Hide and Seek

“No way,” Charlotte whispered.

“I’m almost positive,” Madeline murmured. “It has to be them.”

Gabby used her phone to zoom in on the girls’ faces. Dip-dyed Girl looked even meaner and tougher in close-up. “Bitches.”

“Who are they?” Emma asked, not caring if Sutton was supposed to already know.

I didn’t, though. They looked young, likely freshmen, meaning I never would have met them. I’d died before the first day of school, and I wouldn’t have been caught dead fraternizing with kids from junior high.

“Ariane Richards, Coco Tremont, Bethany Ramirez, and Joanna Chen,” Madeline said. “This sophomore in my dance class told me about them. They were the us of Saguaro Middle School. But their pranks were super-lame. Stealing the school mascot, writing nasty things about girls in lipstick across their lockers, replacing the dry-erase markers with Sharpies.”

“Super-lame,” Charlotte said, stifling a yawn.

“They will hereby be known as the Devious Four,” Lili intoned in a mock-dramatic voice, tapping away on her touch screen. “And don’t worry, Mads. My tweet will put them in their place.”

“Yeah, we’ll see who will be bowing down to who soon enough,” Charlotte said grimly, setting her square jaw.

Devious Four Deflower School Property, Emma headlined silently, running her eyes back over the skanky lingerie. The display was tackier than the shark tattoo her last foster brother, Travis, had come home with after a thirty-six-hour drinking binge.

“Whoa,” said a familiar voice. Emma turned to see Laurel coming up behind them, her blue cotton dress billowing in the breeze. Her blond hair gleamed in the sunlight, and her mouth was open so wide Emma could see her molars. “That’s insane.”

At that moment the doors to the school flung open, and Ms. Ambrose, the principal, burst onto the lawn. The students parted for her—she was making a path straight for Emma and the others. Emma watched helplessly as the woman strode closer and closer. The corners of the principal’s lips turned down in a frown. The look in her eyes said, You’ve crossed the line one too many times, girls.

Emma put on her best Sutton Mercer smile. “Hello, Ms. Ambrose,” she said sweetly. “Can you believe someone did this?”

The principal ignored her, grabbing Emma’s arm in one hand and Laurel’s in the other. “Wait!” Laurel cried. “We didn’t do this!”

Her cries were drowned out by the stomping feet of two security guards barreling through the crowd. With swift, deft movements, one of the brawny men grabbed Charlotte and Madeline, and the other took the Twitter Twins.

“You don’t understand!” Madeline cried weakly.

“We were set up!” Charlotte protested.

Ms. Ambrose rolled her eyes. “You say that every time, girls. You’re coming with us.”

Emma felt her legs move under her as the principal pulled her toward the door. Just before the crowd closed behind her, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the four freshmen staring at them, huge, ecstatic, we-got-away-with-it smiles on their faces. The girls had probably just wanted to make their mark on the school—literally—but the real damage they’d done was to the members of the Lying Game.

Devious Four indeed, I thought angrily. Those bitches were going down.

5

THE DEVIOUS FOUR

Ms. Ambrose’s office smelled like sugary donuts mixed with old, mildewed books. The walls were covered with cheaply framed photographs, cheesy motivational posters with eagles soaring over glaciers, and a master’s diploma from Arizona State. A pamphlet for an educational conference in Sedona the following Friday sat on the walnut desk, along with several disciplinary files and a red stapler. Principal Ambrose’s ergonomic chair was pushed back, unoccupied. She had stepped out of the room for a moment, leaving Emma and the others in the office alone.

The eagle posters sparked a tiny shard of a memory: no doubt I’d spent lots of time in here. But my other friends—especially Laurel and the Twitter Twins—looked totally spooked. Charlotte was sitting next to Emma, jiggling her thigh in time with the ticking clock on the principal’s wall. Madeline and Laurel sat in the two high-backed chairs that faced the desk, staring at their fingernails. The Twitter Twins were squished into an armchair meant for one person, looking like a human yin-yang symbol.

Lili let out a long sigh and hunched forward dramatically, resting her face in her hands. “Does anyone have a paper bag I can breathe into?”

“Calm down,” Madeline said with an eye roll. Her porcelain features were set in a stony mask.

“How can you be calm?” Gabby smoothed a wrinkle in her polo shirt. “I swear to God, if this gets in the way of my Ivy-league dreams I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Gabs, your grades will get in the way of your Ivy-league dreams,” Charlotte snapped. “And it’s not like they can punish us. We didn’t even do anything.”

“But they think we did,” Lili moaned.

Charlotte gave her a cold, calculating look. “You wanted into the Lying Game. Sometimes this comes with the territory.”

“Perhaps you’d like us to revoke your membership?” Madeline asked.

Gabby opened her mouth quickly. But before she could say a word, Ms. Ambrose swept back in, a pinched look on her doughy face. She looked eerily like a baseball mitt. Her brown eyes were the color of old, rotten wood. The skin on her face was folded and worn. She wore her frosted blond hair in a feathered, eighties style—probably the last time she’d gone to a hairdresser.

