These Vengeful Hearts

by Katherine Laurin

  Nothing.

  “I’ll take one of each, thanks.”

  Following in Haley’s direction, I reviewed my plan. Haley needed to either give me her phone or leave it unattended for long enough that I could check it. The bathroom seemed the most logical way to separate her from her bag, but that was a long shot.

  One of the special collections rooms was set up with a black curtain draped in front of the door and a couple of museum staff and security guards stationed at the entrance. I wedged myself in with the crowd slowly trickling their way into the room.

  “What’s this?” I asked the man in front of me. He wore a patterned shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck and thick black glasses that he pushed back up his nose.

  “The museum has some of Picasso’s sketchbooks on loan from Paris. They aren’t open to the public to view yet, but they’re giving us a sneak preview for the next half hour. This alone is worth the price of the ticket.”

  I made a noise of agreement, but my eyes caught on the museum staff at the front of the line. They were collecting bags and phones and offering claim tickets in return.

  “They’re not letting us bring in our stuff?”

  “No, and I really wanted to get something for my Instagram story about tonight.” His disappointment was almost laughable, but I gave him an enthusiastic nod.

  I stepped out of line and went to find Haley. If I had only thirty minutes to get her into the exhibit sans bag, I had to hustle.

  “There you are!” I practically shouted when I located her on a bench across from what were presumably the Warhol pieces she’d mentioned.

  Haley was a charcoal smudge against the bright canvas of white walls and warm-honey wood floors, and yet she fit in the space so naturally. Perhaps it was how at ease she seemed from just a few minutes ago, like she belonged there. I still knew so little about her—apart from her biggest secret—and I’d never seen her expression so open. It was easy to forget art was her passion when plotting her downfall.

  “I’ve been waiting right here. Must have lost each other in the crowd.”

  I held out the two glasses of wine for her to pick her poison. She regarded them carefully and took the red. “I don’t actually drink, but I’m guessing having something in my hand will help me blend in better, right?”

  “You don’t drink at all?” I wasn’t much of a drinker, either, but she was correct. The whole goal of my clothes and the wristband was to look just like everyone else.

  “No, not since...” she trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

  The reference had to be to her stepdad. My instinct to exploit this weak spot for information was difficult to ignore. I wanted to peel her words back and look deeper, but I couldn’t risk pushing her away, so I let it go.

  “Are you picturing your own work on the walls? Visualization really works for me when I’m preparing for a track meet.” I pointed to a bare patch of wall. “That really pretty blue-and-green piece that you have in your room would look amazing right there.”

  Haley looked down, still not comfortable with open praise. “Thanks for bringing me. You’d be a good friend.”

  It was my turn to look away. I was no one’s friend and it had to stay that way.

  “Oh!” I said as if a thought had just occurred to me. “I was held up because there’s a big crowd waiting to get into an exhibit that’s not open to the public yet. I guess they have some Picasso sketchbooks on display for the next twenty minutes or so? Did you know that?” I let my words hang in the air and hoped they’d be enough to lure Haley to the exhibit.

  Haley stood abruptly. “We should go check it out.”

  I waved a disinterested hand. “I’ll walk over there with you, but there’s a ton of people cramming into a tiny room. I don’t want to see them that badly.”

  She gave me a look, but it was more tolerant than suspicious. Careful to seem caught up in all the splendor of the night, I gathered a few appetizers from the trays floating around and shadowed Haley’s progress toward the Picasso exhibit.

  The mezzanine that overlooked the atrium was packed with a crowd jostling into the small space, salivating at the chance to see the sketchbooks before anyone else. I found a small slice of unoccupied balcony and planted my back firmly against the railing to wait. Haley anxiously surveyed the crowd and tried to time her entrance into the fray, but I caught her eye and waved her over.

  “I bet you could slip right in if you left all your stuff with me. They’re stopping people at the door to check their bags and drinks.” My tone was even, and slightly conspiratorial.

  I’m being helpful. I’m being helpful. I’m being helpful.

  The mantra played in my head and hopefully translated into my smile. Haley might be able to read people, but she was playing my game now, even if she didn’t know it.

  “Yeah, that would be great. I just heard someone say that they’re about to rope it off for the night.”

  “Hmm.” I stuffed a bacon-wrapped scallop into my mouth and gestured to the floor where my purse was thrown at my feet.

  Haley’s bag and coat joined mine and she marched into the crowd without looking back. Bingo.

  CHAPTER 40

  MY HEARTBEAT QUICKENED as time seemed to slow. I measured my breaths and watched Haley slip behind the black curtain into the exhibit. There wasn’t a way for me to tell how long she’d be in there, but I doubted it would be more than a few minutes; people were being cycled through quickly to accommodate as many guests as possible.

  Casually setting my drink and appetizers on the ground, I located my real phone and pulled out Haley’s from the bottom of her bag. I unlocked it and tapped her contacts. The screen lit up with a short list.

