Off Center (Varsity Girlfriends Book 2) Read online

  Off Center

  Varsity Girlfriends Book Two

  M. F. Lorson

  Copyright © 2019 by M. F. Lorson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design: Parker Premades

  Editing: Jessica Bucher

  Formatting: Kayla Tirrell

  for Ben Byrd-Jolley

  the real G.O.A.T.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Thanks for reading!

  About the Author

  Also by M. F. Lorson

  Stage Kiss

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Keep Reading!

  Varsity Girlfriends

  Mountain Creek Drive

  Chapter One

  Dear Jillie,

  I’d like to take this moment to say thank you. Thanks for picking a school in Hawaii where the time difference forces me to email you, like a caveman, if cavemen had Gmail. You know what this means right? It means you can’t interrupt me to say, “TMI,” or “Get to the point.” Nope, buckle in, you get every painful detail of your best friend’s senior year. Painful mostly because you aren’t here. I harbor resentment. Can you tell? Or was my sarcasm too discreet?

  I’ll start with the obvious. Elliot Lambert. Yesterday, Bianca got Mono. The dreaded Rosemark curse has struck again. But this time it really went all out. Her parents pulled her out of school indefinitely. Indefinitely, over the kissing disease! This left a rather important vacancy on the Gazette staff, editor-in-chief. There was a vote. I, your very own Lane Crawford was the tie-breaking vote. I tried to be discerning between Veronica ‘tabloid dreams’ O’Rourke and Elliot “dreamy eyes” Lambert, but I’ll confess I chose with my loins and not my brains. I have no regrets. With Elliot as editor, we are destined to spend more time together than when we were both lowly staffers. He will have to read each and every one of my articles. As a result, he is very likely to fall in love with me. Especially when I pitch my latest story idea, wait for it, Cheerleading: Pyramid of dreams or Pyramid scheme?

  As you know, I have three goals for this year, all of which are well underway.

  Goal 1: Procure scholarship to Northwestern University.

  Goal 2: Win the title of American High School Journalist of the Year. No explanation needed, just talent.

  Goal 3: Receive first kiss FROM Editor-in-chief Elliot Lambert (it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?)

  I know what you are thinking. What has changed? Why now, after six years of me pining and him avoiding, will this predestined affair finally exit my imagination and enter the real world? You need to be a better listener, I’ve already addressed this above. We will be working in close proximity. Also, I spent three months with one of those Beachbody coaches last summer, and I am like one artificially flavored mocha protein shake away from making Taylor Swift feel bad about herself in a bikini. I fully expect to be meeting Elliot under the mistletoe by the Gazette’s holiday party.

  As you can see I have been busy. Hopefully, this recap makes up for the first two months of the school year when I was incommunicado. In all honesty, I was still mad at you for leaving. I can’t promise to email daily, but weekly does seem like a reasonable expectation. Please continue forgetting to wear sunscreen, not making any new friends, and feeling homesick.

  See you when I see you.

  Love,

  Lane

  I know there are daughters out there that resent their mothers. Too nosy, too parenty, too much like themselves, etc. But my mom was none of those things. On Wikipedia, under “Awesome Mom” you could find her picture. No literally, you could find her picture. Every year for mother’s day I edit the entry to feature Elizabeth Crawford. Of course, it never takes more than twenty-four hours for the powers that be to correct the entry, but for that small chunk in time the world is forced to acknowledge her superior level of cool.

  And this morning was no different. The familiar scent of banana pancakes wafted up the staircase and into my bedroom. She always made something special for breakfast when it was an important day. For example, on the day I took my SATs she made fish fry. Now, fish isn’t exactly my favorite food, but she had read somewhere that fish is good for the brain. I gobbled it up even though I was pretty sure eating fish the day of a test wasn’t exactly how the good for the brain thing worked.

  Today was special because it was pitch day in the newsroom. The Gazette had been on hiatus since last spring but would resume publication at the end of the month. Pitch day was always fun, but the fact that my personal heartthrob, Elliot was in charge of assigning the beats made my desire to come up with the best feature greater than ever.

  On my dresser, the little cuckoo clock with the Swedish dancers warned me that it was 7:00 a.m. If I wanted any of those banana pancakes, I needed to haul booty downstairs quickly.

  Mom was already at the table, coffee in one hand, fork in the other. My mother always looked like she was too busy to do just one thing. The irony was as one of Inkling Media’s top-selling romance authors; she worked from home. There was never any rush for her to get anywhere, just her own self-imposed deadlines and the occasional pressure from her agent.

  “Today’s the day,” she cried, as I took my seat at the table. “Are you ready? Don’t answer that. Of course, you are ready.”

  Her enthusiasm was adorable. I tapped the tiny Moleskine notebook in my breast pocket.

