Authors: Lynn Barnes
I didn’t question why Ivy had sent the police away. If someone had broken through her security, she wouldn’t want that to get out.
“What were they looking for?” I asked.
Ivy glanced toward the door, as if she could see through it. “Leverage.”
William Keyes waited for the police to leave before he approached the house.
“Wait upstairs,” Ivy told me.
She didn’t ask where I’d been when she’d arrived home. I wondered if the kingmaker would point out that if I hadn’t gone with him, I might have been here when someone broke in. And then I wondered if she would counter that it seemed awfully coincidental that he’d gotten me out of the house
right before someone had broken in and torn her office apart.
Looking for something. Something to do with Walker Nolan.
My mind was jumbled as I ascended the spiral staircase. I paused at the top but heard nothing.
Keyes met with Georgia Nolan. The president’s son knew this terrorist attack was going to happen. People are asking questions.
The thoughts came rapid fire, one on the heel of another,
until Ivy appeared upstairs. Her gaze faltered for a moment when it landed on me.
“Is this the part where you get mad at me for the things I can’t tell you, or the part where I remind you that you can’t trust
William Keyes?” There was no edge in Ivy’s voice, no hint of anger or exasperation.
She sounded tired.
There were so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to tell her that she could
trust me, that all keeping me in the dark accomplished was pushing me further away. I wanted to say that it wasn’t fair that she got to protect me, but I was expected to just sit back and let her, as Keyes had put it,
play with fire.
I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to do this to me again. But she was tired, and she was here, and she was in one piece.
“This is the part where I do
my homework,” I said softly, “and you order takeout, and we both pretend that everything is fine.”
The next morning, things at Hardwicke were back to normal—more or less.
“Don’t look now,” Asher whispered. “But I believe you’re being paged.”
Vivvie immediately turned to look. Stealth wasn’t her strong suit. “I’d say that’s more of a beckoning,” she told Asher after a moment’s deliberation.
“A summoning, perhaps?” Asher countered, wiggling his eyebrows.
On the other side of the
Hut, Emilia Rhodes narrowed her eyes at me and crooked her finger. Asher was right. I had been summoned. With one last glance at Asher and Vivvie, I gritted my teeth and went to see what Emilia wanted.
“We’re polling strong with the robotics club and the jazz band.” Maya Rojas ran her fingers along the tip of her straw as I took a seat at their table. “I can deliver the girls’ basketball
team,
and Tess having nominated you seems to be carrying some weight with freshman females.”
“But,” Emilia prompted.
“
However
,” Maya said, hedging slightly, “Henry is also polling well with freshman girls. And sophomore girls. And most of the junior class.”
“And John Thomas?” Emilia was undeterred.
“He’s got strong support from some of the party crowd, as well as a large contingent of freshman and
sophomore boys.” Maya’s mother was a pollster who crunched numbers for the president. Apparently, Maya had picked up a thing or two about the art of polling along the way.
“We need the underclassmen,” Maya said. “They don’t know any of the candidates that well, so their votes are the most up for grabs.”
Emilia turned her attention from Maya to me. “You’re the freshman whisperer,” she said bluntly.
“Any suggestions?”
First period didn’t start for another ten minutes. That was ten minutes too many.
“I’ll get back to you on that one,” I said. It was too early for this.
Emilia opened her mouth to object, but before she could push out the words, her phone buzzed on the table.
So did Maya’s.
So did mine.
There was a moment of silence and stillness at our table as we processed the fact that
all over the Hut and out in the hallway, other phones were going off, too.
Maya—a three-sport athlete—was quicker on the draw than either Emilia or me. She hit a button on her phone, then sucked
in a breath, and reached out to stop Emilia before she could look at hers.
“Must have been quite a night!” someone called out.
I looked down at my own phone.
A picture text.
I hit the screen to enlarge
the picture. In it, Emilia was slumped against a bathroom wall. Her hair was plastered to her face. She was fully clothed but also fairly clearly trashed.
Shaking off Maya’s hold, Emilia picked up her own phone. She stared at the picture. Her fair skin went paler. Her lips pressed themselves together, but I could see her chin trembling.
