She was wearing a tight black turtleneck and black pants, a glittering pink star drawn at the corner of her left eye. Her blond hair was slicked back in a ponytail, and a Chanel purse dangled from the crook of her arm. Just looking at her standing there all high and mighty made me want to punch something. Was she in the car that night when Jake and the Idiot Twins and some unknown driver had left our old lawn jockey on our front st ep? Had she seen where I was living now? Was that why she had that particularly amused smirk on? I hated myself for even going there. Hated myself for feeling ashamed that she and the others had seen how far my mom and I had fallen. I should have been—and really was—more pissed about the fact that my mother had cried over their stupid prank. That she’d been forced to spend hours on the phone with the condo board—whose strict exterior decorating codes we’d unknowingly violated—over the weekend trying to explain that it wasn’t ours. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Mrs. Thompson was somehow convinced that the drama club’s presence should be mandatory . Thanks a lot for that,” she said, sneering at Annie. “So I’m doing face painting. W ant a goatee? It would be an improvement.” My face flushed with heat. “Or you, Annie? I could do a whole white face thing,” she said, waving a hand in front of Annie’ s face. “Might actually camo the zits for once.” Annie opened her mouth to respond, but I beat her to it. “Enough! When the hell did you become such a psychotic bitch?” I blurted. Faith’s jaw dropped as David guffawed. A few people around us turned to stare as they walked by, their candy apples momentarily forgotten. Maybe what I’d said sounded harsh, but Faith deserved it. Annie was a nice person—a person who had welcomed me back here even though we’d never been that close, a person who’d helped me get a job and hung out with me at school and invited me to her house even though no one else wanted to be seen with me. She didn’ t deserve to be torn down by her former best friend. “What? Speechless? Don’t have an answer?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “Because I’m curious. Do you remember the actual date and time of your supervillain transformation? Was there a scorpion sting in volved? A toxic spill? Or maybe you were the victim of one of those
organ-snatching rings. They drugged you and you woke up in a tub full of ice with no heart?” “Screw you, Ally ,” Faith said, narrowing her eyes. “Right back at ya, Faith.” I couldn’ t believe that Faith Kirkpatrick and I were snipping at each other. She was supposed to be a sweetheart, a churchgoer , the person who saw the good in everyone. When exactly had her soul turned black? “Okay, okay, let’s walk before this gets ugly.” David looped his arm through mine and yanked me away from Faith. Annie followed after us, stunned. “You have a mean streak, Ally Ryan,” she said. “Not that I don’t approve.” “She deserved it,” I exclaimed, throwing out my hands as we approached the hot chocolate booth. “You guys, seriously . What the hell happened to Faith? She used to be Miss Congeniality , and now she’s like Jigsaw on crack.” “It happened in February of freshman year,” Annie said, holding on to her hat as the wind kicked up. “Right around when you moved away, now that I think about it. One day she’s perfectly normal, the next she’s mocking Becca Gray’s Hello Kitty binder and screaming at me at Spring Fling about how I’m a loser with no friends.” “Really?” I said, swallowing hard. “Y ep.” We inched forward on the line, but my mind was not on hot chocolate. Suddenly , it all made sense. All Faith had ever wanted was for Chloe and Shannen to acc ept her, but they’d only hung out with her because of me. Once I was gone, she must have been desperate to hang on to them. Desperate enough to drop her few Norm friends and do it in a way that would impress the Cresties. Like bitching Annie out in public and mocking Becca to her face for something Chloe and Shannen thought was lame. It was my fault. My leaving had turned Faith to the dark side. God. No wonder everyon e around here hated me. I had never realized how much my dad’s actions and their consequ ences had affected everyone. Even Annie. Suddenly this hot gush of anger surged through me and my jaw clenched. I wished he was there right now just so I could tell him to his face how much he’d messed up my life. But he wasn’t. And wherever he was, he was happily obliviou s to all the misery he’d left behind—which just pissed me
off even more. It was so not fair. He should be the one suffering, not me. He’d screwed over our friends, torn us from our home, and then left us without explana tion, and my mom and I were the ones who had to deal with it all. “Oh my God. Shannen Moore,” David said under his breath. I didn’t even realize my fingers had curled into fists until he spoke, bringing me back to the now, and they unclenched. Sure enough, Shannen was cutting purposefully across the field, headed straight for Faith’s booth. My heart dropped at the sight of her. I knew she had to be in volved in the lawn jockey debacle. “Prank” was her middle name. I’d learned some of my best stuff from her. But everything we’d ever done had been harmless— swapping people’ s front porch jack-o-lanterns the day before Halloween, rearranging all of Chloe’s mom’s books in the library, stealing the ladder from Hammond ’s boys-only tree house while he and the Idiot Twins were still up there (and returning it three hours later when they were starving and really had to pee). We’d never done anything overtly cruel to anyone, least of all each other . “God, why don’t you just say hello to her? Or even better, ask her to the Harvest Ball like you’ve been whining about doing for three years?” Annie suggested, holding down the pleated skirt of her jumper-style dress as the wind kicked up again. “This is getting pathetic already .” “No.” He shook his head. But then his eyes suddenly filled with hope. “You think I should?” he asked me. I didn’t. Not even a little bit. Shannen may have had a tough exterior when I knew her before, but these days that exterior was also frozen over by a thick layer of ice. But who was I to rain on anyone’ s lifelong crush parade? I knew better than anyone that Shannen had her good qualities. She just hadn’ t been exhibiting any of them lately . “Sure. Go for it,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back in hope. David was buoyed by my tentative confidence. He st epped out of line and cleared his throat. “Hey , Shannen.” She paused. Her eyes flicked over him, then me. “What?” “Um, yeah, I was just wondering. . . . Do you have a date for the Harvest Ball?” he asked in a rush. I sent Shannen tel epathic messages. Please just don’t humiliate him. Please, please, please be the kind person I know you’re capable of being.
