I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl by Gretchen McNeil

Author:Gretchen McNeil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

GABE, KURT, SPENCER, and I showed up early for school the next morning with a half dozen boxes of flyers. The plan was simple: shove one in each locker and then post the extras wherever we could find the space.

The task was slow and involved a variety of paper cuts and wonky creases before I discovered a folding and stuffing system that didn’t leave me with bloody fingertips. We split up and worked in silence, focused on the job at hand. Fold and stuff, fold and stuff. Each flyer had the identical message:

WHO WILL BE YOUR NEXT ASB PRESIDENT?

IT’S A ZOOPA SECRET!

FIND OUT THURSDAY!

YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS!

By waiting until the general assembly to announce Gabe to a captive audience of the entire student body, there was a 91 percent chance that his would be the only name people would remember when the polls opened. Jesse would lose the election, then lose interest in Toile, and I would win.

You mean you’ll get Jesse back.

Yes, of course, Brain. That’s what I meant. I’d “win” Jesse back. That was the whole reason I was doing this. It wasn’t a competition with Toile: this was just about my relationship with Jesse.

I was lost in thought, finishing up the last row of lockers upstairs at the end of the math-and-sciences floor, when one of the locker doors flew open. I screamed, dropping my box of flyers, as Michael Torres squeezed his skinny frame out of the tight metal interior.

“Beatrice Giovannini,” he said, his voice slimy.

“What the hell were you doing in there?” I panted, my heart in my throat.

“It’s my locker.”

As if that made it better. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I told you,” he said, his nostrils flared. “I’m keeping an eye on you.”

“You’re stalking me an hour before school starts from the interior of your locker?”

“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not,” he said with a grin that he probably thought looked enigmatic but came off as super creepy. “Maybe I’m doing something so amazing you can’t even imagine its scope. Maybe I’ll—”

I cut off his rant. “Boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Michael Torres gasped, horrified. “How dare you quote Star Trek to me? You don’t get to do that. I quote Star Trek to you.”

We were getting nowhere. There was only a 3 percent chance Michael Torres could have known that I would be at school that early, less than 1 percent that I’d be in the hallway with his locker, but I kinda didn’t want to know what he was actually doing in there.

“What do you want, Michael Torres? I have work to do.”

“I see.” He crouched down and picked up one of the scattered flyers. “Secret candidate, eh? So that’s what this Trixie business is all about. You’re running for ASB president.”

The last thing I needed was Michael Torres ruining Gabe’s campaign. “No, I’m just—”

He stepped forward, his eyes locked onto mine. “Well, I’m going to tell everyone what you’re up to. Totally going to blow your secret.

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