The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(14)

First period didn’t start for another ten minutes. That was ten minutes too many.

“I’ll get back to you on that one,” I said. It was too early for this.

Emilia opened her mouth to object, but before she could push out the words, her phone buzzed on the table.

So did Maya’s.

So did mine.

There was a moment of silence and stillness at our table as we processed the fact that all over the Hut and out in the hallway, other phones were going off, too.

Maya—a three-sport athlete—was quicker on the draw than either Emilia or me. She hit a button on her phone, then sucked in a breath, and reached out to stop Emilia before she could look at hers.

“Must have been quite a night!” someone called out.

I looked down at my own phone. A picture text. I hit the screen to enlarge the picture. In it, Emilia was slumped against a bathroom wall. Her hair was plastered to her face. She was fully clothed but also fairly clearly trashed.

Shaking off Maya’s hold, Emilia picked up her own phone. She stared at the picture. Her fair skin went paler. Her lips pressed themselves together, but I could see her chin trembling.

“No one cares,” Maya told her. “So you had a good time one night. It’s not like half the school hasn’t done the same.”

Emilia was still staring at the picture. I reached over and took the phone from her hand, banishing the picture from her screen. Emilia kept staring at her hand, even once I had her phone.

“Why have I not heard this story?” Emilia’s friend Di joined our table. “You have heard all my stories, naughty girl.”

Considering that Di was short for diplomatic immunity and that she had a fondness for dares, her “stories” probably put Emilia’s to shame.

“Who got this text?” Emilia found her voice. It was low, almost guttural. “Who’s seen the picture?”

Based on the murmurs and curious glances from the other students in the Hut and this hallway, I had a pretty good guess regarding the answer to that question—just like I had a pretty good idea of who might have sent it.

“No one cares,” Maya told Emilia again. “We all get a little crazy sometimes.”

Emilia stood up and grabbed her phone back from me. “I don’t.”

Emilia wasn’t in my physics class, but she was the topic of conversation nonetheless.

“I didn’t think she had it in her.”

“When was that taken?”

“I always thought she was so perfect.”

“Wait, wait—who am I?” At the lab table next to mine, a boy adopted a glazed look and let his mouth go slack.

Several tables away, Henry stood up. He crossed the room, then laid his palms flat on the boy’s lab table and just stood there.

Slowly, the boy’s friends stopped laughing.

“I give up,” Henry said, his voice measured and calm. “Who are you?”

The boy developed a sudden interest in his lab notebook.

“Is Emilia okay?” Vivvie’s question drew me back to the lab table we were sharing. Vivvie lowered her voice. “I mean, I know she’s probably not thrilled, but on a scale of the complete opposite of okay to okay . . .” Vivvie caught her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes round. “Is she okay?”

I glanced back at Henry, then answered. “She’d want us to think she is.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Asher said, coming up next to me in the cafeteria, “if one were planning to execute an act of derring-do to draw any and all disapproving murmurs away from one’s twin, would it be better if said act involved a handmade hang glider or—”

“No.” Henry cut Asher off before he could list the second option.

“It’s really sweet that you want to do something for Emilia,” Vivvie told Asher, “in a completely inadvisable kind of way.”

“Exactly,” Asher declared. “I am the very soul of altruism, which is why I’m trying to decide between hang gliding off the chapel roof and—”

“No.” Henry gave Asher a look.

“Perhaps you don’t get a vote,” Asher told Henry.

“Perhaps you gave me veto power when were seven,” Henry countered. “And perhaps you jumping off a building is the last thing Emilia would actually want.”

“Darn you and your infernal logic, Marquette!” Asher, his expression the very picture of woe, reached across Henry and snagged a cookie.

“This whole thing will blow over,” I told Asher.

The murmurs had already died down considerably. Like Maya had said that morning, the picture really wasn’t that scandalous. The only reason it had gotten any traction at all was because it was Emilia Rhodes—picture-perfect, angling-for-valedictorian, eyes-on-the-prize Emilia. She managed her reputation with the same fierceness with which she attacked SAT prep. She’d cultivated an image, and this wasn’t it.

“Consider it my opening salvo.” John Thomas Wilcox slid behind me in the lunch line. He kept his voice low—clearly, those words were meant only for my ears.

Henry was at the cashier now. Asher and Vivvie were talking to each other.

John Thomas leaned into my personal space. I helped him out of it. Forcibly.

“Careful,” John Thomas sneered. “You wouldn’t want to get sent to the office for fighting.”