  “There are no less than three killer leads in here. Any one of them should be front page material, but I am especially partial to the cheerleading article.”

  “As am I,” she noted. “As am I. And...you’ll be pitching to a particularly handsome editor this year, am I correct?”

  She knew she was right of course; there were no secrets in our house. But I played it cool anyway.

  “Is he handsome? I hadn’t noticed.” I laughed, shoving a massive bite of pancake into my mouth.

  Twenty minutes later, with breakfast conquered and my mother off to her study, I hopped on my scooter and made a beeline for Rosemark High School. My outfit was impeccable, black high-waisted skinny legged pants paired with a coral-colored tank top and three-quarter length black blazer, but my scooter-mussed hair left a lot to be desired. Fortunately, after two years of scooting to and from school, I had come up with a pretty decent solution to the problem.

  Just outside the theatre department lay a secret bathroom. Secret, because as part of last year’s remodel it had only recently been opened for student use. The majority of the female student body still didn’t realize it was available. I basically had my own private on-campus facility. I scanned the hallways to make sure no one was watching before ducking inside. After a minute or so of digging around inside my backpack, I found the travel brush I carried with me and began the process of assembling my bushy brown bird’s nest into a semi-respectable ponytail. I cocked my ear to the right at the sound of the door to the rest
room clicking open.

  In walked a girl I’d never seen before. My whole life had been spent in Marlowe Junction, all seventeen moderately boring years, and there were no students I didn’t recognize on sight. I extended my hand for a firm shake.

  “Lane Crawford, senior,” I said with confidence.

  The girl smiled shyly, her teeth painfully perfect like she’d just finished filming a whitening commercial where they let her keep all the samples.

  “Andie Mercantile, junior,” she replied.

  “New to Rosemark?” I asked, though the answer was clear.

  “Transfer student,” she answered. “How did you know?”

  I scanned her from head to toe. It was obvious she was actively trying to blend in rather than stand out. Her green school hoodie and nondescript jeans definitely weren’t intended to shout, ‘new in town.’

  “There are like a thousand kids in this school,” she said.

  I laughed. “The sign for Marlowe Junction may say population 20,000, but you’ll soon find it feels a lot smaller.”

  The reporter in me wanted to ask her a dozen more questions. Why didn’t she want to be noticed? Why had her family moved to Marlowe Junction? New Girl Hides Past in Quiet Colorado Town was the header I’d give her story.

  I would have to wait to find out Andie’s story, however, because the warning bell let us both know we were T-minus two minutes from being late to first period. With a quick glance in the mirror and a fluff of her perky blonde ponytail, Andie waved goodbye, disappearing into the hustle and bustle of Rosemark’s halls.

  Newspaper was my first class of the day, and I could not think of a better way to kick things off. Sure, we’d been meeting since school started in September, but the real work began today. Before this morning it had all been housekeeping. Learning how grades would be determined, practicing using the online submission method for turning in an article, playing with the layout software, that sort of thing. Nothing appealing, like today.

  On pitch day we arranged our desks in a giant circle rather than rows. Usually, the staffers did this as a group but when I arrived the room was already in perfect formation. It wasn’t too surprising. It was just like Elliot to come in early. Besides, he had something to prove. Bianca’s quick departure and his subsequent rise to the editorial throne were not standard Gazette practice. I’d been on staff since I was a freshman, and we had never had an editor leave before the first edition. In fact, we had never had an editor selected by student vote before either.

  Usually, our teacher, Mr. Barkley, chose an editor for the following year during the spring semester. Bianca had been our editor junior year and was supposed to stay our editor senior year for continuity. You couldn’t stop mono though, not at Rosemark. There was a long-standing history of the kissing disease wiping out the student body. Ever since the class of 2002, at least three people a year had gotten it. It was like our own version of the plague and one of the reasons I had never wasted my first kiss on someone undeserving.

  Speaking of those worthy of a liplock, at the front of the classroom Elliot stood with his back to the rest of the students. He scrawled the different sections of the paper on the whiteboard. Sports, News, Arts and Entertainment, and Science and Technology. I knew precisely which I wanted. Three out of four of the last American High School Journalist of the Year awards had gone to news reporters. Science and Technology was a snore, Arts and Entertainment could be interesting, but there wasn’t enough material to guarantee your articles would shine, and sports was just a list of scores and action shots. I gave a warm wave when I spotted Andie sitting at the back of the room and tossed my bag on the seat beside her.

  “Hi again,” I said, hopping on top of my desk.

  Mr. Barkley didn’t care how or where you sat so long as the Gazette went out twice a month, and no one complained about their grades. Andie grinned up at me before pulling out a brand spanking new spiral notebook and a fancy pen.

