Kyle let out an uncomfortable half-cough sound across from me. He ran his hand through his hair, which was either a nervous tic or something to fill up the awkward pause.
“Who are you going to vote for in the mock election, then?” Melissa asked.
Oh, no. She wasn’t letting go of the politics. I wanted to hear the answer, and yet I also didn’t. In the fake “open primary” we had last spring, only seventeen people voted for a Democratic candidate. Everybody else voted for President Bush. I didn’t think much would have changed in six months. When I told Ms. Boudreaux, my history teacher, that I thought Bill Clinton had better ideas than President Bush, she chided me for “being swayed by his charm.” I thought it was super gross of her to imply that I had a crush on him. I didn’t, of course, but even if I had, his dorky saxophone performance on Arsenio Hall’s show would have killed it dead. There was nothing worse than someone my dad’s age trying to be cool.
Except maybe Melissa’s obsession with talking politics.
“Melissa,” I hissed before Kyle could answer. I accompanied that hiss with an under-the-table kick to her shin.
“Ow! Oh, hey,” Melissa said. “Kyle’s got the same backpack I do.”
She returned my sharp kick under the table. I glanced at the backpack. She was definitely smarter than I was when it came to boys. She was nudging me to ask him what music he liked, something I knew about. And there was a Clinton/Gore button, which answered the election question. I let out an audible sigh.
“Oh, yeah,” Kyle said. “I meant to ask you about—”
But he didn’t get a chance to ask whatever question he had. Just when I thought the relationship gods had smiled on me with the favor of a boy with similar musical and political tastes, doom followed in the form of Leah Sullivan and her ever-annoying sidekick, Aimee Blanchard.
My jaw clenched automatically, and suddenly I remembered something—not any of those things that I wanted to talk about with Kyle, which was fine now that I had a legitimate topic in terms of music, thanks to Melissa’s eagle eye—but about Wisteria. And Helen. And, of course, Leah.
Leah slid into the seat to the left of Kyle, and Aimee on his right, forming a sandwich that was like a moldy bun around the most perfectly cooked hamburger ever. I had to get rid of the moldy bun before it spoiled the rest of my hamburger, but I couldn’t do that until I found out what Leah was suddenly doing at my lunch table, and what she was doing to my sister.
“Hey, y’all,” Leah said cheerfully, as though it was perfectly natural for her to join us at lunch. Her Southern accent lilted with charm and cuteness. She flashed Kyle a smile that sent a hot flame of jealousy through my stomach.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the cheerleaders’ meeting?” Melissa asked with a false sweetness through clenched teeth.
“Um, like, we quit,” Aimee said. She tried to do a hair flip with her frizzy brown curls, but her hand got stuck in the wiry mess. Aimee had gotten an ill-advised perm over the summer, most likely to look more like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. People often said Aimee looked a little bit like her, which was true enough if you squinted. “It’s, like, too hectic, you know? And Coach Braden is, well, you know.”
I didn’t know if it was one of Leah and Aimee’s made-up rumors, or just an odd bit of gossip that happened to be true, but a story was circulating that Coach Braden was, you know, a lesbian. It didn’t seem like a good enough reason to quit the cheerleading squad, in my opinion. My guess was if Coach Braden was, you know, a lesbian, she’d be interested in women her own age.
Back when I was trying to be friends with them for Sean’s sake, I never understood why Leah let someone like Aimee hang around with her. She wasn’t especially pretty, and she could be way too obvious when it came to trying to manipulate people. But fortunately for Aimee, Leah valued someone near her who wasn’t quite as shiny, to make her look better. I should know—it was something she’d said about me to Cassie Sanchez last year, to explain why she’d hung out with me during her temporary exile from popularity.
Aimee wasn’t creative enough to come up with the lies by herself, or else they’d all be variations on the themes of witchcraft and devil worship. Leah’s input was what made the stories stick; she knew instinctively how people worked and what felt realistic to them. Last year, for instance, after Melissa started dating Aimee’s ex-boyfriend, Leah and Aimee started a rumor that she was the daughter of a Vietnamese prostitute and an American GI who was then sold to her current parents for fifty dollars—and half the school believed them, despite Melissa’s obvious genetic resemblance to her parents.
Of course, that made me even more worried for Helen.
“We wanted to have lunch with our friends,” Leah said, flashing Melissa and me a big fake smile. She looked at Kyle’s profile, seemingly willing him to turn to her. He was looking at me, but he glanced at her for a moment. Or maybe it was a second more than a glance—was I imagining that he gave her a once-over? It happened so fast, and then he was looking back at me, as intent as ever.
“Well, then, you should go find them,” Melissa said. I was thinking it, too, but I never would have said it out loud.
“Ha-ha-ha,” Leah laughed in a staccato, leaning across the lunch table to give Melissa a gentle punch on her arm. Melissa scowled back at her. “You are so hilarious, Melissa! Aren’t you going to introduce us to your new friend?”
Great. She was planning to be here for the long haul. I would never get to talk with Kyle, and I couldn’t tell her off, because she was being insincere in a way that would only make me look jealous if I called her out on it.
“I’m Kyle Buchanan.” He coughed nervously after he said it.
“Very nice to meet you.” Leah held out a perfectly manicured hand to Kyle. “I’m Leah Sullivan.”
Kyle shook her hand, and Leah held it for an extra beat, stroking her hand across his palm as she let go. I wanted to kill her. She had a boyfriend—who was one of my best friends!—and here she was, touching the first boy at our school I had any real interest in. And who had willingly joined me at lunch. And who had good taste in music. I wanted to reach across the table and slap her hand way from his.
It wasn’t that I expected Leah to make a real move on Kyle. But I did expect her to flirt with any guy near me. Her goal in flirting wasn’t to actually capture the guy for herself so much as it was to provide a means of distracting him from me. She did it last year when Trip Wilson, Sean’s friend from the football team, was over at my house for algebra tutoring. I’m still not sure if Trip was interested in me—or if I even wanted him to be—but he sure had a hard time concentrating on his algebra homework when she was around.
It was different with Trip, though. Leah had flirted with him in an obvious, over-the-top way to embarrass him. He eventually turned all kinds of red anytime she got close. At first, Sean thought it was hilarious, until Trip told him he didn’t think it was funny. Then Sean put a stop to it. Somehow I doubted he’d find it funny if he saw Leah flirting with Kyle the way she was right now.