Kaden | ✓

part ten ♚ démodé

I was officially, certifiably insane. I probably should've been locked up at that point.

I wasn't myself. Everyone noticed. The press had determined fast that I was in love, and there were plenty of polls in magazines trying to determine who the girl that stole my heart was. No one guessed Emmaline. But then, they couldn't have known.

Eadlyn, I could tell, guessed. I knew when she told my parents, because I often found my father studying me as if he could solve me like an equation. I couldn't ask them for help. I wasn't sure how to explain it to them. Osten, I knew, wasn't clueless. He just kept smiling like he knew something the rest of us didn't and would constantly snap an I told you so at me before running away. My family definitely knew.

So did Dustan, who, according to Emmaline, kept asking her how I was doing. James did too, because he would continuously bring her up in our phone calls without being prompted.

Her song kept haunting me. I knew it would keep up at it, too. That fragment swirled through my head, in one ear and out the other and back again.

I kept thinking about her. In her black dress. In the gray one my sister had designed. In that flannel and those beat up sneakers. She was constantly in my head, laughing and smiling and asking what are we going to do, Kaden?

If only I knew. If only I could give her a good, solid answer. If only I could come up with something.

All of my intelligence felt like a waste. I could solve a complicated error in a budget in minutes, and yet for the life of me I couldn't figure out a way that would enable me to spend the rest of my life with the girl that I was almost positive I was falling in love with.

Lunch on Friday with Esther, Autumn, and Sasha was a relief. The girls calmed me and together we went over what was going on with the three things and what they are.

Autumn shook her head and tapped her nail against the table. "No offense Kaden, but you're kind of screwed with this competition. You have a perfect girl that wants you. You. Not the crown, or the money, or you for...you know. She wants every part of you because it's you. We just need a way to get this cancelled so that you can end up with her..."

Sasha perked up. "I've got it." She said. "I'm not sure how well it'll work, but I've got an idea."

"Well?" Esther prompted. "Share it!"

"Eliminate every girl that only wants the crown or sex. All of them. Announce on the Report that the girls didn't have the intention of marrying you for love, which is what you want. Say that you'll be drawing more girls from the provinces of all of the girls sent home to make up for it, and then redraw and rig the competition. Bring in Emmaline and go from there. The important part is that only the girls know who she is, and they all know her as Jem. That's what she told them her name was."

"But she's from Angeles, and so are you." I said. "I couldn't draw her if she's from Angeles and you're still here."

She rolled her eyes. "Kaden, you really must be stupid. Send me home."

♚

"Do you think it would work?"

My father leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. Eadlyn and my mother exchanged a long look, but their conclusion seemed to be the same as mine-ask Dad.

"I think it's a brilliant idea." He said at last. "It's a good reason, and a story would be easy enough-Eadlyn and Osten both overheard several girls discussing it and you decided to put your foot down. It's solid, and nobody will believe those girls over you and your siblings."

Eadlyn smiled. "And there's something else?"

I nodded and turned to my father. I squared my shoulders. "I want my pick."