by Rachel Shane
With shaky hands she pulled off the ribbon carefully, taking the time to compose herself the way she always did before opening Christmas presents from her relatives where the chance of receiving something lame and horrible was higher than not. She’d become good at what she called her, “oh my God thank you!” face and she intended to use it here. Harper slid her finger beneath the edge of the wrapping paper until it lifted in one clean sheet. She pried open the lid and found the same gold jersey waiting inside.
Her mouth dropped open, shock and gratitude erasing the calm composure she’d perfected.
Starr was grinning like crazy. “Go on.” She nudged Harper on the shoulders toward the gym locker room. “Change!”
Inside the locker room, Harper clutched the shiny fabric to her chest one last time before fumbling for her cell phone. Her fingers shook as she fired off a few quick texts to Blake. Her whole skin was crawling with an itch to talk to him again.
BlakeSpacey: Well, maybe I’ll give you a sneak peak of what I look like when I upload the “evidence.” A shot of my elbow in front of the graffiti mural perhaps?
Her brow furrowed and she scrolled back up wondering if she missed something. What the hell was he talking about with evidence and graffiti?
She wrote a response asking as such but he went silent, so she tried a new angle to get him talking again. I guess we’re both committing crimes tonight, mine of the revenge variety. Maybe we should change strategies. Be each other’s partners in crime. What do you say? Sidekicks?
A few minutes passed before Blake texted back: I love when you talk dirty to me like that. Say the word SIDEKICK again.
Harper smiled at her phone. Blake was obsessed with all things comics, just like her old friend turned current enemy Brett. Sometimes she cringed at the similarities between the two but mostly she focused on the elements Blake had that Brett didn’t. For example: guts.
She snapped a quick photo of her pasty white elbow and sent it along with a single word. Sidekick.
He wrote back immediately: Wait, is that what I think it is? An elusive clue to the appearance of ShadowGirl?
Harper: It’s a preview of tonight. When you’ll get to feast your eyes on BOTH elbows at once.
BlakeSpacey: Hold up though. I just re-read what you wrote before. Tell me more about this revenge plot? You’re not going to do anything dangerous are you?
Harper: Not as dangerous as GRAFFITI. But on that note, I have to go. I’ll be in touch later with the meet up plans!
She was about to slide her phone beneath the waistband of her black leggings when she pursed her lips at it. Her fingers flew across the device. Just to check, she told herself. Just in case. If there’s no update, plan aborted. Her heart leaped into her throat as soon as she logged onto Snapchat and spotted the first post in her timeline: a selfie from Connor with his arm around a girl, the backdrop of a restaurant behind him.
Vomit lodged in the back of her throat for only a second before her eyes latched onto the restaurant part.
He wasn’t in his room.
It was now or never. She might not get another chance.
The only way she could catch Connor off guard was if she caught him by surprise. She’d gone to great lengths to conceal her whereabouts, forcing her brother Jackson to “check-in” as her at the movies tonight despite his gripes. But Jackson still owed her. He probably would owe her until the end of time.
She swallowed hard, assessing her options. She could exit through the side door, fleeing from Starr without risk of getting caught, but then she’d have to ditch her suitcase and with it, the disguises she brought. Option two: put on the uniform, go back out there, and then slink away with her suitcase as soon as the commotion started and the girls were distracted. But she bit her lip, feeling uneasy about ditching her future teammates. Ditching them now would destroy any chance of bonding with them next year. She’d be pegged immediately as a betrayer, not a team player.
There was also Plan C: play in the game, meet up with Blake, and forget Connor and her soccer future forever.
Harper swallowed hard, her eyelashes fluttering closed as she made her decision. She committed to it by placing the jersey over her head. She spun in the mirror, watching the sparkles catch the light overhead and marveling at the way it fit her so perfectly. Like she belonged in it.
When she returned to the gym, Starr let out a breath. “Phew. I was worried it wouldn’t fit—I tried to gauge your size thanks to Facebook stalking but that was when I thought you were…someone else.”
