Claire’s mouth spread into a super-wide smile. She threw off her covers and ran to the window. Every single light in the Block house flicked on in rapid succession, from Massie’s room at the second-floor right corner all the way to the library on the bottom-floor left, as though the entire house were doing the wave.
Claire felt a wave of her own. It was either guilt or victory. She was too tired to tell.
As Massie continued to shriek, Claire quickly settled into her desk and video-chatted Layne.
Layne appeared on the screen, sitting in a high-backed chair and wearing what appeared to be an old-fashioned smoking jacket (or was that her bathrobe?). She was drinking something yellow and creamy-looking from an oversized brandy snifter. On the table next to her was a carton of eggnog-flavored rice milk (her newest obsession). A big stuffed animal—a cat—was in her lap, and she was stroking it. “Well, hello, Kuh-laire,” she said in a low voice. She raised the glass up toward Claire like she was toasting her.
Claire giggled, then held the laptop up to the window. “Hear that?”
Layne smiled a huge eggnoggy smile and then wiped her mouth.
The scream continued, getting louder by the second. “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Sounds like she ran out back and…” Claire peered into the dark backyard. “And she’s running around the pool?”
“A little night swimming perhaps?” Layne refilled her glass.
Claire snickered.
“What do you think her face looked like when she saw them?” Layne said.
“Like this.” Claire made a goofy monkey face into the camera of her laptop.
Layne snorted rice milk onto the screen. “No, this!” she said, crossing her eyes and puffing out her cheeks. “Yee-gads. She’s still screaming. You weren’t kidding about the whole not-liking-bugs business.”
“Guess this means Mission Bedbugs is a success,” said Claire.
“And how!” Layne put down her brandy snifter, and the two girls high-fived their screens.
A moment later Claire signed off and went back to her window.
The entire Block family was out on the front lawn now. Mr. and Mrs. Block were in big, fluffy bathrobes, holding giant mugs of something steaming. Massie was in her silk Calvin pajamas and was holding on to her mother, whimpering.
Claire watched as, a few minutes later, Isaac came outside, still wearing his black driving outfit. He wrapped a thick blanket around Massie’s shoulders and then said something to Mr. Block, who nodded. Eventually, they began to file back inside. Claire figured Massie wouldn’t return to her room that night. If she knew her former alpha at all, she’d insist on sleeping in one of the bathtubs, a can of bug spray clutched to her chest.
For a moment, Claire felt bad for her former friend. Yes, Massie had bugged her first, but Claire was more resilient than Massie. She’d had to deal with hardships, like moving to a new town and living with a mean queen bee and battling sale seekers at Marshalls and overcoming adversity to rise to the top of OCD’s social strata. But Massie has never had to do any of that. She’d always been popular and rich. What was it that Claire’s mom always said? What doesn’t kill you just makes you stronger.
A little voice at the back of Claire’s brain whispered that “she did it first” wasn’t a good enough reason, that Claire was just trying to justify her actions, that maybe she shouldn’t have exacted such a terrible revenge on Massie. But Claire shushed it.
And with that, she flipped off her light, climbed into her own soft, bug-free bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
OCTAVIAN COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL
SOCIAL STUDIES
Wednesday, December 10th
3:13 P.M.
SCRATCH-ch-ch-ch. SCRATCH-ch-ch-ch. SCRATCH-ch-ch-ch.
Massie ran her now-ragged, metallic-bronze manicured nails over the thigh of her slate gray Theory skirt. Deep red groves ran up and down her arms and legs, making them look like the World War I battlefields they were studying in class.
Plop!
A little folded-up paper triangle landed on Massie’s desk like a raindrop on a cloudy day. She clenched her teeth and forced herself to look down. Uch. Not another one. Her friends had alternately been shooting her looks of pity about the kisstastrophe and giving her “helpful” bits of advice about the infestation.
She unfolded the lined notebook paper and recognized Dylan’s messy blue scribble immediately: HAVE YOU TRIED A CHAMOMILE BATH? THAT WORKED WHEN I HAD THE POX.
