by Rachel Shane
My head pounded with theories and lack of sleep. I grabbed the coffee and brought it to my lips. The liquid coated my throat, hot and painful, a self-inflicted punishment for betraying my sister.
“I went on Twitter to kill time, and suddenly Kingston posted something odd. The key to the future is in the past.”
“That sounds like something Whitney would say.”
“She’s said it before.” He sipped his coffee. “When we first started doing this stuff and we tried to figure out a way to get access to the files but couldn’t. That’s why I got concerned.”
“So you went straight to the township. And you live far, so it took you a while.” I nodded, understanding.
He looked confused for a second, then nodded, too. “Exactly.” He brushed the hair off my forehead. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I know coffee doesn’t quite make up for it, but—”
“I found evidence.” I pulled the phone transcript out of my pocket and showed it to him.
He scanned the paper. I sipped the coffee, willing it to work faster, like rapid-release Tylenol. It tasted perfect without me telling him how I took it: with a sugar overload to amp the caffeine.
I pointed at a spot on the page. “See, they said to do anything to stop them.”
He shook his head. “Anything is too broad. They threatened my dad. Took away his job. They did do anything, just like the transcript says. There’s no reason why anything would mean something different for your parents.”
“What about the blocked-out text? Isn’t that suspicious?” I’d tried everything to read it: holding it up to a window, squinting, praying to a God I didn’t believe in. Nothing had stripped the censor bar off the paper.
“Looks to me like they blacked out any identifying information. I mean, even if they only made threats to stop our parents, that’s still shady.”
“I think there was other evidence, but Kingston took the rest of the files in this folder.”
“Why?”
“No idea. He snatched them right off my lap. I went through a few other folders, but nothing was useful. It was all stuff about the water supply and soil samples.”
My face must have looked sad because he cupped my chin in his hands. “Hey, we’ll find a way to get them back. I’ll help you, okay?” His fingers trailed up the side of my jaw.
I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch. “I’d really like that.”
He wrapped his arms around me. He smelled so good, like fresh soap. His hair was still a little damp from his stolen morning shower. “I’m really sorry I told you that,” he whispered in my ear. “It was just a theory, and I’d like to think the township isn’t capable of something like that.” He pulled back to gaze at me. “What happened to us agreeing it was false?” He grinned, and his voice contained a hint of laughter.
“I couldn’t exactly shut my mind off.”
“I can help with that.” He kissed my nose. “You just need a good distraction.” He sank his lips into mine until my mind replaced the worries with endorphins.
I knew he was right. Kingston might have had the files I needed to prove or disprove this, or he might have had nothing useful. Murder was a big accusation, one that put the citizens of Wonderland in danger and added us to the top of the hit list. We had to lie low, which meant I had to stop obsessing over the murder, at least until it was safe to gather more info. When Lorina came home with frazzled hair escaping her bun and the news of the break-in, I forced myself to paste a frown on my face and not indulge in interrogating her about who the township suspected of the crime. Best not to make her suspicious. Whenever I regretted that decision and needed a dose of memory loss, Chess was there to help me, with making out for hours after school in his car. I cursed his job whenever it dragged him away from me.
A few days later, I was waiting outside the locker room to meet Chess for gym when Kingston sidled up next to me. “I’m curious,” he said. “What did you say to that redhead about destroying her house?”
I rubbed my arms against the chilly breeze. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, she thinks you did it. She was hounding me about what I knew.”
I swallowed hard. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her you did it.” He smirked.
“WHAT?!” I spun around and headed back to the track. I had to get to Quinn before she spread the rumor.
Kingston huffed alongside me. “Or maybe I said ‘didn’t’.” He panted. “I can’t remember. The phrases are so close, it’s hard to tell them apart.”
Oh God. “If you told her, I’m gonna—”
“Alice, hey.” Chess had raced to catch up with us. Kingston pointed a finger gun and walked away.
