by Lisa Roecker
By the time I made it to school, I felt like I’d already run some sort of messed-up marathon. I was approximately ninety-seven minutes late and hesitating at the front entrance. When I finally forced myself to pull the heavy doors open, warm air crashed over me and I was greeted with the familiar eau de PB. It was a mixture of freshly ground coffee, expensive perfume, and the ancient leather that clung to every surface.
Normal high schools reeked of disinfectant, glue, and a noxious combination of every available Axe body spray. But the hallowed halls of Pemberly Brown were never sullied by scents so common. Pemberly Brown smelled like privilege.
The bell rang and I did my best to melt into the crowds of students pouring into the hallways, but as usual I failed miserably. The whispers began almost immediately, like a little spark. I was used to them by now. They rolled right over me, beading on my skin like raindrops on a windshield. Lucky for me, I was whisper resistant. Well, except when it came to one very important person: Liam.
I still felt guilty about missing our breakfast yesterday and avoiding him for the rest of the day so I wouldn’t have to tell him what was going on with Bethany and Taylor. I wasn’t lying to him. Not exactly. But I was hiding things, and that just felt wrong. Plus I couldn’t really fathom how he’d react to my hair color du jour. So I did what I always did when I was faced with conflicting emotions—I hid. Well, not literally, but avoiding someone was easy when you knew exactly where he’d be between every class.
But I could only avoid him for so long. It was lunchtime and I had fifteen minutes before I had to meet Taylor for our little tête à tête with Alistair. I knew Liam would already be in the cafeteria saving me a seat. I could only hope that by the time I actually found him, the whispers would have made their way to him and would have become so diluted that he’d anticipate a bald head with a giant hand flipping the bird tattooed on my scalp. For once, the gross exaggeration of the Pemberly Brown gossip machine might actually work in my favor. I mean, blue hair was nothing compared to no hair.
I made my way into the cafeteria and stood in the lunch line weaving through the entrance. I played with the pearls around my neck with one hand as I balanced my lunch tray with the other. The pearls felt like some sort of life preserver keeping me afloat as I paddled out into uncertain waters again.
I loaded my tray with a slice of pizza (protein), an ice cream bar covered in tiny chocolate and vanilla cake crumbs (dairy), and Tater Tots (vegetable) and journeyed across the cafeteria toward our usual table. I spotted Liam huddled with a group of his music-obsessed friends. They were all talking excitedly about something, probably some new jam band they’d all discovered or a bouncer who barely looked at IDs at Tim’s, the eighteen-and-over club. I watched him, waiting for him to feel my stare. And then he saw me. He stopped talking, and even from a distance, I could see his eyes flicking back and forth, taking in my new look.
I wasn’t patient enough to try to read his mind, so I ignored all of the whispers and all of the looks and marched right up to my boyfriend and kissed him. And not one of those weirdly chaste, closed-mouth kisses. A real, honest-to-goodness, so-hot-it-might-get-me-a-demerit-for-PDA kiss. The moment I felt his lips open to mine, my knees went weak and I leaned even closer to him. But it ended all too soon when he pushed me gently away and gave me a hard look.
I could tell he had a million questions about my hair, where I’d been, and why I was avoiding him, but before he said a word, his lip pulled up on one side. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before the other side followed and we were in full-force cocky, mega-swoon grin territory. He shook his head slowly.
“Blue,” he said, lifting a long strand and smoothing it between his fingers.
“Blue,” I said, looking up into his ridiculously gorgeous eyes. If I looked closely enough, I could pick out flecks of blue and green and gray and brown. They were my favorite part about him, constantly changing so you never knew what you were going to get.
He moved aside the hair covering my ear and leaned in close, his breath warm against my neck but still able to prick goose bumps along my arms and legs. “Hot.”
