The Cinderella Society (24 page)

Her tears finally ebbed to a trickle, her sobs more like hiccups. She blew her nose, a couple of hard toots that would’ve made me laugh if she hadn’t been such a mess. She took one deep breath, then another. The firestorm had subsided. It was time.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She sniffed and hiccuped, and her voice caught when she tried to speak. I thought we were in for a fresh parade of tears, but Heather pulled it together enough to shake her head.

I reached across the small table to squeeze her hand, making sure it was the one without the tissue. “I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

She exhaled on a long breath that sounded eerily like her soul deflating. “You can’t help me anyway.”

“You don’t know that.”

She looked up at me, smeared mascara circling her eyes like a raccoon mask, and my heart gave a little tug on her behalf. She looked lost.

I waited.

She shredded the tissue in her hand, then a second. Another long-suffering sigh. She balled up the tissue confetti and threw it back on the table. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

Finally, an opening. “But it did?”

“Cameron and I were fighting. I thought we were breaking up.”

“Cameron?”

“My boyfriend.”

I remembered reading about him in Heather’s file in the War Room. Cameron was one of the few people listed in the Support Network box on Heather’s profile, but I hadn’t
realized they were an official couple. “Cameron Cole is your boyfriend?”

“You sound surprised.”

“Not at all. I just didn’t know you guys were exclusive. Cameron seems pretty cool.”

“He and his dad don’t get along. That’s how we started talking. We bonded over alcoholic dads and moms out of the picture. Romantic, huh?”

“Not the greatest way to build a relationship?”

“It is what it is. Things with Cameron were going great until he and his dad started fighting about the money Cam was making playing gigs with the band. Cam wants to save it to get his own place, and his dad wants it for ‘the house.’ That’s alkie speak for
booze.”
She shifted in her seat, her hands gathering the tissues into a neat pile. “Cam’s been getting more and more distant. He won’t talk to me about what’s wrong, and we had a big blow-up about some stupid concert tickets.” She shook her head. “And then he was there.”

“Cameron? Or his dad?”

“Rick.” She looked like she was going to be ill. “Janitor Joe’s assistant?”

Oh.
Ohhhhhh
.

“He’s not that much older than us, you know. And he was so nice, and he listened and said all the right things. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

Janitor, mistake, blackmail evidence. Oh, crud
.

“You and Rick got together?”

Heather nodded.

“And Lexy saw.”

Her head bobbed like a marionette.

Double crud
.

“At first she was going to tell Cameron unless I did what she wanted. But it turns out she has pictures too.” Heather fisted away a fresh batch of tears. “It makes it look a lot worse than it was. We only kissed under the bleachers, but the angle of the pictures makes it look like he was lying on top of me. There’s no way Cam’s gonna listen to my side when he sees those.”

I gritted my teeth, wanting a piece of Lexy more than ever.

“I thought Rick would support me in standing up to them,” Heather went on. “And to tell Cameron the truth.”

“But he didn’t.”

Heather shook her head and the tears started anew. “It was all a lie.” She hiccuped. “They paid him to do it.”

A setup, heinous and premeditated, to get a Reggie under their thumb. It was one thing catching other people’s mistakes in action. But to purposely set someone up to try to get dirt on her? The Wickeds were pure evil.

“Did you see her take the picture?”

“I didn’t see anyone. Nichele Stanton was hanging around for a while, but I didn’t see her afterward.”

Nichele definitely wasn’t in with the Wickeds. It was possible she could be a target, but I figured it was more likely that a Wicked had been lurking nearby. The Wickeds were master lurkers when they wanted to be.

I squeezed Heather’s wrist for reassurance, trying to figure out how to help. “What are you gonna do about Cameron?”

This was clearly the wrong question since it prompted more tears.

“Sorry, you don’t have to tell me. But Heather?” I waited
until her bloodshot eyes met mine. “What does Lexy want from you?”

I watched as her mind slowly reengaged. “She wants me to give her opinions.”

Lexy asking other people’s advice? That didn’t compute. “What kind of opinions?”

