My Fake Boyfriend Read online

  “I’m coming.”

  I hurried down the hallway and into the living room, where Dad waited. His green eyes swept me up and down, his mouth twisted in a slightly disapproving frown. I ran a hand over my messy hair and attempted to flatten it down. Dad was pretty chill about most things, but one thing he liked to harp on was putting my best foot forward. That included not looking like I’d just rolled out of bed. With a final approving nod, he led the way to our maroon Honda parked in the drive.

  “Does Ms. Blanchard need her lawn mowed again?” I slipped into the front passenger seat. It wasn’t the first time Dad had volunteered me for community service. He liked to lead his flock by example, and apparently, that included using his only kid for slave labor.

  “No, son, we’ve got another destination today.” He pulled out of the drive and carefully merged into traffic down the main drag.

  We sat in silence for about five minutes as I stared out the car window. For a pastor, my dad wasn’t a man of many words, but I was okay with that. It had just been him and me for almost as long as I could remember. Mom passed away in a car accident when I was only seven.

  A lot of my memories of her had faded, but I could still vividly remember the lavender scent of her shampoo and the way she used to curl me up on her lap and say that she wanted me to make something of myself one day. I held those two things tight in my soul, especially on days like today, when everything seemed to be against me.

  Just when I thought Dad would drive us straight to Zion Church where he pastored, he ended up taking a left onto the street that would take us past Sweet Mountain High. My heart thudded painfully inside my chest, my senses heightening as I straightened up in my seat. Would the garden shed be completely gone, or would a burnt skeleton remain? A sick curiosity grew inside of me. What would the scene of my crime look like in the daylight?

  “I got a call early this morning from Principal Gentry.” Dad glanced over at me, his face impassive. “Seems there’s been some kind of vandalism down at the school.”

  I gulped and gripped the top of my knees. “Oh, really?”

  He nodded silently and then pulled the car to the curb in front of the school. A police car stood parked just ten feet in front of us. The sight of it had my pulse skyrocketing. The single worst thing a criminal could do was return to the scene of the crime. My dad had just delivered me like a present wrapped in a shiny bow to the Sweet Mountain police department.

  Dad didn’t seem to be concerned about it. He quietly turned off the car, got out, and began strolling toward the far corner of the school. In a few seconds, he’d witness the crime scene. Did he know it was me?

  Dad had a sixth sense about these kinds of things. It must’ve been from years and years of preaching about good and evil. I could only hope that today he’d left those senses at home. But really, there was no point in hiding. Slouching in the Honda would only make me look guilty. So, I took a deep breath and slid out of the car.

  If I was going to jail, I was going to face it like a man.

  With that last burst of courage, I trudged over the school lawn, still damp with the morning’s dew. And when I rounded the corner of the stone building and got a good look, I tried not to let the guilt that I already felt wash over my face. The garden shed was gone. Completely turned to ash. All that was left were the burnt and charred remains of a few metal shelves and a riding lawnmower.

  A cop in a dark blue uniform stood nearby, taking a few pictures and adjusting his camera lens to zoom in on the wreckage. I joined my dad just a few yards away, where he was surveying the wreck with his hand shielding his face from the bright morning sun.

  “Officer Rigley says they found a lock that had been snapped with bolt cutters,” Dad said in a low voice as he stared at the ashes. “The fire started at the fuel tanks. Shed must’ve gone up pretty fast. They could see the flames from blocks away.”

  I shoved my hands in my sweatpants pockets and rocked back on my heels, nerves prickling the lining of my stomach. “Did they catch the guy who did it?”

  Be cool, be cool. No one could trace this to me. I just had to remain calm.

  Dad adjusted his stance and stole a quick glance at me. “No. That’s why Principal Gentry called this mornin’. She wanted me to ask you if you’d heard a whisper through your friends of who could’ve possibly done this. I don’t suppose you have some news I could pass along to her?”

