#famous(40)

But instead of concussing me, he reached for the rum. A wave of cold relief washed down my entire body, leaving my muscles shaky in its wake.

“Okay, we’re cool,” he said, a smile cracking his square, stubbly jaw. “I did tell you to bring chicks, though. Ollie’s pretty close, but I don’t think even I can drink that much.” He laughed, showing bright-white teeth. Ollie shrugged and leaned against the counter behind me.

“I did, actually. Just a couple junior girls.”

“Oh yeah? Where are they?”

“They’re coming.” What would plausibly explain why they hadn’t come with me? “I wanted to talk to you first to make sure we were cool before I had them come.”

“I hear that. Well, call your girls. If you parked on the street, move your car a couple blocks down so the cops don’t come. Woods behind the house and the fire pit are on-limits, pool is closed for the night. Anderson says it’s hell to clean puke out of the filters. Yo, Lu-SEEE,” Lamont yelled, turning away from me to bear-hug a stick-thin brunette in six-inch heels who had just tottered in the side door.

“All right, I guess we’re cool to stay,” I said to Ollie. I could feel myself grinning stupidly. Not getting your ass kicked: feels pretty good.

“Well, maybe,” he said, looking down the hallway toward the main entrance to the house.

My eyes followed his.

Emma was striding down the hall, flanked by three dance-team friends.

I could see her register me, her extra-fast blinking the only indication of the split-second of shock.

Then she turned and whispered something into Erin Rothstein’s mass of shiny blond curls. Erin cracked up, then pulled Jessie Florenzano’s arm so she could pass on Emma’s secret. Jessie’s dark-brown eyes widened. She turned over her shoulder to Willow Agners, who had been smiling with nervous eyes, waiting to see if she was the butt of the joke. All the while Emma watched them, serene, making sure I knew how in control she was.

Suddenly the night didn’t seem to be going as well as I had thought.





chapter twenty-seven


RACHEL

FRIDAY, 8:50 P.M.

“Why are you stopping? We’re at least three blocks from his house.”

I thrust my phone at Mo, the line on the GPS app still defiantly long.

“He’ll just make us move the car if we park closer. This is good. Plus, the woods that run behind his house let out over there, by the park.” Mo pointed over to the left where a few straggling trees tottered up to the plastic fencing around the playground. “If the cops come, it’s better not to have to walk down his street.”

Trust Mo to have planned additional exit routes in case of emergency.

“We’re not going to be here long enough for it to matter.”

“Noted,” Mo said tightly, clicking her key fob. The car chirped behind us. “It’s literally the only thing you’ve said to me since I picked you up. It still doesn’t hurt.”

Whatever. She couldn’t know how short our stay would really be. She was right; we hadn’t spoken the entire ride over. I figured I didn’t owe her any warning about turning Kyle down; she hadn’t given me any. She’d prattled on about how to stay natural in front of a camera, and which stores had the best dresses for homecoming, and which of the apparently myriad smiles I had was my “good smile,” trying to fill the dead space.

I just stared out the window. I needed a ride—there was no way I was delivering the bad news entirely sober—but that’s all Mo was to me right now. Besides, even if I weren’t pissed at her, why would I want to party with a bunch of strangers who were almost certainly responsible for “decorating” my locker on Wednesday? If I hadn’t wanted to deliver the news in person, Mo wouldn’t have even gotten a text back.

I’d never been to Beau’s house, so I didn’t know how secluded it was until we were almost there. It was big and blocky and white, with dark-green trim and a porch that wrapped all the way around the back of the second story. You could hear kids shouting and music blasting once you got right up to the front, but it was tucked way back into the woods, the last place on a dead end, and the next house was too far away for the neighbors to hear anything at all.

Everyone was right. It was the perfect place for a party.

I looked over at Monique. Her mouth was pinched closed and her eyes were wide—maybe she was regretting coming as much as I was. After hesitating on the flagstone sidewalk that wound up under the front portico, I shrugged and started walking across the lawn toward the back. The night was cool, and the damp grass tickling my ankles made me shiver. I heard Monique following, steps soft and squishy in the grass.

Out back, people thronged the deck overhead, but we’d either missed the stairs or there wasn’t a way to get up to it from outside. At ground level, light spilled out from a pair of sliding glass doors leading into a big, open room with a few people clustered in corners. I turned to Monique. Her face looked pale in the glow from the basement. I felt my stomach flutter slightly. These were not my people.

Not that I really had people. There weren’t that many artsy weirdos at Apple Prairie.

“Are you coming?” I snipped. She nodded mutely but didn’t move. Neither of us really knew how to enter a party like this. Suddenly the doors flew open and a huge figure stepped toward us, backlit so it was hard to make out his face.