I wanted to grab him and shake him. Hard. I wasn’t like this; I wouldn’t do this kind of thing.
Except I would. In some ways, I already had. This was the kind of person I was and seeing it from this angle revealed a harsh truth.
Reeling, I turned from both of them and mumbled an excuse about the bathroom. I made my way back down the hall without looking up at the photos and ran smack into a petite frame.
“Ouch!” I muttered. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
The girl I bumped into hadn’t moved a muscle. She just stood staring at the photos, tears sliding slowly down her cheeks. She was pretty and familiar, but no one I knew. I followed her gaze and saw that she was staring at a picture of the faithless guy wrapped up with a girl.
Oh. It’s her. That’s why she looked familiar. She was the girl in the photos, the one he’d been cheating on.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. Though this time my apology was more like my condolences. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she was the one who ended up in tears, humiliated in front of the whole school. It was so unfair. Why did she have to suffer for someone else’s mistakes? However, her boyfriend—or ex-boyfriend, I guessed—deserved all this and more.
The girl yanked at a chain hanging around her neck hard enough to snap it. “Me, too,” she whispered and dropped the necklace on the ground before walking away.
I stooped to examine the silver charm on the broken chain. It was a flat polished disk with a date engraved on one side from just over a year ago. An anniversary present? More like an unwanted token to remember a lie. I pulled away and kept walking down the hall, leaving the necklace where it belonged.
This was all so messed up, but I was in too deep, and there wasn’t anything to do about it. Out of habit, I reached for my journal again, and jotted down the first thing I thought of.
October 9
There’s no way out but through.
I wasn’t in this thing to make friends. I shouldn’t care what Chase Merriman thought of me. I knew why I was doing this, and that was enough. My plan was sound. I just had to stick with it, but my unease grew with each takedown I witnessed. If I was caught, what would the Red Court do to a traitor? Whatever it was, I had no doubt it would make the hallway scene look like a fun trip down memory lane.
No matter. It was time for the Red Court to pay. My job would be less difficult if I embraced the part of myself that enjoyed the work, just to make the next month or two or however long it took easier to bear. It was a dangerous line to walk. If I leaned too far into the parts of the Red Court that called to me, I risked not being able to pull back. But I could do it. I had to. There wasn’t any other way.
Perhaps I could even minimize the damage to innocent people wherever possible. Having someone like me was only a good thing to the students caught in the line of fire. I wasn’t here for them; I was here for her.
A glimpse of familiar curls flashed at the corner of my vision. Haley. I was glad there was nothing written on my face but determination.
Though we didn’t acknowledge each other, waves of approval rolled off her. She must have seen me dodge Chase and the cold resolve that followed after my run-in with that girl. A normal person would probably have had some kind of reaction, and not the detachment I was allowing to swallow me. I quelled the rising sense of satisfaction at having pleased her. Being a perfectionist meant I wanted to do everything well, even when that meant impressing others with my heartlessness. Succeeding as part of the Red Court meant failing at being a decent human being. I’d have to sort through all that later.
When I walked to the sink in the girls’ bathroom, I was surprised at who I saw staring back in the mirror—the girl I’d called up and embraced from some dark part of myself. It was a girl without a shred of empathy. It was an echo of Haley. It was a Red Court girl.
CHAPTER 13
“IT’S TIME FOR PART TWO,” Haley said as she plopped down next to me. It was another Saturday and another day of plotting back in the theater room at school. The carpet was dry, but the damp smell had intensified. Haley brought a Tupperware container with veggie lasagna for each of us. My high praise from dinner at her house must have won me an encore. I’d hit the track again that morning, but Chase was nowhere to be found. Maybe it was a small mercy, but I was still disappointed he wasn’t there. I hadn’t spoken to him since the day we saw the takedown photos.
“I heard that guy from the photos had his car egged every day last week,” I ventured as I ate my lunch. Seeing the outcome of another team’s work firsthand had me wondering if there was someone in the Red Court as good at takedowns as Haley was at election rigging. I was desperate to find out who it was that ran that job. Maybe they had a hand in April’s accident, too.
“Not surprising. When we run a takedown, that kind of thing is often the result.” Haley had already inhaled her meal and was popping her neck and rolling her shoulders out like a prizefighter preparing to enter the ring.
“It was definitely us, then? The pictures?”
She gave me a look that said I should stop asking questions. “We didn’t take them if that’s what you mean. We probably pulled a lot of strings to have that many photos taken. It was nice work. Very poetic.”
I chewed and bobbed my head, thankful for a mouth full of lasagna to spare me from responding. A few fitful nights’ sleep didn’t help sharpen the focus on my mission. Reconciling my goal to take the Red Court down with the firm belief that some people get what’s coming to them was not going well.
“The next phase is twofold, and it involves securing votes for our girl and dismantling any momentum the other two candidates have.”
“Go over that first part,” I mumbled around another mouthful and waved my fork at her to continue.
“You and I will focus on inflating support for Maura. It only takes a handful of well-placed rumors to make it seem like she’ll run away with the election. We each only need to plant three or four of these, and then we sit back and watch them spread like wildfire. Once those start to go, these elections tend to work like self-fulfilling prophecies. The expected winner typically comes out on top because people like to bet on a winning horse.”
I tried to ignore the comparison of Maura to a horse. “Sounds easy enough. What’s after that?”
“Next, we call in a handful of favors. We’re looking for people with a certain amount of influence to lobby against the other candidates.”
“We just went through all that trouble last week filling out the ballots so what’s-his-face student council kid wouldn’t know who our nominee was.” I was indignant at wasting a Saturday. Time was my most valuable commodity. “Won’t these kids figure out what’s going on?”