chapter twenty–one.
A SWELL OF razor-edged screams popped Drew’s crush bubble and sent her crashing down to reality. “What’s going on in there?” she asked as Will pressed his face against the sliding glass doors to investigate.
“I can’t see,” he said. “It’s horror-movie dark in there.” Then he snickered. “I can’t believe they went through with it.”
“Who went through with what?”
“Jasper and Frankie. They’ve been planning all week to cut the power.”
Drew had zero idea how one would cut the power, and she was in no mood to figure it out. Will L-worded her. She L-worded him. The only thing she was in the mood to do was attack life. Because L-wording someone who L-worded you back was a full-body rush that had the ability to transform unappealing situations into exciting adventures. Even mass hysteria.
“Come on,” she urged. “Let’s check it out.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” he answered, with his own strange Harry Potter–type accent.
“What’s going on in there?” called Ava’s stepdad as he and his wife hurried from the guesthouse.
“Are we being robbed?” panted Ava’s mother.
“What kind of robber would break into a house full of teenagers?” he said, wiping his sweaty brow. “Teenagers are nature’s burglar alarms. Even the most hardened criminals are afraid of them.”
“Well, how do you explain—”
“I think some guys in our grade pulled a prank,” Will said, making direct eye contact with the grown-ups. Drew thought about her parents and how they would have liked that.
Then came a sudden crash of glass.
“My mirror!” Ava’s mother screamed.
Her stepfather whispered, “Never again,” under his breath and then they charged inside.
“I gotta see this!” Will took Drew by the hand and led her into the dark kitchen. His touch sent enough electricity through her to light not just the house but the entire block.
How was she supposed to keep all these moments from Fonda and Ruthie? It was wrong to let them think Will was standoffish, rude, and unworthy of her affection, especially since he was the opposite. But what about this was right? Admitting she faked food poisoning so she could sneak off to a party? They’d never talk to her again.
Down the hall, kids were screaming, knocking into walls, and urging one another to find the basket of phones.
“Oof,” Drew said as her hip collided with the edge of the dining table. The kitchen was outer-space dark.
“Told ya you needed those pads,” Will teased.
Then came the sound of footsteps. “Someone’s coming,” Drew whispered.
“Duck!”
They crouched down behind the kitchen island and cupped hands over mouths to contain their giggles.
“I call time-out on the mission so I can grab some chips,” said a girl as she entered the kitchen. “I think better while I’m chewing.”
“Fine, but hurry,” another girl whispered back.
“I am a ghossst,” Will bellowed from their hid- ing spot.
Drew began to quake with laughter.
“Who’s there?” asked the chips girl.
“Alec,” Will said.
“Alec who?”
“Alec-tricity is out!”
Drew snorted a little.
“Yeah, I kinda figured that. Now, seriously, who are you?”
“It’s Avery,” Will said.
“Avery? Avery who?”
“Avery one of you is in dangerrrrrrrrr.”
Drew laughed so hard she smacked Will on the back. The sound of which made them laugh even harder.
“Um, note to dumb-dumb. This is my kitchen. So if anyone’s in danger, it’s you. Now, stop cowering and show yourself.”
“Who cares about the ghost?” said her friend. “We need to stay focused on the mission.”
There was a familiar wobbly quality to her voice. Which was odd, because the only person who spoke with that wobble was—
Ruthie.
Drew stopped laughing. I have to get out of here! she wanted to tell Will. But Drew couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stop breathing. What was Ruthie doing at the Avas’ party? The only move was to stay low, get to that sliding glass door, and sneak outside.
Without a word to Will, Drew began crawling. The plastic from her pads clicked against the hardwood floors. She sounded like a scuttling cockroach or a dog in need of a toenail clipping.
“What’s that?” asked Ruthie.
Drew froze.
“I don’t hear anything,” said her mysterious companion. Someone reached inside the chip bag. While they crunched, Drew took off again.
“Hear that?” Ruthie said, moving closer. “Fall in!”
The bag of chips was tossed onto the counter. “Do you need backup?”
“Roger that,” said Ruthie, who, for some reason, was talking like a Navy SEAL.
Then came the swoosh of stockinged feet sliding across the floor. Drew remembered how she, Ruthie, and Fonda used to wear their slipperiest socks and pretend to figure skate down her hallway. Only these feet weren’t light and graceful. They were deter-mined and—
“Drew?” said Ruthie. She was standing above her now, wearing some contraption over her eyes that must have helped her see in the dark. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was soft and mealy. Her expression shocked and confused.
Drew was stunned into silence. What could she possibly say that would make this all right? If only she could float away like a real ghost and disappear forever. Anything to avoid facing what she had done. Because as soon as Ruthie realized that Drew had gone behind her back and chosen Will over her, the relaxed wobble in her voice would harden into anger, and her confusion would calcify into contempt, and Drew did not want to be responsible for that. Because Ruthie was joy and pineapple pajamas. Not anger and contempt.
Still, of all the things Drew could have said in that moment, the only thing she could manage was “When did you get night vision goggles?”
And that didn’t help one single bit.
chapter twenty–two.
THE LIGHTS POPPED on at the party, and the boiling hysteria instantly cooled.
