Get Even

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kitty saw Bree flinch.

  “Let’s see what he looks like, shall we?” Kitty said. She opened the yearbook with a flourish.

  Only the page with Christopher’s photo had been removed.

  “Gone?” Bree blurted out. “His photo is gone?” She stared at the page in disbelief. Had John ripped Christopher’s photo out of the yearbook?

  Margot lifted the book from Kitty’s hand and examined the page in question. It had been torn cleanly from the spine, leaving a minuscule flap of paper. “Whoever did this,” she said, handing the yearbook back to Kitty, “used a straight-edge razor or paper cutter, which implies that the act was deliberate and premeditated.”

  “Not just this one,” Kitty said. She returned the impotent yearbook to the shelf. “The copy at St. Alban’s, too.”

  Bree felt her entire body go cold, as if she’d been plunged into an ice bath. Her brain felt sluggish, not quite grasping the reality. “Someone ripped the same page out of both yearbooks?”

  “Looks like it,” Kitty said.

  Christopher Beeman. Archway Military Academy. She couldn’t keep ignoring the signs, especially if John had already figured out that both of them were connected to Bree’s involvement with DGM. She needed to face her past. She needed to face Christopher.

  “Do you remember what he looks like?” Kitty asked.

  Bree stared at the shelf. “Short, kinda chubby, brown hair, brown eyes. Generic.”

  “Do you think you’d recognize him?” Margot asked.

  Bree shook her head. “I barely recognize myself from junior high.”

  “Really?” Kitty asked. “You wouldn’t recognize your best friend?”

  “Best friend?” How did Kitty know that? “Who said he was my best friend?”

  “Oh.” Kitty’s eyes faltered. “I . . . I thought Mika said you were.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kitty was a horrible liar. Who had she been talking to about Christopher Beeman?

  Kitty cleared her throat. “Well, at least we know who tore the photos out.”

  Margot shook her head. “John didn’t have anything in his hand when we left.”

  He was down here before. Only Bree didn’t share that out loud. If John had ripped the pages out of both yearbooks, did it mean he’d discovered what she’d done to Christopher all those years ago? And if so, could he ever forgive her for it?

  “I’m late for theater rehearsal,” she said, heading for the stairs. She had to get home as soon as possible. There was one more yearbook that needed to be checked.

  “Bree,” Kitty said, “we have to—”

  But Bree didn’t hear her. She was already up the stairs, sprinting through the library.

  Bree dragged a chair over to her closet and used it to reach a series of boxes shoved onto the uppermost shelf. She deposited the first two on the floor, but the third was significantly heavier. With a grunt, she heaved the box off the shelf and dropped it onto the carpet.

  Bree hadn’t gone through her junior high crap since, well, junior high. The collection was embarrassing. Tickets to concerts by bands she now loathed. Cutouts from fashion magazines featuring clothes she wouldn’t be caught dead in. Friendship bracelets from people she no longer spoke to. Damn, a lot had changed in four years.

  With a shake of her head, Bree hauled three yearbooks out of the bottom of the box. The St. Alban’s Fighting Jesuits, complete with a sword-wielding priest as a mascot. The yearbooks from seventh and eighth grades she discarded, leaving just her sixth-grade keepsake. Without giving herself time to change her mind, she whipped it open and flipped to the alphabetical beginning of her sixth-grade class.

  She froze.

  An entire page had been ripped out of her yearbook.

  Bree had a moment of panic as reality hit her: while she could have explained away the missing page of her own book as some kind of repressed guilt memory or forgotten moment of prepubescent rage, there was no way in hell she would have forgotten the defilement of the yearbooks in two different libraries unless she’d had some sort of psychotic breakdown in the last few years that she’d forgotten about.

  Which meant someone else had torn out those pages.

  Someone like John, who’d been rummaging around in her closet just a couple of weeks ago.

  “No!” She refused to believe he would have gone through the trouble. He didn’t have any motive for hiding Christopher’s identity.

  Because that was the logical reason the yearbooks had been defaced. Someone didn’t want anyone to know what Christopher Beeman looked like.

  Bree tried to think back. She remembered a short, chubby kid with mousy brown hair and glasses who looked five years younger than the rest of the boys in their class. He was quiet, but smart. Only spoke when he had something important to say, and preferred reading in the library to athletic activities of any kind.

  But his face . . . Bree squeezed her eyes closed and tried to picture it. Brown hair, brown eyes. He looked like every kid, Harry Potter–generic without the telltale scar.

  Bree opened her eyes and sighed. She wasn’t getting anywhere.

  Okay, who would want to make sure all traces of Christopher Beeman were erased from the world? If Bree assumed that she was not, in fact, losing her mind and hadn’t ripped out those pages herself, then someone else had been in her room, dug through her things to find her sixth-grade yearbook, and vandalized it.

  The suspect list was short, as very few people had ever been in her room: aside from herself and her parents, there was only the cleaning lady and John.

  John, who spent plenty of time in her room. John, who knew how to gain access to the house. John, who had been holding the yearbook at the library an hour ago. John, who was clearly on a mission to find out the secrets of DGM. Could he have discovered Bree’s secret, and her reason for joining DGM in the first place?

