Текст книги "Rhymes with Witches"

Автор книги: Lauren Myracle

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“Bitsy,” Alicia corrected. “And Mary Bryan Richardson.”

“—but other girls. Other Bitches. One from each grade, four total. And always the most popular girls in school.”

Inwardly, I groaned. She was acting as if this were privileged information, when anyone at school could have told me the same thing.

“When I was a freshman, the Bitch in my grade was Jennifer Mayfield,” Rae said. “We all wanted to be her. We were so jealous we could spit. Although …” She paused dramatically. First she eyed Alicia, then she eyed me. “We never did. Spit, that is, or anything else that wouldn’t be considered proper worshipping behavior. And you want to know why?”

I checked Alicia’s reaction. Her legs were drawn to her chest, with her arms around her knees. Her black hair hung in bone-straight chunks. She jerked her chin, as if to say, Ask, you fool. Aren’t you even paying attention?

“Why?” I said.

Rae tapped her thigh with violent purple nails. “Haven’t you noticed that whenever they enter a room—your Bitches, my Bitches, whoever—everything stops and then starts up again, with them at the center of things?”

“Yeah,” I said, like so?

“And haven’t you noticed that even if you want to, you can’t not like them?”

“Because no one would want to. Because they’re …” I struggled for the right word, but couldn’t find it. “Cool,” I finished lamely.

“No,” Rae said.

“Yes,” I said.

“But that’s not why you like them.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

I closed my eyes. Conversations with Rae were always like this. They went on and on and when they finally ended, the payoff was zilch. Don’t jam your hands in your front pockets, or else.

I opened my eyes. I raised my eyebrows at Alicia, who raised hers right back.

“Fine,” I said to Rae. “Then why do I like them, if it’s not because they’re cool?”

“Because you have to. Because they make you.”

“And how do they do that?”

“I don’t know. But they do.”

“Uh-huh. Mind control? Voodoo? Invisible puppet strings?”

Rae regarded me with disdain. “Crack jokes if it makes you feel better. But the world is a hell of a lot bigger than you think. All sorts of things go on that you know nothing about.”

Alicia scooted closer. “Finish telling her about Jennifer Mayfield.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

“Well, like I said, Jennifer was tapped to be a Bitch,” Rae said. She got to her knees and stretched her body, reaching for the brush on Alicia’s dresser. She grasped it and sat back down. “But it fell apart.”

“What do you mean, it fell apart?”

Rae tugged at the tangles in her hair. “She pissed them off. Or else she just wasn’t good enough. She never figured it out.”

“Did she care?”

“Did she care? She only switched schools in the middle of fall semester. She only ran away with her tail between her legs and never came back. Uh, yeah, I’d say she cared.”

Okay, I could get that. I was starting to care, too. “So what does that have to do with Bitsy and Mary Bryan and Keisha?”

“Everything,” Rae said. “Because Jennifer let things slip before she left. And the Bitches aren’t all they appear to be. That’s all I’m saying.”

“But Bitsy and Keisha and Mary Bryan weren’t around when you and Jennifer were in high school. They’d have been in, like, elementary school.”

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said? They’re all the same, year after year after year. They may not start out that way, but then they do something. Something big. And they become.”

“Become?” I repeated.

“I don’t know how, no one does, but there’s more going on than everyone thinks.” Rae stopped brushing. She lowered her voice. “Something bad happened a long time ago. Really bad.”

“And that would be?”

She tilted her head. “Have you ever heard the saying, ‘She sold her soul to the devil’?”

Oh good god. “Rae,” I said, “I’m not a little kid straight out of the pumpkin patch. I stopped being scared of ghost stories years ago.”

Rae’s expression didn’t change. Her face was long, and there was nothing in her manner that suggested she was kidding. Despite myself I got a chill.

“The school covered it up, but everyone knows,” she said.

“Not me,” I said.

Rae gazed at me. “There was a girl. Her name was Sandy. She cared too much what people thought of her, because she was super needy. She really, really, really wanted to be popular.”

Yeah, well, who doesn’t? I thought. Although the term “needy” made me shift uncomfortably.

