Shot Through the Heart (14 page)

I wave my hand to cut off the conversation. “Guys, guys, this is nuts. This whole discussion feels very late-night, trashy reality TV, which, as we all know, has zippo to do with, I dunno,
reality
? It’s exactly the kind of muck Drew was hoping to stir up when he walked up to us. Let’s talk about how the soccer team is doing, all right? Or about the article in the paper saying the town might finally put in a swimming pool.”

“I did see that!” Tina brightens. “Not that I’m a huge swimmer, but I’d love to have an outdoor pool where we could hang out next summer. I’m sick of going to the indoor one at the Y. The whole building feels damp and reeks of chlorine.”

“Hate to miss the continuing lunchtime drama—and the swimming pool discussion—but I have a student council meeting. I’m outta here.” Peyton sounds normal enough, but as she loops one leg, then the other out from under the picnic table, she spins away from me, preventing me from gauging her mood. I’m positive it’s intentional. “Catch you guys later.”

“Oh, shoot!” Kendall reaches around Josh to nudge Tina. “We have our meeting for the dance committee. We’ve gotta hurry!”

Tina blinks at Kendall. “Ohmigosh. You’re right. I completely forgot!”

Tina says goodbye to me and Josh, apologizing for the quick departure as she and Kendall gather their belongings and hustle after Peyton.

“Well, that’s not good,” Josh murmurs, his gaze following the girls as they disappear through the doors into the cafeteria.

When I grumble my agreement, he drops the last few bites of his burger bun into its wrapper and squishes it. When he looks at me, there’s a hardness to his gaze. “Is there something going on—either with my sister or with Molly—that I should know about?”

“Nothing’s going on with Molly. It’s exactly what I’ve said before. I still want her as my friend, but I have zero interest in going out with her.”

“But?”

“But” —there’s a decade-plus of friendship between us, and I’m afraid I’m about to call on all of it— “I can’t tell you the rest. Not yet.”

The edges of Josh’s mouth curve as he sucks in his bottom lip. After a moment’s consideration, he spreads his hands on either side of his lunch tray. “All right. As long as you know that where Peyton’s concerned—”

“I know.”

He nods in understanding. We gather the extra napkins and I use one to wipe up a smudge of ketchup Drew dripped onto the table while he was yapping at us. We’re about to stand up and head back into the cafeteria when Molly slides in beside me, feet aimed away from the table. I half-expect Drew to appear behind her, but when I make a quick surveillance of the courtyard, he’s nowhere to be seen.

“I am soooo sorry about that, guys,” she whispers, twisting her torso so she can see both of us. “I had no idea he’d go bonkers like that!”

“Not your fault,” I say. Josh nods his agreement.

With multiple club meetings taking place in the second part of the lunch hour, the courtyard’s nearly empty now. After glancing around to ensure our conversation will remain private, she looks from Josh to me, her expression apologetic. “Actually, it kinda is. I should be at Model U.N., but we’ve gotta talk.”

I exhale. I didn’t want to do this in front of Josh, but the sooner I come clean, the better. “I didn’t mean to lead you on, Mol.”

She stares at me for a moment, squinching her eyes like she can’t quite decipher my meaning. Then she covers her mouth with her hand and starts laughing. Not one of those false laughs where you don’t want anyone to know you’re uncomfortable, but a genuine, gut-busting laugh.

“What?” I have no idea how to take her reaction.

“Geez, Connor!” She lets her hand fall from her mouth, but her body is still shaking in amusement. “Is that what you thought?”

Josh and I share a look of confusion. “Um…I don’t know?”

She gives me a playful punch on the arm. “How long have we been friends? We are
so
not couple material. If we were, I’d have been after you back in sixth grade or you’d have been after me.”

Wait. So Molly
doesn’t
like me?

“Forgive me, I’m a little slow on the uptake. You’re saying that you aren’t…?” I can’t imagine how to phrase this without sounding either conceited or moronic.