A second later another note landed on her desk, this one written on graph paper in Alicia’s slanty script: AT LEAST IT WASN’T SCORPIONS, LIKE THEY HAVE AT MY COUSIN NINA’S PLACE IN SPAIN. THEY PIIIIIIIIINCH!
Before Massie even had a chance to turn around and give Alicia a look, her phone lit up with a text.
Kristen: When the people down the hall in my apt bldg had roaches, it only took a few days to fumigate.
Massie felt her face grow red. Was she hawnestly being compared to a tenant in Kristen’s low-income apartment building? Especially one who was dirty enough to attract insects? What was the point of having money if it didn’t protect you from natural disasters like this? Massie laid her burning forehead down on her cool oak desk.
“Massie.” Mr. McGowan paused at the board. “Is everything okay?”
Massie sat back up and tried to make her face appear normal. “Uh-huh,” she said. Her voice came out sounding more robotic than Wall-E’s. Beep-boop.
“And so would you care to explain why the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the match that lit the powder keg of World War One?”
Massie wracked her brain for any shred of what he had just been talking about, but the only thing that was in there was a loop of images from the last eighteen hours: Landon’s warm lips. His horrified face. His grandparents’ shocked expressions on his Mac screen. The sight of the bugs crawling on her lavender Frette sheets.
Isaac had picked up Bean earlier that morning, and he’d returned home with a slice of birthday cake and a note from Landon that said, CALL ME. It was ahb-viously a pity note that Mrs. Crane had made him write.
“Um, no thank you,” Massie said.
Mr. McGowan gave her a stern look. “Please pay more attention, Miss Block. I am not Alan Lambert and just ‘Here for Your Entertainment.’”
Massie was so defeated, she didn’t even have the energy to mention that his name was Adam, not Alan, and that she was quite aware Mr. McGowan was not placed on Earth for her amusement. The man was duller than a plastic spoon.
“Now, who can help Miss Block with the answer…?”
Massie was hit with a wave of exhaustion so complete that she couldn’t even work up the energy for a glare at Strawberry, who promptly answered the question. She was not only emotionally exhausted, but physically too. The night before, after finding that her bed had been turned into a jungle theme park, she’d moved into one of the guest rooms. But even there she hadn’t felt safe from the bugs and their bloodsucking fangs and their multiple legs and their shiny, terrifying eyeballs. Eventually she’d tried to sleep in the bathtub of the guest bathroom, but it was hardly comfortable using porcelain for a pillow.
Finally, the bell rang.
Massie felt a pinch on her leg and instantly reached down—SCRATCH-chchch. SCRATCH-chchch. SCRATCH-chchch— before gathering her books.
“Ehma-it’sabouttime!” she said, sliding her chair back against the wood floor.
But the rest of the PC lagged behind. Dylan slowly stood up from her desk. Kristen was rooting through her leather messenger bag for something elusive. And Alicia pulled out a bottle of clear nail polish and started retouching her tips.
“Um, are you auditioning to be on RuPaul’s new show?” Massie asked.
“No,” her friends said in unison.
“Then why are you dragging?” She sighed dramatically. “Isaac’s waiting.”
“I have a really big indoor soccer game I can’t miss,” Kristen said, her eyes on the ground.
“Um, I need to walk more because of my new diet,” Dylan said, chewing on the ends of her red hair, the way she always did when she was lying.
Massie stared at her friends. After an entire day of trying to hold it all together, she could feel her anger bubbling up inside her like a shaken bottle of Pellegrino. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the fluffy cloud, to put her bad feelings on it, to push it away. But the only clouds she could picture were those of a hurricane brewing on the horizon. She felt the low rumble of thunder rolling in. And the buzzing of lightning about to strike. The cold, angry rain pelting her shoulders. There was nothing she could do now. She was powerless to stop it.