“She joined with three others,” Rae went on. “One from each grade.”

“They were losers, too,” Alicia put in. “Right, Rae?”

Rae plowed on. “But Sandy was the one who did it.”

“Did what?” I asked. I plucked at my jeans, then made myself stop. I told my body to relax.

“They went to an empty storage room in Hamilton Hall,” Rae said. “One of those rooms where no one ever goes—”

“Up on the third floor,” Alicia contributed.

“—and performed a ritual in the dead of night.” Rae leaned forward. “They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted.”

“What … was it?” I said. I couldn’t believe I was asking.

“They awakened some weird creepy power—and I’m not making this up,” Rae said. “That shit is out there, like when you feel someone watching you, only when you turn around there’s no one there. Or like when you do the Ouija board, and it really does work.”

“That happened at Lisette’s slumber party, in seventh grade,” Alicia said. “You remember, Jane. It said that a boy whose name started with a C was going to ask Lisette out, and one week later she was going steady with Casper Langdon.”

Rae silenced Alicia with a look of disdain. To me, she said, “I’m telling you, it’s out there. Shit that no one sees.”

My heart was doing something I didn’t like. I swallowed and repeated my question. “What did they sacrifice?”

Rae pressed her oversized lips in a line. “A cat.”

“A cat?” My tension broke, and a laugh, or something like it, squeezed out of me. For a second there … all that bullshit about deserted schools and the dead of night … but Rae’s whole story was ridiculous. Next she’d be telling me that’s why the feral cats had taken over the school. As payback, or because they were spooks, or because they now had to haunt the place where the first had been slain. Demon cats. Devil cats. Ooooo-oooo.

Rae got angry. “They slit its throat. Or rather, Sandy did. You think that’s funny?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And then she died.”

“Well, duh, that’s what happens when your throat gets slit.” I felt buoyant. My lungs had lost their tightness.

“Not the cat,” Rae said sharply. “Sandy.”

Nuh-uh, she wasn’t getting me again. “Oh, please.”

“And her soul … it fed the power. Made it grow stronger.”

“You are so full of it,” I said.

“And that’s what created the Bitches.” Rae got to her feet. “That’s why you like them, because you have no choice.”

“Why wasn’t it in the papers?” I asked. “Why wasn’t the school shut down?”

She looked at me in a way that was supposed to make me think she felt sorry for me. She huffed out of the room, taking Alicia’s brush with her.

“It’s not funny, Jane,” Alicia said angrily. “It’s, like, witchcraft. Real witchcraft.”

“Only it’s not witchcraft, it’s Bitchcraft,” I said. I giggled at my wit, but Alicia didn’t crack a smile.

“You need to stay clear of them,” she said.

I leaned back on my elbows and crossed one foot over the other. I let my head drop back so that the ends of my hair grazed the carpet. “Thanks, Alicia. I’ll take it under advisement.”

Later that night, I phoned Phil.

“Janie!” he said, his voice all happy. “Hey!”

“Mom said you called last night. Sorry I didn’t call back.” Which was true, in a general sort of way, but I wasn’t worried because I knew Phil wouldn’t hold a grudge. “So what’s up?”

“Not much,” he said. “Just wanted to tell you how hot you looked in that blue dress you wore.”

“Ha, ha,” I said. This was the kind of thing Phil did, throw out a compliment in a joking way so that it didn’t have to mean anything. Because “hot” was such a stud-boy word, and Phil was so not a stud.

“I mean it,” he said. “I wanted to tell you at school, only I didn’t want the other guys to notice and start slobbering all over you.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. These days Phil and I were more out-of-school friends, anyway. Partly because our classes didn’t overlap, but also because when we were in school, Phil had other stuff to worry about, like guys dumping his lunch and giving him flats. Phil was kind of scrawny, and he liked science more than sports, which made him an obvious target. Plus, he’d never developed that cynical veneer that Crestview guys thought was all important. Phil was an eager beaver in a school that didn’t give a damn.

