Kissing the Player (The Dangers of Dating a Diva Book 1)
Page 18
I sucked in a panicky breath as I pushed my glasses back up my nose. This could not be happening. It just couldn’t. Because if Lola really had mono, then the last few months of hard work was a complete waste. Without Lola I’d have to drop out of the competition.
My heart fell, but it didn’t quite hit rock bottom. Perhaps it was because I’d never truly thought I could win. I wasn’t betting against us. Lola was incredible. I thought she had a great chance of winning the singing category, and I knew her voice would give my songwriting an edge, but I’d never truly let myself fantasize about winning the Northeast Regional Scholarship for the Dramatic Arts—or the Diva Scholarship, as we called it.
Why should I? The world had pretty much decided I wasn’t winner material. And Northwood High reminded me of that on a daily basis. But that’s what happened when you were a band geek in a sea of athletes.
I wasn’t sad about it. I loved music. It was my life. But in high school, unless you could somehow pull off the rocker look, which I most definitely could not thanks to my glasses and thrift store budget, that pretty much left band geek as my only option.
I looked down. My red Converse sneakers were dull, just like the rest of my outfit, from my shoes all the way to my boring brown hair.
“Move it,” someone growled while knocking into me as I stood frozen in the hall.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, tears instantly welling in my eyes as I tried to wrap my head around the next four weeks of high school without my best friend.
Lola was sunshine. I was a shadow. But without her . . . I was just plain invisible.
Chapter 2
Wyatt
“I’m sorry, can I go back to class now?” I asked.
“If I could trust you to attend class, I would’ve left you there,” my mother replied astutely.
She continued to pour over the papers on her desk like they were the most important things in the world. What a joke. Like anyone at this school actually cared about whatever fundraiser she was organizing next. I slumped lower in the cushy office chair and let my head droop back, staring up at the dismal ceiling tiles. I exhaled dramatically, not caring one bit that I was behaving like a petulant child. It’s what she expected.
“Wyatt, I know you’re disappointed about baseball—”
That snapped me out of my melancholy. “Disappointed!” I yelled. “Disappointed?” I glared at my mother, who for once was meeting my eyes. “Disappointed is when the grocery store is out of your favorite ice cream flavor, or the movie you want to see is sold out. Disappointed doesn’t even begin to express my feelings about having my last high school baseball season stolen from me.”
“Darling, I understand your anger.”
“Do you, Mum? I mean do you really?”
“Of course. But accidents happen, Wyatt. There’s no one to blame here.”
I glared at my ankle boot, anger simmer in my veins. My mother had no idea what this felt like. She’d never worked for anything in her life. She married a rich Englishman, popped out a kid and coasted.
All she did was convince people to fork over money for her fundraisers and charity auctions. She was good at signing checks and putting her name on things, but she didn’t know what it meant to earn something, to put years of blood, sweat and tears into something only to be told it was over before it ever really began. This was supposed to be the culmination of all my hard work—the pay off. And I’d been cheated out of it.
“I’m a senior, Mum. I don’t get another chance at this. I’m allowed to be pissed that it’s all meant nothing.”
“Fine, Wyatt, be upset but do it in class. Your education is more important than sports. The next time I hear you were caught skipping there will be consequences.”
I rolled my eyes. “What are you going to do, call Dad?”
“I just might.”
I almost laughed. The idea of my mother calling my father about anything that involved me was even funnier than thinking she could ever understand what baseball meant to me. I was about to tell her that when the door to her office burst open, a hysterical brunette breezing in.
“Mrs. Nash, I’m so sorry to do this to you but I have to withdraw from the dramatic arts competition, Lola has mono, she’s out for four weeks, maybe more and I-I can’t do it without her, I just can’t.”
“Layne, sweetie, take a breath,” my mother said offering the girl a tissue and more sympathy than I ever got. “What do you mean you’re withdrawing?”
“Lola has mono, she can’t sing.”
I watch my mother’s face carefully. It morphed from concerned to calculating. This poor girl had no idea who she was dealing with. Maybe the old Special Resource Director was a pushover, but no one told Mrs. Cynthia Nash no. The woman had a solution for every problem—except me, apparently.
“Layne, just because Lola has to drop out of the competition doesn’t mean you have to.”
“But—”
“With Lola out of the competition you’re the only student representing Northwood High. I don’t need to tell you how important this competition is for the school. My charity is contributing a large portion of the scholarship funds.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course. Mummy dearest doesn’t want to look bad. It was the usual reason she pretended to care about the things that went on here.
“Besides dear,” she continued, “You already listed the competition on your college applications. If you back out now it could hurt your chances of getting into a good university. Plus, to be frank you could really use the scholarship funds.”
“I-I know and I hate to let you down b-but I’m not a singer. I only write the songs. Lola does the singing. That’s why we enter the competition together.”
“Well, it seems we just need to find you a new singing partner.”
I cleared my throat. “I think that’s my cue to leave.”
To continue reading, check out Kissing the Hero by Christina Benjamin.
About the Author
MAGGIE DALLEN IS a big city girl living in Montana. She writes romantic comedies in a range of genres including young adult, historical, contemporary, and fantasy. An unapologetic addict of all things romance, she loves to connect with fellow avid readers. Subscribe to her newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bFEVsL
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