THE INTERROGATION TECHNIQUE WAS INEFFICIENT.

I realised that troubling truth while making out Ursula. Cheerleading practice started at four, when the sun was less harsh, and ran late into the evenings. Between then and the end of school, Ursula and I crept underneath the bleachers on the football field to reacquaint our mouths.

The girl was ravenous, I noted. Her hands, her lips, her teeth, it was like they had been starved for contact without me. I appreciated the enthusiasm, but sometimes I liked to kiss in a manner other than cannibal. You know, switch things up.

Perhaps we could take things slow, and then switch to neck kisses, and then tangle our tongues again. Each time I tried to slow the pace down, Ursula made a guttural moan in the back of her throat and surged forth with even more vigour, determined to pick up the tempo for the both of us.

The thing about Bishop, I was coming to realise, was that there was plenty of bitterness underneath everyone's pleasant demeanour. Housewives gossiped about each other eat the grocery store, and the manager of the local bar pushed rumours toward each customer like they were complimentary peanuts. Here, take a handful.

The same rang true in the hallways of the high school.

How could I know which smiles were forced?

Which laughs were carefully scripted and shot forth like bullets?

Ursula's hands slid to my hips, tugging my pelvis into hers. I responded politely by wrapping my arms around her trim waist, skimming the bare skin just above her skirt.

See, despite Bishop's small population, there was a sizeable amount of people in the high school. I couldn't ask every single one of them. Nor could I bank on my hater admitting to my face that they wrote the note, even if I happened to chance on them in person.

Plus, there was always the possibility a person I asked knew someone with the grudge and spread the word to them. That would alert my hater that I was on their trail, send them deep into hiding and effectively obliterate my chances of digging up the truth.

No, I couldn't be blowing my cover like that—

"Whoa," I squealed surprisedly.

Ursula's warm hands had unbuckled my jeans and slipped into my underwear while I was ruminating, grasping solidly onto little — but not little — Jake. For some reason, her smooth, dextrous fingers felt uncomfortable on the most sensitive part of me, like wriggling worms.

I gripped her wrists and stopped her from pulling my length out into the open air. Ursula peered up at me, concerned. Her hands slid out of my underwear, and I let out a small sigh of relief. "What's wrong?"

"Your practice starts in like, ten minutes," I reasoned weakly.

Sure, it caught me unawares to feel something suddenly in my pants. But when I accustomed to the feel of Ursula, should I have been turned on? Excited, at the very least?

Belatedly, it occurred to me that I never hardened when we kissed. Some eager twitches, sure, but never the raging boner I knew I was healthily capable of. Ursula pressed a soft kiss to my neck, trailing her hands up and down my chest. "Ten minutes is long enough for me."

"Um..." I gulped. "I don't know if it's long enough for me."

"Seriously?" she teased huskily. Her finger traced down to my cock, and she gave it an experimental rub. Soft. "Oh. You might be right."

I wrapped my arms around her and sighed. "You know, we should do other stuff when we meet up."

"Like what?" she purred suggestively, squeezing my ass.

I blurted desperately, "Like talk. Maybe."

She arched an eyebrow. "About what?"

No answer came to me. I was not great about talking about my feelings, but I knew I had this weird one whenever I was around Ursula. She was smoking hot, confident, relaxed, but neither my body nor brain was reacting to her the way I thought it would when I accepted her offer to date.

"School," I suggested weakly. "Or life."

"You hate school," Ursula smirked mirthfully. "And you have no idea what you're doing with life."

"Thanks for the reminder," I quipped wryly. "But yeah, exactly, we could talk about what we dislike about school, or about our uncertainties about life."

"That sounds dull and depressing." I agreed with her. What was I asking for again?

"Yeah," I nodded, giving up. "Well, good luck with practice."

"Thanks, babe. Lunchtime tomorrow?" she asked, picking up her duffle bag. A watery smile tugged my lips up.

"Yep."

Round umpteen.

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My new tactic for finding the writer of the note was handwriting comparison.

It was a menial and laborious tactic, but so was asking around the entire junior and senior grades. At least this way, I could keep the fact that I was looking for my secret detractor under wraps.

All I had to do was check one page of each person's handwriting. It would confirm right then and there if they were my hater. No worrying about being lied to, or compromising my mission, necessary.

I put my plan into action in Chemistry the next day. It was a girl-heavy class, full of nerds, and everyone always had their workbook open on the counters to take notes. The perfect hunting ground.

Today we were titrating. The teacher split us into pairs, but there was one poor remainder in the class. I begged the teacher to let me, Jamie, and Kay form a trio, promising to be on my A-game. I did not mention which game I would be concentrating on, however.