I sat on my bed and kicked off my shoes. I lay back and stared at the ceiling, at the frosted-glass light fixture that had been there since the dawn of time. Dead bugs made dark splotches in its center. “So want to hear something weird?”

“Sure.”

“I’m going to a party Friday night. With the Bitches. Isn’t that insane?”

“Whoa,” Phil said. “Hold on there, filly.”

“I know. It’s crazy. Unless it’s a joke—do you think it’s a joke?”

Because that was the angle Alicia had taken, after I failed to be suitably cowed by the Bitchcraft theory. I’d told her about Kyle’s party, and she’d shifted tactics, saying, “But what if it’s one of those ‘ugly’ parties, where whoever brings the ugliest date wins?” She bit at a cuticle. “You’re not seriously going to go, are you?”

Phil’s voice pulled me back. “I hope you’re planning on filling me in, because I have zero clue what you’re talking about.”

“Right. Sorry.” I rolled onto my side, switching the phone to my unsquished ear. I told him everything except for Rae’s mumbo-jumbo, then said, “But why would they pick me? That’s the part that makes no sense. Unless I’m their ugly date. Am I? Am I their ugly date?”

“Geez, Janie, are you blind?” Phil said. “You’re so beautiful, you make my teeth ache.”

“Be serious. I’m, like, socially retarded. Especially compared to Keisha and Bitsy and Mary Bryan.”

He fell silent. He was probably getting a hard-on thinking about them, which was surprisingly depressing. Even though I knew Phil was a boy, and all boys liked the Bitches, I was used to him liking only me.

“Keisha and Bitsy are way beyond hot,” he finally said, “and I’d be lying if I said I’d throw them out of my bed. And Mary Bryan’s an absolute sweetheart. She’s got French at the same time as I have geometry, and our rooms are right across from each other. Sometimes I catch myself just … watching for her, you know?”

I nodded. For some dumb reason I was afraid I was going to cry.

“But none of them holds a candle to you, Janie. Want to know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a good person,” he said. “Because you try to do the right thing.”

“I do? Like when?”

“Come on, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

I wanted to ask again, because I really wanted to know. But even with Phil, I couldn’t be that pathetic.

“I should go,” I said. “I should make myself go to bed.”

“Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow?”

“Uh-huh. I’ll be the one rescuing kitty cats and saving the world.”

“Super Janie,” he said. “You could wear a T-shirt with a big red J.”

“A leotard, like Wonder Woman. With huge red undies.”

He laughed, and I pressed the off button on my phone.

In bed, as shadows played on my walls, my thoughts spiraled back to Rae’s story about four girls who would do anything to be popular. Silly, stupid story—yet in the dark, even stupid stories misbehaved.

I remembered something Mom told me once, about two girls in her hometown. They’d snuck to a cemetery late at night, because they’d heard that if you stuck a knife into a fresh-laid grave, its ghost would rise from the dead. One of the girls knelt on the grave and plunged the knife deep. She tried to stand up, but she couldn’t, and she screamed that the ghost had grabbed her. The other girl fled, and when she returned with her parents, she found her friend collapsed over the grave, no longer breathing. She’d stabbed her nightgown when she’d stabbed the grave, pinning herself to the ground. Her panic overcame her, which meant she’d basically died of fright.

Although, come on. As I replayed the story in my head, I realized that it couldn’t have really happened. What teenager has ever died of fright? It was just a story Mom passed on after hearing it from a friend, from someone whose brother’s cousin’s fiancé had actually known the two girls. Or whatever. It was a story Mom told me for fun, to make goose bumps prick my arms.

But stories couldn’t hurt you.

I imagined four girls giggling as they made their way to Crestview’s empty storage room, the beams of their flashlights skittering off the walls.

And then, at some point, the giggling would have stopped.

I dreamed of cats, of sharp claws tapping through darkened halls.

Wednesday was a waste. Thursday was a bigger waste. In the daylight hours Rae’s story faded to just a whisper, but the fact of the Bitches remained, making me hyperaware of everything I did. How I held myself, how I talked, how I laughed. And all because of the remote possibility that one of the Bitches might be around to notice.

