The Quarterback Next Door novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Shoutouts
At the senior pep rally Demi confesses to Cade at the mic, he turns her down in front of the gym, and the screen calls her BET GIRL; she answers on the mic and walks out as Cade looks at Paisley.
The gym smelled like floor wax and nerves.
Every senior at Brantley High got thirty seconds at the microphone on the first Friday of the year.
That was the tradition.
You thanked your coach, or your mom, or you made a joke about the cafeteria tacos.
I had planned to make the taco joke.
Then Cade Hollander walked to the center of the floor in his number twelve jersey, and I changed my mind.
I'd known him since we were six.
He lived next door, and his bedroom window faced mine across eleven feet of side yard.
He was the best friend I had ever had, and I was tired of pretending that was all I wanted.
I turned eighteen two weeks ago, and I decided that eighteen was old enough to stop hiding.
My mom, Joanne, was asleep after a night shift at the hospital, so she wouldn't see it.
His dad, Russ, was somewhere in Nevada with a truck full of freight, so he wouldn't either.
My name was called after the band's drum line.
"Demi Eastwick, yearbook," the student council vice president announced.
Paisley Corbin said it into her own microphone with her ponytail swinging.
She ran the gym's sound and the big screen above the bleachers.
She also dated Cade until the middle of August, which she never let anyone forget.
I climbed down the bleachers with my old film camera still around my neck.
My hands were cold.
Four hundred people looked at me.
I looked at Cade.
He was standing near the cheer squad with his helmet under his arm.
He was grinning at me, the crooked grin with the chipped tooth.
I took the microphone.
"Hi," I said, and my voice cracked on it.
Somebody in the junior section laughed.
I made myself keep going.
"I had a joke about the tacos, but I'm not going to tell it."
A few people laughed for real that time.
"Cade, I've been your best friend for twelve years."
The gym got quieter.
"I like you, and not as a friend."
"I should have said it a long time ago."
"That's all."
I lowered the microphone and waited.
For about two seconds I thought I had done the bravest thing of my life.
Cade's grin was gone.
He looked at the floor, and then at the ceiling, and then at me, and his face went flat and hard.
He didn't take a microphone.
He didn't need one.
"I never liked you like that, Demi," he said.
His voice carried to the top row.
"Quit making it weird."
Nobody breathed.
Then somebody said "Ohhh" in the long way a crowd does when a fight starts.
A phone went up, and then ten, and then every phone in the gym.
My face went hot all the way to my ears.
I stood there with the microphone, and I could not feel my feet.
"Wow," a girl behind me whispered.
"She actually did it."
Above the bleachers, the big screen flickered.
It had been showing the school mascot, a cartoon bobcat.
Now it showed a screenshot of a group chat.
I recognized the blue bubbles before I read them.
Under my name, in huge white letters, it said, "I dare myself to tell Cade at the rally. Pay up, $20."
Under that, in red, someone had added, "BET GIRL PAYS UP."
The gym exploded.
People were howling and pointing and filming the screen, and filming me.
I looked up at Paisley.
She was standing by the sound table with her hand over her mouth, a perfect picture of shock.
The corner of her mouth was twitching.
That was when I got angry.
Embarrassment is hot and shaky.
Anger is steady, and my hands stopped shaking.
I lifted the microphone back to my mouth.
"I typed that message in June," I said.
The laughing dipped, because nobody expected me to talk.
"It said 'lol.' It said I should honestly dare myself, and I never did anything about it."
"It didn't say a number."
"I never bet twenty dollars in my life."
"Somebody changed it, and I'd like to know who."
Somebody near the front said, "Sure, Bet Girl."
More laughter.
I put the microphone on the floor, because I did not want to throw it.
Then I walked across the gym floor, in front of every person I knew, and out the double doors.
I made it as far as the water fountain in the hallway before my knees gave out.
I sat on the tile with my camera in my lap and breathed in for four and out for four.
The doors opened behind me, and I thought it might be Cade.
It wasn't.
It was a freshman looking for the bathroom, who saw me and quietly backed out again.
Through the glass, I could still see the gym.
I could see Cade standing alone on the painted bobcat at center court.
Everyone else was looking at me, and he was looking at Paisley.
She lifted two fingers in a tiny wave.
And he nodded, slowly.
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