  AB

  BC

  ES

  EW

  Fire Alarm

  GG

  JL

  KQ

  OV

  SA

  SH

  TK

  They weren’t first names, but initials. I could tell because my own—EW—were listed as were Gretchen’s. I drew a stuttering breath. Every member of the Red Court was here in my hand. A small, irrational voice inside screamed at me to run, to grab the phone and make a break for it. If I worked fast enough, I might be able to find out who they all were before Haley could clean up after me. Or take me out entirely.

  No, that was too risky. This was the kind of job that required the finesse of a scalpel, not a wrecking ball like with Matthew. I didn’t need to be taught the same lesson twice. With another quick look at the exhibit’s curtain and the stream of people filing out, I took pictures of every contact name and number with my phone. When I had them all, I opened Haley’s text messages and captured photos of those as well. By far the most texts she had were with the Fire Alarm. They messaged each other daily with updates on other Red Court members, requests for jobs, and miscellaneous comments on everything from the principal’s bad tie choices to whatever the weird smell was coming from the boys’ locker room. My first thought was: they’re friends. The second was: How could I use this? I was surprised by how much the former hurt and how much the latter bothered me.

  My internal alarm clock reminded me that now wasn’t the time to examine my conscience. Before I could put the phone away, I caught my own name in the text message chain between Haley and the Fire Alarm. Without time to read it, I blindly snapped more photos. A swish of bright blond hair flashed in the corner of my eye. I was out of time.

  Scrambling to toss everything back into our bags, I knocked over Haley’s wine. The liquid spilled from the shattered glass in a ruby-red pool. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Party foul!” A teasing voice rang out from a woman in front of me. All I could see from my position on the ground were her purple combat boots. She had better be gone by the time I sorted this out or she’d find herself with her shoelaces tied togethe
r.

  My breath came in a hitch. I had two seconds at best to put away our phones and get the mess under control before anyone looked too closely at the teenage girl who made it.

  “Ember?” Haley’s voice came from behind the woman with the boots. Bless Purple Combat Boots for being too stubborn to get out of the way.

  If I couldn’t hide the evidence of my spying, I had to destroy it. Standing abruptly, I purposefully slipped in the wine and kicked our stuff to the side in my efforts not to fall—which I did anyway, landing hard on my butt. My hand roared in pain as a shard of glass sliced across my palm.

  In a moment, Haley was by my side picking me up and gathering our stuff.

  “Oh my God! Do you need help?” Purple Combat Boots asked. “I’ve never seen anyone actually slip in wine before.” Her eyes were wide, but she stood there smirking at me like I was an amusing anecdote she could tell all her friends.

  “There’s a first time for everything,” I muttered and turned toward the bathroom.

  I was already washing my hand when Haley eventually followed me into the ladies’ room.

  She set our bags and coats down on the counter with a thud. “What was that?”

  “Sorry. I accidentally spilled your drink and kind of panicked. The whole point of tonight was to play it cool. Nothing like falling on your ass to get people to notice you.”

  I hissed as the soap stung the cut. It didn’t seem very deep, but it still hurt like hell.

  “Do you need stitches or a hospital or...”

  Haley was pointedly not looking in my direction as she rambled.

  “I’m fine. I just need to get this cleaned up. If I keep pressure on it for a bit, it will probably stop bleeding.”

  Haley fiddled with a chip in the tile wall, still not looking my way.

  “Are you... You’re not afraid of a little blood, are you?”

  She scoffed. “That was not a little blood. It looked like a crime scene out there.”

  I waved her away and grabbed a few more paper towels to wrap my hand. “That’s nothing. I once sliced my arm open a good six inches when I fell off a trampoline.”

  Haley’s head fell forward to rest against the cool tile. “Don’t talk about it,” she moaned.

  “Wow. I didn’t know you were such a baby.”

  Blood didn’t scare me. What scared me were the scars you couldn’t see. The hurt people kept hidden under smiling faces. Cuts could be stitched, and bones could be mended, but healing a mangled heart was another thing entirely.

  “Lots of people are squeamish about blood,” she whispered between deep breaths.

  “And lots of people are babies.”

  She gave me a rude gesture and I laughed softly to myself. Why couldn’t Haley and I have met under different circumstances? We might have been friends.

  Once I’d cleaned myself up, I collected my bag from Haley and we headed back out into the museum. Someone, probably Ethan, had already cleaned up the mess and a CAUTION WET FLOOR sign was all that was left of my brawl with the wineglass. Sorry, Ethan.

  “Where to next?” I asked Haley with a cheer I didn’t feel.

  “We can leave if you want to,” Haley said, though she was edging slowly toward the Asian Art collection.

  “I’m not wasting tonight because I fell. In front of the whole museum. And left a huge mess behind me for Ethan the intern to clean up. Why would you think that?”

  Haley let out one of her rare laughs. “Fair enough.”

  I let myself be led through the vast halls, eating appetizers off nearly every tray that passed my way and sipping a club soda with lime the whole time. I’d barely escaped dousing my mom’s blazer with red wine, so I wasn’t taking any more chances.

  Haley read from every placard and pointed out what she liked and what she loved. She never mentioned the things that didn’t resonate with her, like she didn’t want to tear any piece or artist down with her criticism.

