The Cinderella Society (20 page)

Ryan walked slowly around his car and got in. The engine roared to life. He gave one last look at my front door, shook his head, and drove away.

I grabbed a box of tissues and burrowed under the
covers as a torrent of tears streamed down my face.

It was official. I was the girl you could only like in private.

*   *   *

GlitterGirl: how did it go tonight???

WillCheer4Food: dinner, great. movie, fun. first kiss, yum.

GlitterGirl: FIRST KISS?!?!?!!!!

WillCheer4Food: running into Wickeds at The Grind, disaster. no goodnight kiss.

Which wasn’t technically true, because he had kissed my cheek. But compared to the soul-searing lip-lock after the movie, it wasn’t even on the same scoreboard. Sarah Jane would understand the difference.

GlitterGirl: {{{Jess}}}

WillCheer4Food: are you embarrassed to be seen with me?

GlitterGirl: i’m sure it’s — —

GlitterGirl: what? of course not!!

I gave SJ the Tina rundown. She made all the right comforting noises (emoticons, whatever), but it didn’t make me feel any better. Neither had spilling the whole thing to Mom over a bowl of Chunky Monkey.

Boy, that had been nice, though. It was the first time Mom and I had really talked in what seemed like forever. It made me remember how cool she could be when she wasn’t obsessing about the twins.

But our talk hadn’t changed my mind about Ryan. No matter how many people told me it wasn’t me, I knew better.

It was Dan Carter all over again. I’d let myself get sucked into the fairy tale with him too. But in my defense, what was
I supposed to think when Dan hung out with me all summer, flirting and sneaking kisses? It’s not like he ever said, “Oh, and by the way? If you can’t hang with the Chosen Few come September, I’m ditching you like last year’s soccer cleats.”

I mean, when the big brush-off happens once, you can chalk it up to the guy being a loser. Which I did. In red Sharpie across his yearbook picture.

But here I was—new town, new guy—and it was like Dan: The Sequel. Ryan’s mind-blowing kiss in the parking lot snuffed out by the cold shoulder I’d gotten when we’d crossed paths with the evil ones. When would I ever learn? I might as well have
gullible
tattooed on my forehead.

No Wicked chatter
.

I braced myself, determined not to give in to the pity party I could feel brewing. I’d been to that party enough to know that no one cool ever crashes it.

I wrapped up with SJ, not wanting to prolong my misery, and was about to shut down when another IM knocked the wind out of me.

First&Goal: jess?

I stared at the screen. I’d taken my Internet safety class like a good little doobie and knew better than to respond to an unknown IM. But could it be …?

First&Goal: it’s ryan

How did he get my screen name? More to the point, why in the heck was he IMing me at almost midnight? Like he hadn’t already done enough damage to my fragile ego? Or was this Lexy and Morgan having a little fun at my expense?

WillCheer4Food: what did you eat tonight?

First&Goal: spinach dip (hot IS better), chicken jambalaya, and too much popcorn

Yep. Definitely Ryan.

First&Goal: i hope it’s okay to IM u … cass gave me your screen name … do u mind?

WillCheer4Food: that depends. are you IMing to break my heart a second time?

I know. I deleted that before I hit Send. As if I’d let on I was fool enough to think the spark was real.

WillCheer4Food: no problem. what’s up?

First&Goal: i wanted to say i’m sorry

WillCheer4Food: for?

First&Goal: how things ended

First&Goal: nick and i … there’s a lot of friction there

First&Goal: it has nothing to do with u

WillCheer4Food: np

First&Goal: can i make it up to u?

I stared at the screen again, afraid to let myself go there.
Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and I’ll put your butt in a sling
.

Whoa. That didn’t even sound like
my
Wicked chatter. Maybe my heart was finally rebelling against the male species.

WillCheer4Food: no need, but thanks. have a good night!

First&Goal: WAIT

First&Goal: okay, you’re mad … i don’t blame u … i acted like an idiot

First&Goal: let me show u i’m not a jerk

First&Goal: at least not all the time

WillCheer4Food: you’re not a jerk. and you don’t have to prove anything. i’m used to not fitting in

First&Goal: who don’t u fit in with?

WillCheer4Food: everyone at the round table? most of the kids in Mt. Sterling? your sister? take your pick

First&Goal: u fit with me

It caught me right square in the heart.

First&Goal: jess?

I couldn’t give in. The Cindys had my head in fairy-tale mode already. I couldn’t afford to let it spill over into my real life. I’d been burned enough to know better. I wasn’t one of the fortunate few destined to have it all.

First&Goal: i have to work early but i don’t want this to be over before it even gets started

First&Goal: i want another chance

First&Goal: i’m working a double shift tomorrow, but how about mini golf and really bad hot dogs Thu night? around 7?

First&Goal: i felt something with u, Jess

First&Goal: something I want to feel again

Was I delusional to give it another shot? To open myself up again, only to be picked off by a Wicked sniper or sleazy competitor ready to step in at the first sign of weakness?

First&Goal: are u going to make me beg?

WillCheer4Food: no

I hadn’t planned to do it. Didn’t even realize I had until I’d typed the word. But deep down I knew I couldn’t live with the what-ifs.

First&Goal: no u won’t go out with me or no u won’t make me beg?

First&Goal: because i’m not above begging

First&Goal: groveling is good for the soul

WillCheer4Food: no, you don’t have to beg. but you don’t have to prove anything either. if it works, it works. if it doesn’t, no big.

First&Goal: deal … but jess?

WillCheer4Food: yeah?

First&Goal: i can’t stop thinking about u. or that kiss in the parking lot

First&Goal: see u thursday, beautiful

Chapter 13

PAIGE WAS TALKING TO SARAH JANE
about the system upgrade when I got to the War Room for our first official leader meeting. I’d been racking my brain over the surge stuff, but so far I’d come up with zip. No idea what the surge was for; no idea how to battle it.