Poe. Harper’s fingers went slack, her old shirt falling out of her hands. It almost felt as if this was another thing she was taking from Poe without asking. But of course, this was the opposite. This was Poe’s request.
Prospective students and their hosts trickled in. Spectators clogged the metal bleachers, including an entire frat wearing Greek letters and whooping at each prospective girl who shrugged a school-issued yellow pinney over her head. This was clearly one of the school sanctioned events put on by the organizers to give the new students a safe alcohol-free evening filled with something fun. She scanned the growing crowd, but let out a relieved breath that she didn’t see Poe and Brett.
Her eyes traced the guys in the crowd, wondering if Blake was among them.
The prospectives on the other side huddled together, eyeing the world-class soccer team and quite literally shaking in their sneakers. Even a few prospective guys joined them to even out the skill set. Adrenaline shot in Harper’s veins the way it always did before a game.
Cheers preceded the rush of a group of girls in the same glittery gold shirts, their hair pulled into high ponies, their muscular legs pounding the floor so hard it felt like the entire world shook. They raised their arms high in the air and swooped Harper into a huddle like she was one of them. The soccer team. Her soccer team.
“Girl, what position do you want to play? Name it. It’s yours.” Starr nudged her into the center of the huddle so she had to spin to look at each smiling face.
The cheers raging outside promised attention, glory. The exit door offered anonymity and secrecy. Her mouth wobbled, opening and closing. Her brain rattled with static like a radio switching between stations. She couldn’t settle on a decision. Play. Ditch. Future. Past. It was too much.
The smile wavered on Starr’s lips and she pulled out of the huddle. All hands dropped and the team stepped back from Harper as if they were so in sync with Starr they didn’t need further instruction. Starr waggled her finger toward Harper.
Harper wobbled on shaky legs as she followed Starr off to the side, where they leaned against shiny concrete walls. Harper sucked desperate breaths through her nostrils, trying to get a hold of herself.
“Are you okay?” Starr placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to play if you’re nervous. I thought this would be fun, but if it’s too much pressure—”
“It’s not that.” Harper stifled a twinge in her chest. This girl had been so kind to her, she felt like she at least owed her an explanation. “I want to play. I do. It’s just that—I have to do something first.”
This hadn’t been the decision she’d made in the locker room. But she would never be able to focus on her future until she closed the door to her past.
Starr’s face softened. “What is it?”
Harper hesitated. Telling Starr would make her an accomplice and Starr had a lot more riding on her good name than Harper did. “I—I can’t tell you.”
Starr lit up like a Christmas tree. “A secret? You most certainly can! I keep ‘em fiercely.”
Harper bit her lip. “It’s against a lot of rules. You could get in trouble.”
Starr didn’t even hesitate. “If it’s for a teammate, it’ll be worth it.”
Harper’s heart thumped. A teammate. “I need to get revenge on my ex. He’s a freshman here and he stole something very important from me. I need to sneak into his room and get it back.”
Starr’s eyes widened.
“What did he steal?”
Harper opened her mouth and then snapped it shut again. If she revealed about the medical records, this whole thing would be for nothing. Starr may say she kept secrets fiercely but would she keep something that could put her teammate’s life in danger? She couldn’t risk it. Harper was already pretending to be Poe tonight, so she told a half-truth. A lie from the past. “A sext.”
Starr gasped.
“He’s threatening to text it to the whole school, which is why I need to delete every instance of it from his computer and phone.” Harper felt she owed Starr some truth though, so she said, “Plus I want to make him pay, revenge style. Prank style.”
Starr cupped her hands over the sides of her moth. “Girls—cancel the game. Rally the team. We’ve got a douchebag to destroy.” She beamed at Harper. “You’ve got an army now.”
CHAPTER 11
POE
“…Not sure but I think so. Ugh. I don’t know. It’s just so hard to decide this early and yet I have to declare by next week and, bah! How am I ever going to choose?”