“Could you give it a rest?” Alicia said during study hall. She’d been leaning forward, obsessing out loud about her latest cheerleading drama, but now she flung herself back in her chair. “They’re not here, Jane.”

“Who’s not here?” I asked. When she didn’t buy it, I said, “I was listening. I was. You said that for the tryout, you have to be able to do a split or you’re eliminated.”

“I said you don’t have to do a split. You can just squat if you have to, which you would have known if you weren’t so busy acting dramatic.” She widened her eyes and gave a fake gasp. She drew her hand to her chest. “A split?” she mimicked. “You have to do a split?!”

I felt myself blush. I glanced around, praying the Bitches really weren’t here.

“God,” Alicia said. “You’re embarrassing yourself and you don’t even know it.”

I twisted the metal wire of my spiral notebook, because I did know it. Other people acted natural in group situations, no problem. But not me. Especially when there was a chance someone might see.

Alicia gathered her books and shoved them into her backpack. “Stupid me, I thought you actually cared about my boring, pathetic life.”

“I do,” I protested.

“Uh-huh.” She glared. “Well, all I can say is that if you do become popular, you have to take me with you. Swear?”

I groaned. “I thought you said to stay clear of them. I thought you said they were evil.” I made spooky fingers, which she swatted away.

“I did, and they are,” she said. “Do you swear?”

This was so like Alicia, to warn me away from something—saying it was for my own good—and then want that very thing if there was a chance it might really come through. Would I take Alicia, if given the opportunity? Would she take me if the situation were reversed? It sounded so stupid, you have to take me with you. As if it were a prison break.

“Oh my god,” Alicia said, and I realized I’d taken too long with my answer.

“I swear, I swear,” I said.

“I’m leaving. You’ve given me a headache.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Yeah?” she said. “You should be.”

Didn’t see the Bitches in the hall. Didn’t see the Bitches in the bathroom. Didn’t see the Bitches in the library, where I ate lunch in order to avoid pissy Alicia.

I did, however, see Camilla Jones. Camilla was a freshman, like me and Alicia, although she often forgot to act like it. She read battered textbooks on post-modernism, for example, and she used words like “socio-economic” even when teachers weren’t around. Today she wore a dusty rose leotard and a wrap-around skirt, and she’d secured her bun with serviceable brown bobby pins. She always wore her hair in a bun, because she was really serious about ballet. Ballet and weird literature theory shit, those were Camilla’s things.

Looking at Camilla, what occurred to me was, Huh. She’s not obsessed with the Bitches. This was a new thought, and I tested it in my mind to see if it held up. At lunch, Camilla usually sat with the drama kids, although she invariably kept her nose buried in one of her books. Did she get all twittery when the Bitches entered the cafeteria? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think Camilla got twittery, period. And I couldn’t remember her ever complimenting one of the Bitches or getting tongue-tied around them or gazing at them surreptitiously from across the room.

No. I was sure she didn’t. Which meant that Rae was a big juicy freak, as of course I’d known all along.

I crumpled my granola bar wrapper and stood up. I walked over to Camilla’s carrel.

“Hey,” I said. I didn’t really know why.

She lifted her head. She seemed surprised that anyone was talking to her.

“Um … what are you reading?” I asked.

She flipped her book so I could see. It was called Artifacts of Popular Culture.

“Huh. Is it any good?”

“It’s all right,” she said. She paused, then added, “Did you know that Barbie dolls can grasp wine glasses, but not pens?”

“Pens? You mean, like to write with?”

“And Astronaut Barbie’s spacesuit is pink, with puffed sleeves.”

Her disgust was apparent, so instead of saying, “Well, that’s to make her look cute,” I kind of laughed and said, “Yeah, that’s definitely what I’d wear if I were an astronaut. Well … see you!”

I left, and my brain spun back to the Bitches. Maybe Camilla was impervious to their charms, but I wasn’t, especially after they’d lavished me with one-on-one attention. Why had they treated me that way only to leave me in the cold?

See? I told myself. It was a joke. They were stringing you along for their own amusement, and now they’re done. What were you thinking—that your life was honestly going to change?