“No one cares,” Maya told her. “So you had a good time
one night. It’s not like half the school hasn’t done the same.”
Emilia was still staring at the picture. I reached over and took the phone from her hand, banishing the picture from her screen. Emilia kept staring at her hand, even once I had her phone.
“Why have I not heard this story?” Emilia’s friend Di joined our table. “You have heard all my stories, naughty girl.”
Considering that
Di
was
short for
diplomatic immunity
and that she had a fondness for dares, her “stories” probably put Emilia’s to shame.
“Who got this text?” Emilia found her voice. It was low, almost guttural. “Who’s seen the picture?”
Based on the murmurs and curious glances from the other students in the Hut and this hallway, I had a pretty good guess regarding the answer to that question—just like I had a pretty
good idea of who might have sent it.
“No one cares,” Maya told Emilia again. “We all get a little crazy sometimes.”
Emilia stood up and grabbed her phone back from me. “I don’t.”
Emilia wasn’t in my physics class, but she was the topic of conversation nonetheless.
“I didn’t think she had it in her.”
“When was that taken?”
“I always thought she was so perfect.”
“Wait, wait—who am I?” At
the lab table next to mine, a boy adopted a glazed look and let his mouth go slack.
Several tables away, Henry stood up. He crossed the room, then laid his palms flat on the boy’s lab table and just stood there.
Slowly, the boy’s friends stopped laughing.
“I give up,” Henry said, his voice measured and calm. “Who are you?”
The boy developed a sudden interest in his lab notebook.
“Is Emilia
okay?” Vivvie’s question drew me back to the lab table we were sharing. Vivvie lowered her voice. “I mean, I know she’s probably not thrilled, but on a scale of the
complete opposite of okay
to
okay
. . .” Vivvie caught her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes round. “Is she okay?”
I glanced back at Henry, then answered. “She’d want us to think she is.”
“Hypothetically speaking,” Asher said,
coming up next to me in the cafeteria, “if one were planning to execute an act of
derring-do to draw any and all disapproving murmurs away from one’s twin, would it be better if said act involved a handmade hang glider or—”
“No.” Henry cut Asher off before he could list the second option.
“It’s really sweet that you want to do something for Emilia,” Vivvie told Asher, “in a completely inadvisable
kind of way.”
“Exactly,” Asher declared. “I am the very soul of altruism, which is why I’m trying to decide between hang gliding off the chapel roof and—”
“No.” Henry gave Asher a look.
“Perhaps you don’t get a vote,” Asher told Henry.
“Perhaps you gave me veto power when were seven,” Henry countered. “And perhaps you jumping off a building is the last thing Emilia would actually want.”
“Darn you and your infernal logic, Marquette!” Asher, his expression the very picture of woe, reached across Henry and snagged a cookie.
“This whole thing will blow over,” I told Asher.
The murmurs had already died down considerably. Like Maya had said that morning, the picture really wasn’t
that
scandalous. The only reason it had gotten any traction at all was because it was Emilia Rhodes—picture-perfect,
angling-for-valedictorian, eyes-on-the-prize Emilia. She managed her reputation with the same fierceness with which she attacked SAT prep. She’d cultivated an image, and this wasn’t it.
“Consider it my opening salvo.” John Thomas Wilcox slid behind me in the lunch line. He kept his voice low—clearly, those words were meant only for my ears.
Henry was at the cashier now. Asher and Vivvie were
talking to each other.
John Thomas leaned into my personal space. I helped him out of it. Forcibly.
“Careful,” John Thomas sneered. “You wouldn’t want to get sent to the office for fighting.”
Whatever.
I noticed that he didn’t attempt to leer at me again.
“If you ask me,” he announced, his voice louder this time—and designed to carry, “someone did Miss Priss a favor. No one should be wound
that
tight.”
I reached the front of the line and gave the cashier my student ID to pay for my food.
“The picture makes her seem more human,” John Thomas continued behind me. “Like she really knows how to have a good time.”
Once the cashier handed my card back, I turned to leave. The expression on my face never changed. Eventually, John Thomas would realize he hadn’t gotten a single verbal reply
out of me.
