I gave him my best vicious smile. “What if I’m one of the sharks?”
He scoffed. “Sharks eat their siblings in the womb, you know.”
“Too much Shark Week for you.” I hauled my messenger bag onto my lap to unpack my geometry homework. It would look weird if we didn’t have something in front of us. Probably best not to attract any attention right now.
“I’m sure you think a plan and your stubborn streak will be enough, but have you thought about what you’ll need to do? Could you write slurs on someone’s car in blood?”
I swallowed down my revulsion. There would be things I didn’t want to do, but I couldn’t borrow any trouble. One step at a time. “For someone with a pronounced vain streak, you’re surprising me with how much you care about others.”
“Em, you know I don’t care about most of the people here. I care about you and what being a part of the—” He caught himself. “What all of this will do to you in the long run. What happens when they ask you to do something like what happened to Tessa? You don’t have a grandma in Phoenix to run to when things take a nosedive. I need you to be ok.”
Leave it to Gideon to mask his concern in selfishness. What was that in his eyes? Worry? Anger? Frustration? Probably all three. And all three unnecessary. Joining the Red Court was phase one of my plan. I clenched my fists tight to stop them from shaking as I said, “I can take it.”
* * *
At two thirty on the dot, a student aid came into my final class of the day and handed my French teacher a note. My palms were itching so badly that conjugating verbs was impossible. Before every track meet and debate tournament, nerves tickled my palms with an invisible feather. It took my entire freshman year to learn to control the impulse to rub them along the tops of my thighs.
The messenger scampered out of the classroom with a concerned look on her face as Madame Anderson summoned me to her desk. Who knew what the girl had done to be in the Red Court’s pocket, but the look in her eyes was a warning I didn’t need.
Rather than going to the attendance office as written on my pass, I made my way toward the theater room. Stress weighted my steps as I walked, so I pulled out my journal to expel some of my worry.
October 1
How can I feel so lost when things are going exactly to plan?
As I descended the steep staircase that led to the theater room and the rest of the performing arts classrooms, I reflected on the steps I had taken to get to this moment. My careful planning, cultivated over years of hard work, had paid off. From my straight As and teacher’s pet status to my position as a leader on the debate team and underclassman on the varsity track team, I was undeniably well positioned to be an asset to the Red Court. April had helped me cultivate the traits the Red Court were rumored to be looking for. They only recruited girls who were the most influential members of the student body, girls who’d shown they could handle leadership among their peers and the ability to win the trust of their teachers. You couldn’t just gather a bunch of nobodies to break up the star football player and cheer captain.
Red Court jobs took finesse and the best of the best at Heller High to execute them. Regardless of how I felt about them personally, I couldn’t deny the allure of their organization to my inquisitive mind. How were prom queens elected and failing grades made passing ones? What was the strange Machiavellian mix of brutal efficiency and cunning that made it work? A sick feeling settled in my stomach at the wave of grudging admiration that hit me.
Since starting at Heller, every move I made was part of a choreographed dance, bringing me ever closer to the Queen of Hearts and retribution for what the Red Court did to April. This was the moment I’d worked for—the culmination of my sweat and tears and all the blood staining the Red Court crimson. I kept my attention focused on that thought to edge out any doubt that might have been lingering in the back of my mind. Getting involved with the group that hurt my sister and countless others was as dangerous as Gideon said, but this was the way. This was the only way. This plan may have started with my sister, but it’d become more than that. My need to take them down was an obsession.
The theater room was wide and open, flanked by thick red curtains on either side that also lined the back wall. It was large enough to hold some of the school’s smaller performances in, but not so large that I would miss my...whoever I was meeting. I glanced around and saw only an arts student crashed out and snoring softly on a weathered couch in the far corner. I’d seen her around, but she was two grades ahead of me; we didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. Poking around the room, I checked behind the curtains and in the costume closet so I could discreetly pull the playing card from my pocket to check the time and location again, even though I knew I had it right.
“September Marie Williams.”
My full name startled me like a thunderclap, and I shot out from the costume closet to see who it was. I couldn’t hide my shock when the girl from the couch sat up and looked expectantly at me.
“September Marie Williams,” she repeated. “Daughter of Steven and Jo Williams. Resident of 1328 Belleview Street. 4.0 GPA. Track prodigy. Youngest captain of the debate team in Hell High history, yet you’re only able to convince your friend Gideon to get coffee with you once a week.”
The girl rambled these facts off as disinterestedly as if they were a particularly boring weather forecast. From the sound of it, I was sunny with a high of seventy-five. Her face was familiar and pretty in an unruly way; she had a lot of her paintings and drawings displayed in the halls for art shows, that much I knew. Her curly blond hair was long and floated around her face in corkscrew tendrils. Black fitted pants and a long dark tunic sweater hugged generous curves. The whole look was very art house, which I could only guess was the desired effect.
I finished examining her and answered coolly, “You could have found most of that online.”
“True, but you don’t have Facebook or an Instagram account or any other kind of online existence. You—” she emphasized the word with a point of her finger “—are a ghost.”
I smiled. All true. I deleted my accounts over a year ago. It was a risk to be one of the only ones at school without a place to upload snaps and videos of my life, but there was a level of vulnerability in it I couldn’t afford. “You know all about me. Who are you?”
“I’m Haley. I’m the one who invited you here.”
This girl was part of the Red Court. I hadn’t realized until I saw her that I had a preconceived notion about the kind of people who made up the secret group. At first blush, she was everything I wasn’t—artistic and laid-back. What would the Red Court do with a painter? How could someone so left-brained run such calculated operations?
“How do I know that this isn’t some prank?” I asked and scolded myself for not questioning the invite before this moment. Could someone have found out about my plan?