The Rivals by Daisy Whitney

Author:Daisy Whitney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2012-12-05T18:28:50.843000+00:00

*

I spend the next day entirely distracted in all my classes. It’s not just that I’m replaying Saturday night with Martin—my stomach flips every time I think back on it and every time I think about how much I want to do it again—but I am also wracking my brain to figure out how to prove Maia innocent.

I want to prove it to the board. I need Parker and Martin to know that she’s not the dealer. And I need to do it in a way that doesn’t reveal her secret—that she has the prescription, only she needs it for the right reasons. Most of all, I want this case behind me. I want my friendships back. I want to return to when T.S., Maia, and I could talk about silly names for pets, and mock our teachers, and, yes, talk about boys and kisses and sex. I want to tell them about my real first time and how I now have new memories, good memories, toe-curling memories to replace the bad ones.

But I can’t right now.

During my history class I study the Debate Club roster. I recognize some of the names, and one in particular stands out to me: Vanessa Waterman. She’s kind of scatterbrained and always dropping her books and leaving a trail of papers behind her, but from what I’ve heard from Maia, she’s one of the top performers on the team. She’s also sitting two desks in front of me right now. Vanessa and I have been in the same history class every year since we started here, and we were also paired up on special projects each of our first three years.

Here’s hoping that shared history will count for something.

When class ends, I stop at her desk. “Hey, Vanessa,” I say. Her desk is like a smorgasbord. Stuff is spread everywhere—notebooks, papers, textbooks, even some barrettes. She’s jamming it all into her backpack, her frizzy brown hair piled up high on her head.

“Hi, Alex.”

“Can I talk to you for a sec?” I say in my library voice.

She tenses, and tilts her head to the side. “About what?” she asks as she pushes some papers into the bottom of her bag.

The rest of the class filters out, including our teacher, so it’s just us now.

I crouch down next to her. “So, listen, I wanted to ask you something. And this’ll be totally, one hundred percent confidential. But we’ve been hearing about some stuff going down in the Debate Club and—”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Well, basically that there’s some sort of widespread Anderin use, sharing, snorting, selling.”

Vanessa gives a coarse laugh. “Oh. That’s all?” she asks sarcastically.

“Yeah. I know, right? Crazy stuff. So I was just wondering if you had heard anything or might know anything about it, because we were asked to look into it. You know, the Mockingbirds.”

“So you want to know who’s involved?” she asks in this conspiratorial way, like I’ve come to just the right person. Score, Alex!

“Definitely,” I say, my eyes glowing as I wait for the goods.

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