by Niki Burnham
I’m not sure if he’s being smart—because it’s a huge advantage in Senior Assassin if your targets don’t know you’re after them—or sneaky, creating an excuse to have me talk to Peyton.
“Don’t say a word to her about Molly or your stupid fake girlfriend idea. I mean it, Josh.”
“You’re an idiot. It’s a great plan.” At my glare, he lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Whatever. I won’t say a word. But for the record? Peyton could keep you from having to hide out your entire senior year.”
I thwack him in the back of the head as we push up from the stairs. “Get this through your skull: I refuse to hide out from anyone or lie about anything. Not my style.”
“Not even for Senior Assassin?” he asks, jogging a few steps backward on the front walk to keep me from smacking him again.
I grin. “That’s different.”
Chapter Two | Peyton
My brother is certifiable.
“I don’t care if I’m not using it right now, you’re not taking my car,” I tell him. “Especially not for a so-called reconnaissance mission.”
My AP Chemistry homework is spread across the kitchen table, which should be a clue that I’m not in the mood to be bothered. But no. Josh is camped out in the chair next to me with his legs and feet taking up every inch of available space under the table. Worse, his elbows are on top of the lab notes I need to finish my report. The sooner he realizes he’s not getting my car and disappears, the sooner I can rescue my notes without having to yank them out from under him.
Unfortunately, Josh being Josh, if he suspects this he’ll never leave.
I hate confrontation almost as much as I hate the idea of my car being subjected to the horrors of guy-in-car abuse while Josh and his best friend, Connor Strabinowski, go stalking. How Josh and I came from the same DNA pool, I’ll never know. He lives to provoke.
“Come on, Peyton,” Josh begs. “Shooting doesn’t start until midnight, so your car will be perfectly safe. I promise. This is important.”
“Give me a break.” I look up from my textbook to meet his oh-so-phony pleading gaze. “You and Connor are going to take my freshly-vacuumed, brand-new car straight to Cumby’s, where you’ll buy monster-sized Cherry Chill Zones which you’ll inevitably drip on the front seats. Then you’ll stop at the McDonald’s drive-thru, which means I’ll have to spend tomorrow morning wiping your greasy fingerprints off my steering wheel.”
“I will not—”
I hold up my index finger to stop him. “After that, you’ll go cruising through Grayson’s neighborhood and you’ll be so busy staring at the front of his house trying to find a hiding place that you’ll hit his mailbox. No, thanks.”
“Harsh!” Josh places a hand over his heart in mock anguish as if this is the first time he’s heard me say anything like this. “You know I’ve never had an accident.”
“Excuse me, but I believe the shopping cart corral in the Target parking lot has a sizable dent with your name on it.” Please. I may not be as naturally smart as Josh, but my recall is excellent.
“It wasn’t in your car. And I still think it was one of your friends who left those red spots on your passenger seat. It definitely wasn’t me, because I would’ve—” Even as he argues, I shake my head. I hate taking such a hard line, especially in front of Connor, but sometimes that’s what’s required with Josh. If I act like I might cave, even for an instant, he’ll be doubly persistent.
“You could always drive,” Connor says to me, his voice far more controlled than Josh’s. “Please? We have to eliminate Grayson and Drew early, before they hit their own targets and start watching their backs. If we take Josh’s car and they spot us, we’re toast. They’ll know we drew them as our first-round assignment and they’ll be ready for us.”
It’s easy to say no to my brother. He always has girls willing to say yes to anything he asks, though I can’t fathom why. He’s a typical smelly older brother. Connor’s tougher. Unlike Josh, he eats with his mouth closed. Thanks to soccer and basketball—varsity, both teams—he’s in phenomenal shape. He wears clothes that are vaguely stylish and has soft brown eyes with long lashes that are more convincing than they should be. Like right now, when he’s smiling across the table at me. I bet he even knows he’s showing off his dimples.
Thank God I’m not one of those stupid, needy girls who fall for surface dressing.
I square my focus on Connor. “I’m not trying to be mean, but this lab report’s due tomorrow and I haven’t even started my Hamlet paper—”
“How am I going to pay you back the two hundred bucks I owe you if I don’t finish in the top three of Senior Assassin?” Josh asks.
“I can help you with Hamlet,” Connor offers. “I got an A on it last year.”
I look from Connor, who is sincere, to my brother, who is not. “You’re paying me back no matter what.”
“I know, I know. But it’ll be faster with Senior Assassin money. If you’re driving, you won’t have to worry about dings or about food getting all over your car. Plus you’ll be good cover for us.”
Since Josh will attempt to reason me to death, I address Connor. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t need help with Hamlet. I know what I’m going to write. I just need time to actually write it without you guys bothering me. Besides, I haven’t had my license long enough to drive you two. Gotta have someone over twenty-one with me if a non-family member is in the car, remember?” I wave my hands in the universal signal for vamoose.
Josh doesn’t move. He’s waiting for me to try to pull my chemistry notes out from under him. I inhale and pretend to read, wondering how much of my time they’ll waste before they leave me alone.
