#scandal (6 page)

“Luce? You okay?” Cole whispers.

The bed is small—only a twin—and he’s shirtless and there’s hardly any space. I’ve never shared a bed with a boy before—just friends or otherwise—and now my skin involuntarily seeks his warmth, his touch. In the narrow gap between us, I feel Ellie’s presence, watching us with tears on her cheeks, holding out for an explanation that just doesn’t exist.

58

I inch closer to the wall without answering his question.

“We’ll take off first thing.” He leans over and kisses my shoulder, lips warm through the
Bears love people!
shirt, and Ellie vanishes. “Everything’ll be better in the morning.” The bed creaks as he settles back onto his side. I focus on emptying my head. Counting sheep. Ten. A hundred.

Drifting.

Somewhere far, far away . . .

“Lucy?” His fingers trail through the ends of my hair and I shiver. He finds a stray bobby pin, drops it to the floor.

Ping!

It’s impossible to hold on to my resolve; like my fairy godmother wishes, I feel it floating away, breath by breath.

Sheep. Count the sheep, Lucy. One, two, three . . .

The bed moans again. Cole rolls toward me.

“For the record,” he whispers, “if you ever got sick, I would totally hold your hair back.”

59

THE MURDEROUS LIT Tll E HARLOT

All SO KNOWN AS MY SIST ER

A
re we okay?” Cole asks when we pull into my driveway the next morning.

It was a groggy thirty-minute drive, and now Cole’s looking at me through heavy-lidded eyes, hair rumpled and adorable, and for a heartbeat I imagine us waking up together in his bed, smiling instead of shamed, lingering in postprom bliss instead of making small talk about the trashed cabin. Spence the horse-napper and Prince Freckles were already gone, but the rest of the place was still full of the drunk and the damned, everything smelling suspiciously equine.

Cole smiles before I respond, and all I can think is,
I
should be looking at that smile over pancakes and coffee. . . .

60

“No.” I blink away the fantasy. “I mean yes. Call when you find my cell? I forgot my license and stuff in your tux, too. Oh, and I couldn’t find my earrings. And I left some hairpins in your bathroom.”

I basically forgot everything that wasn’t attached to my body, all in my haste to disappear before Griff woke up.

I’m pretty sure she was wasted last night—too drunk to remember our run-in—but there’s no way she would’ve just sent me out the door in Cole’s clothes this morning, all bed-headed and guilty-looking. Not without the grand inquisition.

“Hairpins?” Cole says.

“I’m dead if Mom finds out I lost them. The earrings, not the pins. The cell, too.”

“Should I call you on the missing phone?” he asks.

“Stop trying to make me laugh.”

“Never,” he whispers. The familiar mischief is back in his eyes, and I allow myself a smile. “Lucy . . .” Cole taps his fingers on the steering wheel, and my smile vanishes again, a ghost in the morning sun. “I don’t know what to do, either, okay? It’s not like I don’t care about Ellie. I don’t want to hurt her. It’s just . . . it’s over. What happened with us . . .” He sighs, his gaze tracking a robin in the grass before finding its way back to me. “We’ll figure something out. We’ll go to her house and—”

61

“I have to do it,” I say. “Alone. I want her to hear it from me.” Even if she lied about being sick, about her reasons for skipping prom, I can’t keep this from her.

Images of Ellie and Cole swirl in my mind, all our high school highlights blending together: listening to Vanitas in Cole’s garage practically every weekend. Fishing trips to the cabin. My parents and me taking care of Spike when the Fosters went to Italy last year. Dad teaching me and Ellie how to drive stick in his old five-speed Accord. Ellie getting her UCLA acceptance letter the day after I got mine, both of us jumping up and down at her mailbox, planning out our future.

Ellie, my best friend. And Cole, a spark burning in my heart, always bright and silent, always just a dream.

Until last night.

In the cramped space of the car, Cole rubs his eyes and I trace circles on the window and all I can wonder is,
Why
can’t I have them both?

I reach for the door handle.

“I know it’s weird.” Cole touches my hand, pulls away again. “I get it. I just don’t want things to be—”

“They’re not. We’re fine. I mean, not
we’re
, like
we
. Just you. And me. Separately. Anyway, I’ll talk to Ellie tomorrow. I’ll go over there before school.” I smile and duck out of the car, grab Ellie’s dress from the backseat.