Poe’s host, Lucy, spent the entire fifteen minute walk to Haven Hall blabbering non-stop about what major she should declare despite planning to be a doctor, which left only a few actual options and oh my God it didn’t even matter if the end result would be the same. Poe resisted the urge to roll her eyes, instead plopping a smile onto her face that felt as unnatural as always. Once she got inside Haven Hall, she could drop the act. This was just a performance, nothing more. Still, it took all of Poe’s willpower to resist the urge to smack Lucy upside the head until she made a damn decision.
Poe’s eyes darted past every construction paper cut out of rainbows and unicorns lining the dorm doors, each emblazoned with a bubble letter name. Lauren. Chandler. Diana. Naticia. But no Valentina on floor two. Lucy stepped over two girls sitting in the hallway, their legs spread out as they painted each other’s nails, and twisted the knob to the last door in the row. Poe’s heart sank. Valentina wasn’t on this floor.
Lucy held open her door and flourished her hand as if she were presenting the winning award at the Oscars. Poe hesitated, her eyes flicking to the stairwell behind Lucy. “What’s on the other floors?”
“This is a girl’s only dorm, so no boys here, if that’s what you’re asking. A shame, I know. I was pissed when I first got my dorm assignment but it’s really great actually. No pressure.” Lucy pursed her lip for the briefest moment before launching into another rambly speech. “I mean, there’s some pressure, of course. Because all the girls on this floor are especially leggy and gorgeous and I’m”—she waved her hand over her short, stocky figure—”blessed in the hips, as my mom likes to say. Which is just annoying because I really need encouragement, you know?”
“Yep,” Poe said fast, before Lucy felt the need to explain anymore. There was one thing Poe was regretting not packing: a muzzle for her new companion.
“Come in! I have a super fun evening planned so we have to—”
“You go ahead.” Poe pushed her suitcase just inside Lucy’s door but then stepped back out. “I have to pee.”
Lucy clapped a palm over her mouth. “Oh my gosh! Of course! I should have offered. I’m so sorry. I’m such a bad host.”
“It’s fine.” Poe spun on her heels, walking slowly, waiting for the click of Lucy’s door shutting behind her. When it didn’t come, Poe added, “Seriously, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“I have to come with you,” Lucy demanded. “It’s one of the rules. Let me just my bathroom toiletries. Trust me, you don’t want to use the soap in there.”
The door snicked into place while Lucy ran to get her fancy soap. The girls painting toenails laughed and rolled their eyes in Lucy’s direction as if they understood Poe’s desperation to get away. So she lifted a finger to her lips, the universal sign for, can you keep a secret? And then bolted for the stairwell just as Lucy’s door opened again.
Her pulse amped with both excitement and nerves as she took the stairs two at a time. She twisted the knob for floor three and raced down the hallway, running her fingers over the glossy construction block walls, but it wasn’t until floor four that she saw it. Written on damask-patterned construction paper. Valentina.
Poe drew in a shaky breath, her whole body feeling unbalanced. All the confidence that usually oozed in her veins suddenly drained out in a rush. Standing in this very spot could be a five hundred thousand dollar mistake. Lift your arm, she coaxed herself, but it remained glued to her side.
Suddenly, the door flew open and Poe scrambled away, ducking into bathroom across the hall lest she be caught stalking the only blood relative she might have a chance of liking. Steam folded around Poe and the scent of cherry blossom soap warmed her nostrils. The heavy deluge of a shower hitting a plastic floor drowned out the beating of her heart. She headed for the sink, clutching the white basin as she gulped in desperate breaths. She’d come all this way to confront her long lost sister and her fight or flight response triggered the lamest of all.
The doorknob rattled, metal jiggling. When it swung open, Poe’s eyes landed on a girl with long dark hair, a face that mirrored her own but warped in various ways. Poe’s cheeks were gaunter. The girl’s nose was wider. She had darker eyes, fuller lips. But as she stepped into the bathroom, Poe took in other similarities. Long torso. Boyish hips. Genetically gifted booty.