  It was going to be nice having another girl on staff. The paper has been sorely lacking in girl reporters, and it showed in last year’s content. Bianca was our first female editor in years. You would think that meant we had a lot of girls in the mix, but it had had an opposite effect. Because Bianca never wanted to look like she was playing favorites, she tended to assign the good articles to the boys, while the girls were left with things like, Fall Production of Hamlet Dead on Arrival (actually that may have been my favorite headline of the year, but still, it wasn’t exactly the hottest topic).

  Most of the female staffers dropped the class early on. At this point, that left Veronica and me, and calling Veronica O’Rourke a reporter was being very generous. In truth, she was just a gossip who used her press pass as a license to ask people annoying personal questions.

  The desks around us quickly filled with familiar faces. After the final bell rang, Elliot turned to face the group. The dry erase marker in his left hand trembled slightly, the only indication that he was nervous about his new role.

  “All right, guys,” he started. “You all know what day it is. Our first edition comes out in two weeks. Which means it is time to get serious about what we want our content to look like this year. So let’s hear your ideas.”

  The room remained silent.

  “The only dumb ideas are the ones you don’t share,” piped in Mr. Barkley, hardly bothering to look up from the papers he was busy grading.

  It took real self-control not to glance in Veronica’s direction. She had, after all, written an entire series of faculty profiles last year that focused almost exclusively on their dating habits. Entertaining, yes. Dumb, also yes. As if on cue Veronica was the first to raise her hand.

  “How about something on last year’s seniors?”

  “Elaborate,” said Elliot, tapping the pen against the palm of his right hand.

  “Like, who’s thriving in college and who’s living back at home.” Beside me, Andie rolled her eyes. In the bathroom, I got the impression I would like her. Here in the newsroom, I knew we were kindred spirits.

  “I think,” said Elliot delicately, “that, that could be construed as a little on the TMZ end of things.”

  Veronica shrugged, “People read TMZ.”

  “True... True…” said Elliot. As if he were actually considering Veronica’s suggestion. “I’ll add it to the pitch list, but let's see what else we can come up with.”

  All feelings of guilt I had over voting for Elliot over Veronica evaporated. I may have voted with a particular bias but seeing as how that bias kept the Gazette from sinking to tabloid levels, I felt justified in my actions. I knew my story ideas were good, but it didn’t make me any less nervous about sharing them. Especially when Elliot was pretty much the judge and juror. With my stomach a bundle of nerves, I raised my hand.

  “Lane, what have you got?”

  I pulled the moleskin notebook from my pocket and flipped to the first page. I didn’t need to look to know what three ideas I had written. I’d been thinking about them for weeks. Still, holding the little book was like a tiny security blanket. I felt more confident when it was in my hands.

  “I have three thoughts,” I began. “We could do something on Ms. McClintock, the new sophomore English teacher. She used to dance with the New York Ballet.” Elliot nodded with approval before gesturing for me to continue. “Or we could interview the kids that went on the September band trip to Los Angeles and write a piece about their competition journey this year or,” I paused before delivering my big pitch. “Or we could write about the cheerleading squad.”

  “Go on,” said Elliot, a small smile playing across his lips.

  “Well,” I started, trying my best not to let my preoccupation with his mouth prevent me from selling my story idea. “We all buy cookies and wrapping paper from them each winter, right?”

  The class nodded in affirmation.

  “And allegedly the money goes toward buying new uniforms and supporting the program but…” I paused for dramatic emphasis. “I lo
oked into it, and new uniforms are already in the budget. Whether they make the money or not, the team gets new uniforms. So where does the money really go? I have it on good authority that fundraising cash is actually just funding parties for the upperclassmen. And you’ll notice that the underclassmen are the only ones tasked with selling the stuff, yet the juniors and seniors reap all the benefits. Supposedly it’s all earned privilege, but I think the whole thing sounds like a pyramid scheme with those on the top getting the perks and those on the bottom doing the work.”

  Elliot’s previously small smile curved wide with appreciation.

  “I like it,” he said, turning to the whiteboard to add to the pitch list.

  “I was thinking we could call it Cheerleading: Pyramid of Dreams or Pyramid Scheme? I stated, holding my hands in the air as if the headline were neatly printed in bold Helvetica between them.

  The newsroom burst into laughter, further validating my pitch. I knew I was supposed to keep it cool, but a smile ripped across my face when Elliot placed an asterisk next to my story idea. Everyone knew an asterisk meant your story was going in the paper.

  “That’s a fantastic start, Lane. Really good stuff,” said Elliot, and then he winked at me. Full on flirty wink in front of the entire class. For roughly thirty seconds all I could think of was our future newspaper themed wedding. Napkins rolled like little morning papers, food all adorable plays on words.

  “Ahem,” coughed Veronica from across the room. “New girl has her hand up.”