62

Cole’s touch lingers on my skin, my wrist, my fingers after I close the door, but I don’t turn back, not even when his car rolls down the driveway and zooms into the street.

Category-five disaster.

I’m still in the bear shirt, and the basketball shorts are so long on me they cover part of my boots, which really tie the whole ensemble together. My hair is a roiling sea of bent red-brown waves, my lips ache with the ghost of last night’s kiss, and as I drag myself up the walkway to the house, I notice our front door is
wide
open.

A beautiful blonde crosses her arms in the doorway, flashing her cosmetically whitened smile like an evil queen, and behind her, Night of the Living Dog barks in warning.

Who’s the fairest of them all?

Angelica Darling.

Also known by legions of rabid fans as Jayla Heart.

Also known by Mom and Dad as Janey Vacarro.

My sister.

“Jesus, you look like hell,” she says. “Come inside and tell me
all
about it.”

Thrashing computer-generated zombies is my go-to relax-ation technique, but even the battle against the undead can’t keep my mind off Ellie and Cole.

It doesn’t help that my sister showed up a week early 63

and announced over postprom brunch that she’s staying the
entire
summer, which left my parents choking on their zucchini frittata with utter joy while I glared at her, like,
Damn! Give a girl a warning shot!

Lav-Oaks flew her in to do the commencement speech—Principal Zeff swore me to secrecy on that special surprise—but that was supposed to be it. Three days, in and out. For my parents’ sake, I could’ve faked my way through three days of nod-and-smile.

But the whole summer?

Before today, Jayla and I hadn’t spoken in almost a year.

Ambush.

On account of my prom-induced exhaustion, I scored several hours of alone time after brunch, but Mom and Dad are all about the forced sisterly bonding, and now Jayla’s standing behind me, her polished face and buttery blond highlights superimposed over the on-screen carnage.

“Why can’t you, like, paint your nails or go to the mall like a normal girl?” she asks.

Not a second too soon, I ice a charging zombie with my machete, splattering the screen with blood.

Jay flops on my bed, tossing aside a few stuffed ghouls.

“Sometimes I worry about your mental health.”
Click-click boom!

The shotgun works well for a few zombies at a time, 64

but the corpses I wasted give rise to a howling horde. They remind me of the fairies flitting around the gym last night, and I’m all,
Say hello to my little flamethrower, bitches.

I roast them like marshmallows. A few slip past, grab me. “I’m hit!”

“Miss me?” Jayla asks.

“Fuck!”

“Lucy!”

“I’m black-and-white!
Nononononooo!
” I frantically work the keys, but it’s no use. My gamer crew is being all per-mafrosty about my tournament bailout, and I’m way too distracted for a solo campaign. “Happy now, Jay? I’m dead.”

“Good. Come talk to me. It feels like forever since we talked.”

Allow me to translate.

Like Forever: from the Germanic ‘Like Forever,’ last summer, after my disastrous visit to her posh pad in Mal-ibu, cliché as it sounds. After I switched my flight to come home a day early. After Cole and Ellie picked me up at Denver International and I spent the night at Ellie’s so I wouldn’t have to lie to Mom and Dad about the change in my itinerary.

“Lucy, come on.” She bats her baby blues. Really, I couldn’t make this stuff up. “Tell me about prom. Mom said you looked amazing—like a real girl.” 65

“Let me guess. This is you apologizing?” Jay tugs a thread on one of my ghouls, ducking my gaze.

“It was a year ago. Can’t we let it go?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Live in the moment for once. It’s done. Anyway, I’m turning over a new leaf.”

I choke back a snort. New leaf? Allow me to translate again.

On her weekly televised drama, Jayla plays a scheming, conniving killer whose questionable morals are justified by such original backstory as a string of cheating boyfriends, an absentee father, and an alcoholic mother who sleeps with Angelica’s friends.

In real life, my sister’s questionable morals have no such justification.

DANGER’S DARLING A DANGER TO HERSELF, the latest tabloid smear campaign said. SATURDAY NIGHT VIXEN VAMPS IT

UP IN VENICE BEACH
.
That one had a picture of Jay draped over some tattooed six-pack of a dude, her eyes big and glassy, leather skirt riding up her thighs. I found a whole stack in the recycle bin last weekend, still bound in plastic ties like Mom had stolen them right off the delivery truck.