“I know, right?” Suddenly, I felt like an idiot for avoiding him all morning. Liam didn’t need to know why I’d suddenly dyed my hair. I was under no obligation to tell him anything about the Sisterhood or Bethany’s disappearance. I could keep us separate. Sacred.
“What the…?” A voice squeaked behind me, stopping me mid-thought. I pulled away from Liam and spun to face the other boy who, whether I liked to admit it or not, mattered. A lot. “You’re blue.” Seth’s voice squeaked again.
“Pretty much,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. My mom always tried to threaten that one of these days the strands would just go on strike and fall out after one too many bad dye jobs. But my hair had never felt softer. And I had to admit I was having a particularly fabulous hair day for my big debut.
Seth narrowed his eyes, looking from me to Liam and back, and I could almost hear the gears churning in his brain. Finally he said, “Cool,” and walked off to buy another school lunch.
“Hurry up and eat. I want you to hear this song, but I left my music in the Jeep. We can head out during open period.” Liam’s arm slid around my waist, and he steered me toward our usual table at the back of the cafeteria.
“Actually, I have to—”
“Holla!” And the moment was interrupted. It was Ben, of course. His hair was intentionally messy, all weird, overly gelled, evenly distributed spikes, and his designer khakis (who knew they even made designer khakis?) still had creases from hanging on the rack at the mall. His shirt was a wrinkled mess, probably the kind that had been painstakingly creased with a special iron by some cracked-out designer, but in reality he looked like he’d slept the night in a sketchy van.
Slung across his body was a bright orange man bag, which he adjusted carefully, flexing his biceps. Two very sad realities about that fugly bag struck me in that moment.
1. It probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.
2. In spite of his nonstop workouts and protein shakes, Ben was still probably small enough to fit inside of it.
“You know what they say, blue is the new pink,” I said, predicting the direction of the conversation.
“What? Oh, yeah, I thought I noticed something different about you, but my stylist says orange is really big this season.” Apparently I had predicted incorrectly, and omigod, the boy had a stylist. A really, really bad stylist. Ben barely gave my hair a second glance as he patted his man bag and began looking around for someone more important. The boy had a serious case of wandering-eye syndrome. He was constantly searching the vicinity for popular kids he could somehow latch onto or a conversation he could overhear and weasel his way into.
I rolled my eyes and occupied myself with examining his too-tan-for-an-Ohio-winter skin. He must go tanning. Of course he went tanning. His skin matched his bag.
After he’d exhausted his surrounding options, he turned back to me and flashed his Chemistry textbook. “We still on for open? I gots to get a B on this lab.”
One of the many annoying things about Ben Montrose was his five-year lag time on teen slang. Maybe his parents forced him to watch too much Disney Channel in Cali when he was young or something. That kind of exposure could really warp a young mind.
I noticed Liam watching us. He winked at me as if to give me permission to talk to another guy, which I completely did not need. Especially considering the other guy was Ben.
And then she was next to me.
“It’s 12:05,” Taylor hissed. Before turning to her, I noticed a shadow cross over Liam’s face when he saw us talking. This was not going to end well. Lame boys were one thing; members of a secret society, completely different.
“Sorry, Ben, this will only take a minute.” But Ben just stood there with a strange look of euphoria on his face and immediately went back to not-so-subtly flexing his muscles. That is the impact Taylor Wright had on social-climbin
g d-bags.
I pulled Taylor by the arm so we were a few feet away. “We still have time. Detention runs for all of open.” Alistair basically spent every free period, as well as mornings and afternoons, rotting in detention. No one knew what he did to land himself in there, but it was as constant as the slapping of hands against the station plaques. “And McAdams sleeps on the job. We’ll be fine.”
“I saw you kissing your boyfriend and I thought you changed your mind. They’re saying Bethany’s on a yoga retreat, Kate.” Taylor’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears, and I could see myself in their reflection. I remembered how it felt to hear the rumors and half-truths about Grace after she died.
“Fine, let’s just go. McAdams is probably already sleeping.”
