Bookish and the Beast

I shouldn’t have stopped, but hindsight is always clearer. I looked back at him. “Does it look like I’m staying, Geekerella?” She hates it when I call her that, most likely because she gets it every time she shows up in the tabloids.

Her face flickered with annoyance, but then she said, “You’re heading over toward that club, aren’t you? On the far side of the strip?”

“Am I that predictable?”

“Yes,” both of them said in unison.

I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?”

Darien began to shake his head, but Elle pushed on and said, “Would you mind dropping me off at Dare’s place? It’s on the way.”

Again, I should have said no. I should have told her to get her boyfriend to take her home, because I shouldn’t have dealt with the trouble of her. But I said yes. Not because I wanted to be nice.

I said yes because I knew it would piss Darien off, and I wanted to piss him off as often as I could. He’s just so insufferably perfect, like his character in Starfield. He does everything right, and he says all the right things in interviews, and he has a beautiful girlfriend, and everyone loves him.

But I think I hated him the most because he loves himself. He loves his life.

It annoyed the hell out of me.

So I agreed to take Elle home just so I could see the look on Darien’s face when I led his girl to my car and helped her inside. But once the door was closed and I pulled out of the auto spot, she said, “You really like getting under his skin, don’t you?”

“It helps that I have a pretty girl I can use,” I replied slyly.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not helping, and you’re not using me. You’re taking me home. I have an exam in the morning that I cannot fail.”

I knew where Darien’s apartment was, so I took the quickest route to it. I sighed, “Ah, the life of a college student. A wee bit different from perfect Darien’s life, isn’t it?”

She gave me a look. “Yes, it’s different—but neither is perfect. He has a lot of night shoots. I have exams and studying.”

“And professors who already know your name because of who you’re dating, and classmates who want to be your friend because secretly they all think they should be dating Darien Freeman instead of you.”

“Do you always think the world revolves around you?”

“When has it not?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being the spoiled brat?”

“No,” I said, but what I honestly meant was—

If I can’t be this, what can I be?

But we didn’t have time to delve into a therapy session, because a moment later, at a red light, she put a hand on my arm. At first I thought she was getting sweet with me, but when I followed her gaze, she was looking at a black SUV next to us. The window was rolled down. And a bulbous camera lens stared unblinking at us.

This was why I took the shortest possible route. This is why I should have told her no, to call a cab, to let her perfect boyfriend take her home.

The news outlets would report that we had tried to get away from paparazzi, and that was when my car took a nose dive into a pond—which was more like a muddy reservoir, but I quickly stopped trying to argue that point, especially when everyone began to narrow in on the part where Elle and I were together in the car.

Elle and Darien set the record straight almost instantly, of course, but by then it didn’t matter.

What do you think was more newsworthy, the unfounded rumor that I was trying to get Darien’s girl, or that I was—mostly selflessly—taking her home from a wrap party?

It’s not bloody rocket science.

My manager thought it would be best if I laid low for a while. If I let everything blow over. My stepfather, at the end of his rope, thought that if I went somewhere without Hollywood influence, I would come out a better man.

But it seems like even without me there, things just got worse. I made everything worse.

I always make everything worse.

THE DISMISSAL BELL SHRILLS and I slam closed my notebook and shove it into my bag. Miss Rayna bookmarks our spot in Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and shouts at us to finish the novel. A few students grumble about having to read about sparkly vampires, but the teacher quickly tells them, “As if a ring of invisibility is any more believable—there’ll be a quiz tomorrow on the differing mythos between Dracula and Twilight!”

That was met with even more groans. I’d already read both books, so I just needed a refresher course in Dracula. Maybe I could rent the 1992 movie tonight. I always did fancy Keanu Reeves…

Pulling my bag over my shoulder, I hurry out of the classroom to meet Annie and Quinn.

