“I don’t know,” Lyla says.
Shit.
Neither of us has anything else to say, so we end the call.
“Nikki Morgan?” Ethan asks as I drop my phone in my bag.
I nod.
“Jesus.”
“I know.” I feel the beginning of a headache pulsing at my temples. Ethan calmly switches lanes.
Nikki.
“I just wish I could figure out why,” I say, nearly whining.
Ethan blows out a breath. “Well, what do we know about her? She picked you four for a reason, and she wants you dead, so you must have done something to piss her off. Something big.”
“But I didn’t even know her before this game.”
“Maybe you didn’t even realize you did anything wrong.”
I scrub a hand down my face. Lyla’s sister pops into my head, and the puzzle pieces click together.
“Wait. Lyla’s sister committed suicide, and Lyla says her sister and Nikki were friends.” Before the plagiarism fiasco, anyway.
“Bingo,” Ethan says. “Nikki wants revenge for Lyla’s sister’s death.”
“All right….But what does that have to do with all of us? We didn’t kill her. She committed suicide.”
Because she was bullied. “Oh my God.”
“What?” Ethan says.
“Lyla told me her sister was bullied. It got so bad she had to be homeschooled.”
“Farrah?” Ethan says.
“Or Hartley.”
“But if you want revenge for your friend, why try to off your friend’s sister?” Ethan asks.
I remember the story Lyla told me about pushing her sister’s buttons. “They got in a fight before she died. Maybe Nikki thinks that’s what sent her over the edge.”
“This has to be it,” Ethan says.
My heart beats fast.
“We need to talk to the other girls.”
I pull out my phone and send a message to Lyla, Farrah, and Hartley:
We need to talk. Meet me at Norma Jean’s on Chartres in half an hour. It’s a matter of life and death.
The place is one of those fifties-style burger joints with black-and-white-checked tile and a row of steel stools against a long counter.
I don’t see them at first, and I think no one showed up, but when we round a corner, there they are, wedged into one of the bench seats by the back window. Farrah and Lyla.
“Hey,” I say as we approach. “Thanks for coming.”
Farrah shoots a suspicious look at Ethan.
“This is Ethan,” I say. “A friend of mine. He knows everything.”
Ethan gives them a little wave that neither returns. He sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets. We settle around the table. Lyla slides a saltshaker between her hands. Farrah grips a tube of lip gloss as if she’s punishing it.
“Hartley?” I ask hopefully, even though I didn’t get a response from her.
“She didn’t come to school again today,” Farrah says. “And she’s still ignoring my texts.”
Wow—she’s taking their fight harder than I expected.
Hartley hasn’t turned out to be at all the person I thought she was. She may act as if she doesn’t give a shit about anything besides having fun, but in reality she cares the most. All the crass jokes, the bad attitude, the complete disregard for the law—it’s a ruse to keep people from seeing how vulnerable she really is.
Hartley and Farrah are more similar than I ever realized.
It’s crazy, but I actually feel sorry for Farrah. It must be terrible to feel so scared to show people who you are that you’d be willing to hurt the ones you love the most to hide your truth.
Farrah must see the pity on my face, because she juts her chin up. “So are you going to tell us what this is about or what?” she says. “I have to get back to school.”
I take a deep breath. “Lyla and I figured out who’s behind the game.”
“Who?” Farrah asks.
“Nikki. And I think I know why.”
“What? Nicole Morgan?” Farrah answers.
“She was friends with this girl who died. Who killed herself, actually.”
Lyla looks up sharply. I meet her eyes.
“Your sister,” I tell her.
Lyla leans across the table. “You—you think this has to do with my sister?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I think this whole game has all been some sort of twisted revenge for her death.”
“Revenge?” Farrah says. “But I didn’t even know Lyla’s sister.”
“She was bullied,” I say, letting the implication hang.
“So what?” She sees my knowing look. “Oh, so you think I bullied her?”
“Hartley too,” I say. “And don’t look so offended. I didn’t forget about you laughing at my mom.”
“And what’s your connection, huh?” Farrah demands. “Did you bully her too?”
“I—” But I stop. It’s a glaringly obvious missing piece, and I have no idea what it could be.
“Who’s your sister?” Farrah asks Lyla.
Lyla shifts uncomfortably. “Her name is—was Sam.”
“Sam Greene?” Farrah says. “See, I don’t even know a Sam Greene. There goes your theory.”
“She was my stepsister,” Lyla says. “Her last name was MacNamara.”
Sam MacNamara.
Oh my God.
All the blood drains out of my head. And suddenly I know. I know exactly why I was pulled into this game.
Beneath the table Ethan grips my hand. He knows too.
I look into his eyes. “Sam.”
“What do you mean?” Lyla says. “Did you know my sister? What’s going on?”
I shake my head, pulling my gaze from Ethan to Lyla. “I—I didn’t really know her.” I hesitate, looking at Ethan again.
“You have to tell her,” Ethan says.
“Tell me what?” Lyla says.
“Um. Sam. She—she started tutoring me last year,” I start. “After I’d been off sick for a while. She got really…intense. I’m sorry, Lyla. You don’t want to hear this….”