When I turned back to Ben, he was staring at Taylor with that same dopey expression on his face. Well, at least he wouldn’t give me a hard time about ditching.
“Ben, I gotta run. You’re on your own.”
“Taylor.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and he didn’t even glance in my direction.
“So, um, you’ll finish up the lab, right?”
“Shiny.” He lifted his hand in the air.
I decided to take that as a yes. “I totally owe you one.”
He didn’t bother responding. Now Liam was a different story.
He was by my side within seconds. “What are you doing?” His voice was loud and clear, despite the fact that Taylor was only a few feet away. So much for keeping things separate.
“It’s nothing,” I whispered, hoping he’d match the level. “I just…I forgot that we sort of have this thing to do during open. It’s for Concilium, and if I skip out again, it’ll go on my transcript, and…you know.” I looked straight past him as the lie left my lips, praying he wouldn’t call me out on it. But he didn’t say a word. I met his eyes again, but they were focused on my neck. More specifically, on Grace’s pearls. Crap.
“You haven’t worn those in a while.” He lifted them with one finger as though they might burn.
I didn’t feel like answering to him. It wasn’t his fault that he cared, but it was also none of his business when I chose to wear my dead best friend’s jewelry. I slipped into emotional shutdown mode as easily as into a broken-in pair of jeans.
“Guess I’ll just talk to you later then?” I couldn’t help it. I turned back to Taylor without waiting for a response.
She reached out her hand, a weak smile pulling at her lips, and I realized how much she needed me right now. And although that was hard to understand or even to admit, it felt good. Not good enough to hold hands, though—that was just weird.
But that didn’t stop Taylor. She grabbed my hand and yanked me behind her, her deceptively strong fingers clamped around mine. She dragged me toward the double doors at the entrance to the cafeteria.
When I turned back to look at Liam, he looked stunned, like I’d slapped him across the face.
And that look on his face mattered. But finding Bethany mattered more.
Chapter 14
We traveled the empty hallways to Station 5, PB’s official detention room, and I slapped the plaque at the door automatically. Abyssus abyssum invocate. “Hell invokes hell.” True to Pemberly Brown form, no one could remember where the rituals came from, and hitting the signs marking the twelve stations for good luck came just as automatically as the rest.
I liked to pretend that I was above all of the ridiculous, antiquated crap that my self-obsessed private school passed off as tradition, but today I wasn’t in the mood to tempt fate. Taylor ran her fingers over the bronze, and it surprised me that girls like Taylor even bothered. Then again, we could use all the luck we could get.
Or maybe she was just thinking about all the Sisterhood had lost over the past few months. The twelve stations also served as the markers to the underground tunnels the Sisterhood had built when Pemberly and Brown first merged in the ’50s. They’d controlled the tunnels for years, using them to navigate the campus after hours from their underground headquarters. But now the Brotherhood had taken over and changed the locks, like some advanced breed of squatters, and by the looks of things, they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
In the detention room, half the chairs were full of kids sleeping, texting, staring off into space, or even reading. Alistair was one of the sleepers. I shoved Taylor through the doorway. If McAdams was awake, she was the better candidate to do the talking. McAdams and I weren’t exactly best buds, since I’d spent my fair share of free periods in detention rotting along with Alistair.
“Kate!” she protested, stumbling into the classroom. “I am…um…sorry, Mr. McAdams?”
I heard an unintelligible grunt from behind the door and assumed it was McAdams. I could see a few kids lift their heads, including Alistair, who glared in Taylor’s direction. Psycho much?
“Mrs. Newbury in the office sent me here to get Alistair. I think she has a message for him.”
I was very impressed with Taylor’s improv. I didn’t know she had it in her.
“I hope you have a note, Ms. Wright,” McAdams grumbled, more bear than man.
“She was in the middle of her lunch and said to apologize. It will just take a second.”
