The Weight of Blood (79)

Kendrick was still pulling her, somewhere. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. He was supposed to be her Moses, leading her to the promised land. Did hope ever exist for a girl like her?

Her eye twitched. No one noticed the police cruiser’s windshield splinter.

“Kenny! What happened?” Kali said, aghast. “Oh shit, Maddy . . .”

Kendrick stopped short, a numb Maddy running into his back.

“Whoa, whoa. Where do you think you’re going?” another voice said. Maddy looked up. A police officer stood eye to eye with Kendrick.

“Excuse me, I need to get through,” he snapped.

“Why?”

“What you mean why? Look what they did!”

Maddy eyed the ground as the world seemed to swim around her, keenly aware of what she might look like and the pity that would follow.

“Who’s they?” the officer countered.

“Them white kids,” he shouted, pointing ahead. Kendrick still had his fingers wrapped tight around her wrist.

Mrs. Morgan gently turned Maddy toward her, her face stricken. She pulled tissues out of her bag to wipe Maddy’s eyes clean.

“Oh, Maddy,” she whispered, a sob in her throat. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Maddy swayed, staring back at her. “You said . . . I was powerful,” she mumbled groggily.

Mrs. Morgan stood gaping like she wasn’t sure what to say. Then she swallowed, gripping Maddy’s shoulders. “You are. They’re cowards. And what they did . . . they’ll pay for.”

At that moment, the voice Maddy had tuned out all night piped up. She lied! Everyone is always lying to you.

“Let them pass,” Kali shouted. “Them assholes need to know what they did wasn’t right!”

“How do you know that ‘they’ did anything?” The officer laughed.

“Yo, are you serious?” Kendrick spat.

“We saw them running back here! Laughing!” someone in the crowd shouted.

“It wasn’t just them,” Kenny said. “They were all in on it. I know them. And they need to see what they’ve done for themselves!”

Behind her, dozens of footsteps stomped through the gravel as a thick cloud of voices surrounded them.

“Yo, we need to get in there,” Jackie barked. “They ruined our fucking prom!”

Maddy could feel her hair frizzing, a slow-moving monster. And her dress . . . it was ruined. How deftly she had worked on the fabric, repaired the zipper, pulled up the straps so her breasts wouldn’t be exposed. Now, it looked as if she had been dunked into a bowl of pancake batter. Her eye twitched.

A cameraman shifted his pack off his shoulder, tapping the side. “What the hell? It went black! I don’t know, I can’t turn it back on.”

“Let them in!” the crowd chanted. “Let. Them. In!”

“Call for backup,” an officer barked. “Now!”

When Wendy finally freed her trapped wheel and parked the car in the back of the Barn, she ran through the mud and swung open the side stage door, fighting her way through the black curtains. The room sat half empty, house lights on, decorations torn down, chairs knocked over . . . But what hit her first was the stench of paint, as if the room was drenched in it. White footprints tracked across the dance floor. She whipped around and yelped, hands flying to her face. The stage was a monochromatic crime scene.

“Oh God . . .”

“You!”

Across the floor, Regina stormed toward her in a royal-navy dress. Her date held her back as she clawed the air, reaching for Wendy’s neck.

“You fucking bitch!”

“I—I . . .” Wendy stuttered. “Wh-what happened?”

“Don’t play stupid! You set Maddy up! You set us all up!”

“Maddy? What? No! I didn’t!”

“You were in on all this shit from the beginning! Working with the rest of them, just to ruin our whole fucking prom!”

“Them? No! I had no idea—”

“Then what are you doing here, huh? What were you doing sneaking around backstage, dressed in jeans?”

Wendy’s lips flapped open and closed. She couldn’t think of a single answer that didn’t sound crazy.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Regina spat. “You insisted on being prom chair, got your little friends to come help, all so you can do this? Don’t you people got anything better to do? Haven’t you done enough to Maddy?”

Wendy stood speechless just as Rashad ran over. “Guys! Come on. Something’s going down outside!”

But Regina wasn’t done. She stabbed Wendy with one final stare. “I’ll deal with your ass later,” she snapped, and followed everyone out the door, the entire hall clearing out.

Wendy stayed rooted to the dance floor. A wretched sob threatened to explode as she took in the wreckage. All her hard work, her meticulous planning and attention to detail erased with Wite-Out. She had thought of everything . . . everything but this. There was nothing to fix; the night could not be salvaged. She had failed. She’d never failed at anything before.

On the stage, the crown twinkled in a puddle of white water. She climbed up the steps, tiptoeing around the paint, and glanced at the bucket hanging above, an orange Marshall’s Hardware logo printed on the side.