Something True by Kieran Scott Page B

looking at me as if in awe.
    “Just let me know if you need any more help. I’ll be right over there,” I said, pointing at Wallace. I got up and perched myself next to him again. He smirked at me.
    “What?” I snapped.
    “Nothing. Unpause,” he replied.
    I sighed. “Okay, secondly, I have zero chance of winning. The only junior ever to win homecoming queen at Lake Carmody High was Ruma Sen, and she was like a goddess among girls. And even if a junior could win, it would definitely be Veronica, not me.” I paused and toyed with the zipper on my messenger bag. “It’s an honor just to be nominated.”
    “Can I talk now?” Wallace asked.
    “Sure,” I replied tartly. “Knock yourself out.”
    “Okay, first of all, everyone hates Veronica Vine.”
    I pressed my lips together. If anyone in the world had a total right to hate Veronica, it was Wallace. I averted my eyes, trying to figure out what to say.
    The girls on the floor continued their glitter line and high-fived, which made me smile. See? I was totally good at projects. I should have joined Boosters ages ago. If only Orion could see me now, he’d totally ask for me to take over and boot True to the curb.
    Just thinking her name made me look at her, and she quickly looked away. Why was she staring at me? Freak.
    I took a deep breath. “Okay, I get it. But ‘everyone’? Really?”
    “Look, people pretend to love Veronica because they think they have to,” Wallace said with that I know everything look on his face that annoyed me even back when we were friends. “She’s mean, Darla. She’s mean to everyone. Even her boyfriend. Even you.”
    “She’s not mean. Not . . . not anymore, anyway. She’s just opinionated. Men are intimidated by women who know what they want, so they label them as bossy or mean or bitchy, but she’s not. She’s confident.”
    “No, no. She’s bitchy.” Wallace reached for his iPad and brought some kind of list up on the screen. “Have you ever asked yourself why Ruma Sen won homecoming queen as a junior?”
    “She was a super-popular gorgeous beauty queen with a hot boyfriend,” I replied, flicking my hair over my shoulder, glad to be off the touchy subject of Veronica. “Duh.”
    “Wrong again,” Wallace sang, which made me want to slap him. “It’s all about the numbers, Ding Dong.”
    “Don’t call me that,” I said again, but this time through my teeth.
    “Here’s how it works,” he said, tapping his iPad screen.
    Nice. Just ignore me. Why was I ever friends with this person?
    “Each class generally votes for the kids nominated from their own class, except for a handful of the freshmen and sophomores who vote for juniors and seniors because they think they should,” he explained, the rectangular glow of the screen lighting up his face.
    “And you know this how?” I asked, studying my nails as if I was so uninterested. Although my interest was officially piqued.
    “I’m on the homecoming committee. I helped count the votes the last two years.”
    “ You’re on homecoming?” I didn’t mean to sound snotty, but I did.
    “Gotta round out my college apps somehow,” he said. “And you know how I love to crunch the numbers. Anyway, back when Ruma Sen was a junior at Lake Carmody, the junior class was bigger than any other class at the school. Thus, she won most of the vote. I went into the records and double-checked.”
    “So?” I said.
    Wallace turned his iPad screen toward me, holding it straight up against his thigh. His case was covered in planets and comets and shooting stars.
    “So, right now the junior class is bigger than the senior class by seventy-two kids, and bigger than the sophomores by sixty-three,” he told me, pointing to the official school census. “That means a junior could win this thing. You could win this thing.”
    I pulled the iPad closer to me, making sure that what I was seeing was correct. Wallace was right. The junior class was huge compared to the others. And if