“Where to next?” I asked Haley with a cheer I didn’t feel.
“We can leave if you want to,” Haley said, though she was edging slowly toward the Asian Art collection.
“I’m not wasting tonight because I fell. In front of the whole museum. And left a huge mess behind me for Ethan the intern to clean up. Why would you think that?”
Haley let out one of her rare laughs. “Fair enough.”
I let myself be led through the vast halls, eating appetizers off nearly every tray that passed my way and sipping a club soda with lime the whole time. I’d barely escaped dousing my mom’s blazer with red wine, so I wasn’t taking any more chances.
Haley read from every placard and pointed out what she liked and what she loved. She never mentioned the things that didn’t resonate with her, like she didn’t want to tear any piece or artist down with her criticism.
The crowds began to thin around ten o’clock, and polite caterers and museum staff informed us the doors would be closing soon. Haley and I made our way back to the entrance, some of the last to leave. We were about to head our separate ways for the night when Haley stopped.
“Thanks for tonight.”
“I take it you had fun?”
“Anything where you fall on your ass and I get free food is guaranteed to be a good time.”
“Ha ha. You’re welcome.”
“Good night,” she called out as she turned to go.
I spent the walk back to my car shaking, but it had nothing to do with the frigid air. My close call was a little too close for me to be entirely pleased with the way the evening turned out, but it worked.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed April.
“I did it.”
* * *
The following day, my mom roped me into holiday shopping. When we returned home weighed down with bags of presents for aunts and uncles and cousins we never saw, I ran up to my room to store my haul under my bed like I did each year, even though April hadn’t attempted to search for gifts in years. Just an old habit I didn’t bother to break. It was nice that some things remained the same, even when the rest of the world couldn’t bother to stay consistent.
When I got home from Final Friday, my tired eyes had refused to focus on the pictures I had taken. The plan was to take a look first thing this morning, but my mom woke me up extra early to tag along with her to the mall; it wasn’t wise to look through photos of a phone I’d broken into without permission in front of her.
Finally alone, I brought them up on my phone and flicked through the first few images of initials and phone numbers. I wrote them down on individual sticky notes that I pinned to my corkboard.
While I had done laps around the mall vetoing many terrible gift ideas for my dad, I had outlined the next phase in my plan. Part of me wanted to line up the members of the Red Court like dominoes, knocking over each girl one by one, my casualty list creeping up as the days passed in agonizing slowness. It would take effort to research each one and find what would get them to bend. That angle had its benefits, like letting the Queen of Hearts sweat it out as her protection was stripped away until no one stood between her and what she deserved.
Haley. The Queen of Hearts was Haley. It was hard to make the mental switch from plotting the downfall of some nameless, faceless tyrant to the girl I’d spent countless hours with. The chances of getting through everyone before Haley figured out it was me were too low to bet the house on.
With the members of the Red Court’s initials pinned to the board, I went back to the photos of the texts between Haley and the Fire Alarm, where my name came up. It was dated from the day we got Matthew’s cancellation request.
Fire Alarm: what did ember do to make matthew take his request back???
Haley: what makes you think it was ember
Fire Alarm: please i told you she couldn’t hack it she was never going to take gideon down
Haley: now we know her limits
Haley: everyone has them even you
Fire Alarm: are you going to keep throwing him in my face?!?
Haley: no I’m reminding you that everyone reaches this point...we just pushed ember to hers sooner than most
I clicked away from the exchange. Without more context, I wasn’t sure what the Fire Alarm’s breaking point was, but it was good to know she had one, too. But what stood out to me the most was that Haley seemed to be defending me when she knew it was me who interfered with Matthew. A flash of doubt flooded my body, but I pushed it right back down. She was the Queen of Hearts, a master manipulator. And I was going to end her reign.
I dragged out my old yearbooks to find likely candidates for the rest of the Red Court. Under each set of initials, I wrote the names of possible matches. It was surprising how easy it was to find some of them. There wasn’t a way for me to be completely sure, but there weren’t that many people with the same initials, even in a school of two thousand five hundred students.
After a few hours, I had a list of members with mini dossiers on every girl. I stood back to admire my handiwork. The colorful patchwork of sticky notes was strung together like a spiderweb with our Queen of Hearts at the center. Each pair of initials held branches of names that matched up with a piece of yarn linking it to the most probable candidate. Below the names were as many details I could think of on my own and what could be gleaned from public Instagram and Twitter profiles.
AB (aka Addison Betz)
BC (aka Brianna Cho)
ES (aka Emma Song)
Fire Alarm (aka Shauna Lopez)
GG (aka Gretchen Goldberg)
JL (aka Jenna Lowell)
KQ (aka Kayla Quiroz)
OV (aka Olivia Vaughn)
SA (aka Samantha Allen)
SH (aka Sasha Harrison)
TK (aka Taylor Kent)
I rolled my neck out and stretched my back, considering whether I had time for a run before dinner. A text notification from Haley lit up the screen of my burner.
Haley: thanks again for asking me to come with you last night
Haley’s gratitude sat uneasily with me. How was I supposed to destroy someone who kept thanking me?
Me: Of course! Is it lame that I loved it even more because no one else our age got to go?
Haley: extremely lame
Haley: and also true
Haley: see you Monday
The most important thing was to act as normal as possible until I could figure out my next move. I’d reached the end of what I had planned, but the journey was far from over. I was a roller coaster out of tracks, unsure of how the ride would end.
I carefully flipped my corkboard around, keeping my spiderweb facing the wall and feeling like a boy hiding porn under the mattress from his parents. It wasn’t only my parents I was worried about. Truthfully, I didn’t want April to see it, either.