Lyla has wilted into the bench, her eyes suddenly bright. “It’s okay. I want to know what happened.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
“Please,” she says.
I take a deep breath. “Well, she was nice at first. I mean—she was always nice. That wasn’t the problem. And she was smart and really interesting, and she didn’t seem to have a lot of friends—”
“Hope. I want to know what happened.” Lyla looks up, implores me with her eyes. I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and look away.
“We hung out a bit,” I start. “And then it kind of started to be weird. Like, too much, too soon, you know?”
Staring at me.
Showing up places I didn’t invite her to.
Calling me her best friend, even though we’d just met.
Wearing the same clothes as me.
Dyeing her hair ash blond.
I shiver.
“I tried to taper off contact with her, but then she got caught up in that fire in the library. I felt bad for her, but she got really mad at me about it. She said I told her I’d meet her there, but that’s not what I said. I said I might stop by.”
It’s not entirely true. I’d told her I might stop by, knowing full well she’d go. I just wanted her to leave me alone. To have a minute to breathe without her being right there.
I swallow, shift in my seat.
“Anyway, she cornered me by my locker one day and just freaked out—like, really yelled at me. Something about ruining her surprise for me. She apologized after, but the whole thing was just so weird, and it made me nervous. I told the principal what was going on, and he spoke with her. She left the school after that. I didn’t know…I had no idea she would have…”
Lyla stares at the saltshaker on the table.
“I’m sorry, Lyl.”
“I know. It’s okay,” Lyla says.
<
br /> She looks so broken. I want to say something to make it better, but I can’t find any words. How do you apologize for something so big?
“It was an accident,” Farrah says. We turn to her.
“What was?” Ethan says.
“I was meeting Hartley in the study carrels in the library.”
My heart beats fast. I don’t dare budge in case it makes her change her mind about talking.
“She was helping me with an English paper. People think she isn’t smart, but she’s actually a writer. She’s written, like, four novels, and they’re really good.” She seems to realize her slipup. “I said I’d read them in exchange for her tutoring me.”
“What happened in the library?” I say, bringing the conversation back to the accident.
Farrah twists her lip gloss in her hands, digging a manicured fingernail into the grooves in the cap. “We’d go there because it was always empty and quiet and we could be alone. Or at least I thought we were alone. We got in a fight that day, and things started escalating. It was like she was trying to get me to blow my lid. You know how she gets. Anyway, I should have walked away, but I didn’t. Hartley lit up a cigarette just to piss me off, and I was trying to get her to put it out. Mrs. Ferrante came up to see what all the yelling was about, and I didn’t want her to think I was smoking too, so I yanked the cigarette out of Hartley’s mouth and threw it behind the curtains—you know the thick red curtains they used to have upstairs? So Ferrante accused us of smoking, we denied it, and then Ferrante couldn’t prove it, so we left. I guess the cigarette wasn’t out all the way, and the curtains caught on fire. Sam—she was asleep in one of the study carrels….”
It occurs to me suddenly why Hartley incessantly flicks at her lighter but never actually smokes.
“How come no one knows about this?” I ask.
Farrah ducks her head. “Because my dad made a settlement with her family and paid off the school. He didn’t want my name tied up in this with his campaign coming up. I know, it’s disgusting,” she says, and I realize Ethan is sneering at her. “But they didn’t have to worry about money anymore. It wasn’t a small chunk of change.” Farrah seems to realize she’s talking to Sam’s sister, and her face blazes crimson. “I’m sorry, Lyla. I—we didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident.”
Lyla hasn’t said anything in a while. She’s staring at the saltshaker with scientific interest, as if she’s trying to count the individual grains.
“I’m sorry, Lyla,” I say. “I know this is hard to hear.”
“It’s okay.” She forces a wobbly smile. “I mean, I knew we must have had some sort of settlement, because Mom wasn’t struggling for groceries anymore.”
I don’t know what to say, where to look. The tension at the table is palpable. Farrah looks as though she’d rather be donating her body to science than sitting here having this conversation.
“So it’s definitely Nikki, then,” Ethan says.
“Looks that way,” I say.
I can’t believe it. Nicole Morgan. Class president, a member of every club and committee St. Beatrice offers.
Lyla blows out a breath that flutters the small hairs that have come loose from her ponytail.
“So what do we do now?” Farrah asks. “You have a plan, right?”
I still.
“Of course she has a plan,” Ethan says. I look at him sharply. He raises his eyebrows.
“We trap her,” I say. “We have an advantage over her right now,” I add, gaining momentum. “We know what she’s up to, but she doesn’t know that we know. She hasn’t been to the last two dares, at least not anywhere we can see, so next time an invite comes, we’ll have to beg her to come with us. I’ll confront her with my theory, and hopefully she spills the truth. We can even air it live to a YouTube channel or something if one of us has a cell phone on, recording. Ethan can be close by with the cops.”
“That’s your plan?” Farrah’s forehead is puckered.
“You have a better one?” Ethan says.
“Why would she come?” Farrah says. “Just because we asked her nicely? She’d know something was up.”