In pairs, one person had to be the titrator for the whole lesson — one of the accuracy-improving techniques we were taught — and the other had to prepare the reactants and write down the amounts and concentrations we were using.

Jamie was the titrator today, even though I had an innate knack for getting the amounts just right, because I needed to be able to float from station to station. After donning safety glasses, Kay and I went to get bottles of sodium hydroxide, phenolphthalein, etc...

A small line had formed at the equipment trolley, so we dutifully slipped into place behind Nova. When she bent over to get sodium hydroxide from the bottom shelf, Kay let out a slow whistle. My head whipped to his, stunned.

Oh, man. Did he have a death wish? Nova Sanchez was freaking terrifying.

Nova was irritable, arrogant, and ruthless with her words. She once brought a football player to tears at a house party by saying he could never make his girlfriend orgasm, and that's why she left him for one of the supposed nerds of the school. At least we know what we're doing with our hands, you bumbling, useless slab of meat.

Admittedly, she and the football player were both very drunk. Nova was an angry drunk, and the guy in question was a sad drunk. Merely bad luck that they met. But after that, Kay still stopped inviting her round to his house when other people were there.

Which brought us to why Nova was ever there in the first place.

Now, Kay was a fuckboy. Complete manwhore, which I said with affection. Totally coveted, he attracted chicks like he was a high-powered magnet. Sometime last year, he'd taken to hanging around Nova and he... changed. Happier, but also sadder. Calmer, but also angrier. Clear signs of love, though I'd thankfully never been bitten by the bug myself.

Only the people extremely close to Kay ever knew about those weird few months — which meant just Jamie and me — but even we didn't know what happened after. Why Nova was uninvited from all future house parties. Why they now hated each other. Why Kay refused to acknowledge that they'd ever been friends.

I mean, if I'd ever made the mistake of being friends with Nova freaking Sanchez, I would pretend it never happened either. She was small but angry, like a chihuahua, and everyone knew chihuahuas were the bane of the animal kingdom.

"If you were staring at my ass, Killian, I will castrate you," she warned dangerously.

"I wasn't," he insisted cockily, clearly looking to piss her off. "Just admiring those bottles of sodium hydroxide."

Nova turned to me with a withering glare. I swore she might tip acid on me if I dared defy her. She arched an eyebrow. "He lying?"

"Yeah," I answered truthfully.

Kay looked at me with betrayal shining in his eyes, to which I shrugged helplessly. I didn't want bodily harm to befall me. "What the fuck, dude— Ow." Nova slammed her heel into his foot.

See? Bodily harm.

"Pig," she muttered, before stalking off to her workstation, where Avalon was adjusting the titration nozzle.

"You take her virginity or something?" I wondered.

"I wish," Kay grumbled, gazing after Nova with that happy-sad-calm-angry combo I mentioned earlier. "She hates me."

I picked up the bottles we needed and headed back to Jamie. "Why?"

"It's nothing. It's old news, anyway. She asked me for something that would interfere with football, and I couldn't compromise that."

I nodded understandingly.

Then it hit me.

Girl. Smart. Clearly pissed off with K-Ferg, the football golden child of Bishop. Kay said that he'd practically chosen football over her, which would have stung. What if whatever bad blood between them had spilt over Jamie and me, simply by merit of being Kay's closest friends?

It would explain everything.

Now I just had to check her handwriting, and the puzzle would click into place. I could smooth over whatever grievances Nova had against me, point her wrath squarely in the direction of Kay only, and everything would be sunshine and roses. I worked for half an hour to placate the teacher, proving that I was truly dedicated to my schoolwork this year.

Then I ditched Kay and Jamie and made a beeline for Nova's station.

If it wasn't her, I'd still start with her and then comb through all the others. But it was totally her. I felt it in my gut. Nova observed Avalon calmly as she dripped the base solution into the test beaker, which she kept swirling with her left hand, eyes squinting through the safety glasses. Until the titration finished, Nova wouldn't need to write any amounts down.

"Hey, ladies," I smiled winningly, sneakily sliding Nova's workbook over to me. She wasn't fooled.

"If you don't get your hand off my book in the next three seconds," Nova warned, "I will stab you with my pen."

I quickly opened her book and flipped through the pages, innocently taking my hands off when she turned to look at me. "It's you, isn't it?"

"Who's me?" Nova asked dryly.

I lowered my voice. "My secret detractor. You think my hair's mercurial."

"Ah, crap," Avalon swore, letting a large trickle of sodium hydroxide into the test beaker. The mixture tinted a deep magenta, and she gave Nova an amused, apologetic look. "Overshot. I'll do another one."

