CHANG: In my day, you acted cool for the girls, not the guys.
NAVEEN: You can be yourself with a girl.
PEDERSON: Huh. I figured you were all using lab to test out prom pairings or something.
NAVEEN: No offense to a girl who just got murdered, but Kelly wasn’t who I’d take to prom. Only reason I got her as a lab mate was because no other guys wanted her, and I get last pick since I’m not, you know . . . white.
CHANG: So you’re telling me that even though you’re the smartest kid in class, the boys won’t pair up with you because it’d be awkward, and the girls get assigned based on ethnic status, so in the end, the best student gets stuck with the worst.
NAVEEN: Welcome to Chaminade.
(Silence)
NAVEEN: I think Adam did it.
PEDERSON: What?
NAVEEN: Killed Ariana. It might have been him.
CHANG: No, it wasn’t.
NAVEEN: He hated Kelly too.
PEDERSON: He didn’t kill Ariana or Kelly. We have tails on Adam. During the time Kelly was killed, he was volunteering with Phillip, Eric, and Flynn at the church on Cristobal.
NAVEEN: Mount Zion. Adam was there? Makes sense. Phillip’s dad is the deacon. Phil takes guys to help out at the church. Easy way to get your community service hours, and looks good on college applications. He never takes me, though. First time I met Phillip’s dad, he made lots of veiled comments about “radical Islam.”
CHANG: You’re Muslim?
NAVEEN: No.
CHANG: So that was what you wanted to tell us? That Adam killed Ariana?
NAVEEN: I just thought . . . You know. See something, say something.
CHANG: But you didn’t see anything?
NAVEEN: He had issues with two of the girls. But like you said . . . guess it wasn’t him. The other guys you keep bringing in are pointless. None of them could kill that many girls and get away with it. Adam’s the only one that seemed plausible.
CHANG: Two alibis. Both ironclad.
NAVEEN: Well, then it’s probably some old man, like my dad said. Explains why girls keep coming to school, even with a killer on the loose. It’s the one place they feel safe.
PEDERSON: Thought you were buds with Adam.
NAVEEN: I am. Just trying to do the right thing. You know . . . be a good guy.
(Silence)
CHANG: Girls at school are dying, Naveen. Five so far. You don’t seem rattled or freaked out. From where I sit, you don’t feel any way about it at all.
NAVEEN: Don’t know if I feel much of anything these days.
CHANG: What does that mean?
NAVEEN: Feelings aren’t a thing. Not in Prince code. Ask Callum. He actually liked a girl at school, like for real, and Eric and Flynn basically forbid him from hanging out with us until he banged her. So yeah: show feelings, and they can only be used against you. Even with everything that’s happening.
CHANG: Pederson, you liked a girl at school?
PEDERSON: Hold up—Naveen, what would you and Kelly talk about during lab?
NAVEEN: Shit talk, mostly. Kelly knew everyone’s secrets. Isn’t that why you hung around her? To dig up stuff on all of us? Kelly actually thought you were gay because you kept hounding her for dirt.
PEDERSON: Ohhh, that’s why she tried to pair me up with Luke Stoeckel. But yeah, Kelly always had the 411.
CHANG: The 411? Did you just beam back to 1992?
NAVEEN: 411 doesn’t even exist anymore.
PEDERSON: Chill. How did Kelly know everyone’s secrets to begin with?
NAVEEN: All the “Princesses” felt safe talking to her. Since she wasn’t a threat.
CHANG: Princesses?
NAVEEN: It’s what we call hot girls at Chaminade. Just like the Chaminade “Princes” means the jocks. Every class has its Princesses. Ariana. Charlotte. Madelyn. Those were ours. Kelly wasn’t a Princess, to say the least. But she was part of the Princess Game. Whoever killed her probably knew that.
CHANG: For the record, Charlotte Lawson was Victim Number Two. Impaled with glass slippers and bled out. Madelyn Mayberry, Victim Number Three. Suffocated in a glass box.
PEDERSON: The Princess Game means scoring with one of the Princesses.
NAVEEN: It means climbing the tower of in-betweens to get to one. Ari, Charlotte, and Madelyn were the hottest girls at school, but they weren’t friends. It isn’t like Mean Girls, where all the hot girls are in one clique. Each had her own domain. Especially at lunch. Ariana in the atrium, Charlotte in the courtyard, Madelyn in the cafeteria. And the point of the Princess Game is to scale through the leeches around them and make a Princess notice you. It’s easier for guys like Phillip and Adam and Eric, because they’re . . . them. But other guys have to deal with the girls in the way. We have names for them. The “maidens,” like Tessa Tunney or Kendra Jordan, who act like bodyguards. Then there are the “stewards,” who brownnose and suck up, desperate to get to the inner circle. And way, way down are the “wenches” like Kelly Blake, trading in drama and secrets, doing everything they can to hang onto a Princess’s attention. And for guys like me, who aren’t like Eric or Phillip or a “Prince,” you have to start with the wenches and work your way up. Just like you have to start on the bench in basketball, hoping to one day get in the game.
CHANG: Doing well enough, aren’t you? Most Improved . . .
NAVEEN: Everyone knows that means you’re worst on the team.
CHANG: It didn’t mean that when I was young.
PEDERSON: Yes, it did. Anika Gelt. She was a “wench,” wasn’t she?
NAVEEN: Maybe? I’d better head out before my dad busts. Sorry I couldn’t help more.
(Chair slides.)
PEDERSON: Anika was Victim Number Four. Did you know her?
NAVEEN: Nah.
CHANG: Here’s the photo of her body. Someone faked a message from her prom date and sent her a cake that said “Eat Me.” Laced with cyanide. Pretty cowardly way to kill someone.
NAVEEN: Yeah. Didn’t really know her.
PEDERSON: You play Red Dead with the Princes?
NAVEEN: Sometimes.
PEDERSON: Your screen name is White Rabbit. Eric pointed it out on the scoreboard one night.
CHANG: White Rabbit is a character from Alice in Wonderland. In the story, Alice finds a cake that says “Eat Me.”
NAVEEN: So what?
CHANG: You asked Anika Gelt to prom, and she said no. Must have hurt to have been rejected by a “wench.”
NAVEEN: No, that’s not how it went.
PEDERSON: Thought you said you didn’t know her.
NAVEEN: She’s racist. Like a lot of other girls at school. Only into white guys.
PEDERSON: She’s going to prom with Raymond Green. The boy the killer pretended to send the cake from. Raymond isn’t white.
NAVEEN: I have to get to the shelter. Adoption day. Just thought I’d tell you about Adam.
CHANG: When can we follow up?
NAVEEN: Whenever. Might have to deal with my uncle Prabhu, though. But yeah, whenever you want.
(Door closes.)
CHANG: Hmm.
PEDERSON: He didn’t kill Anika. We have confirmed eyewitnesses that he was at the animal shelter the evening the cake was left at her door.
CHANG: When I was in high school, there was this kid. Pete Pauling. Total weirdo, always rambling about wizards and dragons and giving people bug-eyed stares. Used to eat eight pieces of pizza at lunch, slathered with peanut butter. Ninety percent of the school bullied the kid like no tomorrow. But not the prettiest girls. They protected him like their own brother.