No you’re not, I thought.

“I think she’ll be fine on her own,” he said.

“I should go with her, Mr. Daley,” Carter said. “It’s my fault….I won’t be gone long.”

The teacher shot him a suspicious look, but nodded. “Five minutes.”

Lydia breathed out through her nose and looked at her watch. “I guess I have to go to class, Alexis….” It was a clear prompt for me to invite her along.

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “See you later.”

The teacher ducked into his classroom and Lydia trudged away. I was alone with my assailant.

“This really isn’t necessary,” I said. “I can get there without help.”

“My pleasure,” he said.

4

It all started in September of last year.

There used to be this show, Surrey Survey, that was broadcast once a week during homeroom, run by a couple of A/V nerds.

I was on the last episode ever to air.

It was a show about student government elections. The A/V guys were in my Spanish class, and while we were talking one day, they told me their next show was about elections. I said the whole concept of student government was a sham and a farce and a popularity/beauty contest. All the candidates claimed to be committed to change, to making things better, but I suggested that the A/V nerds do a hidden-camera setup and ask the front-runners why they were really running. So they did. When the nonhidden camera was running, the answers were textbook—helping the school, getting involved, taking a stand, blah blah blah.

When that camera was off and just the hidden one was rolling, that’s when the real reasons came out. Motives

as varied as “the faculty sponsor is hot” to “you get to skip class whenever you want” to “Tim MacNamara’s parents always buy beer when he has meetings at his house.”

When the guys asked me (on camera) who I’d be voting for, I told the truth, which was that I didn’t give a flying bleep (that’s how it came out on air, at least) who the candidates were or what they stood for, and neither did anyone else in the school.

I also suggested that, just for fun, everyone who was sick of the pretty people using school elections to perpetuate the social dominance of their tyrannical clique should make a point of voting for a person they’d never heard of.

I wasn’t really serious. I just thought I was being…you know, funny.

But I guess people have different definitions of funny. I hadn’t counted on them using all of that footage of me condemning my fellow students as the basis for the entire segment. I was just a freshman, the girl with the bright pink hair, nobody to get excited about.

That was the day Surrey Survey got the ax.

It was also the day I made my second appearance on the cheerleaders’ Public Enemy #1 list.

Because the front-runner for Student Council VP was Pepper Laird.

And she lost the election to the new kid nobody had ever heard of—Carter Blume. Pepper may have been

knocked off her throne, but Carter’s popularity soared. Soon he was the pack leader of the preps—the buttoned-up speech-and-debate-obsessed clones. Preps are like cheerleaders, only with less jumping.

I had no idea how easy it would be to create a monster—in fact, I had created two monsters. Carter and myself. Suddenly, the freshman anonymity that had softened the public’s image of me was blasted away, and once again, I was That Girl.

So.

I started to walk toward the clinic. He came wandering after me.

“So, okay,” he said at last. “Clearly you have no idea who I am.” “Clearly.”

He wanted me to ask. He was dying for me to ask.

He held open the clinic door for me. The nurse was standing at the counter behind her desk, trying to fish the last cotton ball out of a jar. “Be right there,” she said, without looking at us. Then she disappeared behind the curtain.

I planted myself in one of the guest chairs, and Carter sat next to me.

He leaned over and spoke in a confidential tone. “Are you proficient in the Heimlich maneuver?”

It took me a second to realize he was reading from

one of the posters on the opposite wall. “No,” I said. “Sorry to say.”

I looked at the next poster over, a cartoon about helping your friends fend off depression. A little cartoon girl was looking at her friend and asking, HOW ABOUT YOU, DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE HURTING YOURSELF? “How about you, do you ever feel like hurting yourself?”

He paused and let out a half-laugh. “Well…only on turkey tetrazzini day.”

“I don’t think they serve that here.”

“Right,” he said. “Lucky me.”

He didn’t say anything else. Neither did I.

The nurse came bustling out.

“Carter!” she said. “Are you hurt?”

“No…I’m just here to make sure Miss Warren gets the level of care she needs,” he said.

He was totally flirting with the nurse, and she was lapping it up.

“And I thought chivalry was dead!” she replied.

He stood. “Maybe it is. I opened a door into her head.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure it was probably an accident,” the nurse said absently, sitting down at her computer. “What was the name?”

“Warren,” Carter said, looking right at me.

Forget this. Not about to let him stand around and play hero, I went to the desk, moving closer to the nurse

so that Carter had to edge away. “Alexis Warren.”

She asked a couple more questions, and I kept shifting so that eventually Carter was completely blocked from the desk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take a self-conscious step backward and felt a pang of guilt.

“I should get to class,” Carter said. He patted a stack of papers on the desk and leaned down a tiny bit toward the nurse. “I’ve done my civic duty.”

Civic duty? Was he just using me as a cog in the oppressive machinery of the white male hierarchy? A line on his college application? Part three of a Boy Scout badge?

To think I almost felt sorry for him. All so he could enjoy the smug satisfaction of being a good citizen, get into a fancy university, become a lawyer, and help sleazy rich guys dump toxic waste wherever they felt like it.

He looked at me. “If there’s anything I can—”

“There’s not,” I said.

The breezy look on his face faltered.

“Stop.” My head was starting to throb, and my mood was souring by the moment. “I can take care of myself.”

Everyone was quiet. The second hand on the old wall clock was the only sound.

“Just go to class,” I said.

“You’re the boss,” he said, touching his finger to his forehead in a tiny salute. Then he disappeared.

5

On my walk home from school I heard a car horn and looked around for the honker, even though not once in my entire high school career had someone honked for me.

The responsible party was Carter Blume, in all his J. Crew glory, driving a shiny green Prius. He pulled up next to me, and the passenger window rolled down with a happy hum.

“Can I give you a ride home?” he asked.

I leaned down to look at him across the car, but didn’t answer.

He shifted into park. “Hi,” he said. “How’s the skull?”

“I have a bump,” I said. “But I got some sweet aspirin out of the deal.”

“Seems like they’d at least let you sleep through one class when you’ve been knocked in the head”—he paused—“by an evil Young Republican.”

“They like it when kids get minor head injuries. They think it builds character.”

He nodded. “Glad to see I didn’t knock any of the pink out of your hair.”

I reached up to brush a strand of hair off my forehead and winced when I touched the lump.

“Please let me drive you home,” he said again. “It’s really the least I can do.”

“You mean it’s Section Four of your ‘How to Be a Good Citizen’ handbook?”

He scrunched up his forehead.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ve completely fulfilled your civic duty.”

His eyes widened. “No—that was a joke. You didn’t think I really meant it, did you?”