringing with them a billowing black cloud of smoke and ash.

  I felt my eyes go wide. Already, I could feel the heat of the flames. This was serious. We were way past break-ins and illegal fireworks. This was arson! Jimmy and his friends were burning down school property. There was no way Lindsey would turn me away with this front-page news story.

  This was my shot!

  Now, all I needed was the evidence.

  Holding my phone up to get a video, I witnessed two figures dart off into the distance. No faces in view, but it was enough. And as I panned over to get a shot of the garden shed, a third figure rounded the corner of the shed and ran smack dab into me, causing us both to fall to the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs.

  “What the—?” Jimmy sat up and rubbed his bruised jaw. His already panicked eyes grew to the size of baseballs when he spotted me sitting on the ground beside him. “Mia? What are you doing here?”

  Shoot. I’d been caught.

  “N-nothing,” I said, scanning the grass for my missing phone. Without that evidence, it wasn’t going to be much of an exposé about the pastime of our beloved baseball team. “What are you doing?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest with a stubborn expression, his breathing rapid and shallow. “Nothing.”

  That lie was punctuated by the sound of a small explosion. We both looked up at the shed to see orange flames licking the roof. The heat nipped at my skin, threatening to set fire to my oversized pajama tee. I yelped and slid backward in the grass, putting space between myself and the shed.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jimmy said, hopping to his feet.

  He held out a hand to me, his green eyes glowing in the light of the fire as they took in the sight of my face. I stared at his dirty palm like it was one of the cafeteria ladies’ infamous tuna fish salads. Never in my life would I have dreamed of taking Jimmy Alston’s hand. I would’ve rather given up coffee for the rest of the year. Heck, I would’ve even given up my precious MacBook Pro, which was waiting at home for me to write my next article.

  But in that moment, with the flames growing ever hotter and the distant sounds of sirens approaching, I had no other choice.

  I closed my hand around his and instantly felt a little jolt of electricity go through me. The sensation was strange and dizzying, but there was no time to review it. Jimmy’s fingers tightened around mine. He pulled me to my feet and put a hand on the small of my back to guide me away from the danger. I would’ve been undone by this unexpected contact if it hadn’t been for the flash of metal I spotted in the grass a yard away.

  “My phone!”

  I dove and snatched it up, clasping it and my notebook tightly against my chest like the precious treasures they were. Victory!

  “Come on, Mia,” Jimmy urged, his dark eyebrows lowering in concern. “We’ve got to split. The cops will be here any second.”

  Oh, yeah. Being caught at the scene of the crime wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to bust this story wide open. Not to mention—I did not look good in silver.

  My unicorn slippers sprang into action, sprinting after him. The muscles in my calves burned with the effort. When we crossed the street, Jimmy dove into a nearby backyard, disappearing in the darkness.

  My heart hammered in my chest as I ran the rest of the way to the old Toyota and jumped inside. Dad still sat with his head tilted back on the seat, his mouth open wide in a snore.

  Typical. He was no help at all. He couldn’t even wake enough to give me a good lecture on the dangers of sneaking around in the dark after teenage boys. I guess I should’ve been grateful for his loose parenting methods. At least I’d never had to complain about being grounded.

  With a turn of the ignition, we were off, speeding down the road and around a corner before anyone could spot us. It wasn’t until I’d put about fifteen blocks between us and the school that I burst out laughing, tears running down my face.

  Boy, oh boy, did I have a story that was going to put every other Sweet Mountain High newspaper story in history to shame. Baseball and Arson would make a beautiful front-page headline.

  Thanks to Jimmy Alston, I was going to have the best junior year ever.

  2

  Jimmy

  Bright light flooded the room, jerking me from a deep sleep. I groaned and rubbed my eyes. It took me a couple of seconds to realize I was back in my room and not in a dream, pitching for the Cubs in the World Series.

  “Get dressed, son. We’ve got places to be this morning.”

  Lifting my head off the pillow for just a second, I winced at the sight of my dad standing in the doorway. He stared at me expectantly with a soft expression in his green eyes, his salt and pepper hair carefully combed to one side.

  Dad was a pastor in town and got up at the crack of dawn every single day to commune with the Almighty, as he put it. Most days, he didn’t bother me. We had a good system going. I slept in, and he communed. But when he had a mind to do something, there was no avoiding it. It didn’t help to argue. So I threw him a thumbs-up and heard him shuffle away.

  My entire body ached as I resisted the urge to roll over and go back to sleep. Why was I feeling so beat this morning? There had to be a reason.

  I blinked up at the poster of the Riverdale actress, Lili Reinhart,
taped on my ceiling. Her soft smile did nothing to ward off the sense of impending doom that had started the moment I’d woken up. What had I done last night? And why did my clothes smell like I’d taken a roll in a bonfire?

  I sat bolt upright as my memories collided with an awakened brain.

  We burned down the school’s garden shed!

  Groaning into my hands, I let the memories wash over me. It had all started when I’d discovered the abandoned bag of fireworks in my closet from the last Fourth of July. When Andy and Taggish met up with me later, we’d hatched an idiotic plan to pull a prank on the ACT testing going on Saturday morning.

  Last night’s mission had been simple. We were only supposed to stash the fireworks in the garden shed and connect them all on one giant wick. On Saturday, I’d run out there and light the wick—and be a mile away before the first roman candle went off. But something had gone wrong. So terribly wrong. And when Andy had lit that fuel tank on fire, I knew we were going down. It was one thing to set off a handful of firecrackers—it was another to burn down the school’s shed.

  And now, we were outlaws.

  Criminals on the run.

  It was over.

  My dreams of finally getting out of Sweet Mountain and playing college ball had gone up in flames with that garden shed.

  “James, I’m ready to go.”

  There was only one person in this town that called me by my proper name. Dad’s voice urged me out of bed at a record pace. I tossed aside the clothes I’d slept in and grabbed a pair of sweatpants and hoodie. Even with the eventual doom coming for me, it would do no good to run around town smelling like evidence.