by Diana Urban
I followed his gaze and spotted a tiny red glow in the back of the top shelf. “What the hell is that?”
“What is it?” Robbie joined us.
I rested the tips of my fingers on the glass. “We’re . . . we’re being watched.”
“What?” Sasha rushed toward us.
I pointed into the cabinet. “It’s a camera. Someone’s watching us.” A small lens—it looked like a webcam—was nestled between two rows of crystal goblets, covered by a dark red cloth napkin. It blended in with the mahogany shelves.
“So it is a test.” Priya scrambled to her feet. “They’re watching to see how we’ll react.”
“No,” said Diego, clasping his hands behind his head. “If anything, it means it’s not just a test. The poison’s real, the bomb’s real . . . this is really happening.”
Priya blanched. “Why?” I asked. “Why does the camera mean it’s real?”
Scott let out a groan of agony. He pressed his back against the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him.
“Because of that.” Diego motioned to Scott. “If they’re watching, and this was just a joke, or a test, they wouldn’t let Scott lie there injured for the rest of the hour. They’d have stopped this when he broke his ankle so we could get him to a hospital.”
“Oh my God,” Priya whimpered. “That means they’re waiting until . . . until . . .”
“Until we kill someone,” Sasha finished, her voice trembling.
Robbie nodded and said through clenched teeth, “She’s right. This is real. We’re gonna have to kill someone.” Scott threw me a worried look, pinching his lips as if to keep himself from howling in pain again.
Robbie pushed Diego out of the way and peered at the camera. “Fuck you!”
I shoved Robbie’s arm. “Robbie, stop it. That won’t convince whoever it is to let us go.”
Priya gasped. “Do you think we could convince them?”
“How?” Scott grunted through shallow breaths. “We don’t even know who they are.”
“Well,” I said, “let’s think. Who do we think it could be? Who’d hate us enough to do this?”
Sasha nudged my arm. “You don’t think it could be Maria, do you?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Maria . . . cheerleader Maria?” Diego asked. Sasha nodded, swallowing hard.
Robbie shook his head. “No way. Maria wouldn’t do this to us.”
I ran my fingers over my lips, considering this, taken aback that the first person Sasha would suspect of locking us in here was someone she considered a best friend. Was she thinking of something she did to piss Maria off? Sasha’s eyes were wide and panicky as she watched me mull this over. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why would she do this? What would her motive be?”
“Well . . .” Sasha licked her lips, like she was holding something back. “Her parents own this place. It’d be easy for her to set it up.”
I frowned. “True. But that’s not a reason.”
“She couldn’t set this up, anyway, right?” said Robbie. “She’s in the middle of the ocean somewhere.”
Maria’s parents had pulled her out of school for two weeks for their biannual family reunion, and she’d been on a cruise for the last week and a half. “Lucky bitch,” Sasha kept saying to her before she left.
Sasha slapped her forehead. “I didn’t even think of how the restaurant should have been closed.”
I gripped my throat, shaking my head. Maria’s family always shut down the Chesterfield when they went on vacation so their staff could take time off, too. “Me neither. Didn’t think of it at all.”
“When do they get back?” asked Priya.
“Saturday, I think,” I said.
“Okay, so it wasn’t Maria . . .” Priya bit her thumbnail, staring at the camera. “Maybe it’s some serial killer. Remember those murders a few years back over at the park?”
“Oh, right,” said Robbie. Back when we were in seventh grade, a few young women disappeared within weeks of each other. Each of them had been out jogging in Brewster State Park, and each washed up within a week in Brewster Lake. I didn’t know any of them, but terror flooded our town like a tsunami. At school we had a buddy system in place whenever we set foot outdoors for gym or lunch. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let Maggie and me bike to school by ourselves, and Maggie, then a junior, put up a huge stink about having to take the school bus.
