"This is all your fault, director's pet. This is a play. I'm not falling in love with you, and I would never ever go out with you, Jack Garrison."
Jack and Shayna can't get through a rehearsal without fighting.
Cheerleader Shayna loathes perfect Ja...
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Tasha texted me before school on Monday that at least the production couldn't get any worse. That must have been what jinxed it.
Carson saw Juan and Samantha kissing in an empty English classroom during lunch. He texted Hugh, who texted Novah, who mentioned it to Jules, who forwarded it to me.
When theater rehearsal started, the five of us stood around sweating while Novah gave us the scoop. Hugh was cleaning invisible dirt off his glasses. Kai was pacing back and forth while Jules leaned against the wall coolly.
From what Novah had gathered from her contact on the cheerleading squad, this had been going on for at least a week, and no one had told Shayna. Novah wanted to tell her. Kai was hoping that it was a misunderstanding. Hugh thought we should tell her after the production for the sanity of the play.
I agreed with Novah. Shayna needed to know. If the cheerleaders weren't going to tell her, we had to. That's what friends were for.
We'd all been too scared to mention this in the group text. I hadn't seen Juan or Samantha the rest of the time we'd been at school. Jules said that Samantha was acting smug in gym class.
"What do we do?" I asked. I don't think we can keep this from Shayna. It's not fair to her not to know what Juan is doing behind her back."
"But what happens to the play?" Hugh asked. "I mean, Jack... he wouldn't make this worse, would he?"
"Probably not intentionally," Jules said.
"Maybe this will all resolve itself," Kai suggested.
Carson had texted Jack during school about the conundrum. Jack had told Carson he didn't know that Juan was cheating on Shayna and that he hadn't heard anything about it from the football team.
In Jack's opinion, we should tell Shayna in front of Juan, but Carson thought we should disregard it since Jack never thought all that clearly when it came to his costar. Not to mention that idea might get a lot of people's feelings hurt.
Jules shook their head. "It's been going on for at least a week. Shayna will be hurt no matter how she finds out."
"I can tell her. Women have to stand up for each other," Novah said. "We don't deserve to be walked all over by men."
"We should let her find out naturally," Jules said.
"Calm down," I said. "It won't help if we turn on each other."
We all froze as the theater door opened behind us, and Samantha walked in. Today, she wore an electric blue pixie cut wig with a white crop top, short jean cut-offs, fishnets, and gold high-heeled sandals.
She couldn't hear us anyway. She had on expensive rose gold plated headphones and sang along to the chorus of "Rumor Has It" by Adele. She walked past us straight into the dressing room without so much as a hello.