“I can’t believe you get to read Twilight in honors class while I had to suffer through Huck Finn,” Quinn says as they meticulously file down their beautiful clawlike nails, leaning beside Annie’s locker. “It’s honestly not fair.”

“We also had to read Dracula, though,” I point out as I jerk open my locker, “which is drier than my love life.”

Annie and I have had lockers beside each other since middle school. It’s the curse of having T names—Thorne and Trout. Annie says, “Well, there are some one-hander bodice-rippers I can lend you for that.”

“Oh, gross.” Quinn wrinkles their nose.

Annie shrugs. “Just saying.” She takes out her book and closes her locker. “Okay, so I have a crazy idea and I need you both to be super-ultra-supportive of it.”

Quinn and I both eye her hesitantly. The last time Annie had an idea we had to be supportive of, she shaved off her brother’s arm hair and it never grew back right. Quinn finally says, “Okay, let’s hear it.”

So Annie flips open her notebook and presents us with a list titled HOW TO BECOME HOMECOMING ROYALTY.

“Oh no,” Quinn whispers as I look around for somewhere—anywhere—to hide.

“Quinn will become Homecoming royalty instead, preventing one Garrett Taylor from becoming Homecoming King and guilt-tripping you into becoming his date. It’s a bulletproof plan,” Annie says triumphantly. Then she tears out the list, and I realize she’s written it down three times. She hands each of us a sheet and pushes up her glasses, like the nerdy hero of her own rom-com. “Operation Royally Screwed is a go!”

I scan down the list. “This is a terrible idea.”

“Who says I even want to be Homecoming King?” Quinn says, closing the locker door. “It’s sexist.”

“Then who better to be crowned than our favorite nonbinary Overlord?”

Annie has a good point, one that I don’t really like, but Quinn seems to have taken the bait. “Overlord, you say?”

“And you get a crown.”

“I always did like overthrowing the patriarchy,” they muse. “Okay, I’m in. This calls for a trip to the library, I believe.”

Annie nods gravely. “We need the help of Space Dad.”

I grimace and shove Twilight and my calculus book into my bookbag. “Why do we need my dad’s help? And can you please stop calling him that? It’s weird,” I add as we melt into the steady stream of students leaving the school.

“Look,” Annie says, putting a hand on my shoulder, “he’s so beautiful that his beauty is out of this world, so thus—”

“Space Dad,” Quinn agrees. “Besides, he loves those trashy sci-fi books so it fits.”

I sigh. “I’m never going to win this, am I?”

“Nope,” both Quinn and Annie reply in unison.

Of course not. I toss my keys into the air and catch them. “Okay, library it is. Only until four, though. I have a date with a few hundred books after that.”

“And Vance Reigns,” Quinn replies with a wiggle of their eyebrows.

My cheeks warm, but before either of them can notice, I push open the door to the school courtyard. Students slowly trickle out of the breezeway toward their cars in the almost-empty parking lot. I can hear the sound of some sportsball playing in the field behind the school, followed by the out-of-tune howl of the trombones over on the marching band field.

Someone bumps into my shoulder, muttering, “I can’t believe Garrett’s taking you.”

I glance back, but whoever it was gets lost in the crowd of students behind us. That was odd. It’s not like I want Garrett to take me. I told him no, after all.

But that makes me think of something more concerning—how many people think that? That I’m stealing Garrett Taylor away from them? I mean, Garrett is popular, but it’s only because he has a few hundred thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel and everyone wants to have their five seconds of fame. Do they think I’m looking for five seconds of fame? Suddenly, it feels like everyone is looking at me even though I know—I know—they can’t all be.

Maybe just most of them.

Some of them.

Enough for me to hurry up my pace. If Annie and Quinn notice, they don’t say anything. When we get to my car, they toss their backpacks into the back, and Quinn calls shotgun. I slide into the driver’s seat and mutter a prayer to my car.

I turn the key and the engine squeals.

“Not today,” I say to it. “Please not today—”