  My heart threatened to give out and die right there as it thundered at max speed beneath my sternum. I may have caused some trouble as a kid, but I’d never done something so awful as outright lie to my dad. That just wasn’t me.

  But there was no way I wanted to be caught for burning down Sweet Mountain High’s garden shed—even if it was an accident. A mark like that in my permanent record could kill any chance I had of making something of myself. My baseball scholarship would be canceled. And if I was going to follow through on my mom’s dreams for me, then I had to keep this dirty little secret hidden until I could figure out what to do about it.

  “I don’t know anything, Dad,” I said, adding a shrug to the end of my lie. “None of the guys have mentioned anything, but I’ll keep an ear out for news and let you know.”

  He worked his jaw a few times, still staring at the pile of ashes, and then nodded his head. Relief poured over me, swiftly followed by guilt so intense I felt sick. I moved away from my dad, afraid that I was going to upchuck right on his loafers if I didn’t do something to distract myself.

  This was bad. This was awful. I was the worst son in the world. If I didn’t get struck down by heavenly lightning in this very spot, I’d be utterly surprised.

  It wasn’t until I’d stepped a few paces toward the street that something snapped me out of my misery. A small, yellow object lay stuck in the grass between my feet. I glanced over at my dad, relieved to see him and the cop deep in conversation. Reaching down, as if to check on my shoelaces, I grasped the yellow object and then started walking toward the car as nonchalantly as I could manage.

  I knew the moment my hand had closed around that object how significant it was. The tiny golf pencil pointed to evidence of my guilt, and its owner was the single thing standing between me and freedom.

  Mia Jackson—the junior with a talent for sticking her nose in all the wrong places.

  I pictured her as I saw her last night, sitting in the wet grass in her pajamas, fuzzy slippers, and blonde curls falling all around her face as she looked at me with wide eyes. She and I had never gotten along—ever since middle school when I’d accidentally dropped a stink bomb in her locker instead of Logan Cartwright’s. I’d pretty much left her alone since then, but now, I couldn’t wait to ask her a few questions.

  Why had she been here when everything was going wrong? What did she know?

  And most importantly of all—how could I get her to keep quiet?

  3

  Mia

  I rushed into school Monday morning with an unusual amount of confidence that reverberated in the click-click-click of my ankle booties across the tile floor. In my hands, I clasped the one article that was going to guarantee me a spot on The Prowler news club.

  This was just the first step in a long line of steps that would take me all the way to a Pulitzer Prize. If I wanted to be a real journalist someday, I had to start somewhere, and that meant the high school paper.

  And what better way to start than with an article busting wide open the awful crime that took place on this very campus?

  My feet slowed as I reached Mrs. Drake’s classroom. She was the English teacher and faculty sponsor for The Prowler. I liked her. She was young, energetic, and not burnt out like some of the older teachers. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the one I had to impress today.

  I peered in her doorway and clenched my jaw with determination. Just as I had suspected, Lindsey Beck already sat at one of Mrs. Drake’s computers lining the back of the classroom. Dale Odom, her hunky, beef-cake boyfriend of three weeks, sat beside her playing a g
ame on his phone.

  Lindsey was a senior and had been president and editor of the newspaper club for the past two years. She was the mighty gatekeeper to The Prowler and held it tight in her perfectly manicured fuchsia claws. It didn’t help to reason with her. She was our homecoming queen, and one of the resident mean girls—an MG—of Sweet Mountain High. If the chemically straightened, ash-blonde hair, on-point makeup, and choice clothes didn’t tip anyone off, it was the impressive way she could glare at you to make you feel like she was flaying the skin right off your back.

  “Knock, knock,” I said, tapping on the doorway. Although nerves had already begun bouncing around my stomach, I wasn’t going to give them the time of day. This was my chance.

  “Morning, Ms. Jackson.” Mrs. Drake sat at her desk with a warm smile that reached her chocolate-colored eyes. She wore her strawberry blonde hair pulled up into a high bun, brown feather earrings swinging from her ears. With a wave of her hand, she beckoned me inside. “What can we do for you?”