The killer turned out to be the manager of our local grocery store. Apparently when his wife left him for his best friend, he went berserk and preyed on redheads who resembled her. Once the cops connected the dots, they were able to make the arrest pretty quickly. But even after he was behind bars, Mom made me carry pepper spray in my purse at all times. She was especially freaked out since we were redheads. “That could have been one of us,” she’d say each time a news report aired.
“They caught that guy.” Robbie scoffed. “Stupid son of a bitch.”
“More like murderous piece of shit,” Scott muttered, tugging a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket with trembling fingers. One of the victims had been his cousin.
“Maybe he escaped from prison,” said Sasha.
Scott laughed, though it sounded more like a croak. He dangled a cigarette between his lips, his head resting against the wall as he fished through his pockets for a lighter. “He’s a serial killer, not a petty thief. He’s in some maximum-security prison now. There’s no way he escaped.”
“And we would have heard about it,” said Robbie.
“Right.” Scott cast aside his jacket. “Besides, it’s not his MO.”
“His what?” asked Priya.
“His MO.” Scott lit up, the flame wavering as he touched it to his cigarette. “You know . . . his pattern. Don’t you watch Law and Order?”
“No.”
“It stands for modus operandi,” said Diego.
Scott pointed at Diego with his extinguished lighter. “Yeah, that. Like his method; his style. He went after girls who looked like his ex.” He paused to grimace against a fresh wave of pain. “Why would he suddenly want to torture a bunch of teenagers?”
“You really shouldn’t smoke in here.” Sasha eyed the trail of smoke streaming out from between Scott’s lips.
“Oh, c’mon, throw me a bone over here.” He motioned toward his broken ankle.
“What if something catches fire?”
Scott flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Don’t be so paranoid.” Scott took a long drag. “We’re all gonna die anyway.”
“Nobody’s going to die,” I said, standing between them. “We’re going to figure this out.”
Catching a whiff of Scott’s cigarette, I cringed. His face glistened with sweat, and streaks of blood stretched from the gash on his forehead down his temple to his chin. Between puffs of smoke, he breathed with wheezing gasps—I couldn’t imagine how much pain he was in. “Scott, maybe you shouldn’t smoke. It’s already kinda hard to breathe in here.”
Scott snorted. “Only for you, Red.” He held the cigarette over his head, and I plucked it from his fingers and tossed it out the window between the crisscrossed bars.
Priya ran her tongue over her front teeth as she contemplated something. “So if it wasn’t the grocer serial killer, who could it be? Who on Earth would want any of us dead?”
“Maybe they don’t,” said Diego. I raised my eyebrows.
“Seriously?” Sasha said.
“We’ve been through this,” said Robbie. “Those things are probably real.” He motioned at the tray with the bomb and poison. “Someone’s out for blood.”
“Wait a minute, hear me out,” said Diego. “So either way, the whole scholarship thing was a ruse to get us in the same room. That much is pretty clear. But maybe this is some sort of psychological experiment.”
I furrowed my brow. “What, like . . . by some mad scientist?”
“Or the government.”
“Oh, geez.” Sasha balled her hands into fists. “We don’t have time for one
of your stupid conspiracy theories.”
“No, really—” he started.
“What conspiracy theories?” Robbie scoffed.
“He’s obsessed with UFOs and secret military bases and stuff,” said Sasha.
Diego’s jaw tightened. “I’m not obsessed—”
“How do you even know that?” I asked Sasha.
She rolled her eyes. “I had to peer review his AP Research paper last year. He also thinks we’re in the matrix, like we’re all being controlled by computers.”
“I do not!” Diego glanced at me, his face reddening. “I wrote about the psychological factors driving conspiracy theories, and how not enough information or scientific evidence exists to disprove certain ones. That’s all.” Despite everything, I had to stifle a smile. With his valedictorian status, sponges, and sci-fi-themed wardrobe, his nerd flag was already flying. There was no need to hide it.
“Well, anyway, I don’t think this is just an experiment,” said Sasha. “Some psycho wants to blow us to bits, and torture us first.”
Robbie shook his head. “It can’t be some rando. It has to be someone we know. Or someone who knows us, at least. Someone who knows we all know each other.”