But losing it at school brought a whole new meaning to LBR, so she just hitched her Coach bag higher on her shoulder and joined the out-of-school procession. Her boots clomped down the shiny wooden floor, ignoring the protests of the people she pushed out of her way. Through the open door at the end of the hall, she could see the familiar black shape of the Range Rover, the sun glinting off its windshield.
“Where are your friends?” Isaac asked when she opened the door, his brown eyes meeting Massie’s in the rearview window.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Massie growled, popping her seatbelt into the buckle with a loud click. She slouched down in her seat, pretending to rub sidewalk salt off her boots, until she was out of view of the school. She did nawt need someone getting one hundred gossip points for spotting Massie Block driving home alone.
Fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the Blocks’ driveway. Massie’s phone started vibrating, and a picture of Landon holding Bark popped up on her screen. But she just sat there with the phone buzzing in her hand—because as shocked as she was to hear from her ex-crush, she was even more shocked at the appearance of her beloved home.
“Cirque de NO WAY!” Massie jumped out of the car.
It looked as though the circus had come to town and exploded all over the Block Estate. The entire mansion had been covered in an enormous, billowy red-and-blue tent. Her parents stood at the front of the house with fumigation masks on. At her father’s feet was a set of matching, monogrammed Louis Vuitton suitcases. Her mother held Bean, who reached out a perfectly groomed paw toward Massie as she approached. At her mother’s feet were Bean’s matching, monogrammed Louis Vuitton puppy cases.
“What’s going awn!?!” Massie screamed.
Her dad cleared his throat. “We’re having the house fumigated.”
Kendra adjusted her faux-fur chinchilla hat. “You can never be too careful when it comes to insect infestations.” She reached out to tousle Massie’s expertly tousled hair, but Massie pulled away. Kendra ended up grabbing at the air next to Massie’s head instead.
“No one is allowed in the house until after the fumigation is finished,” said William. “But look at it this way: It gives me and your mom the chance to finally get away on vacation to the Bahamas. And you get to bunk in the guesthouse with your pal Claire!”
Massie took two steps backward, feeling the storm clouds rolling in again. “I. Have. To. Live. With. Kuh-laire?” She dug her fingernails into her chapped, raw hands and narrowed her amber eyes. Suddenly she had a sneaking suspicion that she knew just where those bugs had come from.
“No need to thank us,” Kendra said. “It will be like one big sleepover! We weren’t able to get any of your clothes out, since your room was the site of the infestation. But I’m sure you can borrow things from Claire.”
“THANK you?” Massie gasped.
“Well, okay.” Kendra flashed her Chiclet-white smile. “You’re welcome.”
“Wh-wh-why can’t I go on vacation with you?” Massie sputtered.
“Sorry, honey,” her father said. “You have to stay in school.”
A parade of official-looking men in protective rubber coats and gas masks marched down the flagstone path, holding clipboards and hoses and wearing bright orange backpacks with HAZMAT printed on the back.
Suddenly Kendra’s iPhone started clucking like a chicken. “Oops, that’s my alarm!” She leaned over and gave Massie a kiss on the cheek. “We have to get to the airport now, sweetheart!” Isaac loaded their suitcases into the Range Rover. “Really,” Kendra said. “I know you’re going to have a great week. Look at it as an adventure.”
Her father gave Massie a hug, her mother placed Bean in Massie’s arms, and then with the crunch of gravel beneath the Range Rover, they were off, leaving their daughter with nothing but her dog and the Michael Kors riding boots, high-waisted Theory pencil skirt, sleeveless silk blouse, and cashmere shrug on her back.
THE GUESTHOUSE
CLAIRE’S ROOM
Wednesday, December 10th
4:41 P.M.
“Ready, set, GO!” Claire yelled into her computer’s microphone, setting off a commotion of scissoring and taping. She, Cam, and Layne were having a contest over G-video-chat to see who could wrap their holiday presents the fastest. Right then, Claire was using candy cane–print paper to speed-wrap a pair of robot walkie-talkies for Todd. Cam was covering a pair of fuzzy gray slippers for his father in gold foil. And Layne looked as if she were swimming in a sea of metallic blue Santa paper, wrapping a pair of bright pink Converse for herself—according to her, it was “the gift that kept on giving.”
