Chapter 2: Our Hero Does Recon

That day was the closest I came to meeting her for a month. I hauled my ass to all of the home football games to see her. It made me feel like a perverted stalker, but getting to see her was borderline compulsive for me. It was a special kind of torture to watch her cheer, especially when they did stunts.

Half the time I was trying not to drool. The other half I had to resist the urge to punch her stunt partner in the face. Whenever he put Ellery in a stunt where he touched her ass, like a chair sit, which he did every time we scored a touchdown, my blood would boil. The football team scored a lot of touchdowns.

I really had no choice if I wanted to see her though. She was elusive at school. Physically that is. Her reputation, on the other hand, stood five stories high; all you had to do was make a small reference to her and people were eager to share everything they knew. She hadn’t been kidding about people treating her as their favorite source for gossip.

Some of the stories people shared just couldn’t be true, so I waited until I had the same story from multiple sources before deciding to believe it. My favorite tidbit was that she’d been dubbed Ellery Sinful her freshman year and the nickname had stuck, though no one ever dared call her that to her face.

By the end of October I had learned that despite being talked about constantly, very few people could actually claim to know her or to have spent any time with her. She didn’t seem to socialize much outside of school, preferring to stick with a small group of close friends.

She didn’t date, or at least she hadn’t ever dated anyone at this school. Her brothers had, but not her. This had led to her being dubbed Ice Princess as her other nickname.

Aside from that group of friends the only people Ellery seemed to take any interest in according to the gossip were the varsity basketball players which made me laugh. I heard a number of stories that made it sound like she was the school’s version of a basketball groupie, but that didn’t compute with everything else I heard.

Whatever the truth of the matter was, if I couldn’t figure out a way to meet her before then, maybe I’d get to if she was hanging around after practice.

I also found out her parents were loaded and that the huge white house I passed every day on my way to school was hers. I used Coach Hendrix’s computer to bring up her schedule and realized why I couldn’t seem to find her during the school day. Her classes put her in different parts of the building than mine for every class period.

The only time we had a chance to run into each other was during lunch, but I hadn’t been able to determine where she ate, and while I was willing to do a lot to get a girl I wasn’t so desperate that I was going to wait at her locker for her. Yet. I contemplated cutting a few of my classes to lurk around hers, but decided that was way too extreme and could get me slapped with a restraining order.

As forthcoming as the guys I talked to had been, girls seemed to have an equally visceral, but opposite reaction. Everything they told me was filled with venom and jealousy. ‘She thinks she’s better than everyone else’ was the common refrain, but when I pressed for an example of this superior attitude no one could give me a legitimate one.

Perhaps the fairest assessment of her came from one of the girls on the cheerleading squad that I spent a few fun hours with prior to learning of Ellery’s existence. I waited for her after one of the last home games of the season to see if I could find out anything more about why the girls seemed to have a problem with Ellery.

“I know you’re not here to see me, Xander,” she said as she walked towards me in the parking lot. “She’s already left.”

“What are you talking about, Lisa?”

“Come off it, Xander.” She grinned at me. “You’ve fallen under Ellery’s spell just like every guy does at this school.”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked, sheepishly, as I leaned against the car.

“It will pass. Sooner or later you’ll realize that our resident princess is unattainable and then you’ll be able to move on with your life.” Lisa’s voice and face were both amused.

“What’s the deal with her, huh? Why does every girl act like she’s their worst enemy when as far as I can tell she’s never done anything to or with anyone?” I asked in confusion, gesturing wildly in the air.

Lisa sighed and dropped her bag, joining me in leaning on the hood of her car. “Ellery is so easy to hate if you don’t know her. She’s got it all: looks, money, brains. Add to that the fact that she keeps herself pretty distant from everyone and well…” She shrugged.

“It’s hard to live up to her standard, and everyone feels like they have to because of how guys respond to her. She’s actually a great person once you get the chance to know her. I admit to being shocked by that. I used to think she was stuck up, but I think she’s just shy around people she doesn’t know.”

Lisa looked at me sideways. “If you decide to go after her, just be extra careful.”

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me,” I griped.

“You should listen then. Xander, Ellery has a temper. She doesn’t show it very often, but let’s just say that bad things happen when people piss her off.”

I tried to get her to elaborate on that but Lisa refused. When I questioned why she wouldn’t tell me she said “you’d never believe me.” Then she’d pushed off her car and told me to get lost because she wanted to get ready for a date.