“And someone who knew Maria’s family would be out of town,” said Priya.
The back of my neck prickled, and I exchanged a wary glance with Sasha. “So do you think it’s someone from school?” I asked.
“It’d have to be, right?” said Robbie. “It’s the only thing we all have in common.”
“And we’re all in the same grade,” said Priya.
“That’s true.” Diego rubbed his chin. “But other than that, I don’t see a way we’re all connected. It’s not like someone wants to wipe out a group of popular kids, or smart kids, or jocks, you know?”
I nodded. All of us together didn’t fit any single mold. If I were to classify us, I’d say we were the queen bee, the jock, the brains, the stoner, the loner, and the orchestra geek. Each of us was so different. “Right . . . I don’t understand why each of us was invited, either. Maybe we all have some enemy in common?”
Diego raised his eyebrows. “Someone with an individual vendetta against each of us?”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Well, who here has the most enemies?” asked Robbie.
“It has to be him.” Sasha glared at Scott.
He opened his mouth to say something, but Robbie cut him off. “Yeah. C’mon, fess up. You get in too deep with a drug deal gone bad?”
“I don’t buy drugs,” he croaked. I threw Sasha a look, but she avoided my gaze. “I swipe most of it from my dad’s stash. Sometimes I sell some to kids at school, but we’re only talking enough for a couple joints. I don’t know anyone who’d do this.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I said to Robbie. “Even if he did have dealers, why would they want the rest of us dead?”
Sasha flicked her hair behind her shoulder. “Well, none of us have enemies. At least, none who’d want to kill us.”
“That’s not true,” said Robbie. He met my gaze, a look of fear in his eyes. “I can think of someone who’d want Amber dead.”
9 Months Ago
MAY OF JUNIOR YEAR
Kneeling at my locker, I swapped out a few notebooks and stood to find Robbie standing next to me. My heart jolted aggressively. He was saying something, cradling a notebook and textbooks under his arm, but I couldn’t hear him over The Tudors score blaring in my ears. (Hey, it made Mr. Baskin’s lectures about medieval England infinitely more interesting.)
I yanked out my earbuds. “Sorry, what’d you say?”
Robbie cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “I just wanted to know . . . if you were free Friday night.”
“Oh!” Warmth spread through my veins. Robbie and I hadn’t been alone together since Maria’s birthday party over a month ago. When I asked Sasha about him recently, she said his baseball team’s schedule was super packed. That made sense—I knew what it was like to be ludicrously busy. But more likely than not, I’d hallucinated our entire make-out session. Yep, that was the most logical conclusion.
But now here Robbie was, with his toned biceps, adorable smile, and killer dimples, asking me out on a date.
And there I was, melting into a puddle the janitor would have to mop up later.
“Yeah, sure.” I grinned like an idiot and blushed as memories of his kisses raced through my brain. “I’m free.”
“Great.” His posture relaxed. “I just inherited my brother’s car, so I can pick you up.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s a piece of shit, though.”
“Better than nothing, right?” I didn’t even have my license yet. Since I was working nonstop on Romeo and Juliet, I hadn’t had time to take driving lessons this year. But I was in no rush—my parents couldn’t afford to get me a car. Not even a beat-up used one. I could think about taking lessons this summer.
He shrugged. “True. Anyway, six okay?”
“Six what?”
“Six o’clock. On Friday.”
Oh, God. My brain was malfunctioning. “Oh! Yes. That . . . definitely. That good.” Me Jane, you Tarzan. Oh, brother. Now my cheeks were scalding.
“Nice. So I figure six’ll give us time to catch a movie after dinner. Is there anything out—”
“’Scuse me.” Phil Pratt stood behind Robbie, his mouth set in a frown. His mousy brown hair was greasy as always, with an accompanying low-level rank smell. I’d had to hold my breath around him for years; since his last name was right before mine alphabetically, he always had the locker next to mine, or the seat in front of me if they were assigned. His eyes were heavily lidded and dark, and he always wore the same black hoodie. His backpack bulged behind him, and he gripped the straps as if to keep them from digging into his shoulders.
