Hide and Seek (6 page)

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.”

She caught the scent of his minty shampoo as he shifted in his seat to face her. The sun reflected in his eyes, turning them a golden brown. Emma drew her bottom lip into her mouth. “How’s your first day back?”

“Well, my old soccer buddies aside, I don’t think I’ve ever been so popular,” he said with a hint of a smirk. “Maybe I should go missing more often.”

Madeline lowered herself into the seat next to Thayer and swatted him. “Don’t even joke about that!” Then she narrowed her eyes at Emma, as if to say,
Remember what I told you?

Emma felt another pair of eyes on her, too: Laurel’s. Sutton’s sister was glaring fiercely at her, her gaze bouncing from Emma’s face to Emma’s and Thayer’s fingers. Emma hadn’t realized they were almost touching. Emma quickly grasped her cup of hot chocolate, angling slightly away from Thayer.

“Where’s your
boyfriend,
Sutton?” Laurel said pointedly.

“Taking his mom to the doctor,” Emma said coldly. “Where’s
your
boyfriend? Have you officially dumped him yet?”

Laurel crunched angrily into a carrot stick, not answering. The other people at the table shifted uncomfortably. Finally, Charlotte cleared her throat. “So, are you two excited for your dad’s party on Saturday?”

Madeline launched into a story about her father’s disastrous birthday party a few years ago. But before she could get to the punch line, a crackling sound blared from the loudspeaker mounted over the doors.

“Hello, Hollier students,” came the gravelly voice. “This is Principal Ambrose. I have an announcement regarding the Harvest Dance next Friday.”

Students perked up across the patio, and conversations ceased.

“Due to the recent vandalism to school property,” Ms. Ambrose continued, “I regret to inform the student body that the dance has been canceled. Unless the persons responsible step forward, this decision is final.”

Everyone collectively gasped. Girls groaned. The soccer table looked pissed. One girl actually started crying. Emma’s stomach sank. She thought about the moment when Ethan asked her to the dance, and how excited she’d been to see him in a suit.

“Told you they didn’t have cameras,” Emma said in a defeated voice.

“
Shit
,” Madeline said beneath her breath.

“This is very not good,” Laurel said gravely as all heads turned toward Emma, Charlotte, Madeline, and Laurel. The stares weren’t friendly. The looks on everyone’s faces said
How dare you.
The table of girls next to the Lying Game group stood up in unison and walked away, as though Emma and the others were afflicted with the plague.

The swish of pom-poms filled the air, and three cheerleaders stalked by and leveled their glares on Emma and her friends. “Thanks for ruining
everything
,” the tallest one snapped. Then she tossed her hair over her shoulder and walked on.

Charlotte slumped down in her seat. “I haven’t been this ostracized since I was the skinniest girl at fat camp.”

Laurel nudged Madeline. “Aren’t some of those girls in your dance class? Tell them the truth!”

But Madeline’s gaze was on something else. Emma swung around. There, sitting just inside the cafeteria, clinking their Diet Cokes and smirking like they’d gotten away with murder, were the Devious Four. Emma tried to give them the nastiest look she could, but the girls just stared back, undaunted.

I couldn’t believe the balls these bitches had. Where was the respect?

“We’ve got to get them,” Emma murmured.

“How?” Madeline curled forward over her Hogan bag, looking expectantly at Emma.

“Um,” Emma stalled. She racked her brain for a Sutton-worthy idea. “With another prank.”

“And, that’s my cue to leave,” Thayer said under his breath. He slipped his black bag over his shoulder and started across the patio.

A streak of nerves passed through Emma. Lately the Lying Game pranks had been getting out of hand. Some of them, like Gabby disappearing in the desert, had been downright dangerous. “What if it’s…a
nice
prank?”

Laurel wrinkled her nose. “Why would we be nice to them?”

But an idea was forming in Emma’s mind. “Go with me here. Let’s throw our
own
dance next Friday—and keep a very tight guest list.” She glanced at the girls just inside the cafeteria doors. “We won’t invite a certain freshman four, if you know what I mean.”

Charlotte let out an excited whoop. “I love it!”

“
Brilliant!
” Madeline cried. “It will make everyone love us again,
and
it excludes the girls that burned us.”

I had to admit that I liked it, too. I was impressed my sister thought of it. And I kind of liked that we were going to pull a prank that didn’t target anyone for once. From my new lofty vantage point, it didn’t exactly feel good to watch how my friends and I used to treat people—and each other. Would things have been different—would
I
have been different—if Emma was in my life before I died? Would she have brought out a better, kinder side of me? Or would being around me have made her as mean as I was?

Charlotte flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I think this calls for a prank-planning session. Hot springs, anyone?”

“Perfect,” Madeline said, just as the bell signaling the end of lunch sounded. “Tomorrow night?”

“Done.” Emma gathered her books and stuffed them
into Sutton’s leather satchel. Right as she was about to slide from the table, she noticed the Devious Four once more. They were staring straight at her, watching her every move like a hawk homing in on its prey.

Look out, Sis. When you’re playing with fire, anyone can burn you. Even a freshman.