My stomach picks this precise moment to gurgle loud enough for both of them to hear it.
“I’ll bring back dinner for you if we can use your car,” Connor promises. “My treat.”
At the same time, Josh picks up my lab notes and starts critiquing them. Aloud.
He and our older sister, Tessa, are total brains. They can slide into any exam and ace it with minimal study time. But me? I lack that miracle gene. I have to work my tail off for every single point. Ironic, since I’m the one who’s most concerned with grades. Every A I notch raises my odds of getting into MIT, which is my dream school.
Not that I’d tell Josh my goal. He’d only use it as ammo.
“Fine, buy me dinner,” I mutter when Josh’s critique goes past teasing and into torture. I slam my chem book shut and steal the notes back from Josh so he’ll shut his mouth. “But I’m coming with you and I need to be back by five-thirty. Deal?”
“Deal,” Connor and Josh say together, practically crashing into each other in a rush toward the garage. As I locate my sandals on the shoe rack beside the door, Connor drops to the concrete floor to retrieve a wayward basketball from under the front of my car. Josh leaps over him, then races to the driver’s seat. I wonder—not for the first time—how these two ended up best friends.
I raise an eyebrow at Josh. “You mock my homework, then make Connor crawl for your basketball and think you’re going to drive? Huh-uh. You ride in the back.”
Josh looks at Connor and shrugs, then opens the rear door without an argument as I hand my car keys to Connor. When I stow my purse between the two front seats, I catch sight of Josh waggling his eyebrows at Connor as if the seating arrangement is part of some grand plan. Connor ignores him.
I bite back a sigh as Connor shifts into reverse. I have the worst feeling that my well-planned evening is about to make a similar shift.
Chapter Three | Connor
“I’m sorry, Peyton,” I say for about the millionth time. She’s following me up and down Aisle 14 in Lowe’s, helping me search for the rubber tubing the clerk insisted was here. To save time, Josh took off in the opposite direction to find a plastic funnel. I hope he’s having better luck.
“It’s all right.” Peyton’s words are muffled as she stretches for a cardboard box on one of the higher shelves.
“I’ll never admit this to Josh, but I’d love to see you guys win. As long as I get my homework done, I’m okay helping out.”
“Thanks.”
She shrugs and glances at me. “It also means Josh won’t have an excuse not to pay me back, so I won’t have to keep bugging him for my money.”
“Good point.” I try to flag down an employee, but a customer at the far end of the aisle nabs him first.
“Wish I knew what we were looking for.” Peyton scans the label on the front of the box, then sets it back on the shelf. “You’d think tubing would be on a roll or hanging from a hook so it could be cut to length, but I don’t see anything like that.”
“I have no idea.” I’m not a rubber tubing expert. “If we can’t find any here, we could run across the street to Sports Authority and buy a resistance tube. You know, the kind people use for workouts. That might work.”
Our recon mission made it clear we’d have to hit Grayson long distance. Not only did we confirm that it’d be impossible to hide near Grayson’s driveway, we discovered that he’s already watching his back. His younger brother, a sophomore, was staked out in the front yard checking each and every car that passed to see if anyone was spying on their house. The good news: With Peyton in the passenger seat and Josh ducked down in the back, he didn’t pay much attention to us. The bad news: The situation meant buying equipment to build a balloon launcher ASAP since Josh and I broke the one I’d inherited from my older brother while taking practice shots.
On the way to Lowe’s, we circled by Drew’s and saw that I could use a squirt gun, no problem. A massive oak tree stands in the perfect spot at the side of his house, within easy shooting distance of both his garage and front door. The plan is for me to walk the mile to his place at four a.m., cutting through the woods between our houses to sneak into his yard from behind, climb the oak, then wait. That way, even if Drew leaves extra early, I’ll already be in position. Simultaneous hits will prevent Grayson and Drew from warning each other.
“Found it!”
I spin to see Peyton crouching down and reaching for something on the bottom shelf. Her shirt is hiked up in back to reveal a thin strip of skin that’s still tan from the summer. As I walk toward her, she bends further for a better look at the shelf’s contents, causing the front of her shirt to swing down enough in the front to give me a two-second peek at a flat, equally tan stomach before she yanks the fabric back in place. As much time as she spends sitting on her butt studying, it surprises me to see that she doesn’t have a bit of muffin top.
In fact, her bod is head to toe smokin’. Seriously smokin’.
Funny how, after all these years hanging out at the Lindors’ house, I haven’t noticed before. Has Peyton never been in a swimsuit near me? Or was I so busy horsing around whenever Josh and I went to the town pool that I didn’t enjoy the view?
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have Peyton as a fake girlfriend. I could certainly do worse.
I wipe my palm over my face, squelching the thought as soon as it enters my brain. The fake girlfriend idea has to be one of Josh’s craziest, not to mention the fact that Peyton is Josh’s sister. Zero possibility of a hook-up without Josh breaking my jaw.
“You find it?” I ask.