Ms. Ambrose sat heavily back into her chair and stared at all of them. “You girls have spent the last four years turning this school upside down, and I’m putting a stop to it right now.” She focused her attention on Emma, licking her thin lips hungrily.

She was probably dying to get her hands on Sutton Mercer. Little did she know that ship had sailed, I thought grimly.

“Ms. Ambrose, we didn’t do this,” Emma said quickly.

“It was those freshman bitches!” Lili cried.

Ms. Ambrose whirled around to face Lili. “Watch your language, Miss Fiorello.”

“Ms. Ambrose,” Madeline started. “What Lilianna is trying to say is that—”

The principal held up a pudgy hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I know it’s you, and the security cameras will show it.”

Emma sat back. “What cameras?” she challenged. Hollier was a public school. They barely had a budget for security guards, let alone security systems.

Ms. Ambrose’s steely expression wavered slightly, as though she didn’t expect Emma to call her bluff.

Emma pushed on. “If you had cameras, you’d know it wasn’t us.” And if they did have cameras, no doubt the Lying Game members would have been suspended long before this, she added to herself, thinking of all the videos of pranks she’d seen on Laurel’s computer. Several occurred on campus, and one included hanging the school’s American flag upside down on its pole.

Ms. Ambrose pressed her lips together until they almost disappeared. “Either way, once I have proof, I’ll have no trouble expelling all of you.”

“Well, we look forward to seeing that proof, which you’ll have trouble finding, since we didn’t do it,” Emma shot back, straightening up. “And if that’s all, we’re late for homeroom.”

The others jumped up quickly and followed Emma out the door. “Miss Mercer!” Ms. Ambrose called after her, but Emma kept going, even though her heart was hammering hummingbird-fast in her chest. She figured it was something Sutton would do. And if there was ever a time to show her friends that she was their fearless leader, it was now.

I had to admit I was impressed with Emma’s nerve. She was becoming more and more like me by the second.

At lunch, Emma sat in the petite redbrick patio courtyard just outside the cafeteria, waiting for Sutton’s friends to arrive. Only seniors and a few select juniors were allowed to eat there, and even though the temperature had dropped, the usual suspects were still holding court. The soccer team sat at the corner table, chowing on subs. Garrett craned his neck over the goalie’s head, making it plain that he was glaring at Emma. Emma flinched and looked away.

Garrett had had it in for her since the night of Sutton’s eighteenth birthday party, when he’d offered her his body and she’d blatantly refused. The night of the Homecoming Dance, he’d cornered her in the supply room to confront her about dating Ethan—and her history with Thayer. She didn’t have any evidence that he’d hurt Sutton, but she hadn’t ruled him out as a suspect quite yet. It was possible he’d known all along that Sutton had been sneaking around with Thayer and wanted revenge.

It was something I’d thought about, too. Garrett was a goody-goody, and I couldn’t imagine him having the nerve to kill me, but at this point, I was willing to consider anyone a suspect.

“Dining alone?” a voice said, and Emma looked up to see Charlotte, a cardboard carton containing four hot beverages in hand. Emma breathed in. They smelled like hot chocolate, a nice change from the gallons of coffee Sutton and her friends usually drank.

“Not anymore,” Emma said, pushing away her German text.

Charlotte took a seat and pushed her red curls behind her shoulders. “Did you hear that the Twitter Twins got detention?”

“For the prank?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Nah. They got caught tweeting in class. Probably to their dad’s lawyer or something.”

Emma snorted. “They need to chill.”

A squeal sounded across the courtyard. A chubby girl in leggings and Tory Burch flats was pointing at something just out of view. “It’s Thayer Vega!”

A hush fell over the courtyard immediately. Charlotte froze, her hot chocolate inches from her lips, and Emma edged out of her seat. There, in the doorway, was Thayer, with Laurel and Madeline at his heels. His dark hair hung shaggily around his eyes and he had on a North Face down vest and broken-in gray corduroys. He moved across the courtyard confidently—or as confidently as someone could move with a limp.

To me, the limp made him even sexier, like he was vulnerable, mortal. Then my gaze slid to Laurel. She smiled up at him flirtatiously, shaking her honey-blond hair free from its ponytail. He looked down at her with affection. No, I thought. This was my kind of entrance. And Thayer was only supposed to look at me like that.

The captain of the girls’ soccer team broke the silence. “Thayer Vega for Harvest Dance King!” she whooped. A cheer erupted among the students.

Thayer coughed in embarrassment, then dropped his tray next to Emma’s. Emma started in surprise. Why wasn’t Thayer sitting with the soccer guys? She glanced at Garrett’s table over her shoulder, but none of the boys were even looking Thayer’s way. Were they all showing solidarity for Garrett?

As though reading her mind, Thayer nodded at the soccer table. “Apparently I’m not as useful to them now that I can’t kick.”