Josh is still frowning. “If you aren’t all hot for Connor, then what was with the flirty texts? Not that I was reading Connor’s phone or anything.”

Molly pulls a face. “Of course you weren’t, Josh. You would never read
anyone’s
messages.”

She has the decency to look remorseful as she turns to me. “I’m sorry, Connor. I figured you knew what I was doing! You were so nice after Drew dumped me for Sofia.”

I spread my hands as if to say,
so?

“You remember when we talked a couple days after it happened?” She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “I told you how much I wanted Drew back. I said I was sure he wasn’t thinking straight when he did it and that I wanted to come up with some strategy to make him realize his mistake.”

“I remember.” It was the Monday after Drew dumped her. I was about a half-block behind her, walking to school. She’d stopped walking twice, turned around once as if she wanted to ditch, then turned back and was walking toward the school again when I caught up to her. Her eyes were red and puffy. When I asked if she was all right, she confessed that she wasn’t sure she could handle the inevitable expressions of pity when all anyone really wanted from her was dirt on the breakup.

Then she’d launched into a three-block monologue about how much she wanted Drew back, which made me want to simultaneously plug my ears and smack some sense into her.

“The minute you mentioned the word ‘strategy’ I told you that strategies have no place in a relationship and that you were better off without him,” I remind her.

“And I told you I wasn’t.”

I shrug. “And?”

“I was still crazy over him! One conversation with you wasn’t going to change that. I spent that entire day in school distracting myself from everyone’s fake sympathy by working out a plan in my head.”

Josh studies Molly as if she’s sprouted antennae. “A plan?”

“I wanted him back. Duh.” She spins so her legs are under the table and she’s facing Josh. “I was hoping Sofia would get another offer and ditch Drew before the prom—because you know she’s that kind of girl—and that he’d come crawling back asking me for forgiveness, so it’d all come to nothing. But it didn’t work out that way.”

“Drew doesn’t crawl,” Josh points out. “His ego won’t let him.”

I’m still not following. “So all those texts were what? To make Drew jealous?”

Her mouth curves into a self-deprecating grin. “I thought it’d work. I made sure to send them whenever my friends were watching. You know they’re all major bigmouths. And like Josh said, Drew has an ego. If he heard through the grapevine that Connor and I might hook up, his instinct would be to prevent it. No offense, Connor, but he’s never liked you.”

Josh’s head is in his hands. I don’t blame him. I can’t believe Molly could be so smart and so stupid at the same time.

“Am I the only person in this whole school who doesn’t consider gossip an effective relationship-building tool?” I groan in frustration.

Molly elbows me, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she does so. “Admit it. Getting all those texts made you feel good. I just wish you’d picked up on the fact that, hello, they’re from
me
.”

“Me, too,” I say. How much grief would it have saved me? As it is, I have a heck of a lot of explaining to do to Peyton.

“You’re demented,” Josh tells Molly, but there’s a smile in his voice now. “Guess you changed your mind about wanting Drew back at some point, though, given what you said to him at the funeral home.”

Molly checks her watch, then tilts her head toward the cafeteria doors. As we leave the table and cross the courtyard, she says, “Deep in my gut? I’ll always have a soft spot for him. I couldn’t be so ga-ga over him for so long and
not
, you know? Plus, I meant it when I said I didn’t want to humiliate him the way he humiliated me. But before I’d even consider getting back with him, I’d need to know that he respects me and doesn’t simply see me as a possession to be taken for granted. Otherwise, what would be the point?”

“I’m not sure he can do that.” I hate saying it, but Molly needs a good dose of honesty.

“Me, either. Especially given how ballistic he went at Blanchard’s.” She pauses to pick up an abandoned granola bar wrapper and toss it into the nearest can. “But he’s learned the hard way not to treat his next girlfriend the way he treated me. And I’ve figured out that I’m perfectly fine without him. Happy, even. It’s weird to say, given all that planning I put into getting him back, but it’s a liberating feeling. And I like it.”

“Maybe there’s someone better for you than Drew.” Josh can’t resist getting in one last comment.