Then I came back with, But who said anything about hanging out together at school? Not Keisha. Not Bitsy. Not Mary Bryan. Maybe the hanging-out part comes later, after you pass the test.

And then my stomach got spazzy and I had a panic attack right there in the hall. Kyle’s party was only a day away, and what if the Bitches didn’t arrive to pick me up? What if they did?

During my humanities elective on early religions, as Lurl the Pearl tried to explain parthenogenesis to Bob Foskin for the hundredth time, I claimed a vacant research computer and spread out my notes so that it would look like I was working on the day’s assignment. The Camilla factor had punched a hole in Rae’s “powers from beyond” theory, but I thought I’d Google the Bitches and see what came up. Even though I knew it would be nothing.

“Nossir,” Bob Foskin complained from his desk at the front of the room. “Just ain’t no way a chick can make a baby on her own, goddess or no goddess.”

“Fertility. Creation. Rebirth,” Lurl the Pearl droned in her gravelly voice. “There are mysteries in the world that aren’t meant to be understood.”

“I don’t know nothing about that,” Bob said. “What I do know is that every mare needs a stallion, if you catch my drift.”

A few kids tittered, but I tuned them out. I jiggled the computer’s mouse, and the “Lady and the Beast” screen saver disappeared. When I got to Google, I typed in “Sandy,” “Crestview Academy,” and after a moment of thought, “died.” No hits, of course. I tried “Crestview” and “witchcraft,” but again got no hits. I cleared the search line and typed in “bitches,” just for the hell of it. The list I got filled zillions of pages. First came the obligatory “female dog” stuff, and then the entries got more interesting. Tokyo Bitches, IQ Bitches, Cricket-playing Bitches. I found one site called Mature Bitches, which must have slipped past the school’s blocking software, because when I pulled it up, I was bombarded with porn pop-ups. If I ever needed a perverted granny, I knew where to go.

Something brushed my leg, and I jumped. A cat—small and dark with clumpy fur. The feral cats were always prowling around in here, probably because Lurl the Pearl was the sole teacher who didn’t seem to mind. And usually I didn’t either. Usually I felt sorry for them, because they were so mangy and bedraggled. Other students complained—a girl named Alice was allergic and brought in a note from her doctor—but Lurl the Pearl didn’t do anything about it. “Focus, please,” she’d said, blankly surveying both the class and the cats.

The cat nudged me again and let out a squeaky mew. Usually I didn’t mind—but today I didn’t want to touch it. Rae’s story had done that if nothing else. But I didn’t want to not touch it, either, just because of Rae’s malarkey. I gave the cat a quick scratch, then wiped my hand on my jeans and scrolled further down the list on my computer. Chess Bitches, Vegan Bitches, Snarky Bitches … hmm. The description for Snarky Bitches read, “For girls/women who are Bitches, plain and simple.” I double clicked on the address. The screen blipped, and a hot pink site logo popped up.

“Have we finished the assignment?” Lurl the Pearl asked from behind me.

I smothered a cry. She was mouth breathing down my neck. Quickly I clicked the back button, and the list of “bitch” sites reappeared. Shit, shit, shit. I clicked again and again to get back to the Google homepage.

“This computer is reserved for research, Miss Goodwin,” said Lurl the Pearl. “Not Internet hanky panky.”

“Sorry, Ms. Lear,” I said. I swiveled to face her, reminding myself not to stare at the bizarre contraption connected to her rose-tinted glasses. But it was extremely difficult. A thick strip of elastic circled her head like a crown, securing a Band-Aid shaped piece of metal that stretched horizontally across her pale forehead. A slimmer piece of metal extended downward from the Band-Aid’s center and hooked the bridge of her glasses, preventing them from slipping out of place. All of this to save her the effort of pushing them up every now and then.

She blinked. “In any case, we do not condone the exploration of inappropriate subjects. Let’s save the nasty until we’re safe at home, shall we?”

The nasty?