  And if he had, what would he do next?

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  THIRTY-SIX

  DONTÉ WAS WAITING FOR KITTY AT THE SIDE ENTRANCE OF school Monday morning. His face was pained, and Kitty immediately knew something was wrong. “You aren’t going to believe this,” he said, holding the door open for her.

  Kitty halted the moment she set foot inside the building.

  The rows of dull, metallic lockers that lined both sides of the wide hallway had been plastered with neon pink fliers. Each taped below a locker number, hundreds of fliers fluttered in the breeze like a blinding fringe.

  “What the . . .” Kitty’s voice trailed off. Her eye caught the letters printed in massive, boldface type on the top of the fliers:

  REWARD: DGM

  Kitty pulled a flier off the nearest locker. Her hand shook, her throat closed up, and her brain only took in about every other word.

  “‘Reward: DGM,’” Donté read over her shoulder. “‘The administration of Bishop DuMaine Preparatory School hereby announces the following reward: any student who supplies information that leads to the identification of DGM will have their tuition fees waived for one full year.’”

  “A bounty,” Kitty said, her voice raspy. “He’s offering a bounty on DGM.”

  “‘In addition,’” Donté continued, reading more quickly, “‘by special directive from Father Uberti, the student service organization known as the ’Maine Men is now under the direct command of Coach Creed. You will offer them every support and compliance during this time of crisis.’”

  “You . . . you don’t think anyone will actually go for this, do you?” Kitty paused, as if afraid of the answer. “I mean, with all the rich kids at this school, it seems kind of silly.”

  “Maybe for the Rex Cavanaughs,” Donté said. “But once word gets out to the parents, you can bet your ass they’ll be pressuring their kids to squeal.”

  Bishop DuMaine was about to morph into a school of DGM bounty hun
ters, complete with their own gestapo, the ’Maine Men.

  Donté reread the flier and shook his head. “When I signed up for the ’Maine Men, it seemed like a good way to help the school, you know? But now . . . I don’t know. The stuff they’ve been doing lately makes me really uncomfortable. I’m glad I dropped out.”

  Kitty wanted to throw her arms around Donté’s neck and kiss him right there in the hall, she was so elated. Instead, she just nodded. “Me too.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Look, try not to let all this bother you, okay?”

  Kitty closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’ll try.”

  “How about we do something fun this weekend? Something to take our minds off the drama around here?”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s a show at the Ledge Sunday night. That band everyone’s talking about? The lead singer goes to our school?”

  “Bangers and Mosh.”

  “Right! They’re in the school play and we’re all supposed to go and support them.” He pulled her close. “What do you say? Ready to make our relationship DuMaine-official?”

  Coach Creed was addressing the leadership class—beefy hands planted on his hips, legs shoulder-width apart like he was a drill sergeant instead of a second-rate gym teacher—when Kitty entered the classroom after prepping the announcements. He paused, clearly annoyed at the interruption, and glared at her while she took her seat.

  “It has been two hundred and eighty-three hours since a member of the ’Maine Men was cut down in cold blood,” Coach Creed continued. “And there are still no suspects in custody. So we’re taking matters into our own hands.” He was wearing a blue ’Maine Men polo shirt two sizes too small, tucked into a pair of camo pants. A complex flowchart drawn in multiple colors adorned the whiteboard behind him.

  A smattering of applause rippled through the room. It made Kitty’s skin crawl.

  Coach Creed pulled a laser pointer from his pocket and pointed it at the whiteboard. “Based on your assignment from last week, I’ve assembled a profile of the most likely perpetrator. Our primary suspect—the DGM ringleader—is male, between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. He’s a loner, quiet. Maybe with a dangerous, artistic temperament. He’s got a smart mouth, but for the most part he keeps it shut. He doesn’t have many friends, maybe one or two at most, and he feels safe here at Bishop DuMaine, almost like he’s an insider or has a relative who works on staff.”

  Kitty licked her lips, which had gone bone dry despite a layer of balm. Coach Creed wasn’t describing some anonymous profile of a suspect, he was describing one person quite specifically. He was describing John Baggott.

  Coach Creed smiled wickedly. “Last of all, he’s cocky.” He leaned forward on his desk. “I think we all know the kind of student I’m talking about.”

  “Hell, yeah!” Rex said. Tyler reached out and high-fived him.

  “That’s what I thought.” Coach Creed straightened up and began to pace behind the desk. “We must be diligent. If we put enough pressure on him, he’ll cave.” He paused. “Did everyone see the fliers around campus?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rex said.

  “One year of free tuition,” Coach Creed said. “To whoever can force our suspect to confess to his involvement with DGM.”

  Force our suspect to confess? This couldn’t be good.

  Coach Creed folded his arms across his chest. “It’s time to take back our school.”

  A cheer went up, as Rex and a group of ’Maine Men rushed to the whiteboard, where Coach Creed was diagraming the school, circling certain target areas like the quad and the baseball field, as if they were planning an attack.