Girls began wiping streaks of mascara from their damp eyes, then smiled as if they’d never been better. Boys fanned their sweaty armpits and teased each other for panicking.
“Found the basket!” someone shouted from the kitchen. A stampede of thirty-plus guests charged down the hallway to reclaim their phones.
Minutes later, Fonda was tapping on her screen, certain she’d find a few How are you feeling? texts from her friends. There were none. Which was fine. Ruthie was probably trying to give her space so she could rest, and Drew actually ate bad chicken, so—
“What the heck?” screeched a familiar voice.
Fonda looked up from her screen and clutched the kitchen island to keep herself from collapsing. “Ruthie?” Her mouth went dry. All distant sounds of chatter fell away.
“Fonda?” asked another familiar voice. It was Drew this time. She was on the opposite side of the island wearing knee pads and wrist guards.
Heat bloomed inside Fonda’s body. Blood pounded against her scalp . . . her teeth . . . her spine. Was this a fever dream? Some kind of psychotic break? A guilt hallucination? Fonda blinked twice, hoping to erase them, but they were still there. Glaring and infuriated.
She wanted to apologize. Explain her side. Beg for mercy. Cry. Time travel. Run! But her brain was so jumbled. “What are you doing here?” spilled out before she could do any of that.
Ruthie smacked her hands down on the marble countertop and said, “I’ll ask the questions!” She was positioned at the head of the island between Fonda and Drew, night vision goggles resting atop her head, blue eyes wide
and damp. “Bad chicken, huh?”
“Ruthie, I’m so—”
“Food poisoning, huh?”
“I can expl—”
“You lied! You said you had my teacher!”
“Wait,” Drew said to Fonda. “You lied about that?”
“Did you?” Fonda demanded.
The Avas, along with dozens of other kids, were standing around the island, cell phones aimed at the girls. How long had they been there?
“Can we go outside and talk about this?” Fonda muttered, indicating the crowd of spectators. She needed to know what Ruthie and Drew were doing there; she needed to make things right. But not in front of the Poplar paparazzi.
“Canwegooutsideandtalkaboutthis?” Ruthie mocked. “So what if everyone is watching? Is that all you care about?”
“Is what all I care about?”
“What people think of us?”
“Us?” Fonda scoffed. “There hasn’t been an us since you joined TAG.”
“At least the TAG’ers aren’t liars, conspirators, and backstabbers.”
Sage pumped her fist toward the ceiling. “Go, Titans!”
“We did not conspire,” Drew clarified. “I had no idea Fonda was going to be here.” Then to Fonda, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Drew lowered her eyes. “You would have called me pathetic.”
“What?” Fonda asked, feeling supremely ganged up on. And a little confused. How did Drew get invited? How did Ruthie? And how could Drew say that? “Why would I do that?”
Drew flicked her head toward Will, who was standing by the sliding glass door. The cell phones pivoted left, a school of fish changing course.
“Wait,” Ruthie said. “You lied so you could come here with him? The doozer you said you wouldn’t cross the road to help, even if he was injured?”
“Drew, you said that?” Will asked, with a mouth full of chips.
“No!”
“Yes, she did,” Jasper said. “I heard her say it in the movie theater.”
“Movie theater?” Will asked, looking between Drew and Jasper. “When did you two go to a movie together?”
“We didn’t,” Drew said just as Jasper said, “Last Saturday.”
“Wait.” Drew turned to Ruthie. “How do you know I said that? You weren’t even there.”
“Fonda told me.”
“Thanks a lot, Fonda.”
“I—” This fight was going from bad to worse, and Fonda had no clue how to stop it.
“So, Drew, you did say that?” Will asked.
“Yes. I mean no. I mean I said it, but I didn’t—”
“Diss!” shouted Frankie.
“Major diss,” said Jasper.
“Poor Wilbur,” said Dune Wolsey. “I think he showed up with her.” Then he paused and added, “Unless that was Jasper.”
Soon everyone was chanting diss, and before Drew could stop him, Will opened the sliding glass door and took off.
“Can we please talk about this outside?” Fonda asked, desperate to escape the spotlight she had so often craved.
“Why?” Ruthie’s eyes were wild with emotion. “You don’t want these dumb-dumbs to know we’re friends? Are you that embarrassed by me?”
Fonda felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. Dumb-dumbs? Was that seriously what Ruthie thought of everyone who wasn’t in TAG? Was that what she thought of Drew and Fonda? “Only because you used the word dumb-dumbs,” she lied.
Everyone laughed, and Fonda instantly regretted it. But dumb-dumbs? Really? Who thought that? Who said that? “Can we please just go somewhere private and talk about it? I’m sure we all have good reasons for—”
“For what?” Ruthie asked, her shock morphing into anger. “Lying? Betraying each other? Social climbing? Forget talking. We have nothing to talk about.” She made a fist with her right hand, quickly knocked done onto the island in Morse code, then opened the sliding glass door to leave. When she did, her friendship bracelets got caught on the handle, their strings ripped, and hundreds of beads scattered across the floor. “You two just put the end in friend,” she said, her eyes full of tears. Then she slipped into the darkness with Sage following closely behind.