  “I’ve got an article I drafted for the paper,” I said, taking a bold step through the door. “I think it’s perfect for next week’s run. I wanted to give it to Lindsey.”

  “By all means.” Mrs. Drake nodded toward the computers. “I’ll let you two hash it out.”

  I turned my gaze toward Lindsey, where I knew she was already watching me with the fire of a thousand suns burning in her brown eyes. How anyone had voted her as homecoming queen was beyond me, but I guess popularity was a perk of being one of the MGs.

  She hadn’t always been this awful. In middle school, we were even sort of friends. I loaned her my straightener one time for the winter formal. But puberty must’ve sent her female rage hormones into overdrive because she pretty much hated me now. Either that, or she’d never gotten over losing to me in an essay contest when I was in sixth grade. I couldn’t be sure, but I wouldn’t put her above holding a ridiculous grudge for four years.

  “Hi, Linds.”

  “What up?” Her dry greeting was matched with an equally unenthusiastic frown.

  I stepped closer to her, feeling the heat from her gaze grow stronger. The article shook slightly in my trembling hands. It had taken me nearly no time at all to type this baby up. The brilliant words had spilled from my fingertips like water. I’d felt nothing but excitement as I printed it out and brought it to school.

  But now, walking toward Lindsey with the article in my outstretched hand, guilt coursed through me for the first time.

  Jimmy and his friends would most definitely pay the price for my acceptance into the newspaper club. As soon as this article hit the newsstands around the school, they were going to be in some deep trouble. Maybe even be expelled from school. But that wasn’t my problem, was it? After all, they were the ones who’d burned down the shed. I was simply a reporter.

  I was just doing my job.

  “I wrote an article for next week’s run of The Prowler.”

  “Next week’s issue is already set.” Lindsey drummed her nails on the back of the chair and pressed her red lips into a thin line. “And besides, I’ve told you a hundred times, all of our journalist spots are taken. You’ll have to wait for an opening just like everyone else.”

  The article wrinkled in my tightened fist. “But this story is really great. I swear, you’ll want to run it on the front page as soon as you read it. It’s about crime and—”

  “No.”

  “But really, I think you’re going to want to read this. The baseball team—”

  “I told you, we’re full.”

  I held back my frustration as I dropped the article to my side. Lindsey and I had been here a thousand times before. It did no good to argue with her. She was a stone-cold Medusa with fangs. She wasn’t going to publish my article.

  Jimmy Alston could thank his lucky stars.

  It was typical. Even when he wasn’t here to defend himself, he still got away with the bad-boy behavior. Some people got everything.

  “Well, can you let me know when a spot opens up?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  I could tell from the tone of her voice that I’d be more likely to see Raquel join the cheerleading squad than hear back from Lindsey. She was looking at me with a smug expression that made her pert little nose wrinkle. She really was the worst.

  I couldn’t help but glance over at her boyfriend, genuinely curious as to how he could stand her. He was ignoring us, his lanky body draped over three chairs and his phone still in his hand. I’d be getting no help there. Dale was just another jock—a track star –and had no interest in the mistreatment of the little people of Sweet Mountain High. And yet, people loved him, too. He and Lindsey were a power couple. The type that made everyone else fall in line behind them, drooling over their perfection.

  Yuck.

  Another massive defeat. At this rate, I’d be a real journalist when I was a hundred years old.

  “What about the relationship column and corresponding blog you wanted to start?” Mrs. Drake asked suddenly from her desk. I spun to see her chewing on the end of a pencil, her forehead wrinkled in thought. “Maybe Mia could get it rolling and move into a current events spot when it opens. How does that sound? A compromise for everyone.”

  Hope exploded in my chest. There was an open spot. I’d take it! I’d take anything just to get my foot in the door.

  “But Mrs. Drake…” Lindsey’s snotty voice pulled my gaze back to her. “Only someone in a relationship can write that column. It would be ridiculous to have it any other way. And Mia isn’t dating anyone.”