“Weird stuff. Like she wants me to picture things and tell her what I see. Or hold a piece of something and tell her what I think about it.”

I’d been around enough of Nan’s clients to know a gift when I saw it. “Are you a clairvoyant?”

“More of an intuitive. I don’t see ghosts or the future or anything. I just get a sense of things sometimes.” She paused thoughtfully. “My mom had a real gift. She used to help the police with cases and stuff. Before she died.”

Guilt about my constant annoyance with Mom ate away at me. I needed to give her a five-alarm hug when I got home. “I’m sorry about your mom, Heather.”

“She died when I was born, so I never knew her. People tell me I look like her, though.” She smiled, a tiny crack in her misery. Then her face fell. “I don’t know how they even knew about the intuitive thing. It’s not like I go around advertising it. Besides, I can’t even control it. Sometimes I get little glimpses, and other times, nothing.”

“Did it work for Lexy?”

A light glinted in Heather’s eyes. “Not usually. And even when it did, I didn’t tell her. I just made it up as I went along.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Ten points to the Reggies.

Heather laughed too, and it felt good to let loose for a minute. We laughed harder than we really needed to, but it was more of an emotional release mixed with a mini-celebration
of finally getting one over on the Wickeds.

When the laughter subsided, we sobered up again. “So,” I said, drumming my fingers on the Formica tabletop, “what happens next?”

“I think Lexy’s on to me. She thinks I’ve been sending her on a wild goose chase, so she said she’s gonna test me.” She shuddered. “There’s something they want at school. I’ve figured out that much. Something under the school, I think, but that doesn’t make sense.” Heather focused on a point near the microwave like she was trying to picture something in her mind. “I can’t quite get it. But whatever they want, they want it bad. The look she gets in her eye when she thinks I’ve given her a lead gives me the heebies.”

I thought about the day after cheer practice. The excitement on Lexy’s face had given me the heebies too.

“Even if I could help her, I couldn’t live with myself if I used my …”

“Gift?”

“It sounds weird to say that. Like I’m a circus act or something. I’m always afraid people will run away screaming.”

“Have you forgotten where I work?” I deadpanned.

That earned an honest chuckle from Heather. “I couldn’t live with myself if I used it to help someone like Lexy. That would be like spitting on my mom’s grave.”

“What if you don’t help her?”

“She’ll give the pictures to Cameron.”

I sighed. “You need to tell him, Heather.”

“I know. I just don’t know how.”

I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if Ryan ever cheated on me, and I wasn’t even sure we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I didn’t envy Heather the job ahead of her. “If you tell him, the pictures have no meaning.”

“If I tell him, our relationship has no meaning.”

Touché
. “I’m here if you need me, okay?” I jotted down my cell number on a napkin. “Call me anytime.”

“I wish I was more like you. The way you stand up to Lexy … you’re a role model. And not just to me.” She shook her head. “But you don’t want a piece of this, Jess. You’re already on her list.”

I already had a piece of it. This was exactly what I needed to know to put the full weight of the Cindys behind me. As glad as I was that I’d achieved my mission and confirmed their blackmail scheme, knowing I could help Heather mattered more.

“Don’t worry about me. Just watch your back where she’s concerned, and call me if you need backup.” I got up to go, since I was technically still on the clock. “There’s a bathroom through there if you want to clean up. Take as much time as you need. My grandma won’t care.”

“Okay,” Heather said, picking up her stack of tissues. “Jess?”

I paused at the door. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for listening. And for helping.”

“That’s what friends do.”

Chapter 16

GRATEFUL FOR MY OFFICE
, I slid into the seat and exhaled a long breath. I was feeling guilty about having to cut my volunteer hours way back right when the Humane Society was gearing up for their big summer adoption event. I’d recruited Mel to come, and now I wasn’t even going myself. Some example I set.

But I was already an assignment behind in my
CMM
because of work and my leader stuff plus the Heather mission on top of it. Most days, it felt like my head was spinning.

And that little tiny bit of brain space I had left over? That part was devoted to Ryan.

