Chapter Three

Zoey’s Pov

Apparently, the universe had a strange sense of humor. First, it let me embarrass the captain of Ridgeview Academy in front of half the town, and then it decided the perfect punishment was making him my partner for the biggest event of the year.

I found out about the second part before I’d even made it to my locker.

By the time I walked through the doors of Evergreen High the morning after the pep rally, my phone had already buzzed itself into a small crisis. Forty-three notifications. Group chats I hadn’t opened in months had suddenly come back to life, every single one filled with the same ten-second clip of me telling Ryan Walker that hockey wasn’t the only thing worth cheering for.

Someone had set it to dramatic orchestra music. Someone else had turned it into a meme with the caption “Evergreen’s Final Boss.” My personal favorite was the one where they’d zoomed in on Ryan’s face at the exact second he ran out of things to say, freezing the frame like a trophy.

“You’re famous,” Ava announced, appearing at my locker with the kind of grin that meant trouble. “Like, actually famous. Ridgeview-hates-you famous.”

“Wonderful.”

“I’m serious, Zoey. There’s a whole page dedicated to ranking your comebacks.”

“There’s a page?”

“There’s a page.” She held up her phone, scrolling through screenshots faster than I could read them. “Number one is ’so does education.’ People are putting it on shirts.”

I closed my locker a little harder than necessary. “I didn’t ask for a fan club.”

“You didn’t have to. You just have to be right in front of a live microphone.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “For what it’s worth, I thought you were amazing.”

“Tell that to whoever keyed ’go home, Wolves’ into the science hallway.”

Ava winced. “Okay, that part’s less amazing.”

That was the part nobody warned you about. Winning an argument felt good for exactly as long as it took the video to load a second time. After that, it stopped being about hockey versus everything else and started being about which school hated the other one more that week. I hadn’t meant to hand anyone a reason to start scratching insults into lockers. I’d just meant to say something true.

Mrs. Dawson found me before first period, a folded newspaper tucked under one arm like a weapon she hadn’t decided whether to use yet. “My office. 

Now.”

I followed her down the hall, already rehearsing my defense. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t interested in a defense.

“Sit,” she said, closing the door behind us. She didn’t sit herself. She never did when she was about to say something I wouldn’t like.

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“Do you?”

“That I went off script.”

“You went off script the moment you decided to have an opinion, Zoey. That’s not new.” She unfolded the newspaper and set it on the desk between us. The headline read STUDENT RIVALRY REACHES BREAKING POINT, and underneath it, a photo of me and Ryan mid-argument, both of us leaning toward our microphones like we were about to go to war. “What’s new is that half the town has decided you started this one.”

I looked down at the photo, at my own face frozen in the middle of a sentence I still believed every word of. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

“I know.” She finally sat, folding her hands on the desk the way she did before delivering something I wouldn’t want to hear. “Being right has never been your problem. It’s what you do with people once you’ve proven it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you have a habit of winning the argument and losing the room.” Her eyes softened, just slightly. “You’ve spent years convincing people you don’t need them to like you. I’m only asking whether that’s actually true, or whether it’s just easier to believe.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Which, for once, I hated more than losing.

The rest of the morning passed in the usual blur of classes and hallway whispers, except every single conversation seemed to bend back toward the same topic no matter where it started. By lunch, I’d stopped bothering to correct people who assumed I’d planned the whole thing. Let them think what they wanted. I had a debate scholarship to think about, and Ryan Walker’s bruised ego wasn’t going to cost me any part of it.

That confidence lasted exactly until a volunteer from the front office found me at my lunch table and asked me to come to the conference room. Immediately.

I knew something was wrong the second I saw who else was already sitting inside.

Ryan looked exactly as thrilled to be there as I felt, arms crossed, jaw tight, like he’d been called to the principal’s office for a crime he hadn’t decided whether to confess to. Both principals stood at the head of the table, wearing the specific kind of pleasant, unshakable smile adults use right before they announce something you’re going to hate.

“This is a joke, right?” I asked, because someone had to.

It wasn’t a joke. By the time I walked out of that room twenty minutes later, I had a folder with my name on it, a schedule that had somehow already been rearranged around my debate tournaments without my permission, and a co-chair I hadn’t spoken a single friendly word to in four years of secretly watching him win things I told myself I didn’t care about.

Ava was waiting outside like she’d sensed disaster from three hallways away. “Well?”

I handed her the folder without a word.

She scanned it, then looked up at me with an expression somewhere between horror and delight. “You’re co-chairing the Winter Festival. With Ryan Walker.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s funny.”

“Zoey. It’s extremely funny.”

I would have argued, except Principal Ellis chose that exact moment to step back out into the hallway, already talking before either of us could brace for it. “One more thing,” he said, glancing between me and Ryan, who’d appeared beside me looking equally cornered. “Several of our festival sponsors have expressed concern after yesterday’s headlines. We’d like the two of you to visit them this afternoon. Together. Reassure them the schools can still work as one.”

“Today,” I repeated.

“Today.” He was already walking away before I could tell him exactly how unreasonable that was. “Consider it your first official duty as co-chairs.”

Ryan exhaled slowly beside me, running a hand through his hair. “So we’re doing this.”

“Looks like it.”

“Right now.”

“Apparently.”

Neither of us moved for a second, the two of us standing in a hallway that suddenly felt smaller than it had five minutes ago.

“After you,” Ryan finally said, nodding toward the front doors, and for the first time since the pep rally, there wasn’t a trace of that easy, practiced smile on his face. Just the same wary curiosity I was pretty sure was written all over mine.