If I’d been a baseball player, I’d have been one step away from striking out. Not an impressive start for the new leader.

Once she’d turned Sarah Jane loose on the latest intelligence briefing from ISIS, Paige led me over to a magnetic whiteboard filling a large section of wall space. “Our intel isn’t anywhere near complete, but here’s what we can confirm: fourteen primary targets and about two dozen secondary targets.” She pointed to a group of photos gathered in the upper right corner. “Those are the primary targets: favorites of the Wickeds for a year or more. The rest are ones we’ve identified in the last twelve months.”

The targets were small photographs, each attached to card stock that listed the name, year in school, address, and any other notes the Cindys thought might be important.

“That’s it?” In a school of more than fifteen hundred students, forty or so targets didn’t seem like a very wide
net. Although I’m sure it seemed plenty wide to those forty girls.

“Those are just the top two tiers. Reggies we’ve been able to document being bullied on a regular basis. That’s targeting. The Wickeds gain power by dominating people who are strong. They might occasionally bully someone weak just for kicks, but it’s pretty rare, because it doesn’t increase their power. In their eyes, anyone can bully a weakling. But dominate someone strong, and the Wickeds’ power—and egos—get a boost. Plus, it makes that person less of a threat to the Wickeds’ empire.”

She settled us into chairs along the bank of computers on the side wall. “The hard part is that there’s been an upswing in new targets over the last couple of months. We’re still trying to get a handle on the new group. There could be dozens more, even hundreds. It’s like the rules changed overnight, and the Wickeds have taken their game to a new level. We don’t know how they’ve been able to manage it so quickly. And now we’ve got the surge on top of it.”

“Is this my pep talk?”

Paige laughed and relaxed a little. “Sorry. It’s just frustrating to be turning all this over to you. I feel like I should be able to give you more. Instead, I’m handing off a bunch of problems and no solutions.”

Paige showed me how to log in to the intelligence system and get background information on the Reggies. It felt intrusive, like I was spying on them. Yes, the Wickeds had far more information—and more embarrassing information, to be sure—but it didn’t seem right to be reading about Heather’s dad, the town drunk. Or that her mom had died when she was born, leaving her with no female role model and a father who could barely care for himself, much less a
daughter. At least she’d had her grandparents until she was ten. Since then … there hadn’t been much of anything in the way of support.

Paige excused herself to deal with a system issue, and I stole a minute to search the Cindy database for Mom. Given that she’d never mentioned a word about the Cindys since I’d joined their ranks, it wasn’t very likely she was a Cindy herself. But if people like Sarah Jane’s mom could be lifelong Cindys, making Sarah Jane a legacy, part of me still clung to the hope that Mom might be. Just to give us something in common, something the babies couldn’t take away from us.

The search came up empty. My insides felt a little like that too.

My gaze fell on the board again. Looking at it from across the room gave me a different perspective. Up close, they were people I knew. Maybe not personally, but I’d passed them in the hall or seen them in a yearbook. From farther away, the pictures were a pattern. Groups of rectangles sorted around the board in various ways.

My math-geek tendencies came out of hibernation. Success leaves clues. If the Wickeds had been successful at growing the ranks of the targeted, it wasn’t by accident. Not if all the communication evidence from ISIS was any indication. There was a pattern to what they were doing; they were systematically targeting people who fit into the bigger plan.

If we could uncover the pattern, we could unravel the plan. Just like the Albuquerque Cindys were doing with the code.

I moved toward the board and studied it, looking for patterns. Paige had said I could move the targets around as long as they all stayed up, so I shuffled them around in different ways. By grade level, by last name. Even tacked up
a map of Mt. Sterling and grouped them according to where they lived.

I stepped back again. There was something about how they grouped on the map that called to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. What would location have to do with it?

In less than a minute, I’d printed off a roster of the Wickeds, complete with addresses. Maybe that was the connection. Start near home and move out, so you’d have easy access? I used little red magnets to mark where the Wickeds lived compared to the Reggies.

There were a few clusters in the nicer parts of town, but nothing that seemed organized. With income came status, though, so maybe that was the key. The Wickeds were all about status, even when it meant stealing someone else’s to give them more power.

Shuffling them by social status was harder, because I didn’t know people the way the Cindys did, so I peeked into our office and asked for Paige’s help. I pulled off the red magnets—bye-bye, Wickeds—and Paige helped me break the targets into groups by popularity.

“We looked at that too,” she explained, “but there wasn’t anything obvious that sent up a red flag.”

There were three groups: those at the top of the social pecking order, those at the bottom, and those in the middle. Not exactly earth-shattering.

Rather than group them by where they seemed to be in the social hierarchy, we started looking at them individually. What did the Wickeds have to gain by targeting them?

“We looked at that too,” Paige said. “Some are pretty easy to figure out. Like the student-council president and the editor of the school newspaper. They’re in power positions the Wickeds would want to control.” She pulled out those
two, plus a few other Reggies in key positions, and lined them up along the left edge of the board. “But the strategy falls apart there. Not every target is a power player at school.”

Maybe that was our problem. We were looking for an explanation that would justify every target.

“If it’s true targeting instead of random bullying, there’s got to be a reason for it. But it doesn’t have to be the same reason for everyone, right?” I asked. “What does each of them have that the Wickeds want?”

Paige and I shuffled things around and looked for more groupings that seemed logical, but nothing gave us that “Aha!” moment we were looking for.

What made the girls desirable targets if they didn’t hold a position of power? “What about connections to high levels that
aren’t
targets?” If you couldn’t get to the person you wanted, getting to a person close to them would be the next best thing, right?