Or to Tina, more specifically, and the nagging suspicion that she might be right. That Ryan
didn’t
want to be seen with me in public.

After moving past the disastrous meet-up at The Grind on our first date, things seemed to be going so well. Yet all of our bonding had happened off the beaten path. On IM or on the phone, we were golden. But that was private. He’d taken me to the Fun Zone, but that wasn’t in Mt. Sterling. The only person we’d seen there was Matt. And at the lake, Ryan
carefully kept us on the far side, away from the beach where everyone usually hung out.

I’d been trying to tell myself it was because Ryan wanted to be alone with me. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t measuring up. I might look better than I had, but I was no Fake Blondie.

Not the time to dwell
. I shook my head to clear the woe-is-mes and pulled out the recruitment-surge file Paige had given me. I started jotting notes about what we knew for sure and what we suspected was true.

1. Doubling their new recruit class (strength in numbers)

2. Targeting people in key positions (either directly or by getting to someone close to them)

3. Getting the Reggies to do their dirty work (building spy network to boost intel?)

We were looking at the pieces—a lot of them, anyway—but something was still missing. The bigger plan of what they were trying to accomplish. Where did the recruitment surge fit in? Why the sudden need for extra Wickeds if they had spies doing their work for them?

Paige walked in, stopping short when she saw me at the desk. “I keep forgetting you might be in here.”

“Sorry. I thought it was okay that we shared the office.”

She opened a drawer and tossed in her purse. “No, it’s fine. I’m just so used to coming in here when I need to regroup. It’s nice to be able to close out the world when you need it.”

I’d been an almost-leader for less than a week, and I could
already see where that would come in handy. “Want me to scat for a while?”

“Not on your life. You need to be here more than I do.” She inclined her head toward my folder. “How’s it coming along?”

“Slowly. It’s hard, because I know some of the players but not all. I don’t really understand how the Reggies operate.”

She pulled up a chair next to me. “You’ve been to a lot of schools, so it’s probably similar to what you’re used to. The Reggies aren’t one group—they’re a community of little groups.
Community
isn’t really the right word, though, because they rarely connect, thanks to the Wickeds. The Wickeds get antsy if any groups show signs of merging. Size matters to the Wickeds, in their own ranks and with the Reggies.”

She flipped to a new page of my notebook and drew a diagram of the cafeteria. Just like at any school, mapping out the cafeteria was the easiest way to show how the groups split out. The drama club, student government, class leaders, athletes, brains, goths … the list went on and on. Her map looked slightly different from my lunch period, but the groups were mostly the same. Whether you were sophomores or seniors, groups were groups and cliques were cliques.

I tucked her map into the surge folder for future reference. Being an outsider might help in some ways, but it was hard to keep all the major players straight with a student body of a thousand and a half. All I wanted was to wrap up my mission and find my new comfort zone.

“Oh!” I dropped my pen—I’d nearly forgotten my good news. “Mission accomplished with Heather,
and
I’ve got intel about the Reggies.”

“Really?” Paige opened the door to the War Room and pulled Sarah Jane away from her earbuds. I filled them in on what I’d seen at the restaurant.

Sarah Jane looked at Paige. “Any chance that’s a onetime thing?”

“I’d be shocked it if were,” Paige said. “It’s a brilliant strategy for them. They can’t be everywhere at once, but the Reggies can. We need to get a research team together for that.”

“Why Corrine?” I asked.

We wandered around the War Room, talking about possible connections. The two columns Paige had separated out—
KEY PLAYERS
and
KEY FRIENDS—were
still there. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t figure out where Corrine would fit in.

“Is she a threat to them?”

Sarah Jane gave a half laugh. “Corrine isn’t a threat to anyone except for the Class Nicest award. She’s friends with everyone.”

Paige and I looked at each other. Could it be—?

“She’s a floater,” I said at the same time Paige said, “She’s a connector.”

“So it’s not what she has—it’s what she’s capable of?” Sarah Jane asked.

Paige nodded. “Her strength is that she’s easy to talk to and people respect her. She’s one of the few people who could go back and forth between Reggie groups to connect them.”