Page 50 of I'm Gonna Get You Back
Watch your back, Rousseau.
“Ow,” Mitchell exclaims as I thrust the phone into his chest.
“Where is he?”
I find Josh across the square. I was hoping he’d be too hungover today to come, but he’s here warming up with Nicole and the current cross-country team. He’s talking and laughing with one of the JV runners from this year. She can’t be more than fifteen.
Kenji grabs a hold of my shoulders before I can charge over there. “Nope. Principal protection, remember?”
I exhale slowly. He’s right. Josh is untouchable because he’s aWest. It’s why he did this—he knew he could get away with making an account like this in the first place to stir up shit and mess with me. But he’s playing with fire.
“Don’t stress,” Kenji says. “It only has… a few… hundred followers. I doubt anyone will even see it or believe it.”
I scoff. We all know that’s a long shot.
Mitchell steps closer to me and asks in a low voice, “Are you really failing?”
Case in point.
But I don’t respond because Clara is close and—fuck—getting all of this on camera. She looks concerned and Ihateit.
I never wanted her, of all people, to know any of this.
“Can you turn that off?” My voice is sharp. It’s not a command, but it sounds like one.
She frowns. “You said I could—”
“And now I’m saying you can’t,” I snap. My gaze is hard on hers. Dread and furious anxiety clawing at my stomach.
Her face reddens. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken to her like that, and I immediately wish I could yank the words back. But at least she lowers the camera and walks toward the course without looking back.
When Josh sees me, his gaze narrows. It’s clear from his expression that he has one objective today: to beat me.
Yeah, like I’d letthathappen.
Ready or not, I can’t just get by today. I have to run like I haven’t in weeks if I don’t want these rumors to spread more. The last thing I need is my dad finding out and asking questions about my grades or pushing harder about mymysterious absence from the course.He’s accepted my excuses for now, but I can feel the clock ticking.
Rumors become facts here. Nobody knows that better than me and Clara.
I need to put this to rest, today, on this trail—before things get out of control.
“You limping there, Rousseau?” Josh asks, loud enough that several heads swivel to watch me.
I concentrate on keeping my gait fluid as I approach the starting line.
“You still obsessed with me, West?” I ask.
He scoffs, but at least he shuts up.
“Just ignore him,” Nicole says on my other side, rolling her eyes at Josh.
I shoot her a grateful smile. It takes a minute as we wait for MayorHarper, Logan’s mom, to get in position with the starting gun. I should be talking to all the people around me who are giving me excited looks. Who came to see me. But I don’t have a fake smile in me right now.
I put my earbuds in and scroll through my phone for my favorite running playlist. Amaya is on Nicole’s other side, and though she speaks quietly, I hear when she asks, “Did you see those posts?”
I turn down my music.
Nicole nods, her eyes wide. “I’ve heard some of the same stuff about…” She trails off, and I see her bending her neck toward me. It’s about as subtle as a shove. But I’m not worried. She told me herself that she’s heard the Olympics rumors.
