The Dolls (24 page)

“Sure,” I agree. I check my watch. I know Liv’s not thinking about the fact that I don’t have a car, and I don’t want to bug her while she’s getting ready for a date. The weather’s supposed to be nice out, and I should have enough daylight left to ride my bike. “Just text me the address.”

“You’re the best!” she says before hanging up.

I cast one last reluctant glance at the herb book. As I head to the bathroom to put on some makeup for my “date” with Max, I’m repeating some of my mother’s favorite herbs in my head in an attempt at memorization.

I’ve just started applying tinted moisturizer when my cell rings again. Drew’s name flashes on the screen, so I pick up. “I hear we’re doing dinner in an hour,” I say.

“Word travels fast. Liv said you’re meeting us, but I know you don’t have a car. Want me to come get you?”

I pause. “You don’t have to,” I tell him. I don’t want Liv to get the wrong idea if I show up with Drew.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “How else would you get here, anyhow?”

“Bike?” I venture.

He laughs. “I’m not making you ride your bike all the way to the Périphérie when it’ll barely take me any time to swing by your place.”

I’m ready to go ten minutes later in a black tank maxidress and a striped cardigan with ballet flats. While I wait for Drew, I boot up my laptop and check my email, which I haven’t done in days. Along with a few dozen junk messages and a bunch of ads for Sephora,
Glamour
magazine, and some online bookstores, there are a few forwarded chain emails from Meredith, which I delete instantly, and a note from a guy named Ross I had a few classes with back in New York asking whether I want to go see a movie with him. I laugh out loud at that; a date with a guy who hasn’t even noticed I’m gone doesn’t sound like the best idea.

I check the time and see that I still have a couple of minutes, so I pull up Google and enter
LSU newspaper
into the search box. It sends me to the site of
The Daily Reveille
, the official school paper. I enter
Carrefour
into the search engine and am relieved when nothing comes up. Then I type in
murdered + fraternity
, and one result, from earlier today, is returned. I click on the article and begin to read.

The body of a Louisiana State University senior was found early Sunday afternoon in the Fantome Swamp region of Louisiana, about an hour outside Baton Rouge, after Louisiana State Police received a call from the man’s fraternity brother Sunday morning
. I nearly drop my laptop when I get to the next line:
Blake Montoire, 21, a member of the Lambda Delta Epsilon fraternity, was stabbed several times before his car was stolen, police say.

Blake Montoire was the name of guy who was talking to me at Peregrine’s party, the guy who tried to walk me home before Caleb stepped in. But the grainy photo featured on the website doesn’t match the person I met, except for the glasses, which can only mean one thing: I was talking to Blake’s killer. Worse, he’d seemed overly interested in getting to know
me
.

“Eveny?” Aunt Bea’s voice from the door startles me. I look up to see her staring at me suspiciously. “What were you reading?”

“School assignment,” I lie as I quickly shut the computer.

“You look awfully freaked out for an assignment,” she says.

“Math scares me,” I say as innocently as possible. I know that if I tell her what’s going on, she’ll insist we leave Carrefour. But if I go, the town will have no chance of surviving now that Main de Lumière has gotten in.

Like it or not, this is my fate. And I have no choice but to face it head-on.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
shoot Peregrine and Chloe a quick text telling them that I saw the probable killer—the fake Blake Montoire—then I shut off my phone and try to forget about zandara and death for the evening.

Drew arrives at 6:45 on the dot, and when I open the door, he grins. “You look real pretty,” he says. Once we’re in his pickup, he turns to me. “You know I wanted to ask you out, right? When you first got back to town?”

“What? No!”

He gives me a look as we rumble down the hill. “What’d you think that invitation to the crawfish boil was?”

“I thought it might be a date,” I admit. “But then you kind of acted like we were just friends.”

“Admittedly, I don’t have the smoothest mackin’-on-theladies moves,” he says.

“Mackin’-on-the-ladies moves?” I repeat, stifling a laugh.

“Fine, so maybe I’m not good at talking about my moves either,” he concedes. “But then you came to my show, and I figured, hey, girls go for musicians, right? But you disappeared with Caleb Shaw before I could do anything.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. I want to explain to Drew that our shared history makes him feel more like a brother to me. But I have the feeling that’ll only make things worse.

