Ready for our dinner date?
My stomach gurgles a yes.
See you in five, I respond, trying not to think too hard about the fact that Ethan used the word date. A hostile three-person, cornered-in-a-murder-plot date, but still a date. My first date.
Progress.
I should head straight to the dining hall, but something locks me in place. There’s a buzzing, like a bee is trapped in my brain. I lied to my mom. Not the first time, but maybe for the first time about something that mattered. I tap into my text messages and pull up my thread with Avery. Our last solo exchange was over a month ago. I swipe a new message.
You working on RD apps tonight? Maybe we could work on them together?
There. A lie made true. Now I can eat with one weight off my shoulders. Though I suspect Autumn is going to lob another anvil on.
I find her at the dining hall entrance right on schedule, hands stuffed into the center pocket of her Claflin hoodie, brown eyes carefully neutral. We’re teammates, but she’s always been chilly. I’d always assumed it was WASPy snobbery, but the last twelve hours have cast everything I thought into question. Ethan stands beside her, already comfortably in conversation. No frost toward him, it would seem.
“Hey!” I say, with a grade too much cheer in my voice.
The ice in Autumn’s stare could reverse global warming. “I’m not doing this for you,” she remarks flatly while grabbing a tray.
“Why don’t we make it quick, in that case. After you.” Ethan motions Autumn toward the buffet line and follows after her, putting a buffer between us.
We make our way around the food stations and buffet lines to the half hexagon–shaped atrium. The floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the athletic fields. I eye the Ivies’ usual table. It’s empty right now, as if our fellow students know to give us a wide berth even when we’re not in the room. Well, technically, I am an Ivy. Fuck it.
“Over here,” I say, leading Autumn and Ethan over to the table. We slide our trays in front of three seats facing the window. We get the view, but a bit of privacy as well.
“Rebecca brought me up to speed,” Autumn opens. “She thinks we might be wrong about what you did to me. I’m not as convinced.” I find myself on the receiving end of a begrudging look.
I chance a glance at Ethan. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t know what I supposedly did to you.” With a steadying breath, I say, “Tell me.”
Autumn takes a bite of her lettuce-wrapped turkey burger. Then she cracks a smile before taking a long draw of water to clear her throat. “You know, for a while I genuinely thought I was being paranoid. It was too silly, bizarre that someone would Mean Girls me. Though, indeed, spiking my protein shakes is a lot savvier than Kälteen bars. The weight just crept on, and before I noticed, well, I’d failed my conditioning and you got the spot on varsity.” Autumn shrugs, seemingly nonchalant, but a shit-eating grin creeps through. “Real poetic irony that you didn’t even end up being good enough to be recruited. That’s kept me warm at night.”
“You think I sabotaged your shakes?”
“Hmmm,” Autumn hums around another bite of burger. “I did. Though now, given your playing-dumb shtick, I’m assuming it was Sierra instead. Smart, really, having someone else do your dirty work so you have deniability. I can only imagine what you’ve done for your friends in kind.”
I become very interested in cutting my chicken breast, making sure to avoid Ethan’s eyes. That is the Ivies’ strategy. Deniability. I once wrote a scathing editorial on Margot’s behalf, saying her theater rival warbled like a dying cow and blasting Claflin drama for not employing race-blind casting for shows. That choosing the less talented Diana Klein instead of Margot for the ingenue lead was clearly unexamined bigotry. Margot is better than Diana, though. It wasn’t lying, and the editors on the paper let it go to print. I remember the pride I felt when I showed the draft to Margot, thinking maybe it would endear me to her. No such luck. But thanks to me, she was cast as the lead in every production since then and is a lock for this year’s Jimmy Awards. I never gave one thought to Diana. Guilt pools in my stomach.
“How would Sierra get access to your protein shakes? Maybe you just weren’t good enough, and the weight gain was incidental.” Okay, so maybe I’m not ready to give up denial just yet.
Autumn snorts. “Short memory you’ve got there, Olivia. Surely you remember that brief, shining time you and Sierra were breakfast buddies with me? We made our shakes together in the kitchen at the boathouse. I started arriving fifteen minutes later to avoid you. Still do. And the weight melted off as soon as I altered my schedule.”
She’s right. It was all the way back in sophomore year, so not at the front of my mind but not forgotten, either. Sierra said Autumn was just bitter about not making varsity. Screw her if she didn’t want to be on the Shake Squad anymore.
“So that’s it?” I say, spearing a piece of broccoli with my fork. “Sierra put some weight-gain powder in your shakes, and I get told to drop dead? It’s underhanded but hardly earth-shattering.”
I don’t miss Ethan’s flinch beside me.
Autumn looks ready to explode. “Is that it?! Your friends almost cost me a college scholarship. No school would look at me since I wasn’t on varsity. I had to spend the whole summer training with a private coach to get back into competition shape. Do you have any idea how much money that cost my parents? How stressed I was about not making the team?”
“I—” But I have nothing to say, because I didn’t know. And even though I wasn’t the one who sabotaged Autumn’s placement on the team, shouldn’t I have noticed? They’re my friends. And I’m the one who stole her spot.
There’s no time to apologize, though. Autumn is already forging ahead.
“And if that’s not enough for you, how about poisoning Jason before the ACT? Not to speak ill of the dead, but that’s what your friend Emma did. She slipped him laxatives. Last year, February sitting, he loses it right after Emma buys him a coffee. Confirmed.”
“That’s…insane,” I settle on, hardly adequate for the mental images Autumn’s story conjures up. I don’t realize I’m shaking until Ethan’s hand covers mine under the table. A moment and my heart begins to slow. I think. “But why would Emma mess with Jason’s ACT score? He applied to WashU, not an Ivy.” There’s no point in even pretending that my friends and I weren’t aggressively protecting our Ivy status. Clubs and class ranking transcended all school choices, but there was no reason to sabotage a test score unless someone was a direct competitor. We’re not villains.