Even though I could only see the back of her head, I could tell she was smiling, which I knew must have been incredibly difficult to pull off at the moment. The girl was good. I also knew she’d hooked McAdams. No one could resist Taylor Wright’s smile. Especially not an underpaid widower in his early sixties.
Another gurgle and Alistair was free.
“Thanks for the free pass, T.,” he said, pushing past Taylor and into the hallway. “Sorry I’ve gotta run.” Then his eyes landed on me, and he looked back at Taylor and started laughing. “Nice hair, freak show.” In terms of greetings, I had to admit that was actually one of Alistair’s more friendly salutations. “See ya around.”
Wow. I never knew that level of dickery actually existed.
“We got your text,” I called out to him as he walked. That stopped him in his tracks just like I knew it would.
“Well, at least we’re not beating around the bush anymore. I suppose you’re here to tell me that you’ve disbanded the Sisterhood?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Taylor snapped. “We are here to give you one last chance to let Bethany go. Or else.”
Alistair laughed. “Or else what? You’ll tell that fat-ass security guard to beat us in an arm-wrestling match? Ooh, scary.”
Never in my life have I wanted to punch someone more than in that moment. Alistair Reynolds was the worst kind of asshole. The kind who had never been put in his place. The kind with actual power.
“Let me know when you’re ready to turn over your little robes and necklaces, and then we’ll talk. But you better hurry, because I heard your friend wasn’t feeling too hot this morning, and now that I think of it, I’m not sure anyone remembered to feed her.”
Taylor ran up to Alistair and went straight for his face, her hands ready to claw his eyes out. He managed to grab her right hand, but with a broken wrist he couldn’t stop her left hand from drawing four lines of blood down the side of his cheek.
He cupped his fingers over the wound and, without a word, turned his head, his eyes like flint.
For one long moment I thought he was going to backhand her. But Taylor just stood up and walked back down the hallway. Her arm bumped mine as she passed me, and I could see the struggle in her face as she tried to hold back tears. I could tell by the look on her face that if she even uttered a single word, the floodgates would open and every emotion she’d bottled up over the past few days would come pouring out all at once. And if Taylor was anything like me, tears would make her feel weak, defeated. She picked up her pace and pushed into the closest girls’ bathroom and was gone.
So that went well.
I made my way over to Alistair, who hadn’t moved an inch.
“This isn’t going to end well. You might as well just tell me where
she is.”
“You want to know the truth, Lowry? I have no idea where they hid her. It’s not my job to know. This whole thing wasn’t even my idea.” It was strange, but Alistair almost sounded like he was telling the truth.
“You honestly expect me to believe that as president of the Brotherhood you have no idea where they’re hiding the girl you’re holding for ransom?”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything, but you should know that I’m not the president anymore. And like I said, this isn’t my plan, so I’m doing my best just to stay the hell out of it.”
Alistair turned in the other direction and began walking, his hand still pressed tightly against his cheek. As I watched him go, I saw a piece of notebook paper flutter to the ground.
For a moment I held my breath, sure he’d notice that he’d dropped it, but he kept walking. The second he rounded the corner, I snatched up the piece of paper. I figured with my luck it would be something stupid, like his Latin homework, but I was wrong.
The piece of notebook paper had clearly been ripped from a journal of some sort. There were cutouts of beautiful girls in bathing suits and words pasted across their faces.
Too young to die, too old to live.
Gone. Gone. Gone.
Tick tock, time’s out.
I examined the girls in the pictures, trying to see if any of them looked like Bethany or even Taylor. Maybe this was some kind of hit list the Brotherhood had created? But these girls just looked like a bunch of models randomly snipped from magazines. I carefully folded the paper and slipped it into the pocket of my uniform skirt. And just as I was about to push into the girls’ bathroom to check on Taylor, I caught a flash of plaid at the end of the hallway, light spilling in from the huge bay window behind the girl. But there was no mistaking her.