  The crowds began to thin around ten o’clock, and polite caterers and museum staff informed us the doors would be closing soon. Haley and I made our way back to the entrance, some of the last to leave. We were about to head our separate ways for the night when Haley stopped.

  “Thanks for tonight.”

  “I take it you had fun?”

  “Anything where you fall on your ass and I get free food is guaranteed to be a good time.”

  “Ha ha. You’re welcome.”

  “Good night,” she called out as she turned to go.

  I spent the walk back to my car shaking, but it had nothing to do with the frigid air. My close call was a little too close for me to be entirely pleased with the way the evening turned out, but it worked.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed April.

  “I did it.”

  * * *

  The following day, my mom roped me into holiday shopping. When we returned home weighed down with bags of presents for aunts and uncles and cousins we never saw, I ran up to my room to store my haul under my bed like I did each year, even though April hadn’t attempted to search for gifts in years. Just an old habit I didn’t bother to break. It was nice that some things remained the same, even when the rest of the world couldn’t bother to stay consistent.

  When I got home from Final Friday, my tired eyes had refused to focus on the pictures I had taken. The plan was to take a look first thing this morning, but my mom woke me up extra early to tag along with her to the mall; it wasn’t wise to look through photos of a phone I’d broken into without permission in front of her.

  Finally alone, I brought them up on my phone and flicked through the first few images of initials and phone numbers. I wrote them down on individual sticky notes that I pinned to my corkboard.

  While I had done laps around the mall vetoing many terrible gift ideas for my dad, I had outlined the next phase in my plan. Part of me wanted to line up the members of the Red Court like dominoes, knocking over each girl one by one, my casualty list creeping up as the days passed in agonizing slowness. It would take effort to research each one and find what would get them to bend. That angle had its benefits, like letting the Queen of Hearts sweat it out as her protection was stripped away until no one stood between her and what she deserved.

  Haley. The Queen of Hearts was Haley. It was hard to make the mental switch from plotting the downfall of some nameless, faceless tyrant to the girl I’d spent countless hours with. The chances of getting through everyone before Haley figured out it was me were too low to bet the house on.

  With the members of the Red Court’s initials pinned to the board, I went back to the photos of the texts between Haley and the Fire Alarm, where my name came up. It was dated from the day we got Matthew’s cancellation request.

  Fire Alarm: what did ember do to make matthew take his request back???

  Haley: what makes you think it was ember

  Fire Alarm: please i told you she couldn’t hack it she was never going to take gideon down

  Haley: now we know her limits

  Haley: everyone has them even you

  Fire Alarm: are you going to keep throwing him in my face?!?

  Haley: no I’m reminding you that everyone reaches this point...we just pushed ember to hers sooner than most

  I clicked away from the exchange. Without more context, I wasn’t sure what the Fire Alarm’s breaking point was, but it was good to know she had one, too. But what stood out to me the most was that Haley seemed to be defending me when she knew it was me who interfered with Matthew. A flash of doubt flooded my body, but I pushed it right back down. She was the Queen of Hearts, a master manipulator. And I was going to end her reign.

  I dragged out my old yearbooks to find likely candidates for the rest of the Red Court. Under each set of initials, I wrote the names of possible matches. It was surprising how easy it was to find
some of them. There wasn’t a way for me to be completely sure, but there weren’t that many people with the same initials, even in a school of two thousand five hundred students.

  After a few hours, I had a list of members with mini dossiers on every girl. I stood back to admire my handiwork. The colorful patchwork of sticky notes was strung together like a spiderweb with our Queen of Hearts at the center. Each pair of initials held branches of names that matched up with a piece of yarn linking it to the most probable candidate. Below the names were as many details I could think of on my own and what could be gleaned from public Instagram and Twitter profiles.

  AB (aka Addison Betz)

  BC (aka Brianna Cho)

  ES (aka Emma Song)

  Fire Alarm (aka Shauna Lopez)

  GG (aka Gretchen Goldberg)

  JL (aka Jenna Lowell)

  KQ (aka Kayla Quiroz)

  OV (aka Olivia Vaughn)

  SA (aka Samantha Allen)

  SH (aka Sasha Harrison)

  TK (aka Taylor Kent)

  I rolled my neck out and stretched my back, considering whether I had time for a run before dinner. A text notification from Haley lit up the screen of my burner.

  Haley: thanks again for asking me to come with you last night

  Haley’s gratitude sat uneasily with me. How was I supposed to destroy someone who kept thanking me?

  Me: Of course! Is it lame that I loved it even more because no one else our age got to go?

  Haley: extremely lame

  Haley: and also true

  Haley: see you Monday

  The most important thing was to act as normal as possible until I could figure out my next move. I’d reached the end of what I had planned, but the journey was far from over. I was a roller coaster out of tracks, unsure of how the ride would end.

  I carefully flipped my corkboard around, keeping my spiderweb facing the wall and feeling like a boy hiding porn under the mattress from his parents. It wasn’t only my parents I was worried about. Truthfully, I didn’t want April to see it, either.