“Please,” Liam said. “The team went undefeated last year. I don’t want to start our season out with a loss. They’ll blame all the new players. And I think only you can fix it.”

What had he said before? That Axel wasn’t handing the ball off to Jacob at all? I exhaled slowly. Yeah, that seemed like it was probably my fault. I couldn’t believe Axel was being so petty about our deal. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thanks.”

My phone buzzed again. I looked down at the kiss thief’s next text: “I came prepared. I figured Sophie had stolen your phone and sent that other text about sending pics.”

Okay, so this guy knew Sophie too. Well. Shit, could it be one of her six?

For some reason I was smiling, despite the fact that Sophie had maybe seen this guy’s penis. This picture was hilarious.

Wait. Was my kiss thief the guy that dressed up for the games as the Empire High mascot? I tried to think of who that was...but I had no idea. This was my first real clue about his identity. And it was a huge one. “May I be excused?” I asked.

My mom nodded.

I hurried back to my room as I texted Sophie, asking her if she knew who our mascot was.

“I don’t know? Some nerd probably? Why?”

I bit the inside of my lip. “Because my kiss thief just sent me this.” I saved the picture to my phone and then texted it to her.

“I take back the nerd thing. We know your kiss thief isn’t a nerd. Unless it’s like a sexy nerd situation. And by that I mean a hot guy in glasses.”

I laughed.

“Wait, what picture did you send him that made him send that one?” she asked.

I didn’t want her to pester me about this. “One of the ones of me jumping on the bed.”

“Good choice. If he’s sending pictures back, try to get his location out of him. Show him a picture of your room and he’ll send you one of his. There will be so many clues!”

That was good thinking. “Okay, I’ll report back on what I find.”

I snapped a picture of my room and sent it to him. “My current view. Your turn.”

He texted back a picture of his apparent current view, which was just a snapshot of the New York City skyline.

Seriously? That was a clue...I guess. But I’d never seen that exact view before. And he wasn’t even necessarily at home. I tried to rack my brain for an idea that would reveal his identity. I took a picture of the red panda stuffed animal on my bed and sent it to him.