“Done!” cried Cam, holding his finished present in the air.
“Hey!” Layne said. “You cheated.”
Claire giggled as she looked at Cam’s “finished” present: a jagged sheet of gold was halfway wrapped around the slippers. A big piece of tape held the whole thing together.
“We never said it had to be wrapped well,” Cam laughed, his green eye twinkling at her from the computer screen.
“True,” said Claire as she stuck a shiny red bow on top of her neatly wrapped box.
“So what do I win?” he said.
“A bed full of bugs?” Layne said.
“I still can’t believe you guys actually bugged Massie’s room,” Cam said, shaking his head.
Claire set out a new present—seashell earrings for her mom—on a sheet of Santas and prepared to cut around it.
“Shall I reenact the moment of discovery?” Layne said. Without waiting for his answer, she clutched her heart and threw herself onto her tie-dyed bedspread. “Argggggggggggggggghh! I’ve been infested with wildlife! Cover the house! Save my shoes!”
“I would have liked to see you in your bug-burglar outfit.” Cam smiled at Claire.
She blushed. She was in crush with the way he supported her, even when she concocted crazy schemes like scaling a wall and breaking into her ex-bestie’s house.
Layne interrupted her thoughts. “Status update,” she said. “Get a room.”
“I have a room,” Claire said, motioning around her. “Unlike some people I know.”
Cam coughed uncomfortably, and Claire looked up to see Massie standing in the doorway, hands on her Theory skirt–encased hips, tapping one nut-brown riding boot in slow motion.
Cam scratched his nose. Layne sneezed. Claire nibbled on her thumbnail. How did Massie manage to suck all the fun out of a room—or in this case, a video conference—like a high-powered Dirt Devil after a birthday party? She had to admit, though, that Massie wasn’t looking good. She was barely a 3 today, while she usually hovered around a 9.2. Bags the size of silver dollars hung under her eyes, and her bare forearms had jagged red marks all over them, like she’d accidentally hugged a cactus. She had a soy stain on her cashmere shrug. And her usually pin-straight hair looked minutes away from kinking into a curl.
“Have you come to steal Christmas?” Layne said from the computer screen, curling a silver ribbon on the edge of her scissor
s blade like a butcher sharpening a carving knife.
Massie ignored Layne and blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Can anyone guess how this guesthouse is like my sense of style?”
“It’s rigid and outdated?” Layne tried.
“No,” Massie snarled. “It’s MINE.”
“Is everything okay, Massie?” Layne asked in a sugary-sweet voice. “It seems like you’re bugging out.”
“So are your eyes!” Massie said, scratching at the soy stain on her shrug.
Claire grimaced. Even Massie’s comebacks had taken a dive. The alpha was in serious trouble. “I’m sorry you have to move out of your house,” she said. “But you can borrow my PJs if you want. Rainbow gummies or reindeer print?”
Massie was quiet as she considered the two sets of flannel sleepwear—and perhaps Claire’s act of kindness with them. But when she looked up, her face was devoid of any warmth, almost like she was the wax Madame Tussauds version of herself. “I would rather be fumigated than wear anything you own.”
“She’s just trying to be nice, Massie,” said Cam, coming to his crush’s defense. His green eye was crinkled in outrage, but Claire could tell his blue eye was trying to maintain an air of reasonableness and sympathy.
“Well, that explains why she’s hanging out with you,” Massie snapped.
That did it! Massie could belittle Claire if she wanted, but Cam was off limits.
“Go to the spare room!” Claire ordered, her voice harder than a Jolly Rancher.
“Amen, sister!” Layne clapped from her bedroom.
Massie rolled her eyes, like she couldn’t even be bothered to respond, then reached down and tore the candy-cane paper off Todd’s walkie-talkies. With that, she whirled around and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
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