Before I can say anything, he says, “I guess I was stupid to think you could like someone from my side of town.”

“That’s not it at all!” I say instantly. “Look, if I did anything to hurt your feelings—”

He cuts me off. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad, Eveny. I was just saying that I’m glad. I mean, it worked out the way it was supposed to. I hadn’t really thought of Liv like that, but then I kept running into her because of you, and . . .” He shrugs and says, “Well, anyway, I’m really happy she said yes to going with me to the Mardi Gras Ball.”

“She’s a great girl,” I tell him.

We’re halfway out to the Périphérie when I finally ask the question that’s been on my mind since Caleb mentioned it. “Before she died, were you dating Glory Jones?”

Drew looks at me in surprise. “Where’d you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “And I don’t care if you were. I just want to know.”

“No,” he says after a pause. “But we were friends. Really good friends, actually.”

“So why did you act like you barely knew her at her funeral?”

“Because I promised her I’d keep our friendship a secret. I’m still trying to honor that, Eveny, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t say anything to the Dolls.” There’s bitterness in his voice, but there’s pain there too. “You know about the line between people from central Carrefour and the Périphérie.”

“If she liked you, if you two were friends, she should have been open about it. People would have had to be okay with it.”

“I used to tell her that. But it meant a lot to me to have her in my life at all. I don’t have a lot of good friends, and I didn’t want to hurt her by making Peregrine and Chloe turn their backs on her because of me.”

“You really think they would have done that?” But I know the answer to my own question. They treated people from the Périphérie like sources of power, not human beings.

“Peregrine and Chloe aren’t the people you think they are, Eveny,” Drew says. “They’re not nice, they’re not good people, and I think they were ruining Glory’s life. She died before I had a chance to figure out how to help her.”

“You must miss her.”

“Sure I do,” he says. “All the time. But we were from two different worlds.” He clears his throat and adds, “Kind of like you and me.”

“I’m not from a different world than you,” I say instantly.

“Could have fooled me, with that big mansion of yours.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, but I’m not even sure what I’m apologizing for. “I’m not like them, you know. The Dolls, I mean.”

Drew glances at me as he turns onto a side street in the Périphérie, but he doesn’t reply.

The silence between us stretches long and thick until we pull up to the restaurant, which is in a far corner of the Périphérie, close enough to the town wall that you can see the bricks and stones that separate us from the outside world. “Welcome to Cajun Eddie’s,” Drew says as he puts his truck in park and turns off the engine. “You’re going to love this place. Best jambalaya on the planet.”

Liv and Max are already waiting by the hostess stand, and although a flicker of worry crosses Liv’s face when she sees me and Drew arrive together, she relaxes when I hug her and whisper in her ear, “He talked about you the whole way here.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m staring down at the first bowl of jambalaya I’ve ever ordered.

“You’ve got shrimp, chicken, andouille sausage, onions, peppers, celery, and all sorts of amazing Cajun spices,” Liv explains enthusiastically as she eyes the piping hot mixture on my plate.

“Go ahead,” Drew says, smiling at me as he pushes my glass of water toward me. “Try it. But it’s gonna make you thirsty.”

As I take my first bite, my taste buds tingle with the assault of flavors. But I have to admit, it’s smoky and delicious.

The others dig into their own meals: fried oysters for Drew, a blackened fish sandwich for Max, and a Caesar salad for Liv, who nibbles nervously while looking at Drew out of the corner of her eye.
Relax
, I mouth to her when Drew’s distracted by a debate with Max over the merits of the Beatles versus the Rolling Stones.
He likes you
.

Thanks
, she mouths back, visibly calming.

As we eat, we talk about having lunch with the Dolls in the Hickories, our upcoming tests in French and physics, and the fact that we’re all weirded out by the death of the fraternity guy just outside our gates. “I don’t get what happened to him,” Drew says, glancing at me. “It’s so odd.”

“Beats me,” I say as innocently as possible as I wash down another spicy mouthful of jambalaya.