  Coach Creed had whipped the ’Maine Men into a frenzied mob that was about to be unleashed.

  She needed to warn Bree.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  BREE SPIED KITTY COMING TOWARD HER IN THE HALLWAY AND was careful not to make eye contact. Those were DGM rules, of course, but after their run-in at the library on Saturday, Bree wanted nothing to do with her de facto leader. And she was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

  Which made it even weirder when Kitty pretended to trip and fall directly into Bree.

  “Sorry,” she said, turning back to look at the tiled floor. “I slipped.”

  Bree felt something being pressed into her hand. A note.

  Kitty was gone in a flash, disappearing through the door into the courtyard. Bree palmed the folded piece of paper, then shoved both of her hands into the front pockets of her hoodie while she continued down the hall.

  She ducked into the ladies room, moving slowly and calmly, like she hadn’t a care in the world, and didn’t pull the note from her pocket until she was safely locked into a stall.

  MM are coming for JB. Be careful.

  As the warning bell tore through the restroom, Bree hastily flushed the note down the toilet, standing over the bowl until the tiny paper square spiraled downward into the sewage system.

  This was all her fault.

  John had been keeping secrets from her, had replaced her with Cordy, and had maybe even discovered her long-buried secret about Christopher, yet suddenly all of Bree’s resentment evaporated, replaced by blind panic. She needed to protect him, no matter what.

  Lunch. That would be the most dangerous time. If Rex and the ’Maine Men found John alone on campus, especially someplace secluded . . . Bree’s stomach lurched at the thought of John getting pummeled by Rex Cavanaugh in an attempt to beat a confession out of him.

  She needed to find him first.

  Bree whipped her phone out of her pocket and texted John.

  Hey.

  Bree paused. How was she supposed to break through the gigantic iceberg that had settled over their friendship?

  Can we talk? At lunch today?

  No response.

  Meet me in the library, or your mom’s car?

  This time, her phone buzzed as a text came through.

  The party you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again later.

  Well, at least he still had a sense of humor. She quickly responded.

  This is serious. There’s some drama going down you need to know about.

  John’s response was so fast he must have copied and pasted it.

  The party you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again later.

  The cell phone equivalent of plugging his ears and chanting, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”

  John was still mad at her. Fine, she’d deal with that later. For now, the important thing was keeping the ’Maine Men from kicking his ass. If only she had friends on the wrestling team, or some big biker dudes who could create a perimeter around him during lunch. But she and John didn’t have friends like that.

  Or did they?

  Bree opened the Facebook app on her phone and located Shane White’s page.

  Shane? This is Bree. She paused. John Baggott’s friend, she added.

  This is going to sound crazy, but I think there’s a group of ’Maine Men going after John at lunch.

  Could you keep an eye out for him?

  Bree held her phone in a death grip as she swung her surplus bag over her head and hurried to class.

  Third-period trigonometry lasted an eternity. She kept her phone in her pocket, set on vibrate, and every time someone so much as moved at their desk, Bree was convinced she’d gotten a response.

  When the bell final rang, Bree discovered she was wrong.

  No notifications on her cell phone. Total radio silence.

  Bree sat in the empty classroom, staring at her phone. She double checked to make sure the message to Shane actually went through and wasn’t caught in some sort of Facebook messenger app purgatory, but it had a timestamp. The message had been delivered.

  She’d just have to find John herself and drag him
into hiding.

  Students were already in the quad eating lunch when Bree exited the building. The same cliques of friends sat at the same tables on the same corners of the courtyard as they always did, that unspoken territorialism that was only ever challenged in teen movies and antibullying PSAs. She looked around for Shane. John had been eating lunch with him all week, but other than the sour-faced Cordy and some of her goth friends, none of Shane’s gang was in sight.

  Which might be a good thing. Wherever Shane was lunching, maybe John was with him? That should keep the douches at bay.

  Bree hurried across the quad. She’d better keep searching, just in case. Small groups of blue-shirted ’Maine Men roamed campus, questioning students—a militia on a manhunt.

  But unlike those Smurf-shirted idiots puffing aimlessly around school, Bree knew John better than anyone.

  When John was in a shit mood, the first thing he turned to was music.

  The music building was silent, eerily so. Usually there was at least one neurotic string player sawing out arpeggios on a cello during lunch. She peeked into each of the practice rooms through their small, double-paned windows, passing empty room after empty room. Until the last one at the end of the hall, where John sat on a piano bench, leaning against the wall with a book propped up on his leg.

  “Dude,” she said, swinging the door open unceremoniously. “There you are.”

  John glanced up at her, then slowly lowered his eyes to the book. “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

  With a pang of embarrassment, Bree noticed that he was reading Nietzsche.

  “Save it,” Bree said. She tried to act like there was nothing wrong, like there had never been a rift between them. She desperately hoped he’d take her cue and do the same. “There’s important shit going down today.”

  John read in silence, or at least pretended to, but Bree wasn’t about to give up. “Coach Creed has gone off the rails. Did you see the flier? He’s in direct command of the ’Maine Men.”