Some people weren’t worth the breath it took to shoot them down.
I’d made it halfway to our normal table when I noticed that Emilia had a visitor at hers.
Mr. Collins
. He was the photography teacher. Even from a distance, I could see the disapproval on his face and the flash of panic that crossed Emilia’s as he led her out of the room.
“Pity,” John Thomas said, coming up behind me
once more. “The Hardwicke administration has never been known for their approval of good times. Especially,” he added, “when someone is careless enough for that good time to be caught on camera.”
I skipped lunch.
The Hardwicke administrative building had once been a residence. Now it was a historical landmark. The headmaster’s secretary looked up from her desk when I entered.
“Tess,” she said warmly. “What can I do for you?”
I wasn’t sure that twinset-wearing, cookie-baking Mrs. Perkins
had
any setting other than warm.
“I’m looking for Emilia Rhodes,” I said. There was
a chance that John Thomas had misled me, a chance that Mr. Collins had merely pulled Emilia aside to speak to her himself.
Mrs. Perkins cured me of that notion. “She’s in with the headmaster. You can wait if you’d like.” She tilted her head to the side. “But isn’t it your lunchtime? You really shouldn’t get in the habit of skipping meals, Tess.”
A phone on her desk rang. She answered it, and
when she turned to consult her computer, I ducked past her desk and made a beeline for the headmaster’s office.
Adam had said my father had always had a tendency to act with no mind to the consequences. I took that to mean I came by it honestly.
I twisted the knob and pushed the door in just as Headmaster Raleigh was gaining momentum on a very pointed lecture. “You are, I can only assume, well
aware of the Hardwicke policy on alcohol and other such substances,” he told Emilia. “While we cannot police your behavior outside these halls, the distribution of this picture reflects poorly on both you as an individual and on this institution—”
“I didn’t distribute it.” Emilia’s voice was steady enough, but I could tell her composure was hard-won.
“Be that as it may,” the headmaster continued,
“this is hardly behavior befitting a would-be student-body president. I believe it would be best, for all involved, if you withdrew your name from the race.”
The Emilia I knew would have refused on the spot. The girl sitting in front of the headmaster’s desk did not.
“I understand you intend to apply to Yale next year.” Raleigh hit Emilia exactly where it hurt. “Hardwicke has enough students
apply each year that the admissions committee relies heavily on the recommendations of our teachers and staff. You want to put your best foot forward.
This
”—the headmaster nodded toward a phone he’d placed in front of Emilia—“is hardly your best foot.”
I stepped forward, drawing Raleigh’s attention to me. Emilia didn’t even turn to look, her eyes locked on the front of the headmaster’s desk,
her head bowed.
“Ms.—” the headmaster’s voice boomed with disapproval, but he still hesitated when it came to my name.
“Kendrick Keyes,” I supplied. Headmaster Raleigh flinched slightly at each of the names.
Ivy Kendrick. William Keyes.
Like it or not—and most days I didn’t—those names meant something at this school and in this town.
“This is a private conversation,” the headmaster informed
me. “Unless you want to face disciplinary action yourself, I strongly suggest you leave the way you came. Immediately.”
“Just like you’re strongly suggesting Emilia drop out of the student council race?” I asked. “Remind me: Was there alcohol or any kind of illegal substance in that picture? Was Emilia holding a drink?”
“I will not warn you again, young lady.”
“There’s really no way of telling
what’s going on in that picture, is there?” I continued. I’d never done well with warnings. “She could have the flu. She could have just pulled an all-nighter. Someone could have slipped something into her nonalcoholic beverage of choice.”
“Stop, Tess.” Emilia’s voice was hoarse. “Please. Just stop.”
The phone on the table buzzed. An instant later, mine did, too. Emilia didn’t move, but the
headmaster did. He picked up the phone. A few seconds later, I heard a video start to play.
“Look at her. She’s so wasted! Say ‘wasted,’ Emilia!”
Whatever Emilia said in response was incomprehensible. Her speech was slurred past all recognition.
In the present, Emilia lifted her head. Her shoulders shook. I crossed the room and went for the phone, hitting stop as several boys were snickering
offscreen and one nudged her with his foot.