I Accidentally Sexted My Enemy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Mic
At the pep rally Brock reads Anja's love note into the gym mic, and that night her anonymous message goes to the wrong captain.
Brock Sandvik tapped the gym microphone twice and grinned at nine hundred people.
"I got a note in my locker this week," he said.
My stomach turned over.
I sat in the fourth row of the bleachers with a notebook on my knee.
I was the editor of the school paper, and I always covered the pep rally.
I had folded that note into quarters on Tuesday.
I had rewritten it half a dozen times.
Brock unfolded it slowly, so the whole gym could watch him do it.
"Dear Brock," he read, and a few boys whooped. "I have liked you since freshman year, and I think you should know."
My face went hot from my collar to my hairline.
Dottie grabbed my wrist beside me. "Anja, we are leaving," she whispered.
"I can't move," I said.
"Then I'll carry you."
Up on the floor, Brock kept reading in a soft, silly voice.
"You hold the door for people. You remember names. I think you are the kindest person in this school."
He lowered the paper and looked out at the crowd.
"Aw," he said. "That's sweet. But I'm taken."
Then he held out his hand, and Kenzie Finnegan ran down from the cheer line and kissed him in front of everyone.
The gym exploded.
People were cheering, and somebody was holding a phone up to film it, and Kenzie was laughing against his mouth.
Then Kenzie took the microphone.
"Whoever you are," she said sweetly, "you have great handwriting. But he's mine."
Everybody laughed.
Nobody knew it was my handwriting.
Not yet.
Across the floor, on the team bench, Rhett Kolstad was the only person in the building not laughing.
He sat with his elbows on his knees and his jaw set, looking straight at Brock.
Then, for one second, he looked up into the bleachers and found me.
I knew that look.
Rhett was the hockey captain, and he had been glaring at me since January.
I picked up my notebook and walked out of the gym with my head down.
Dottie followed me into the parking lot, where the cold October wind off Lake Superior hit us both in the face.
"I'm going to key his truck," Dottie said.
"He doesn't have a truck. His dad has the dealership."
"Then I'll key a Ford."
I laughed once, and it came out wrong, and she hugged me hard in the middle of the lot.
That night I sat on my bed with my laptop closed and my phone in my hand.
My mother was on shift at the hospital, so the house was silent except for the radiator.
I kept hearing Brock's voice saying "Aw."
I kept hearing the laughing.
I was not a girl who did reckless things.
I was a girl who proofread her own text messages before sending them.
But I was tired of being the only person in that gym who had felt anything real.
So I downloaded a free app that gives you a fake phone number for thirty days.
I put on my dark green robe, the one with the soft collar that always slid off one shoulder.
I stood in front of my mirror and held the phone up so my face was cut off at the lip.
My hair was down.
The robe had slipped, and one bare shoulder showed, and that was all.
It was a teasing picture, and it was not a lot.
It was enough to make a boy wonder, and I wanted Brock Sandvik to wonder for a very long time.
I typed with shaking thumbs.
"Brock. You read my note out loud. Here's what you didn't get."
I looked at it.
Then I added, "I don't blush. I proofread."
That was the line from my column, and I didn't think about why that was a bad idea.
I scrolled my contacts for his name.
I had saved every player under "Hockey" for the sports page, so Sandvik and Kolstad sat right next to each other.
The room was dark, and my eyes were stinging.
I tapped the wrong one.
I pressed send before I could stop myself.
The little word "Delivered" appeared under the picture.
I put the phone face down and lay back, and my heart was going so hard I could feel it in my ears.
Then the screen lit up the ceiling.
I turned it over.
The reply was from the number I had just texted.
"This isn't Brock."
A second message followed before I could breathe.
"This is Rhett Kolstad. Who is this?"
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