Robbie was blocking his locker, and clearly hadn’t heard Phil, because he kept talking. “—you want to see? There’s that action flick with Matt Damon, but—”
Phil cleared his throat and said louder, “Can you move?” My eyes lingered on a yellowing bruise under Phil’s left eye. I vaguely wondered if it was Zane’s doing. I recently saw him “accidentally” bump into Phil in the hall; maybe he’d “accidentally” elbowed him in the face, too. Though I shouldn’t have assumed the worst—Zane had even bumped into me before. Maybe he was a legit klutz.
Robbie followed my gaze and finally noticed Phil. “Do you mind, dude?” Robbie leaned against Phil’s locker, holding his ground. “We’ve having a conversation here.”
Phil furrowed his brow and gritted his teeth, staring at the locker behind Robbie. “Do you mind?” His voice was monotone. “I need to get to my shit.”
Robbie glanced back at the locker. “Oh, crap. Sorry.” He shifted closer to me to give Phil some room.
“Anyway,” I said. “That Matt Damon movie sounds great, I’ve been wanting to see that.”
Robbie grinned. “Awesome.” He tucked my bangs behind my ear and brushed his lips against mine. Electricity rippled through me, and I could feel his kiss all the way down in my toes. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said.
“Sounds yes. Is good.” My God, what was wrong with me? Robbie spun to head down the hall, accidentally crashing into Phil with his shoulder. Phil’s backpack was so heavy he nearly toppled over.
“Oh, shit, sorry, man,” said Robbie. “I was just, you know . . .” He motioned toward me, then ran his hand over his short hair. He laughed awkwardly, gave me a final wave, and strode away.
Oh my God. I made Robbie Nelson get all flustered. Me. What was even happening?
“Whatever,” Phil muttered after regaining his balance. I opened my mouth to apologize, but before I could say anything, Priya dashed over, with Sasha, Amy, and Maria in tow. All four of them were squealing.
“OhmyGoddidRobbiejustaskyouout?” Priya spoke so fast it sounded like one word.
I grinned. “Yeah. We’re going on a date on Friday.”
She squ
eaked again and threw her arms around me, while Amy and Maria launched question after question about the venue, my outfit, whether we’d get to second base. I blushed furiously. It was like having my own pep squad, and I wasn’t used to all this attention.
Sasha opened my locker door all the way and checked her lipstick in the mirror. “I told him you wanted to go out with him.”
My eyes widened. “You did what now?”
“Well, you asked me about him last week.” She nudged me with her elbow. “It’s because you like him, right?”
I bit my lip. “Maybe . . .”
“Oh, please.” She fished through her purse and uncapped her tube of rose-tinted lipstick. “Don’t play coy. He’s gorgeous, sweet, loyal—”
We both jumped when Phil tossed a heavy textbook into his locker. Sasha cringed at him and pinched her nose, miming passing out from his stench. Amy giggled.
“Gawd, Sasha,” said Maria. “Why don’t you date Robbie?”
My stomach dropped. “Oh . . . is that something you’d want?”
“Oh, God, no,” said Sasha. “He’s like a brother to me. You know, our dads are BFFs, so we’ve been friends forever. And I could never date anyone who saw me throwing up next to the kiddie pool half naked when we were five.” Sasha dabbed some more color onto her bottom lip. “But you’ll be good for him; he needs something to fawn over besides his baseball mitt.” She gave me a conspiratorial wink. “So I helped you two along. It all worked out, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess . . .” Diego and I had also been friends since we were little, but that never kept me from thinking maybe someday I’d feel his lips on mine. That maybe someday we’d end up together. But that spark had extinguished when he started ignoring me.
“Who is your latest boy toy, now, anyway?” Amy asked Sasha.
“You know I don’t kiss and tell.” Sasha winked, throwing me a mischievous look. “I don’t need any of you fools spreading gossip.”