Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Bayport is the kind of school that has a homecoming princess. Anyone? Anyone?

“Each year, four seniors, three juniors, and two underclassmen are nominated by the students and faculty to run for the honor of being the homecoming queen.”

Did this have to take so freaking long? Who cared about the details of the process? Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone to just fall down and worship Brooke now?

“The girl with the most votes will be named queen at the official homecoming game, and the remaining junior and senior nominees will be named her attendants. Additionally, the sophomore with the most number of votes will be named the homecoming princess.”

Being a logical person, I could see the flaw in this system. As a nominee for queen, if the “princess” got enough votes, she could actually beat a senior out for that coveted spot, in which case I could only assume that the runner-up underclassman would get the princess title. It would have made a lot more sense if they stipulated that the queen be a senior, but this didn’t seem to strike anyone else as off—either because the student body knew as well as I did that the race for queen was as good as over and Brooke had as good as won, or because I was the only person at this school afflicted with homecoming-related logic.

I braved a glance at Jack, expecting him to look every bit as tortured as I felt, but instead, he was smiling. Broadly.

“The senior nominees for homecoming queen are…” Mrs. McCall paused dramatically, as if there was anyone in the room who hadn’t figured out exactly whose names would be on that ballot. “Brooke Camden, Chloe Larson, Zee Kim, and Bubbles Lane.”

The four senior members of the Squad. Color me shocked.

Across the room, Jack’s grin grew bigger and wickeder by the second. Without a word, he simply pointed in my general direction. I turned around and glanced over my shoulder. Nothing.

“The junior nominees are Tara Leery, Lucy Wheeler, and Tiffany and Brittany Sheffield.”

Okay, was I the only one in the entire school who realized that Tiffany and Brittany were actually two separate people and that, therefore, there were four junior girls nominated for homecoming court and not just three? Sometimes, the mental math at this place was depressing.

“The underclassmen nominees are…”

Across the room, Jack’s grin had settled down to a smirk, and he pointed again. A second too late, I realized that he wasn’t pointing behind me.

He was pointing at me.

“April Manning and Toby Klein.”

Not to sound like an acronym-loving cheerleader/spy, but OMG with a side of WTF.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath. Now Jack’s smile made sense. He knew this was going to happen. Everyone but me had realized it. I’d said it myself—there wasn’t anyone in this room who didn’t know whose names were going to be on those ballots. The varsity cheerleaders were called the God Squad for a reason. And yet, somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that there were exactly two sophomores on the Squad and exactly two sophomore nominees for homecoming queen.

Now whose mental math was depressing?

“I hate my life.”

Tara and Chloe both elbowed me in the stomach at the same time.

“Ouch,” I hissed. “I still hate my…”

This time, I saw the blows coming and dodged them. Oblivious to the violence amongst the cheerleaders, the rest of the school listened as the nominees for homecoming king—Chip, Jack, and a handful of other football players—were read off. It didn’t take me long to figure out that there was no such thing as a homecoming prince.

Thank God.

“Good luck, boys and girls, and remember, this is a very special time in your lives.”

Yeah, I thought, a very special time for my life to suck. I’d come to terms with the cheerleader thing. Scratch that, I’d almost come to terms with the cheerleader thing, but I most certainly did not sign on for homecoming princess. I had a healthy disdain for things like dances and popularity. I hated dresses and tiaras, and I wasn’t even ready to accept the fact that people at this school even knew my name, let alone that it would be plastered on hundreds of ballots.

Life as I knew it was over. Again. And this time, things were going to get ugly.

CHAPTER 6

Code Word: Hottie

“We’re strong! We’re tough! Bayport Lions—stand up, up!”

We were closing out the pep rally with another cheer, and as the student body rose to their feet at our command, I couldn’t help but note the fact that I was this close to upupchucking all over my Asics cheer shoes.

“We’re strong! We’re tough! Bayport Lions—stand up, up!”

Technically, this was a chant, not a cheer, which meant that we repeated the words and motions indefinitely until Brooke called last time. I was starting to doubt that Brooke would ever put me out of my misery, when she finally yelled those two, wonderful words.

“Last time!”

I hit the final pose, my arms in a high V and my mind in overdrive. In approximately thirty-five seconds, this pep rally would be over, and students would start pouring out every available exit. My mission was clear: I had to get out of Dodge before Dodge’s Most Eligible Bachelor could so much as smirk the words homecoming princess at me, or ask me to the dance. After I managed to finagle my way out of the gym unnoticed, I was going to sneak down to the Quad, drown my sorrows in whatever fruity juice-like beverage lived in the fridge, and wait for Tara to come and tell me it was time to do something that didn’t involve cheering or homecoming or pretending that Jack and I had never kissed.

At this point, a little espionage sounded like heaven.

Ultimately, however, things did not go exactly as planned. The moment the assembly officially ended, people rushed the gym floor, including three individuals who, for one reason or another, felt that they just had to talk to me.

The first of the three was Noah. “To-by, To-by, To-by.”

My brother was an idiot. Unfortunately, he was also extraordinarily loud, and his voice carried. I spent one moment vehemently hoping that his chant wouldn’t catch on, and the next plotting his immediate and violent demise.

“My sister, the homecoming princess.” Noah batted his eyelashes at me. “Our little girl, all grown-up and…”

I took a step forward, and Noah, smart boy that he was, took a step back.

“Shutting mouth now,” he volunteered.

I gave him a look that simultaneously commended his mouth-shutting decision and warned him that I wasn’t in the mood to be teased.

“Hi Noah!” two voices chorused at once.

I turned to glare the twins into oblivion, but somewhere between Noah’s “helllllloooooooo, ladies” and the twins’ giggled response, I was waylaid by a woman with no respect for personal space and a huge smile on her Botox-ed face.

“Toby. It is Toby, isn’t it?” Mrs. McCall, PTA president and nauseatingly reminiscent mom, came up and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Yup.” I stuck to one-word answers, hoping she’d get the drift.

“I just wanted to congratulate you. Homecoming court—how exciting! Of course, it can’t be that much of a surprise…”

If she only knew.

“You girls are just so lucky.” She squeezed my shoulder. “These are such—”

“Precious times,” I finished. “Yeah, I know, but right now, I’ve really got to—”

I didn’t escape then, because in a move too smooth and quick for the human mind to follow or comprehend it, the NRM had been replaced with a JVB—a junior-varsity beeyotch.

“You must think you’re pretty great.” Hayley Hoffman was smiling, but she was not happy. “You think that just because you’re varsity, it’s okay to walk all over the rest of us.”

Coming from her, the accusation was laughable. Hayley was a lifelong cheerleader and a supremely hideous person. She preyed on the weak, drank tears for breakfast, and would have sacrificed her own child on the altar of popularity. The fact that she hadn’t made the varsity squad had a little to do with her lack of loyalty, and a lot to do with the fact that I’d convinced the others to vote in April instead.