“Is everyone okay?” asked Ava G.’s mother, panic etched into her face as she came running into the room.
“We’re more than okay,” whispered Ava R. to Fonda. “We just got our PP.”
Fonda wanted to swat Ava’s phone to the floor, as if that could possibly erase what had to have been the most mortifying experience of her life. Even if that did destroy Ava’s video, it wouldn’t matter. There were dozens more just like it. Each one a digital reminder to be careful what you wish for. Especially if that wish is to be Poplar Middle School’s most-watched girl on social media ever.
chapter twenty–three.
THE TITANS WERE lazing under the pagoda during the last period on Monday—a “Monday Moment,” as Rhea called it. She sold the break as an opportunity for everyone to reconnect after the weekend, but it was really a chance for her to finish grading their Thursday tests. And Ruthie was relishing the afternoon gossip session with the Titans, especially now that she was officially best-friendless.
“You really said, ‘You put the end in friend’?” Alberta asked, for the fifth time.
Ruthie raised her palm. “Guilty as charged.”
Alberta lay back on the pile of Moroccan cushions, as if she had just finished a satisfying meal. “Genius.”
“It really was,” said Sage, clearly proud to have been an eyewitness. “The dumb-dumbs were dumbstruck when she busted them.”
Favian opened his mouth and pointed at the glistening puddle under his tongue. “Look, I’m lit-er-ally salivating from the drama of it all. I swear, this story has a Pavlovian hold on me.”
“I wish I’d seen it,” said Tomoyo.
“You can see it.” Ruthie beamed. “It’s viral!”
That she could say that with such positivity, such pride, was not lost on her. Less than twenty hours ago, Ruthie was curled up on her bed, sobbing and snotting all over Foxie. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t write. How could her so-called friends lie and ditch her like that?
Sage kept calling Drew and Fonda dumb-dumbs, but Ruthie was the one who felt like a dumb-dumb. This was exactly what Ruthie had been worried about since Fonda pointed out those TAG letters on her schedule the first day of school. Drew and Fonda had moved on without her, and Ruthie was too naïve, too much of a dumb-dumb to see it coming.
Had her brain not craved something to chew on—something other than betrayal—Ruthie would have claimed bad chicken and spent the day in bed. But she was done dwelling on the girls who stabbed her in the back. The Titans had her back now and would help it heal. Yes, she lost two friends, but she gained eight.
“I have a question,” said Zandra. “You told the dark-haired one, and I quote, ‘You said you had my teacher.’ Were you referring to Rhea, and if so, what exactly does that mean?”
Thankfully, the ancient sound bowls rang before she could answer. The day was over. All they had to do now was get their grades and—
Ruthie stopped short of the entrance, her body weighted with regret. What had she done? She was going to get the F-word on her tests. And failing meant taking regular classes, where her brain would starve and her heart would get thrashed by Drew and Fonda yet again.
The only thing for Ruthie to do was stay after class and confess. But how could she ever explain? How could she tell Rhea that she’d thrown her grades to be with friends who didn’t even care about her?
But Rhea didn’t end up returning the tests. Instead she told everyone to have a great night and asked Ruthie to stay after class.
“Funny you should ask that,” Ruthie said, approaching her teacher’s des
k. “Because there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Great,” Rhea said with a distracted smile. “Your mother and father should be here any moment. We can talk about it together.”
“My mother and fa—”
Then, “Hello, Ruth-Ann,” Steven said as they entered the room.
The Goldmans were dressed in their work clothes—Fran in pink scrubs and Steven in a suit—which meant they rushed over from work three hours before they were done for the day. Forget Talented and Gifted; TAG stood for Terrified and Guilty now.
“Have a seat,” Rhea said, indicating nine available balance balls. Fran and Steven exchanged an awkward glance and then carefully lowered themselves onto two white orbs. They rocked side to side and offered each other their arms to help them stabilize. Their wobbling would have been hilarious under any other circumstances, but right now they were frustrated, which meant their wrath would be even wrathier.
“Thank you for coming in on such short notice,” Rhea said, handing Steven a thin stack of papers. Ruthie could see the red pen as he flipped through: 73 percent in math, 68 percent in science, and 71 percent in English.
I can’t even fail at failing!
Not that Ruthie wanted to fail. Not anymore. She was desperate to stay in TAG. Desperate to stay with her only friends.
“Oh,” Steven said, unbuttoning his suit jacket. “I was expecting worse.”
Fran turned to face him so quickly she almost rolled onto the floor. “Really?”
“What?”
“She’s never gotten below a ninety-seven.”
It was really ninety-eight, but this was no time to split hairs.
“I told you she was in over her head,” Fran told Steven, “and you said I was overreacting.”
“I did not say overreacting, Fran,” he said, in that lawyer voice of his. “I said we should give it more time.”
“No, you specifically said overreacting.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
Rhea cleared her throat. “Actually, I think you’re both wrong,” she said gently. “Ruthie isn’t in over her head, and she does not need more time. She is a gifted student with a photographic memory and an infectious passion for knowledge. Ruthie does not lack ability.”
girl stuff. Page 11