Feeling like I was maybe intruding on something private, I shifted my eyes away from the picture and read the caption.
You can tell Leon’s doing better! Kitty May would have given him an actual heart attack if we were still living in the Texas heat. It’s amazing up here. Kitty May loves it too, and look at that smile!
There were more pictures, and I scrolled through them all. I’d liked Kitty May a lot.
I’d grieved for her when I thought she was dead, panicked for her when I thought she was missing.
Julianne had insisted that she’d already filed missing person reports on Kitty May and her family, and told us all to leave it at that since she, according to her, had already built personal relationships with the investigators and they were more likely to tell her the truth than us.
In retrospect, it had been idiotic to believe that lie—but Julianne had a way of asserting control which did not invite challenge.
I would love to figure out how she does that, I thought. How she manages to make everybody around her assume that she knows better than they do about whatever it is. I’ve seen her use her influence to get people to do things they would never dream of doing themselves—
“Like buying a useless baby-sized backpack covered in blue butterflies,” I said, scowling at the screen.
But to take it so far as to accuse someone of murder or kidnapping?
It struck me that she might actually have manipulated the cops into opening an investigation on Kitty May’s “disappearance.”
On the surface it would be stupid, since any investigation would turn up exactly what I’d found—that the family moved to Alaska for Leon’s health—and would be closed without comment and possibly an admonition in her direction for wasting their time.
But it would also come with paperwork. Phone records or the police report, something to prove that she had, in fact, been in touch with the police. Not that any of us had asked for proof—we sort of just believed what she told us.
I don’t know why the others did, but for me it was because I had a sneaking suspicion that any challenge to her world-view would be met with destruction.
Maybe that was an indication of my own issues—but maybe it was instinct.
The next day I returned everything I bought without bothering to go through it, then took my time buying things I liked and actually needed.
Chapter Six
“Kennedy! Did you have a stroke or something?” Julianne frowned at me and crossed her arms.
Macy and Joan mimicked the expression, which looked like something out of a horror movie since they were all matching.
We’d agreed—sort of—during the shopping trip that we’d all be wearing the matching blouse and jeans combinations we’d picked up at the mall. Julianne in pink, Macy in lavender, Joan in green, and me in blue.
The outfits —which they all wore—were intended to match the strawberry, teddy bear, watermelon, and butterfly mini backpacks we’d all bought.
I’d returned mine - outfit and backpack - and replaced them with something that didn’t make me look like Julianne’s sun-darkened quadruplet.
I tossed my hair and adjusted the wide, buckled straps of my red dress and gave a little twirl, flashing my grey-and-red backpack as I did so.
The bag was big enough to hold my books, which, you know, was kind of the point to a damn school backpack.
“You like the dress?” I asked. “It has pockets.”
I shoved a hand into one of the deep apron pockets on the front of the dress and grinned like I hadn’t just defied her majesty.
Julianne raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “I’m going to assume you forgot,” she said slowly. She sighed and touched a hand to her brow. “It’s too late to do anything about it now. It’s fine. I’ll come over tonight.”
To pick out tomorrow’s outfit for me, no doubt.
Irritation ground down my spine, but I followed her into the school. Macy walked beside her, as usual, and Joan beside me. When the other two pulled ahead a little bit, Joan dropped her voice.
“Ballsy,” she said quietly. “Why’d you do it?”
I shrugged. “Nobody’s dressed me since I ran off my last nanny,” I replied under my breath. “I’m not about to break that streak.”
She looked at me in some confused combination of horror and respect, but didn’t have a chance to say anything.
The four of us had most of our classes together. In a town this size, it would almost be easier to keep the seniors in one room and just swap out the teachers, at least for the core subjects, but Starline High had enough funding to pretend that we were a much larger group than we actually were.
As usual, the four of us took the four seats in the second row on the left-hand side of the room.
Stew, Renard, and Adam took up most of the second row on the right side of the room. If Kitty May had still been here, she would have taken the right-hand seat nearest the aisle—part of Julianne’s group, but not too close.
I had never really been sure whether that was her decision, Julianne’s, or just the natural effect of their personalities.
The Seymores were late as usual. There were two of them in our class, and they had their preferred sitting arrangement too.
Rudy, the dark-haired one with the piercing blue eyes, sat behind me.
Bradley, the pale Viking, sat behind Macy.
Neither of them had ever sought out the seat behind Kitty May. Come to think of it, if either of them were responsible for targeting one of us, it would have been me or Macy.
Tension rose in the room as the boys took their seats. It was never a question at Starline High as to whether or not the Seymores and Julianne’s crew would be at war; the only question was who would make the first move.
Before the shopping trip, I would have expected them to start it—from my perspective, they always had before. But today I kept my eye on Julianne.
“All right, seniors! Let’s buckle down and pay attention. You all know me, I think—yep, no new faces this year, but just for the hell of it—and because I never practiced different ways to start a class—I’m Mr. Franks, and this is your homeroom.”
Franks had only been teaching for as long as I’d been in high school. He still looked like he’d be more comfortable behind the desks than in front of them.
He’d worn jeans and t-shirts the year before until some parent complained about professionalism, and the credibility of a teacher who dressed like a teenager.
Now, left with no other choice, he begrudgingly wore polo shirts and khaki pants. He didn’t kick the Converse’s though. If anything, the sneakers on his feet grew brighter and more obnoxious.
He was as aware of the tension in the room as any of the other students, and knew where it came from. The thing about looking like a student is that people tend to treat you like one. They tell you things they wouldn’t tell an older or more severe teacher.
He shot a glance over the second row, then the third. His sweeping gaze paused just behind my head. “Mr. James had a long talk with me this morning. You remember Mr. James, the poor man you all drove into a nervous breakdown last year? Yeah. He’s back, and doing very well now, thank you for asking.”
I resisted the urge to wriggle in my seat. I still felt bad about that.