She's So Dead to Us by Kieran Scott Page A

there at our side, as if a brawl were about to break out and they were ready to throw down. “I’ll dance with you,” I told him, “after you give me the two-hundred dollars you owe me.”
    His brow knitted. “What?”
    “Two hundred dollars. That’s what it’s going to cost to have the lawn jockey you and your friends left on my doorstep hauled away.” I folded my arms over my green H&M dress—the one I’d bought for last year’s Holiday Dance in Baltimore. The good thing about moving to a new school? All your clothes are brand new again. And even if it cost one tenth the amount of Faith’s black strapless, I still thought I looked pretty good in it. “I assume you have the cash.”
    Jake blanched. “I . . .”
    “No? I’ll take a check,” I said obnoxiously. “I do know where you live in case it bounces.” I held out my hand flat, waiting.
    “I didn’t know,” Jake said. He looked away. “I didn’t think it’d be that big a deal.”
    I narrowed my eyes as my heart started to soften. It was so Jakesessed it wanted to take that meager nothing of an apology and run with it. But I wouldn’t let it. My brain had some pride, even if my heart didn’t.
    “Come on, David. I’m over this dance,” I said, taking his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
    Confused, David followed me toward the door nonetheless. Jake, much to my surprise, came after us.
    “Wait.” His hand was on my arm. I turned around. “Look, I’m . . . I’m sorry, okay?” he said quietly. “We shouldn’t have done it. But it’s not like it was my idea—”
    “No? Then whose was it? Tell me so I can ask them for the cash,” I said.
    Jake looked away again, his handsome face turning a deeper shade of red.
    “Fine. I’ll expect the money in the morning.”
    I twisted around on my heel and walked off, David, Annie, and Logan jogging to catch up.
    “Are we really leaving?” David asked. “Should I get the coats?”
    “Yeah. I mean, if it’s okay with you guys,” I said. “This is lame anyway, right? I say we hit the diner.”
    “I’m all over that,” Logan said. He smacked David in the chest with the back of his meaty hand. “Let’s go.”
    The two of them loped off toward the lobby, where the makeshift coat rack had been placed. I kept moving for the door, wanting to put as much space between me and Jake as possible.
    “Okay. That was weird,” Annie said, clutching her notebook in one hand, her pumpkin-shaped purse in the other.
    “What?” I asked, both fuming and exulting. I’d finally gotten to tell him off, but somehow, I was still pissed.
    “In all the months I’ve been documenting Jake’s every move, I’ve never seen him (a) go after a girl who’s walking away from him or (b) apologize for anything.”
    I paused with my hand on the metal door. “Really?”
    “Really,” she said, whipping the notebook open to jot something down. “Clearly you’ve had some kind of positive effect on Jake Graydon.”
    I swallowed hard and looked across the room at him. He was rejoining his friends and his date, as if nothing had happened. Apparently it wasn’t a huge effect.
    “Here you go, milady,” David said, holding out my mom’s black wool coat to me.
    “Thank you.” I slipped my bare arms into the warm sleeves. “Let’s go. I’m starved,” Logan said, shoving open the door and barreling through it ahead of Annie. She rolled her eyes and went after him before it could slam in her face. As hard as he’d worked to win this first date, he wasn’t exactly gunning for a second.
    “Um . . . shall we?” David said, tilting his head.
    “Yeah,” I replied. My stomach was clenching and unclenching as I remembered what we’d been talking about before we were so rudely interrupted. Jake was clearly a jerk, and David was clearly his polar opposite. Maybe the key to breaking the Jakesession was to replace it with something else. Something real. Someone who actually cared about me.
    “Hey, David,” I