Geekerella (Starfield #1)(59)

Just one more night, I tell myself. Just a few more hours.

Then the lamp in my room flicks on. Startled, I glance up. My heart stops.

Chloe is sitting in my computer chair, legs crossed, waiting patiently. Her gaze is so sharp it could cut glass. “Oh look,” she says coolly. “You’re home.”

“What are you doing in my room?”

She cocks her head. “Why’re you sneaking into the house? Could it really be this late?” She mocks a look at her fake watch and tsks. “Oh my, it really is late.”

Downstairs, the garage door opens and Catherine calls out that she’s home.

“Mom was with a client,” Chloe says simply. Which makes sense—the only explanation why Chloe would be home when Catherine isn’t. “But it seems you made it just in time.”

I don’t understand. “In time for what?”

She leans forward. “I know what you’re trying to do, geek,” she snaps. “You think you were so smart, going behind my back. How do you think Mom’ll react when she finds out you’ve been hanging out with that freak after work? You’ve been lying to her. After all she’s done for you.”

My mouth goes dry. “But you already knew that, and I said I wouldn’t say anything if you didn’t, and—”

“Stop screwing with me!” she cries, slamming her hands on the chair’s armrests. “Where is it?”

I get to my feet, dumbfounded. “Where’s what?”

“You know exactly what!” she snaps. “You took it. You know you did. So where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Don’t play stupid!” She leaps out of the chair.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“The dress,” she hisses. I’ve never seen her so angry in my entire life. “Where did you put it? What, you think you can wear it? Don’t make me laugh.” Then her eyes settle on the duffel bag slung by the bed. She leaps for it, and I quickly grab for the strap, not wanting to let it go, but she’s too fast.

“What’s in here?” she cries triumphantly.

“Stop it! It’s not in there!” I lunge for the bag but she jerks away, unzipping it. She grabs a fistful of cloth and yanks it out.

I stand, horrified. Oh, oh god. She knows. Now she knows.

Her surprise quickly morphs into some sort of anger as she turns the fabric over in her hands. “Oh my god.” Her eyes cut back to me. “You were going to enter?”

“I—I don’t—” My throat constricts.

“You were! You were going to enter! And you took the other dress so we wouldn’t win! A loser like you. God, you really are pathetic.”

Something in me snaps. Maybe it was her calling me pathetic for wanting to enter. Or that her claws clutch my father’s jacket like it’s a cheap Halloween costume. Or maybe it’s her look of mockery, reminding me of that day last summer when I finally realized that people weren’t nice. That no one was nice. That everyone lied, and that my heart was just a token, and this universe was the one in the Black Nebula. The hopeless, terrible universe. The one no one wants to be in.

I rush toward her, grabbing the collar of the jacket. “Give it back! It’s not yours!”

“It’s not yours either!” Chloe replies, darting away from me. The collar slips from my grasp. “This was in our house, so it’s ours!”

“Yours?” I cry. “None of this was ever yours!”

I grab hold of a sleeve and tug on it. Chloe repels against me, trying to wrench away, but something tears and comes off in my grip. At the sound, I drop the sleeve as if burned and stare down at it.

No—no no no no no no—

“Ugh,” Chloe mutters, dropping the jacket. “Cheap garbage.”

I gather it up and press it against my chest. Willing it back together.

“Wait a second.” She spins around. “If you were going to the contest, that means you have a pass, don’t you?”

My blood goes cold. I’m shaking.

“Of course you do.” She tears a poster off the wall and it comes down in scraps. “Oops, not there. Or there,” she adds as she knocks a frame off the hook and opens my drawers, dumping clothes onto the floor. I watch her, still shaking, still with my arms around myself because I don’t want to let go of the jacket. My dad’s beautiful, ruined jacket.

“Hmm, now where would you put it?” Chloe turns full circle and then pauses on a poster. She glances at me as I pale, then back at the poster, and tears it off the wall. Behind it, tucked into the frame, are my con passes.

I jump to my feet. “Give those back!” I snap.

“Or you’ll do what? Run and tell Mom?” she mocks. Just then she sees the worst of it: my savings, balled up in a rubber band, and the bus tickets to Atlanta.

“What’s this?” Chloe sounds practically gleeful as she scoops up the tickets. “Greyhound tickets? Gross. Oh no—oops.”

With one swift motion, she rips them in half. And then in half again, and again and again until the tickets—the nonrefundable cash-fare tickets that Sage and I were going to use tomorrow morning at 6:30 a.m.—are a pile of confetti.

“This should do nicely.” She takes the roll of bills and pockets it. “We can just buy a better costume. Thanks.”