“Actually , I do,” she said. Then miraculously she gave him a kind smile. “But thanks for asking.” Then she glanced at me quickly , turned, and walked away. For that split second it was as if we were friends again. As if she understoo d me. As if she cared about someone other than herself. Something other than her insular clique. “Ouch,” David said. “Bitch,” Annie added under her breath. She whipped her notebook out of her pocket and furiously started making notes. “Sorry.” I patted him on the back. “It could have been worse, right? I mean, she already had a date, so . . . you were just . . . too late.” “Yeah, right,” David said, looking at the ground as the line inched forward. He leaned down and plucked a small leaf from the laces of his Skechers, then shredded it into tiny pieces. “She doesn’t like me. She’s never gonna like me. I should just get over it already .” “I know! Why don’t you two go to the ball together?” Annie suggested, so excited by the idea she bent at the knees and brought her pad and pen to her mouth in her fists. David and I looked at each other . “Uh . . .” “Come on, please? Someone has to be my Logan Pincus buffer,” Annie begged. “If you guys are there together , then you can both buf fer me.” “I don’t know. I wasn’ t even planning on going,” I said. “Come on, Ally! Please?” Annie begged. “It’s your fault I have to go with the guy in the first place. Y ou owe me!” I sighed as David looked at me. “We could look at it as community service.” “Datebuf fers-dot-or g?” I joked, tilting my head. David laughed and let the tiny pieces of his leaf flutter away on the breeze. “Let’ s do it.” I hesitated for just a second but didn’t even give myself a chance to think about why. It wasn’t as if anyone else was an option anyway . Especially not now. “Sure. Why not?” I said. “I t ’ ll be fun.”
Jake Graydon was staring at me. He was cocked back in a chair in his blue suit and dark orange tie, some sophomore girl in a low-cut dress nibbling on his neck, and he was staring at me. Why? Why was he looking at me like I was the gravy and he was the biscuit? Had we not locked eyes just the other night in the OVC parking lot when he was making his getaway? Did he not know that I knew he was an asshole of the first order? “Would you ever marry outside your religion?” David asked me. I tore my eyes away from Jake and looked at David. His arms were around my waist, and mine were around his neck as we slow danced under the disco ball at the center of the gym floor. In all the Jakesession (my new term for my quite unhealthy and completely inexplicable Jake obsession), I’d forgotten what we were doing here. “Are you making an offer or just asking one of your non sequitur questions?” I joked. David frowned in thought, turning me in a slow circle. He looked adorable in his gray suit and blue tie, all clean shaven and gleaming from aftershave. “The latter. Wait. I always get that wrong. Is it the latter or the former . . . ? Whatever . The non sequitur one,” he said. “What are you, anyway? Religionwise.” “Evangelical. But honestly , it’s never been a big thing with my family, so I guess I would marry outside my religion,” I said. “But it would be weird if my husband didn’ t want to celebrate Christmas.” “I’m with you. Anyone messes with my eggnog habit and I’ll bust their ass,” David joked. I laughed. We’d turned in a full circle, and my gaze went directly to Jake again. I wished he wasn’t here. I was having a perfectly nice time with David, Annie, and Logan—bot h of whom were sitting at a nearby table while Annie took copious notes on Crestie behavior—until Jake had arrived