You Should See Me in a Crown(46)

“Fine. Are you at least coming to Jordan’s party tomorrow night?” She puts her hands on her hips and stares me down. “You need to be there, Liz. Everyone is going to be there. If you care at all about this campaign—”

“Yes! Okay? I’ll be there. I’ll do it.” I click the lock shut around the frame of my bike and hop onto the seat. “Is that it? I’m late.”

Instead of answering, she just steps aside and waves an arm out in front of her like, Be my guest.



I’m grateful for the years I’ve spent biking everywhere in this town to build up my endurance, because I ride to Amanda’s neighborhood in ten minutes flat. I don’t know which house is hers, but I have a vague idea because the Marinos live in the neighborhood. G had a conniption the first time she saw Amanda’s Jeep parked in the McCarthy’s driveway a few weeks ago and called me immediately afterward.

It doesn’t take more than riding around two blocks in The Oaks before I find it. Amanda’s house isn’t as obnoxiously big as some of the others in the neighborhood, but it’s still at least two of mine stacked on top of each other.

I drop my bike on the driveway behind a new-looking black Jeep Wrangler and run to the front door. I don’t want to waste any time. I ring the doorbell once, and not even fifteen seconds later, the door is opening to reveal a smiling man in a black Joy Division T-shirt, a pair of ratty jeans, and bare feet.

I guess I expected Mr. McCarthy to also have red hair and freckles, but he doesn’t. He has Timothée Chalamet brown, curly hair that is teetering on the border of too long.

“Hi, Mr. McC—”

He pulls me into a hug before I even get the words out.

“You must be Liz!” He leans back to look at me and wags his finger. “I did not think I would be meeting you today, but I am so glad you’re here! I’ve been trying to get Mandy to invite you over for dinner ever since she told me about this Very Important Girl that she met while running for prom. She hasn’t talked about anything else over a meal in days—”

“Dad!” Amanda shrieks from the staircase, and rushes to the door. She grabs my hand and urges me inside while laying into her dad just a little bit. “Wow, this is much more mortifying than I thought it would be, and that’s after knowing you for seventeen years. And you say I have a big mouth!”

“Sorry, daughter of mine!” He laughs as Amanda walks us up the stairs and into her room.

She shuts the door behind us and flops down onto her bed. I stand near the door and don’t move. I’m not sure where I would go, even if I were feeling comfortable enough to move. I mean, Amanda’s room is … a mess.

It’s clear that she hasn’t unpacked everything by the boxes still stacked against her walls, but there is stuff all over the floor. Old issues of Ms. magazine and dirty clothes and skateboard decks without wheels. There’s a desk that’s covered in stacks of records, and the only thing that looks completely set up is the drum kit in the corner.

“I wasn’t really expecting company.” She looks at me looking at her room. She bites her thumbnail. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted you to be in here for the first time.”

“Yeah.” I slide my hands into the pockets of the plaid chinos I’m wearing. “What did you imagine it would be like?”

She smirks. “Well, for one, I imagined more kissing.”

Maybe she hasn’t forgiven me for what went down today, but I’m taking that as a good sign.

“About lunch today. That was screwed up six ways to Sunday. I just panicked because I haven’t told them yet and then Gabi was going feral and I just … I’m sorry. I was a terrible girlfriend, and it only took me five days.”

“Was?” she asks. She stands up and crosses the room to me. “Girlfriend in past tense?”

I swallow hard because she’s right in front of me and for whatever reason, my brain just doesn’t seem to function around this girl.

“Not past tense.” I shake my head. “I mean, not if you don’t want it to be past tense because I was an idiot.”

“Okay. Not past tense then.” She stops for a second to think. “I know you said we were keeping things quiet, but I thought at least your best friends …”

I shake my head. Of course she thought I would have told my best friends. That’s what I should have done, but I didn’t. I haven’t.

“Are we going to be okay?” I ask instead of offering an explanation.

“I’m just glad you’re here. I’m glad you said sorry. It was only four hours of radio silence and I already missed you.”

And then we’re kissing. And it feels better than I remember. When you thought you might never have something again, when it comes back to you, it’s somehow a hundred times better than you remember. She pulls away and looks up at me.

“I came to tell you that I quit. Today at lunch, I had just come from meeting with Madame Simoné. After last night I realized there was no point for me to stay in the race.” She smiles, and her eyes do that sparkling thing and my stomach flips. “I got what I came for.”

She got what she came for. Me. I am that thing. And I know this is the moment to tell her about the scholarship, the real reason I’m running, the real reason people can’t know about us—all of it. But I don’t want to ruin it. So I just smile back and wrap my arms tighter around her neck.