My arms flailed as I ranted to Chess what Kingston had just told me. Chess grabbed my hand. “Come on, let’s go talk to Quinn.” We rushed to the track, but when we got there, Di and Dru were waiting right inside the gate, identical scowls on their faces.
“Were you going to tell me?” Di asked.
“Tell us,” Dru corrected.
“Whatever Kingston told you, I had nothing to do with Quinn’s house.” I crossed my fingers behind my back and hoped only the good lie young.
They exchanged a glance.
Dru smirked. “We know that. It wasn’t you. No how.”
Di still wore the scowl. “Contrariwise, we were talking about you dating him.” She pointed at my boyfriend for emphasis.
Chess looked about as comfortable as the boy who accidentally walked into our fifth-grade health class when we were learning about menstrual cycles. I mouthed that he should go, and he gladly obliged.
“We had to hear it from Quinn,” Dru said.
Di crossed her arms. “Not my best friend!”
“Then you did hear about it from your best friend. Optional S at the end.”
Di snapped her head up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Di . . . ” I focused on the gravel at my feet, then changed my mind and met her eyes so she could see the honesty in them. I didn’t include Dru in my statement. “We both know we stopped being best friends a long time ago.”
Dru laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to explain yourself because you’re not yourself!”
“I don’t even know who you are anymore.” Di spun on her heels, her sandy-colored hair whipping her face. Dru followed after, of course.
Di’s words were icicles, but they didn’t stab me, just melted away as they plunged into my chest. I’d known for a long time she didn’t understand me. We’d both tried to fit the other into a mold: me begging her to be a do-gooder, and her turning my good deed into the latest gossiple. Our sham of a friendship had buckled, too flimsy to stand on its own ever since we’d each silently bartered each other away for someone who got us in a way the other never could.
Throughout class, Chess reassured me that if Di and Dru believed I hadn’t damaged Quinn’s house, then it meant Quinn thought that, too. Di and Dru’s minds were impressionable, filled with tall tales from the gossip queen herself. Still, I would have talked to her in gym if she’d come to class.
Chess calmed me down by squeezing in a few extra kisses after gym, mostly so I could avoid Di and her minion in the locker room. And, okay, because I liked the kissing. The girls must have changed like they were backstage at a runway show, because I didn’t see them anywhere.
By the time I threw on my clothes and exited the locker room, I was on the verge of being late to my next class. Whitney would be proud.
My ponytail stopped swinging as I froze in place.
Up ahead, Kingston stood over a girl at her locker, his hands outstretched on either side of her like he was keeping her prisoner. The girl’s face was tilted up to him, which suggested she didn’t mind in the least. Guess you could teach an old dog new chicks. Red curls spilled out from behind Kingston’s body. Quinn.
WTF? What, did she need to resort to extreme measures to get people talking about her instead of me? Or maybe Kings
ton had drugged her into submission.
I stalked over to them. “Tell her I had no part in what happened to her house.”
“I’m a little busy here.” Kingston met my eyes, then sank his mouth into Quinn’s in a showy gesture meant only for his audience of me. I snapped my head away.
I already felt sick about possibly getting caught; I didn’t need to see this make-out session to push me into toilet-worshiping territory. I started to turn back.
He broke away from Quinn. She smirked at me like she was hiding a juicy secret.
“Thanks for all your help, Alice,” Kingston said. “But I don’t need you guys anymore.” He set his eyes on me. “I have an army now.”
CHAPTER 18
After the hallway incident, I spotted Kingston and Quinn sitting together at lunch, holding hands in the hallway . . . basically, everywhere. What in the world would make Quinn help with his agenda? Or date him?! My best theory so far: his kissing technique contained the power of compulsion. My worst theory: she was just as crazy as him. Each time I caught them, his eyes shifted to mine, as if he wanted to watch my reaction. I countered with my own form of showy PDA with Chess.
