Red(36)

“I hate that we’re not speaking, too, but I can’t talk to her if she won’t listen. Will you tell her I really want to work things out whenever she’s ready?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell her.” Ivy was quiet for a minute as she picked at the fraying sleeve of her hoodie. “Hey, Felicity?”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you nominate her?”

The prospect of thinking up another lie made Felicity feel heavy. “I … I really can’t talk about it. I’m sorry, Ives. Can you just trust me when I say that it had nothing to do with Haylie? And that I feel awful about it and wouldn’t have done it if there had been another option?”

Ivy shrugged. “I just don’t get how something like that is unavoidable. Are you in trouble or something?”

“Well … kind of.” It was both frightening and comforting to say that out loud for the first time. “But I’m handling it.”

“Trouble like ‘I plagiarized my English paper,’ or trouble like ‘I have six dismembered bodies in the trunk of my car’?”

“Closer to the first one. But it’s nothing like that.”

“Does it have to do with Gabby? Did she force you into this somehow?”

Felicity swallowed hard. “I … I mean, I really can’t …”

“Okay, I get it. You can’t say. But is there anything I can do to help?”

“Thanks, Ives, but I don’t think so. It’s just something I have to work out on my own.”

“If you say so. But if you need me, just ask.” The first bell rang, and Ivy turned to go. “I have to get to physics.”

“Okay. I’m really sorry you and Haylie got caught up in this. And I’m extra sorry you had to go shoe shopping.”

“It was horrible, Felicity. It was worse than that day with the bikinis freshman year.” She shuddered at the memory. “See you at lunch, maybe?”

Felicity was so relieved to be welcomed back to her usual table that she felt as if she might levitate, but then she remembered her prom committee meeting. The juniors and seniors were voting for prom king and queen this morning. “Crap, I have to count ballots at lunch,” she said.

“Okay. Hey, I have a swim meet at four-thirty, if you and Haylie want to come. Maybe you could talk.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Tell her I’ll meet her there.”

“Cool. Later.”

As she was closing her locker, Haylie’s friend Vanessa passed by with a few other girls from the dance troupe. “Hey, Vanessa!” Felicity called.

Vanessa’s face hardened when she spotted Felicity. She gestured for her friends to go on without her. “What’s up?” she said with a tight smile.

“Listen, I was hoping you could text some of the dance troupe girls and tell them to vote for Haylie today. If we all vote for her, maybe we can bump out some of the cheerleaders and—”

“Way ahead of you,” Vanessa interrupted. “A bunch of us are already voting for her. I thought you’d be voting for yourself, though.”

“Haylie cares about it more than I do. I just want her to have a chance.”

Vanessa’s expression softened. “That’s cool of you,” she said. “I’ll text the girls again to make sure, okay?”

“Thanks. That’d be great.”

Felicity made it to History of Redheadedness just as the bell was ringing. Mr. Cavender was standing at the front of the room, next to the large poster that proclaimed your mc1r gene is your most precious resource! He was holding a stack of hot-pink ballots by the corners, as if he were afraid the color might rub off on his hands.

“Good morning, future leaders of America,” he said. “Before we continue talking about Queen Elizabeth the First, I’m going to distribute your prom court ballots. Please vote for one boy and one girl. The top five nominees will be posted outside the main office after school.”

When Felicity got her ballot, she checked the box next to Haylie’s name. Then she folded the paper in half and slipped it into the envelope on Mr. Cavender’s desk, awash in the calm that comes from finally doing the right thing.

The prom committee congregated at lunch to count the votes. Madison tallied the scores on the dry-erase board as the count from each classroom was verified, making hash marks next to the nominees’ names. The votes seemed scattered at first, but by the time half the ballots had been counted, patterns started to emerge. Felicity was pleased to see that Haylie was doing well.

Unfortunately, her own total was just a little bit higher, and it was still creeping upward.

Felicity’s stomach thrashed as if she’d eaten live eels for lunch instead of a peanut butter sandwich. Being on the prom court would be a perfect bolster to her red cred. Her mind flooded with images of herself walking in the prom court procession and spinning around the floor in Brent’s strong arms during the special prom court dance. But if she beat out Haylie for a spot on the court, it would look as if she really had been trying to get ahead, and then it would be impossible to repair their friendship.

Felicity didn’t need to be on the prom court. She needed Haylie back.

It was time for more drastic measures.

She surreptitiously angled her desk away from the rest of the committee, then set her paper lunch bag in her lap. Whenever she found a ballot with a checkmark next to her name, she quietly folded it up and slipped it into the bag. Her palms started to sweat, and she jumped at every sound, terrified someone might catch her—throwing a vote was a big deal, and she’d likely be tossed off the committee. But everyone was busy counting, and nobody looked her way, even when she shoved the bag full of ballots deep into her backpack. When the bell announced the end of the period, she said a silent prayer that she had managed to remove herself from the running. She spun around and looked at the whiteboard.