Mom’s convinced the tabloids lie.

I narrow my eyes at her. “You’re up to something.”

“I have time off before shooting for next season, so I 66

thought I’d see what’s shakin’ in the Mile High.” She scans a series of zombified celebrities tacked to the wall over my bed, a pen-and-ink project I sketched a few months ago for art. “Obviously not much.”

I’m no detective, but it doesn’t add up. If my sister has time off, why would she spend it here? She has a beach house on Martha’s Vineyard. Boyfriends on every continent. She and I are totally on the rocks, and even her calls to my parents have been supershort, Jayla always phoning in an obligatory hello from the middle of some important shoot and,
Oh, sorry, gotta run!

I watch her across the room, searching for a crack in the facade, but she’s so tan and smiley it’s hard not to get caught up in her current. Hard not to believe her, every explanation made logical by her luscious lips. Hard not to miss her when she’s up close and personal again.

I blow a breath into my bangs. It’s
always
like this with Jay, like the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” song she sang during our childhood baths. When that girl laughs, up comes the sun and dries up all the rain.

And then the hurricane hits, right when you least expect it.

“Oh,” she suddenly squeals, “I totally have to show you something! You’ll
die
of sweetness!” She smashes against me in the computer chair. “Make a hole. Make a hole.” 67

I scootch over and swallow the lump in my throat, soaking up the essence of her latest signature scent. Pears, this one smells like. Crazy, expensive, diamond-studded pears.

Her fingers
click-clack
across the keyboard as she navigates to her Facebook fan page, the Jayla Heartthrobs. Two hundred thousand fans, growing steadily by the hour, I’m sure. Every picture has hundreds of likes and comments.

Hundreds.

My research is hardly scientific—already established, not a detective—but I spy a distinct correlation between Jayla cleavage exposure and number of fanboy likes.

“Congrats on being the last thing thousands of adoles-cent boys think about when they get into bed at night,” I say.

“Isn’t it awesome?”

“In a gross and illegal way, sure.”

She tries to smack me, but I duck. Video games have seriously honed my reflexes.

Jayla replies to a few messages with Xs and Os, and in the pale glow of the screen I study the curve of her jaw, the berry-hued lips, the salon-shaped brows. Even without the money, she’s always been a stunner. But for the first time since she became famous, she looks older, way more than the seven years she has on me.

68

“Don’t you start filming the next season in the summer?” I ask.

“We’re shooting in the fall this time.”

“But you—”

“Here’s the one I wanted to show you.” She taps a French-manicured nail against the screen. “‘Dear Jayla Heart. You have
my
heart. I turn eighteen in two years. If you’re still single, will you marry me?’ Isn’t he the sweetest thing ever?”

I roll my eyes. “Like high-fructose corn syrup.”

“How many marriage proposals have
you
gotten, little miss smug?”

I clap my hands and give her a radiant smile. “Golly, I don’t know. Maybe Mr. Right is waiting for my response right now!” I lean across the keyboard and sign in to my dusty-ass Facebook profile, barely giving it a glance.

“Eww.” Jay scrunches her nose. “You have the same number of Facebook friends that I have on my hair and makeup team alone.”

Whoosh!
That’s the sound of my rekindled sisterly affec-tion evaporating. “Guess that’s why my online marriage prospects are so slim,” I say.

“I get that you’re not a party girl, but you should be all over this. You don’t even have to do your hair to hang out online.”

69

My hand shoots to my head. “I do my hair.” Jayla snorts. “Seriously, Luce. Facebook is, like, twice the friends and half the effort.”

“You think?”

Jayla doesn’t get it. I didn’t abandon social media because I don’t want to make an effort. I just couldn’t deal with the we’re-so-in-love, aren’t-we-adorable status updates from Ellie.

Ellie
.

Without my phone, I have no idea what’s going on with my friends. For all I know, Cole’s already confessed everything. Or Griffin’s sharing her theories, taking revenge on me for snapping at her last night, for leaving without saying goodbye. And I’m hiding out at home, a phoneless coward, not one word closer to figuring out what I’m supposed to say to Ellie tomorrow.

I jam my thumbs into my eyes to erase the images of last night, and when I blink it all away and look at Jayla again, she’s shaking her head, her face all,
WTF?