“I wasn’t … I mean, I was just …” My gaze strayed to the metal T. I wondered if she got tan lines from it, or if it got hot and burned her. I wondered if she ever went out in the sun.

The cat at my feet mewed, and Lurl scooped it up. It immediately began to purr.

“In any case, you won’t find what you were looking for on the computer,” she said. She did this laugh thing that sounded like a grown man’s giggle, and my internal creep-meter dinged in alarm.

“Um, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear.”

She stopped giggling. “Focus, please,” she said, fondling the cat as it head-butted her hand. She turned to face the class. “Would anyone care to discuss the cult objects found in the temple of Kali, goddess of death and resurrection?”

Friday night, Bitsy pulled up in front of my house at eight-fifteen.

“My, aren’t we looking glam?” she said when she saw me. “Quite a bit of leg on show there, eh?” She and Mary Bryan went into a titter fest, and my insides gummed up. I couldn’t move.

“Hi, Jane,” Keisha said from the passenger seat of Bitsy’s red car. “Get in.”

I searched Keisha’s face. She didn’t seem to be joking.

“Come on, come on,” Bitsy said. “You’re dead lucky I haven’t peeled off by now.”

I climbed past Keisha into the back. I squished in with Mary Bryan and tugged at my skirt.

“Don’t let Bitsy bother you,” Mary Bryan said. “Anyway, I love your blouse.”

“Really? It’s not too see-through?”

Mary Bryan tucked my bra strap under the strap of the camisole. “There. Fabulous.”

“You look fabulous,” I told her. I leaned forward to address Bitsy and Keisha. “You guys, too. You look great.”

“Thanks, Jane,” Keisha said. “You’re sweet.”

Bitsy accelerated, and I fell back against my seat. Mary Bryan giggled.

“So help us out, will you, luv?” Bitsy said over her shoulder. “I want the truth. Your honest opinion.”

“On what?”

“Nose rings. Not a hoop, just a stud. A tiny silver star, for example.”

“Oh my god,” Mary Bryan moaned. “Bitsy!”

I pushed myself into a more comfortable position. “Uh … in general, or on someone specific?”

“On me,” Mary Bryan said. “She’s talking about me, because I happened to mention—once!—that I thought it might look cute. But I wasn’t going to actually do it.”

“Right, now you deny it,” Bitsy said. “So what about it, Jane? Yay or nay?”

Mary Bryan hid her face in her hands. “Go on. Just say it, whatever it is.”

I hesitated. I could tell they were teasing, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed. “Well, I wouldn’t judge somebody for getting it done,” I hedged. “Because, I mean, it’s their body. They can do whatever they want.”

“Ha,” Mary Bryan said. “See?”

“But would you get it done?” Bitsy said. “Would you even consider it?”

“Personally? Um, probably not?”

“Exactly,” Bitsy said. She caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Good girl, Jane.”

“Sorry,” I said to Mary Bryan.

“I never said I was actually going to do it,” she said.

Keisha turned toward the window, but she was smiling. My chest filled with something balloony and light.

Bitsy tapped her iPod to change the playlist. She punched up the volume and tapped the beat on the steering wheel.

Feeling bold, I fingered the hem of my skirt. “So, what you said about showing a lot of leg. Is that a good thing? Or do I look, you know, too tarty?”

I meant it to be flippant. An I-can-take-it sort of remark, and also to show that I hadn’t forgotten what she’d said that day by my locker. But she and Keisha exchanged a look, and my stomach dipped.

“What?” I said.

Keisha twisted in her seat to face me. “Listen, Jane. Don’t take this the wrong way, but looks do matter. And if you’re going to be one of us, you’ve got to meet a certain standard. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Mary Bryan found my hand and squeezed it.

Keisha pressed on. “Your skirt’s a little short. I’m not going to lie. But for the most part you’re cute enough. And you do all right in school, which isn’t that important, but it doesn’t hurt. All of this is part of why we chose you. But you know what the most important thing is?”

I shook my head.

“You have to want it,” Keisha said. “You have to want to be popular more than you’ve wanted anything in your life.”

Her eyes bored into me. Was I supposed to say something? Was I supposed to, like, bounce up and down and do cheerleader jumps?