By the time we’re done, Drew and Liv are gazing at each other with googly eyes, and I’m trying not to feel jealous. It’s not that I’m interested in Drew at all, and of course I’m glad that he likes Liv. I just wish someone would look at me that way. Specifically Caleb. Instead, I evidently inspire cursing and fleeing.

“Earth to Eveny,” Max says. I realize I was so lost in thought that I’d spaced out for a moment.

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Just asking if you had a date to the Mardi Gras Ball,” he says.

I shake my head. “No. Do you?” I’m hoping he won’t ask me to go as friends, because I’m holding out hope that something will change with Caleb.

So I’m relieved when he says in a stage whisper, “I’m thinking of asking Rob Baker,” he says. When I look at him blankly, he adds, “He’s in my Spanish class. I’m, like, ninety percent sure he’s been flirting with me lately.”

“Do you like him?” I ask.

“I guess. He’s a nice guy. And he’d be fun to pass the time with until Justin Cooper stops pretending to be straight.”

I gape at him. “Wait, what? Justin who’s dating Chloe?”

He leans in conspiratorially. “I don’t know what’s up with him. He and I were flirting like crazy for a year. He finally told me he was going to officially come out to his parents over the summer. Next thing I know, he’s dating Chloe St. Pierre.”

“No way,” I whisper. I’m absolutely positive Chloe has no idea about Justin’s sexual orientation. “What do you think happened?” I ask carefully.

“Maybe his parents weren’t cool with it, and he felt like he had to pretend to be straight? Whatever it was, though, he’s not worth it. If he can’t be true to who he is, I don’t need that.” I see sadness in his eyes behind the forced nonchalance.

“Maybe there’s an explanation,” I begin, but when Max gives me a questioning look, I realize I can’t explain further.

“What, that he’d rather be popular than be with me?” Max asks bitterly.

Drew interrupts us then to ask how we want to split the bill. As Max and I dig in our wallets for cash, Max leans over and says, “Don’t say anything, okay? Liv’s the only one who knows what happened. I figure that whatever’s going on with Justin is his business.”

I agree to keep Max’s story to myself, but I know it’s on me to fix this—not just for Max and Justin, but for Chloe too. As the four of us walk out together, I think how lucky Liv and Drew are to have a chance at a relationship. Whatever’s between them is real. Max deserves that too.

Drew and Liv hug awkwardly in the parking lot, then Drew gestures toward his pickup. “You ready?” he asks me.

I nod and say good-bye to Liv and Max before following after him.

“That was fun,” I say once I’m strapped in and we’re pulling out of the parking lot.

“Liv’s a great girl. And Max is kind of growing on me.”

“Growing on you?”

“I always thought he was sort of eccentric, with his Buddy Holly glasses and all those vests he likes to wear. But he’s okay.” He pauses. “You know, now that you have friends like that, I don’t know why you’d want to keep hanging out with the Dolls.”

I glance at him but don’t say anything. Defending Peregrine and Chloe to him is getting old. I get that he’s probably still hurting over losing Glory, and blaming the Dolls for making her life complicated is an easy thing to do. But the more I find out about this town, the more I realize that there are no clear-cut lines between right and wrong, good and bad.

“So, anything new with your band?” I ask, changing the subject. “Liv says you have a producer interested.”

“Yeah, he wants us to come to New Orleans and meet with him, maybe play him a few of our originals.”

“For real?” I grin at him. “Drew, that’s a huge deal! Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I’m just trying not to get ahead of myself,” he replies, but he looks excited. “Besides, I have to tie up a few loose ends here before I even think about getting out of this town.”

We’ve just turned on to Cemetery Road when the truck pulls sharply to the right, sending us skidding off the shoulder into a muddy embankment. I cry out and reach for the door to steady myself as Drew struggles to regain control.

“What the hell was that?” I demand once we’re back on the street. His face is pale, and his knuckles are white on the wheel.

“I have no idea,” he says unsteadily. “Something’s wrong with the steering.”

The words are barely out of his mouth when the truck jerks to the right again, but this time Drew loses the fight with the steering wheel, and the truck goes spinning wildly toward the cemetery. I scream and do my best to brace myself between the dashboard and the door. Drew tries desperately to overcorrect, but we’re only spinning faster.