“Maybe.” The sly way she says it makes me wonder if she already has someone in mind. Since that someone obviously isn’t me, I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.

The guy has no clue what he’s getting into with her.

I pause a few steps from the door. Now that I know this was all part of a grand scheme, it occurs to me that there may a lot more to Molly’s plan than sending a few texts to make her ex jealous. Texting doesn’t constitute ‘all that planning.’ And Molly’s
I’m perfectly fine
spiel strikes me as too laid-back.

“Hold on a sec.” As much as I should let it go, I can’t. It’s too important.

She spins around, all serenity and light. Cautiously, I ask, “Just how extensive was your plan? What haven’t you told us?”

Josh stops walking, confusion etched on his face. When Molly flashes the same sweet smile she gave Drew when she first tried to wave him out of his car, dread bubbles up in my gut. “You said you wanted to teach Drew a lesson.
That
was the big plan, wasn’t it? It wasn’t simply to make Drew jealous.”

“A lesson?” Josh’s expression goes from confusion to horror. “No way. Oh, Molly, tell me you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?” Molly looks from me to Josh in complete innocence. I don’t buy it. I know how good an actress she is.

“You rigged Senior Assassin.” Josh whispers the accusation, even though no one else is outside to hear. “Jayne was picked to run it only a few days before you and Drew broke up. It wouldn’t take much for her to switch up the computerized assignments.”

When Molly doesn’t respond, I put together the rest of the pieces. “If you were after revenge, Jayne could’ve assigned Drew to you and your partner. But that would’ve raised suspicions, and revenge wasn’t your ultimate goal anyway, was it? You figured that if you flirted with me to make Drew jealous and he didn’t take the bait, you’d give him an extra push by ensuring that I was the one to knock him out of the tournament. He’d hate me more than he already does, and you knew he wouldn’t be able to stand by and watch after that if he thought you and I might hook up.”

Josh runs a hand over his head in disbelief. “In the meantime, you could offer to help us, teach Drew a lesson in humility, and Connor and I wouldn’t even have to know we were part of your plan.”

Rather than confessing, Molly merely blows past us into the cafeteria. “If you two want to attribute that kind of evil genius to me, well, go right ahead. I doubt anyone would believe you. It doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

“Seriously evil genius,” Josh mutters, looking sideways at me. “Because it worked.”

We follow Molly inside, pausing to slide our trays into the appropriate rack just as Joe Delano approaches with his. Behind him, Molly scans the dwindling crowd, turns and discreetly puts her index finger to her smiling lips, then bounces out the cafeteria’s double doors, heading toward her next class.

I could kill her.

“Catch ya later, guys,” Joe says, sticking his tray into an empty slot before he follows Molly out the door. At the last second, he turns and sticks his thumb and index finger out at us, crooking his thumb in a mock gunshot.

Fantastic.

“This is one steaming load of horse excrement.” Josh’s voice is barely audible as we weave our way through the cafeteria, ignoring the clandestine looks of those who witnessed our confrontation with Drew. The hallway is full as everyone hustles to beat the final bell, but we walk close to each other to keep our conversation private. “If anyone finds out—”

“We’ll be disqualified.”

“Even though we had nothing to do with it?”

I give a grim nod. There’s no doubt in my mind. We’re already walking a fine line with Josh’s video posting. If the senior class student council reps thought there was even a hint of impropriety, we’d be tossed from the tournament, as would Molly and her partner. Jayne would be in even bigger trouble. Not only would she have to step down and forfeit her fifty-percent share of the administration fee, the entire class would be angry with her. As much as they might sympathize with her desire to help Molly, no one wants a taint on the tournament. It’s been run cleanly for more than a decade, making it a source of senior pride.

“Well, Grayson and Drew would love to see us booted, especially if it created a scandal, so I hope they don’t figure it out,” Josh says. “I bet they’d even get reinstated for the next round. Not that I care about them, though. I care about
us
. What do we do?”