OFF LIMIT FOR THE HOCKEY CAPTAIN

Stephanie Colton smiled at people the way most girls smiled at spiders. Like she was deciding whether to scream or squash it.

She stopped a foot away from us, close enough that I caught her perfume, something expensive and sharp, and let her eyes travel from Dylan to me and back again, cataloguing the distance between us like she was doing math.

"Am I interrupting something?" she asked, in a voice so sweet it had to be a weapon.

"Nope," Dylan said, stepping back from me like I was suddenly contagious.

I hated how much that stung, and I hated more that I noticed it happening in real time, my whole chest doing something complicated and stupid over a boy stepping half a foot away from me in a cafeteria.

"Good." Stephanie's smile widened, landing on me now, and up close I understood exactly why people got out of her way in the hallways without being told to. There was something in her eyes that dared you to be interesting enough to bother with. "Virginia, right? Ryan's sister?"

"Ginny," I said.

"Cute." She said it like it wasn't. "I don't think we've actually talked before."

"We haven't."

"Well." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and Amber and Vanessa arranged themselves on either side of her like furniture. "I heard you're trying out for cheer Thursday."

I hadn't told anyone that except Maddy. Which meant either Maddy had told someone, unlikely, or Stephanie Colton had a surveillance network more sophisticated than the actual school administration, entirely likely.

"Word travels," I said.

"It does when it's interesting." She tilted her head, studying me the way you'd study something you'd stepped in. "You know it's a competitive squad. We don't just take anyone who shows up wanting to be popular."

"I'm not trying out to be popular."

"No?" Her eyebrows went up, delighted, like I'd said something genuinely funny. "Then why?"

Because I've wanted it since I was eleven years old and stood in these same bleachers watching girls fly through the air like nothing scared them, and because it was the one thing I'd ever wanted that had nothing to do with being someone's sister or someone's rival's little problem. But I wasn't about to hand her that much of myself, not standing here in a cafeteria with an audience, so instead I said, "Because I'm good at it."

"We'll see." She turned back to Dylan before I could say anything else, her whole posture shifting, softer now, angled toward him in a way that made my stomach twist even though I had absolutely no claim to feel anything about it. "Dylan. You're still coming to Chelsea's thing Friday, right?"

"Probably."

"Good." She let her hand rest on his arm for just a second too long, and I watched him not pull away, and told myself very firmly that I did not care. "We should catch up. It's been a while."

"Steph…"

"I'll text you." She was already walking away, Amber and Vanessa trailing behind like she'd tugged them on strings, but she paused after a few steps and looked back at me, and whatever performance she'd been doing for Dylan's benefit dropped clean off her face. What was underneath was colder. Sharper. Real.

"Good luck Thursday," she said. "You're going to need it."

Then she was gone, swallowed into the crowd, and the cafeteria exhaled like it had been holding its breath the whole time.

"That was pleasant," I said, watching her disappear around the corner with her entourage still perfectly in formation.

Dylan winced. "She's not usually like that."

"She seemed exactly like that. Practiced, even. Like she's done this before."

"We used to date. Freshman year." He said it carefully, like he was handling something breakable. "It ended a long time ago. She just hasn't fully caught up, and she doesn't love being reminded of that in public."

"Clearly."

"Ginny." He said my name differently than he had all day, quieter, without the performance. "About earlier…"

"I have to go." I didn't, not really, but I'd used up every ounce of composure I had for one lunch period, and I could feel my ears doing the thing Maddy had called me out on, the thing that apparently gave away every lie I'd ever told, and I was not about to let him watch that happen too.

I found Maddy by our lockers after the bell, and she took one look at my face and didn't say a word, just fell into step beside me toward class, letting the silence stretch until she couldn't hold it anymore.

"So," she finally said, halfway down the hall, unable to hold out any longer. "No bet."

"No bet."

"But something."

"I don't know what it is." Which was true, and also the most unsettling sentence I'd said all day, because I'd built my entire life around knowing exactly what Dylan Kingston was. A flirt. A collector. A boy who made a hobby out of hallways and half smiles and never meaning any of it. And now, apparently, I didn't know anything at all.

I turned the corner toward chemistry, still turning it all over, Stephanie's cold little threat looping in my head on repeat, and walked straight into a wall of navy blue fabric that smelled like laundry detergent and cold rink air.

"We need to talk," Dylan said, and for the first time all day, there was nothing lazy or easy about his voice at all.

Behind him, taped to the wall outside the chemistry lab where the entire junior class would see it in exactly four minutes when the bell rang, was a printed flyer with my school photo on it, my actual school ID photo, the one from freshman year I'd spent two years trying to forget existed, blown up and centered like some kind of wanted poster.

Across the bottom, in bold red letters, someone had written: ASK HER ABOUT THE BET.