Nova smiled warmly — how could she be so kind around her friends, but a total ice queen around everyone else? — and shrugged.

Then she turned to me, leaning close. "I'm your public detractor, Tanner. Barely a month into junior year and you're disrupting all your classes again." Her upper lip curled in disgust. "You're just doing that thing where you avoid studying by all means, which I don't give a shit about, but don't use me as a procrastination tool."

I stared pleadingly at Avalon, whose blue eyes were twinkling with hilarity at the telling off I just received, and not even from a teacher!

Nova glanced back over her shoulder. "Oh, and mercurial isn't a great adjective to describe hair. Hair's inanimate. Wrong connotation." As if that didn't evidence enough, I dropped my gaze to an old page full of her notes on electron shells.

Nova's handwriting was not a match. Hers was thin and surprisingly messy, while my hater had neat, smoothly-rounded cursive.

"Huh," I frowned.

Then there was that thing about Nova being a public detractor rather than a secret one, which was incredibly characteristic of her. Any problems she had with me, rather than write them down and throw them away, she'd spit in my face. Which was what she did just now, in a way.

So that meant she wasn't the girl I was looking for—

"Ow!" I exclaimed when the nib of her ballpoint pen came down on my hand. I yelped out of surprise more than actual pain, but I still removed my hand from her workbook and clutched it tightly to my chest anyway. One could never be too safe around Nova.

"I warned you," she said unapologetically. Her back turned to me and she started chatting animatedly with Avalon, effectively ending the conversation.

For the rest of the period, I drifted around the rest of the students in my Chemistry class, but no-one's handwriting was a match either. I was becoming more and more confused, while my hater was probably having a good old laugh at me.

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I broke up with Ursula three days later.

Unlike Lacey, she didn't take it well. She slapped me behind the cafeteria and stalked away, her long braid swishing behind her. I didn't regret doing it though.

Lacey and I didn't necessarily get on like a house on fire; more like leftover embers and newspaper. Lots of smoke, but no flames. And from that ten-second encounter with Heloise, I knew I had it in me to get aroused in a rapid timeframe. So the non-existent conversation, sparkless kissing and complete nonchalance I had with Ursula were definite omens of doom.

Our pashing sessions had taken a sharp change in direction, angling more towards third base than first base, almost always ending with me pulling her hands away from places I didn't feel comfortable being groped. I think she thought we would finally do the deed at us twins' seventeenth birthday bash, which was happening this weekend.

But that was not my plan, nor was it ever on the cards — which I realised with extreme shock, because Ursula was objectively one of the hottest, funniest and most sought-after girls in the school — so I decided not to lead her on any further.

"Are you insane?" Jamie yelled in my face when I told him. "Did you get a concussion? Do we need to take you to the doctor's office?"

It was during one of the morning training sessions we had in the weights room. I was lying down, doing bench presses. Jamie was supposed to be spotting me, but currently, he was staring down at me with a mixture of shock and disappointment. As I said, my ex was objectively coveted.

"I'm sane and healthy," I told him, once I hooked the barbell back into the rack.

"She would have totally put out this weekend. You'd have gotten birthday sex with Ursula freaking Ahmad! Are you sure you don't require medical attention?"

I nodded.

"Then why? Ursula is a goddess—" Jamie dropped his voice when he realised how worked up he was getting. "Though not as good as Franny, whom I love," he added carefully, glancing around the room to see if any of our teammates had heard.

As much as I wished the guys would be immune to romantic drama, some of them might have used Jamie's platonic admiration of Ursula against him. Ursula, Lacey, Francesca — all the cheerleaders were hot and in short supply.

"What were you thinking?"

I did another bench press before answering. "I was thinking, I should feel something."

"Oh," Jamie exclaimed, understanding dawning on his face. "She didn't let you feel her up?"

"No, she did," I chuckled. What was I trying to say? "I meant, feel emotional things. Emotions." That's what they're called. "Yeah."

Jamie huffed. "What emotion do you need other than pure joy and gratitude that you got to smash her on our birthday? Life doesn't get better than that. You were going to peak this weekend."

"Set higher standards for yourself, bro," I jabbed instinctively. "That's what I did. And, strangely, I don't really regret it."

That was true. I thought I ought to spend at least one night tossing and turning about my decision, wondering if I'd just shot myself in the foot and would regret it ardently later, but I'd slept like a baby last night.

"What's happening to you?" Jamie asked disappointedly.

I sighed heavily, half out of physical exertion, half mental. "I don't know."

I really didn't.

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A / N :

Please enjoy the meme I made. Sums up this chapter perfectly.