Lilia takes my arm again. “Andrew Mack,” she tells me. “He’s good.”
“You’d know,” says Piper.
Lilia turns toward me so one sharp shoulder cuts in front of her right-hand girl. “The boys,” she says. “You have to watch yourself with them. But not him.”
Piper’s never-shutting-up next to her, damn, Lili, you’re such a drama queen, like you haven’t fucked the whole team, like you ever do anything except forget the way things actually happened so you can keep on playing Sister Holier-Than-Everybody, until finally Lilia snaps, “God, Piper, just shut up for once, okay?” and she does.
Then Lilia turns to me again. “He’s single,” she says.
I know.
“He’s smart. In all the honor societies.”
I know.
“He’s a damn good middie. He might even beat Duffy out for captain next year.”
I know.
“You can trust him.”
I could, but I won’t. So I tilt my head and ask, “Why isn’t he one of them?”
She blinks shutter-fast and looks away. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do,” says Piper, acidic. “And to answer your question, new girl, because he won’t put the team first.”
So I quote Lilia: “I don’t know what you mean.”
Her gaze lingers, ember and spite. “You will.”
“Piper,” says Lilia. Watching the boys; watching Duncan, but not because she loves him. “Don’t.” And then, to me: “I’ll introduce you to Mack. After. He’ll like you, I think—”
Duncan swerves past a Viking and scores again and everyone jumps up to scream his name.
Mads texts me, Ready.
When all the girls settle back in, I say, “I’ll be right back.” Lilia flutters up again and I wave her off and pin her in place with a smile.
I walk around to the back of the bleachers. At the corner, leaning against the wall with one baby-blue high-top hitched up against the stone, there’s Jenny texting. Sunglasses so dark you can’t see where she’s looking. She doesn’t say anything and neither do I.
I round the next corner, and there’s Summer in floaty silver chiffon walking figure-eights by the bathroom doors, purring into her phone, “I told you I’ll be there. Twenty minutes, okay?” She almost walks into me, and she puts one hand up to her lips and goes, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t even see you,” and disappears back into the call: “No, nothing, just some girl—”
In the bathroom, I fake-fix my hair. It doesn’t need fixing. It’s shiny and unruinable. But I run my hands through it anyway, until a cluster of lower-school girls trips in spilling he-said she-saids and one of them whispers too loud, “That’s the new girl. Lilia loves her.”
My alibi.
I text the coven, Ready.
The lower-school girls slam their stall doors. The locks click into place: one-two-three.
Jenny says, Clear.
Summer says, Clear.
Mads says, Clear.
I walk out, long strides, light slashing across my eyes. Past Summer telling next week’s ex, “—black lace, yeah, new, yeah, soon, if you’re good.” Around the last corner. Mads waits by the tennis courts in whitest-whites, spinning a killer-blue racket in one hand.
She nods.
I open the door set into the stone with VARSITY nailed over it. Unlocked, because no one would fucking dare.
The locker room is dark except for the light from two narrow windows high-up. I snake through their things: ties and shoes and a liquor bottle not even hidden. They have polished wood shelves and brass hooks but everything belongs to them, so everything spills out onto the benches and the floor.
Connor’s pile is the last one at the end. A blue-and-white team bag and a satchel with his monogram branded into leather so soft my skin crawls. I want to slash it open. Rip the leather apart, and then the whole locker room.
But I have to be patient.
His phone is buried under textbooks and a stray cuff link, getting ruined. He doesn’t have to give a fuck. He can smash anything he wants, be careless and violent and dirty, and tomorrow he’ll have something new to break. He’s the kind of fuckboy prick who doesn’t even bother looking for his phone if it goes missing. The kind who doesn’t lock it, because he’s spilled all his secrets already.
The kind who doesn’t check to make sure he has everything when he heads out after a game.
Besides, nobody trusts him. He’s the one who lets the boy-talk leak out of the locker room; the one who pulls out bribes in broad daylight; the one who isn’t dazzle-smiled or square-jawed enough to smooth things over. He makes the rest of them uneasy. Duncan only keeps him around for blunt force, on the field and off. And—
if I’m right, and I know I am—
—because good-king Duncan, damn-she’s-feisty Duncan, knows someday he’ll need a boy to blame.
He’s got one.
On Saturday, after all the St Andrew’s Preppers had stumbled home, after all the best pictures were up, Connor said on some second-string boy’s blurring dance-floor shot—
another party, another slut down lol
The second-string boy wrote back: get your trophy?
And Connor said, always do.
The second-string boy said, pics.
Connor said, dunc would kill me lmao.
The second-string boy said, dm me?
And Connor said, done.
Here I am, two days later, with his phone in my hands. Standing in their hazed-dark secret place and opening his message to the second-string boy.
He said, u cant tell dunc u know.
And the second-string boy said, bro you were yelling about her all night. Then, pics, u promised.
And Connor said, u think im fukkin high? no phones in the room. dunc’s rules.
The second-string boy said, bet Dunc’s rules say no trophies too.
Connor said, dammm. And then, tru tho. And then, check it out lmao.
He sent a picture, off-center but searing clear: an old St Andrew’s tie, hanging crooked over a bookshelf. The silk scarred with a constellation of earrings. A white pearl, a silver hoop, a gold stud. Half a dozen of them.
The one at the bottom, centered between the points, is gold and crystal and mine. He plucked it off of my ear before we were even in that white-sheets room. Porter, at the door, said something that melted down the walls, so I couldn’t understand it, and Connor said, fuck what Dunc says.
I zip Connor’s phone into my purse. Then I take out the other gold-and-crystal earring, the one still left when they left me.
Connor’s this-year tie hangs halfway through his collar and halfway across his duffel bag. I poke the earring into the bottom of the tie, right between the points. Exactly like the one in the picture.
He won’t even notice.
Poor Connor.
He’ll be the first to die.
When I stand up everything looks exactly how I found it. I take one step toward the door and my phone buzzes. Jenny says, Someone’s coming.
I don’t have time to get out. He’ll see me coming around the corner.
I text, Who?
My eyes flurry around the half-dark. I want to hide where I can see him, but there’s nothing out here besides the benches and the shelves and all their wolf-pack debris.
Summer sends a picture: one lone boy passing her post, blurred and looking over his shoulder. It’s Malcolm, the good-king’s little brother, shorter and skinnier but with the same glittering gray eyes and almost-black hair. The same fucking smirk.