“I think so,” Peyton loops her blond hair behind her ears, then ducks her head between the shelves and reaches in. A few feet back, there’s a thick, industrial-sized spool wound with dark yellow tubing.
“No wonder we couldn’t see it.” I squat beside her to help. The shelf is an open metal grid, making it difficult to slide the spool out without the screws on its underside catching in shelf’s crossbars. We grab the sides of the spool, pulling it forward. I can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous we must look with our rear ends sticking into the aisle.
“Someone’s going to hit me with their shopping cart,” Peyton says as we heave the tubing a few inches closer to the front of the shelf. She looks around the back of the spool at me. “How would I explain that injury to emergency room docs?”
“I’m more worried about Josh,” I tell her. “If he sees my butt hanging out and realizes I can’t stop him—”
“He’d have a hard time deciding which of us to kick first.” She feigns a look of panic before sliding her gaze toward the aisle. “We should move faster. If he comes looking for us, the temptation will be too much for him.”
Finally, we maneuver the heavy spool to the front of the shelf. While I unhook my shirt from where it’s caught in the metal grid, Peyton wiggles her way out, then sits back on her heels.
“Peyton? What in the world are you doing down there?”
I nearly bang my head at the unexpected voice. I see feet behind me—two sets, both in jeweled sandals with painted toenails—but can’t tell who the girls are until I scoot backward into the aisle.
“Um, hello,” the taller one says to me. They’re both juniors whose names I don’t know, though I think the one who said hello is the twin sister of a guy on my soccer team. They’re looking at Peyton and me as if they’ve stumbled upon Eastwood High’s juiciest piece of gossip.
“Hi,” I say. Lame.
“Hey, Kerry, hey, Emily. How are you guys?” Peyton greets them with the same cheer as if she’d met them for a movie or game of putt-putt.
“Uh, we’re fine. So—?” The tall one, who I take to be Kerry, makes a swirly hand motion toward the bottom shelf and raises one dark eyebrow.
“Stupid errand for my mom,” Peyton says, a convincing level of irritation in her voice. “She’s packing a bunch of cartons and wanted me to find one of those supersize rolls of bubble wrap. The guy at the help desk said it was on a bottom shelf in this aisle, but I can’t find it. I figured it might be down here, but…” She shrugs. She’s babbling, but I don’t think the two girls have noticed. They’re still trying to figure out why I was crawling into the Lowe’s shelves with Peyton. They probably heard us laughing down there.
Peyton turns to me, her blue eyes wide and apologetic, as if she’s embarrassed to have bothered me. “Thanks for stopping to help me move that thing out of the way so I could look for the bubble wrap. It was really nice of you, but the guy obviously sent me to the wrong aisle.”
“Yeah, you might want to find another person to ask. Good luck.” Taking the hint, I brush myself off and tell her I’ll see her around, give the girls a half-hearted wave, then go hunting for Josh. I spot him paying for the funnel and signal him to meet me at the car.
Once he’s outside, he waggles his cell phone at me, then points across the lot. “Pey says, ‘Subway in five, clerk cutting tubing.’ What happened?”
I explain as Josh and I cross the parking lot and enter the restaurant. While he’s placing his order, I receive a text from Molly asking if I had a good day and wishing me good luck in Senior Assassin. A second text arrives while I’m filling my soda cup, adding, but u know im gonna win!
When Josh asks an employee for extra napkins, I turn my back to him and discreetly type a quick, we’ll see…good luck. Hopefully, Molly will view it as more friendly than flirtatious. I turn off the phone and slide it into my pocket as Peyton sails in through the glass door.
“Sorry about abandoning you, Peyton,” I say as she slides into the booth next to me and eyes the food I bought for her. Josh swore Peyton’s fave order is a footlong Veggie Delite with extra pickles on wheat bread, Baked Lays, and a Diet Coke. It looks bland to me—I’m all about the Chicken Teriyaki—but I decided that since Josh and I stuck her at Lowe’s buying our tubing, the least I could do was have her order ready when she arrived. “I couldn’t figure out why you were telling that bubble wrap story, but—”
“I didn’t want anyone putting two and two together.” Peyton lifts the top of the sub, inspects the contents, then smiles her thanks. “Grayson’s brother is tight with Kerry and Emily; he may even be going out with Kerry. If the either girl mentions seeing me buying rubber tubing with Connor right after Grayson’s brother saw me driving by his house, they mi
ght realize that you and Connor have Grayson as your target. And that you’re building a balloon launcher. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out where you’d need to set up if you wanted to attack him anywhere near his house.”
I can’t believe she thought of that on the fly. “I’m impressed.”
“No kidding. Thanks,” Josh says. He’s looking past Peyton, out the large glass windows plastered with posters of Subway’s bread selections, to study the comings and goings in the parking lot. Last year, Josh and I mocked the seniors and their paranoia. Now we completely get it. With so much money on the line, you can’t be too careful. At this very moment, anyone could be following us, studying our routines to map out the best places to hide and make a hit on us.
“See anything?” I ask, resting my arm across the back of the booth so I can turn and look over my shoulder without being obvious.