Poe forced her elbows to jerk into motion like someone doing a robot dance and thrust her hands beneath scalding hot water. Valentina sidled up to the sink next to Poe and plopped a bag of make-up on the brushed metal ledge below the mirror. She closed one eye and leaned toward her reflection, then swiped glittery silver eye shadow over her lids. She wore the slimmest little black strapless dress Poe had ever seen—and she’d seen and wore them all.
The water burned Poe’s skin but she couldn’t drag her hands—or her—eyes away.
Valentina paused mid-eye shadow application. She turned her head to Poe with one eye still jammed shut. “What?”
The word was sharp. Clipped. Combative.
The words I’m your sister hid in the back of Poe’s throat, her heart somersaulting. She was sharing the same breathing air as the girl she shared DNA with, and her sister didn’t show any hint of recognition. “Nothing.”
Valentina spun back to the mirror, rolling her eyes at the creepo next to her and amping the volume on her iPhone until heavy rap beats pulsed through the bathroom, echoing off the tiled walls.
Poe silently mouthed every word to the song bumping through the tinny speakers, feeling a strange sense of solidarity to the person she shared both DNA and song preferences with.
“I love this song,” she managed to say in a whisper, barely audible over the pumping bass.
“Who doesn’t?” The slightest hint of a Spanish accent lingered in her words. Valentina dipped her brush into a darker shade of silver.
Poe clung to the music, bobbing her head and cataloguing it in her heart in an expanding file about her sister. The file also contained her essay on The Handmaid’s Tale published on her high school’s website. Two make up reviews she’d found on Amazon. And her Tumblr account, which consisted mostly of reposts of aggressive quotes about feminism, existentialism, and rebellion. Oh and Dylan O’Brien.
After Poe had googled the hell out of Valentina Cupo, she’d moved on to David Wallace Easterly, the man she never got to know. She’d expected a deadbeat, like all Ashley’s other boyfriends and girlfriends…or fuckbuddies as the case may be. But David Wallace Easterly seemed…like the kind of guy who would pay child support, not the kind of guy who would impregnate two different women within a year and abandon them both with some hush money. The kind of guy that had a mil to spare thanks to his lucrative plastic surgery business.
Her dad was an expensive doctor and last week she ate Ramen for three straight days because it was all she could afford. The five hundred thousand he bequeathed her seemed too little, too late, a sorry replacement for eighteen yea
rs without the life she could have had.
Poe didn’t know why he chose not to pursue a relationship with her, but now she stood only a foot away from someone who might have clues. She switched off the water and shook out her pruned fingers. Hi. That was all she had to say. Hi. Just one word. She had no problem spewing a string of curses at people she didn’t like, so why was one word so difficult to push past her lips?
But then another girl burst into the room, one false eyelash dangling from her eye. “Help!” the new girl squealed. “Fashion emergency!”
Valentina rolled her eyes. “I told you to wait for me. Fuck. What am I going to do with you, Kate? Come here.”
Kate fluttered forward in a gait that would be fit for a fairy prancing through a flower meadow. “I got brave! And bored.”
“And stupid,” Valentina said. “Close your eye.”
Kate was the redhead from Valentina’s Facebook profile. The girl’s hair was straight, not curly, but side by side, they reminded her too much of herself and Harper. Poe quickly turned away, her heart beating fast, and leaned toward the mirror, pretending to inspect her own reflection.
Valentina yanked the eyelash off Kate’s eye without hesitating.
“Ow!” Kate clutched her eye, pouting her coral-stained lips.
Valentina ran over finger over her phone on the mantle. “Crap, party starts in ten!” She tossed her makeup products into her bag.
Kate blinked with one naked eye, one glam one. “Pfft, then we have at least forty minutes before we need to leave.”
Valentina stopped throwing objects into her bag and gave the girl a hard look. “You know why I need to get there on time.”
Kate leaned toward the mirror, going for round two in the battle against the lash. “Fine, but if you get arrested again, I’m bailing.”
The most brilliant smile lit up Valentina’s face. Poe let out a breath, earning a sharp glare from the girl herself. But Poe’s half-sister turned back toward Kate, the same smile stretching her lips. “Bailing me out?”