Without meaning to, I thought of the dead girl, Sandy, who had somehow come to life in my brain even though I knew she had never existed. Sandy, who was super needy. Who really, really, really wanted to be popular.

“And we know you do,” Mary Bryan said reassuringly. “Right, Jane?”

“Crikey, here we are,” Bitsy said. She turned left into a gated community and pulled up at the guard station. She gave them Kyle’s name.

“So … what do I need to do?” I asked. I heard my voice quaver, and I dug my fingernails into my palms.

Keisha’s expression softened. “Your wardrobe needs some work—it’s true. But you’re here at Kyle’s party with us. You’re pulling up in Bitsy’s car, and you’re walking in the door with Mary Bryan on one side of you and me on the other. Okay?”

The gate creaked open.

“Just be cool, luv,” Bitsy said. “Tonight you’re our baby Bitch.”

I tried. I did. But my gut cramped up the second I walked in the door, and the whole time I was there I felt like I needed to sprint to the bathroom. Plus, everything was all chichi and ultra fancy. Like, there was a plaque in the entry hall announcing that this was a SHOE-FREE ENVIRONMENT. A shoe-free environment? In all my fourteen years, not once had I seen a plaque announcing a shoe-free environment.

The others slipped off their shoes and put them on a special rack, so I stepped out of my clogs and did the same thing. My toenails were scraggly. I tried to scrunch them out of view.

“Ladies,” Kyle said, swooping over to greet us. He put one arm around Bitsy and one arm around Mary Bryan. “Bitsy, I adore that halter. And Keisha! Our queen of the Nile!” He let go of Bitsy and Mary Bryan and air-kissed Keisha’s cheek.

“Hi, Kyle,” Keisha said. She returned his kiss and made eyes at Bitsy.

Kyle stepped back. He gave me the once over. “Well, what do we have here?”

My face split into a twitchy grin. “Hi,” I said. “Thanks for inviting me to your party.”

“You’re very welcome. Did I invite you to my party?”

My smile hurt the sides of my mouth.

“Kyle, this is Jane,” Bitsy said. “Be nice.”

“Oh, poo. I’m always nice.” He looped his arm through mine and led me toward the kitchen. “Jane. Jane. Can I offer you a quencher, Jane?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet, cupcake. What’ll you have?”

I looked at the blue– and gold-tiled countertops, which were lined with bottles. Dewar’s. Grey Goose. Bacardi. I remembered a drink I’d heard mentioned in a movie. “Maybe a mojito?”

“Aren’t we sophisticated,” Kyle said.

Bitsy choke-laughed. But she said, “Make it two. Better yet, four. I think we could all benefit from a mojito, right, girls?”

She lounged against the counter, as comfortable in her body as I was uncomfortable in mine. I modeled my position after hers. Chill, I told myself. You are here with the Bitches. You are golden.

Kyle handed me my drink. It tasted like mint.

From where I stood I could see the already crowded living room, and out of everyone there—the jocks and the cheerleaders, the honor council kids, the partiers—there wasn’t a single person I knew well enough to say hello to. So when Keisha said, “All right, Jane. Time to mingle,” I about crapped my pants.

“I’ll just hang out here,” I said. “But, you know, thanks.”

“We need to see you in action,” Keisha said.

Panicked, I turned to Mary Bryan.

“You can do it,” she said. She smiled anxiously. “It’ll be fun.”

Bitsy raised her glass. “Go on, luv. Strut your stuff.”

Elizabeth Greene, head cheerleader: … and so he called me up out of the blue and was like, “I could really use someone to cuddle with right now.” Isn’t that too cute?

Amy Skyler, Elizabeth’s best friend: No.

Elizabeth: I think he wants to get back together.

Amy: Elizabeth, he was horny. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, is why he dumped you for Paisley in the first place.

Elizabeth: She totally stole him on purpose. Slut.

Amy: Skank.

Elizabeth: Lying piece of trash.

Me, edging closer: Paisley Karr? The girl who trains Seeing-Eye dogs?