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“They thought that was too boring?” he asked, as if those werehisthoughts on why I didn’t make it.

I held back a sigh. “Guess so.” I stopped outside the science building wondering if he was going to follow me in, but right when I grabbed the handle, he turned the other way. “So the party?” I called after him.

“Tomorrow at seven, Soccer Star!”

“A SEGWAY?” JENSEN ASKED. “ISN’Tthat one of those two-wheeled electric scooter things? Finley and I rented one of those over the summer. Right, Finley?”

The heads around the table swung in my direction.

When I didn’t answer, Susie said, “No, Jensen, asegue.A smooth transition from one subject to the next. You should have some in your arsenal for when you need to change topics quickly so it won’t be so jarring for the listeners. Eventually they’ll come to you more naturally, but for now, memorize a few.”

“Oh, right. Okay.” He was wearing the headphones that weren’t plugged into anything. “Which ones do you suggest?” He smiled at Ava, and I swear I watched her swoon. She’d been slowly softening to Jensen since she’d been assigned his partner on day one.

They’d been practicing for the last thirty minutes. Going over the basics, like we’d been doing all week. The rest of the class was filling out forms with terminology related to their specialties. It was hard to concentrate, though. Jensen’s voice was so loud that I kept getting distracted.

“He doesn’t know what a segue is?” Rachel, the girl sitting next to me, asked under her breath.

“Sure he does. It’s an electric scooter,” I responded sarcastically.

“You have the patience of a saint, Finley,” she said. “Not sure I could’ve stayed on the team if I were you.”

Little did she know that my rage ran deep. “I couldn’t let him take it all from me.” But really, he already had.

My attention was drawn back across the table, where Ava was looking at Jensen’s phone now. “You’ve been getting these weird messages all week?” she asked.

“Yes, I must’ve gotten added to some spam list.”

My entire body went still. He was getting messages from my bathroom ad. He was going to be embarrassed in front of the whole class. I’d get to see some karma play out right before my eyes.

Ava read a message out loud:“Sitting in the not-so-purple bathroom thinking of you.”

“I liked that one,” he said.

“Why would they say what color the bathroomwasn’t?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” he said.

Ava barked out a laugh as she read another. “I’m glad I ate dairy today so I could find you.These are funny. We could totally use these as a short feature on the podcast. We could call itMessages from the Spam Folder.Or something like that.”

“Who Likes Spam,” Jensen suggested. “On the Menu for Today: Spam.”

“That’s not half bad,” Ava said.

Karma,I wanted to scream,you’re supposed to be on my side!

Chapter

eight

“AND THEN HE SAID,ONthe menu for today: spam,”I said the next day as we pulled onto Theo’s street. Deja was driving, and she glided to a stop two doors down from his house and shifted her car into park.

“Ugh,” Lee groaned.

“And people liked that? They were eating up his Spam puns?” Max asked.

“I see what you did there,” I said.

“I couldn’t help myself.”