“Then we send her a text from a blocked number,” Ethan says. “Threaten to expose her secret unless she goes. Fight fire with fire.”
“Think that’ll work?” Farrah asks.
“It worked for us.” I lean across the table, steepling my fingers together. “Look. This is our best chance at catching her.”
“She’s right,” Lyla says. She straightens, and the booth vinyl creaks. “We need evidence to go to the police with. If we went to them ranting about a secret dare club and revenge plots with nothing but theories and rumors to back us up, they’d laugh us out of the station.”
“And what if she turns on us?” Farrah says. “What if she has a system in place to reveal our secrets if we step out of line? What if she has other puppets besides Tucker helping her? Then what? We’re a bunch of dead girls walking. Or, I dunno, maybe we already are. Dead Girls Society. Has a nice ring to it.”
“I’m not denying any of that is a possibility,” I say. “But if we don’t do this, she just gets to keep controlling us. She can make us do whatever twisted things she wants until one of us dies. Do you want to live like that? Look, Farrah. If you don’t want a part in this, then fine. But do you really think no one’s going to find out about you?”
“Hope,” she warns.
“One day this is going to get out there,” I say, and I know from the look in her eyes that we’re talking about something else besides the fire. “So you can either make this something you come forward with, something you’re not ashamed of, or it can be something the press ferrets out and exposes you for. It’s up to you whether you want to be a coward or not.”
The clatter of plates in the kitchen comes into hyperfocus. A knot of tension coils in my stomach, and I’m not sure whether I want to scream or cry or throttle Farrah until she can see the sense in what I’m saying. But none of those things will help me—it’s up to her if she wants to stand up to Nikki or not.
“I’m in,” Lyla says suddenly.
Farrah presses her lips into a hard pink line. “Fine,” she blurts out. “I’ll do it.”
The knot unfurls. I look at each of them, these two girls I’ve come to know so well in such a short amount of time. Even though we’re all afraid, I feel better having them with me.
“Okay,” I say, “one last dare.”
We don’t wait long for the next invite to arrive. When I get home and open my laptop, there’s one new message in my inbox, sent today at 11:07 a.m. Just minutes after we left the diner.
I click it, and the screen goes black before a pixelated image of a rose comes into view. Words slash across the screen:
You’ve made it this far—now it’s time to win. Come to 291 Schilling Road at midnight tonight. And come alone.
If you dare.
“Let’s go over the plan one more time.”
I shoot a glance at my bedroom door, then lean in closer to Ethan.
“You’ll follow us to the warehouse,” I start, “and if I can, I’ll text you the dare location when I find out what it is. If I can’t, you’ll follow us. I’ll confront Nikki, and we’ll get the whole thing on tape. You’ll dial 911, cops will swarm. We’ll save the day.”
Ethan smiles, and I refresh the screen on my phone. I sent messages out to all the girls about the plan tonight. They all responded—even Hartley—but no one seemed overly enthused about it.
“Do you think they’ll come?” I ask.
“Who knows. But even if they don’t, it’ll still be two against one. I’m not leaving you.”
He’s right. We don’t technically need them. I push away the discomfort and stow my phone back in my purse.
Ethan looks out my bedroom window, but I watch him. Brassy streetlight cuts sharp angles into his features and makes his jaw look sketched out of marble. His hair shines like polished stone as it falls over a pensive brow.
> He turns around again and catches me.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I answer. My voice sounds small and timid.
We keep looking at each other. After a while it gets to be like a contest. Who’s going to look away first? I lose.
And then I instantly regret it. I want that moment back.
Ethan opens his mouth to speak, then reconsiders and closes it again.
“What?” I ask.
“I didn’t tell you the full reason why I broke up with Savannah.” His gaze falls to his lap. He nervously traces the seam of his jeans.
I don’t say anything. Nerves skitter inside my stomach. Somehow I know what he’s going to say.
“It’s because I’m in love with someone else.” He takes my hand and looks up at me. “I’m in love with you.”
My heart stops, then beats harder, warmth filling my cheeks. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted to hear, but somehow it doesn’t feel real.
“How—Why didn’t you say anything before?” I ask.
“I didn’t think you thought of me that way.”
I shake my head. How could he have possibly thought that? Not taken one look at my face and instantly known how desperately I wanted him?
“But I’m sick,” I say.
“I know.”
“I won’t be around forever.”
“None of us will. Now stop trying to convince me I don’t want you.”
Ethan reaches up to my face, his fingertips tracing my cheek, my jaw, the tiny cleft in my chin, his eyes never leaving mine. A test—is this okay? Can I do this?
I give him my answer by fixing my gaze on his lips, the bottom one full and sulky and smooth looking. I want him to kiss me so badly. I want to see if his lips are as smooth as they look. I tilt my face toward him, and we move so close that everything else disappears and all that’s left is him, clean laundry and soap and a hint of chlorine. But he doesn’t kiss me yet. Not like with Tucker, all desperate collision and quick-let’s-do-this. Ethan looks at me as if he wants to memorize every part of my face, every second of this moment, so he’ll always have it. As if he’s wanted this forever.
As if he loves me.
Dead Girls Society Page 20