As much as I enjoyed the make-out sessions—mine, not Kingston’s, just to be clear—my body itched to keep investigating, find out more about the murder, defeat the township. Stop lying low. I experienced all the symptoms of addiction withdrawal: insomnia, paranoia, and preoccupation.
I couldn’t even search my sister’s bag for answers because Lorina was never at home anymore. She’d started practically living at the office, ever since the break-in occurred.
I was poring over the files one more time, for lack of any better source of information, when my doorbell rang one Saturday afternoon. My parents had always told me not to open the door to strangers, but I needed my rebellion fix. I dashed downstairs, expecting a telemarketer. But Chess stood on the front porch, hands in pockets, next to Whitney. She wore a terrible brunette wig.
“Do your hair in pigtails and put this on.” Whitney thrust a baseball cap into my hands as she brushed past me. Embroidered lacy ribbons circled the mirror appliqués against the gaudy pink fabric.
“Are we dressing up as Kingston for Halloween?” I let Chess inside and followed behind.
“Ha ha,” she deadpanned. “It’s a disguise. You’re my little sister. And sorry, but Chess is my boyfriend for the day.”
“I haven’t agreed to that yet!” Chess kissed me hello, then grabbed my hand and led me down the long hallway. He peered into the rooms of my house as we passed them. “Not until you tell me what we’re doing.”
“I second that motion,” I said. Inside, though, I squealed. Another mission!
“Surprises are best left unspoiled.”
“I still think it’s too soon.” Chess squeezed my hand.
Whitney rolled her eyes. “I told you, it’s an emergency.”
Despite my excitement over the mission, my lips slipped into a frown. If Whitney had planned this, it couldn’t be related to my parents’ potential murder. She didn’t know about it.
“I’m hoping it involves something with the old nuclear-power plant.” Chess let me go ahead of him into the kitchen. “We’ve left that alone for too long.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?” I spun around to see Whitney dawdling behind. “I mean, they destroyed the nuclear plant, so it’s not doing any harm anymore.” Unless you counted the night vision the entire town had had to acquire to adjust to the lack of lights.
Whitney cleared her throat. Chess covered by dropping my hand, wrenching open a cabinet, and studying the contents. “Got anything to eat?”
I wasn’t letting him change the subject that easily. “Is there something I should know about the power plant?”
“No,” Whitney said. “Because our mission today has nothing to do with that. Your job is to cure Chess’s hunger so he stops bitching.”
“Tell me what it is, or you drive.” Chess pulled the keys out of his pocket and dangled them in front of Whitney’s face. “Oh wait, that’s right. You can’t.” He cupped the keys and turned back to the cabinet. I joined him by the counter.
“Hey, I had more important things to do than practice for my driver’s test.”
“She failed,” Chess told me. “Three times!”
I reached into the cabinet, pulled out a can of soup, and held it out for Chess’s approval.
“Perfect. Thanks.”
I dumped the contents into a pot and set it to boil. If Lorina hadn’t packed up the good china and hidden it from me, I would have served it in that. Instead, I had to settle for a cheap bowl, which I set on the counter. Chess and Whitney sat at the table and continued to argue about her annoying love of secrets and riddles. I wanted so badly to impress Chess with my cooking, but canned chicken soup? Not exactly gourmet, the-way-to-a-man’s-heart-is-through-his-stomach memorable. I twirled the spice rack and chose a few seasonings to add, hoping it might make the soup more exotic.
I was twisting open the pepper when Chess said after a minute of silence, “Okay, please tell me why we didn’t load the car with plants?”
His abrupt question startled me. My hand, slick from the steam, slipped and I dropped the entire contents of pepper into the soup.
“People expect the expected,” Whitney said.
I bolted for the silverware drawer and yanked out a spoon.
“These disguises better not be your solution to spying on Kingston.” Chess tapped his fingers on the table.