  She said that last line as if I were man repellent. It took everything in me not to scowl and stick my tongue out at her.

  “That’s not true.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and shot her a sickly-sweet smile. “I’ve got a boyfriend. We actually just started dating. We’ve been keeping it on the down-low, which is probably why you haven’t heard.”

  Lindsey’s disbelieving glower couldn’t dampen my excitement. Okay, so she was right. I didn’t have a boyfriend. But that was purely by choice. I’d had bigger things to focus on. Swapping saliva with some smelly teenage boy was not on the to-do list.

  But, I was willing to make sacrifices. It couldn’t be that hard to get a boyfriend. After all, even Lindsey Beck had found someone. It wouldn’t take long.

  “Problem solved,” Mrs. Drake announced with a clap of her hands. “Mia can start the relationship column and the daily blog. I’m thinking a taste of The New Yorker’s ‘Modern Love’ with a teenaged twist. Can you handle that?”

  “Definitely!”

  “Then you’re hired.” She smiled warmly at me. “Welcome to the club.”

  Before Lindsey could pelt me with any more questions, I backed up toward the doorway. Even I could recognize when it was time to cut and run. “Thank you, Mrs. Drake. I’ll have my first column on your desk in no time. You’re not going to regret this.”

  I didn’t miss the grumbled, “But I will” from Lindsey as she turned back to her computer in disgust.

  My feet felt lighter than air as I skipped down the hallway toward my locker. I couldn’t believe my luck. This was my chance! I was finally an official member of the Sweet Mountain High newspaper club. The universe couldn’t hold me down. There was only one thing left to do…

  Find myself a boyfriend.

  4

  Jimmy

  Usually, I would describe myself as a person who kept cool in difficult situations. The type who could let trouble roll right off my back.

  But today? Today was a different story.

  My palms were sweaty. My muscles ached. I hadn’t slept for the past two nights. And the fact that the whole school was being called into the gym this morning for an unplanned assembly during first period was not helping.

  I knew what this assembly was about. The last time we’d had an emergency school meeting was my freshman year when some of the senior linebackers set p
iglets loose in the hallways during homecoming. Today’s topic: a crime on school property. This was a witch hunt, and the school was determined to find the guilty parties.

  “Dude, I just saw two cops pull up outside.” Taggish appeared at my side on the way to the assembly, his hands stuffed in the front of his jean pockets. It looked like he’d had about as much luck as I did in the sleep department this weekend. His dirty-blond hair was a little more out of control than usual, and dark rings had appeared under his eyes. When he spoke, his gaze darted nervously across the hallway and back to my face. “Think they know it was us?”

  “No, not yet.” I swallowed down the nerves in my stomach. “But don’t be surprised if they turn up the heat today. Dad said Principal Gentry is pretty upset about her precious shed.”

  As Taggish groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, I couldn’t help feeling bad for him. We both knew what it was like to lose our moms at a young age. When Taggish had lost his mom in middle school, I’d kind of taken him under my wing. He didn’t need to deal with this. Not now. Not with our last season of baseball coming up fast.

  “Listen, don’t worry about it,” I said, patting him on the back. “If it comes down to it, I’ll take the fall. They were my fireworks. It was my idea to pull off that stupid prank in the first place. I should be the one that gets in trouble.”

  He shook his head. “No way, man. What about your scholarship—?“

  “That’s the way it’s got to be. I’ve made up my mind.” I squeezed his shoulder. “You and Andy are off the hook. Don’t sweat it.”

  Taggish gave me a half-hearted smile. “You sure?”

  “Definitely. Go give Andy the good news. And tell him he owes me a turn around the block in that new Mustang of his.”

  With a final grateful smile, Taggish hurried off to find the final member of our troublesome trio. It felt good to see his shoulders straight again, without the weight of impending doom on them. He was safe. If only I could feel the same way about my baseball scholarship to the University of Iowa. There was only one thing standing in my way, and I had to find her before the cops got to her.