Page 17 of The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

My English class was only a few doors down from the headmistress's office. Angry all over again, I stalked over to the bulletin board outside Ms. Rathbone's office, grabbed the pencil hanging down, and wrote my name in big block letters right under Jake's.

"So, you're running for president too?" I could hear the amusement in his voice.

I turned to see Jake smiling down at me, as if he found me funny. "Apparently." I dropped the pencil and went to class. He followed slowly behind me. I threw my bag on the floor and took out my notebook, determined to ignore him. I didn't watch as he slid into his seat and made a point to not study the back of his head.

The bell rang, and Ms. Aprils stood up from behind her desk. She was an extremely tiny woman, and reminded me of a small, brown mouse with her bland brown hair and the beige wraparound sweater she always wore. She took an upside-down hat off of her desk and shook it a few times. I heard rustling paper.

"For your first project of the year, you will be assigned a classic work that you will retell in a new medium. You will select your work by pulling it out of this hat." She held it slightly higher so that everyone could see it.

She walked through the aisles, stopping every so often to allow one of the students to pull a paper out. "Last year we had a puppet show. Another group did an online blog of the character's internal thoughts," she said as she shook the hat up again. "Someone else told the story through a series of tweets. I want you to use your world to tell this tale."

Ms. Aprils walked right up to me and gave me the evil eye as she held the hat out in front of me.

Please not Twain, please not Twain. She'd fail me for sure no matter what I did if I got him. I reached in and took a folded strip of paper. I opened it and read the wordsPride and Prejudiceby Jane Austen. I tried really hard not to smile. I couldn't have picked a better book. I loved Jane Austen, and Pride and Prejudice was my favorite.

She walked past Jake and stopped at the girl in front of him so she could draw out a title. "The project will be due next Friday." As soon as I picked my paper, I had been thinking I could do a manga retelling, turn it into more of an adventure story by making the Bennet sisters warriors. But I didn't know if two weeks would be enough time.

"And we're going to be working in pairs."

A small groan rumbled through the class, while some girls started whispering and planning to be paired up together. That should be somewhat better. Maybe I'd get paired with someone exceptionally smart and hard-working and we could get the project done quickly.

"I thought the easiest way to select partners was to simply have you turn around. The person behind you is your partner."

I made a strangled noise. I was last in the row. No one sat behind me. Which meant…

Jake turned around slowly and my heart actually stopped. Literally stopped. Like, I worried they'd have to take me to the emergency room to jump-start it back up again.

"You have the next ten minutes to confer briefly with your partner."

"What did we get?" Jake asked. I handed him the strip of paper. He looked at it and then back at me. "I don't really know this story, sorry."

He gave me the movie star smile, and a marching band started a beat in my stomach. Right then I didn't know who I was more mad at—me for still responding like that to him, or Jake for being a total douchebag yesterday and pretending like we were best buddies today. Jerk.

"I think that's sort of the point. That we read the book first and then decide how to retell it." To my disgust, my voice cracked while I was talking to him. I could feel my face starting to flush.

The paper fell from between his long, lean fingers on to my desk. "I'm not sure I'll have time to read a book and do the project. Isn't there like a movie version or something?"

"A couple," I nodded, looking down at the paper on my desk instead of his dark brown eyes. "I actually own the most recent one. We could watch it at my house."

"So, you know the story."

I nodded again.

"That's good."

Jake leaned toward me so that I could smell his yummy boy cologne smell. It was confusing my senses and scrambling my brain. "Any ideas?"

He was all smiles, brown twinkling eyes and shiny dark hair. I had lots and lots of ideas when it came to Jake. Unfortunately, he was talking about the project.

"I…I was thinking we could do a manga retelling. You know, like anime but in a graphic novel."

He looked slightly insulted. "I know what manga is." Then he leaned in closer. What was that cologne? I didn't know what it was, but it made me feel like one of those girls in the Axe commercials who throw the guys on the floor and start kissing them. I had to lean back in order to control myself. I also tried to single-handedly suck all of the oxygen in the room into my lungs and hold it there. If I didn't breathe, I couldn't smell him.

"And that sounds like a good idea," he said. Then he did something so unexpected I was amazed that I didn't spontaneously combust.

He reached out and took my right hand in both of his. My first thought was that my hands which had always seemed too large actually looked small next to his. My second through fiftieth thought wasJake Kingston is touching me! Jake Kingston is touching me!Actual tingles started everywhere that he touched and raced up my arm. His hands felt warm and strong. I didn't need to worry about holding my breath, because I had forgotten how to breathe.

Jake turned my hand this way and that way and smiled lazily as if he knew exactly the effect he had on me. "Since it sounds like you already know the story so well, maybe you could just draw everything up and put my name on it. No need for both of us to be tortured. Once you finish, we could grab some dinner and you could tell me what to say in our presentation. What do you think?"

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