I frantically scooped out as much black pepper as I could before it dissolved. Most dots sailed right off the spoon back into the pot. I transported each spoonful to the sink carefully, like the old egg-on-spoon relay race we used to do in elementary school. The aroma of the pepper seeped into the air. In the middle of carrying my fourth spoonful, I sneezed. The contents went flying, dousing my clean shirt.
I raced to get a paper towel off the counter. Another sneeze forced my eyes shut as I was reaching for it. My arm knocked over the bowl I’d set out and it crashed to the floor, shattering into pieces.
Chess hopped up from the table. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t answer because it was difficult to speak while being attacked by sneezes. I went back over to the cabinet, hoping I could salvage Chess’s lunch by starting over. But that was the last can of soup. We weren’t exactly stocked for the apocalypse here. Fighting sneezes, I headed back to the soup and continued excavating the pepper.
My nose tingled. I stepped away from the stove and the cause of my newfound allergies before I could taint the soup even more. “I’m sorry. I was trying to make it taste better, but . . . let’s just say culinary school is not in my future. Apparently klutziness is.”
As if on cue, Chess let out a monstrous sneeze.
I wiped a hand over my sweaty brow. “Maybe I shouldn’t go with you guys. I keep messing everything up.” Soon I’d need an abacus to tally my mistakes, because I was running out of fingers to count on.
Chess placed his hands on my shoulders. “We’re not doing the mission without you.”
“But I screwed up your lunch.”
“No, you didn’t.” Whitney pushed herself away from the table. “Do you have any lemon?”
“We have lemonade, does that work?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Whitney grabbed it from the fridge and sidestepped the mess on the floor in order to add a cupful to the soup. “That should counteract the pepper.”
“I’ll help you clean this.” Chess scooped a few pieces of broken porcelain into his palm.
I bent down next to him and plucked a large piece. “I hope this doesn’t bring me seven years bad luck, like breaking a mirror.”
“Hey, you know what? This is totally good luck!” He grinned. “Like breaking a glass at the end of a Jewish wedding.”
I stood up. “In that case, you should break something, too. We can use all the luck we can get.” I reached into the cabinet and took down all the cheap bowls.
“Besides, I never liked these dishes anyway.” I threw a bowl to the floor, making sure it didn’t land anywhere near his legs.
Chess held out his hands and I laid a bowl in them. He did a little twirl, brought his arm behind his back, then slammed the bowl to the ground.
“Fancy! We’re going for style points, huh?” I took a bowl off the stack and brought it to my chest like I was gearing up to throw a bowling ball, then I sprinted forward a few steps, dropped one arm, and let the bowl dangle at my side before I sent it flying toward the wall.
“I give that a nine-point-five.” Chess took another bowl off the stack. “Would have been a ten, but you didn’t stick the landing.”
Whitney casually stood up, left the room, and pulled an umbrella from the holder by the front door. She sat back down at the table and opened the umbrella, all without saying a word.
Chess and I attempted to show each other up with the next four bowls, until the entire kitchen floor was littered with the remains of our war against ugly dinnerware. “Now Lorina will be forced to use the good china!” I said. If I’d learned one thing in the last few weeks, it was that you only got results with extreme measures.
Chess and I got to work scooping up the mess. “Now that recess is over, I found out where Chapera Farms sold the pigs.” Whitney shut the umbrella and headed to check on the soup.
“Where? How?” Chess looked so happy, I thought he might do a Herkie right there in the kitchen. Then he set down the broken pieces he’d been holding and stood up. “Wait, please say they’re alive.”
“Sorry, only one is. The rest of his friends are bacon.”
My stomach dropped.
Chess closed his eyes for a second, burying his face in his hands. “I was afraid of that. We should have made this a priority! Ever since we found out they were shutting down Chapera Farms, too!”
“Chess . . . ” Whitney bent down and picked up the broken pieces he had discarded. “There was nothing we could do until we could do something, you know that. It took me forever to track the pigs down. Eat your soup.”
