The next morning, things at Hardwicke were back to normal—more or less.
“Don’t look now,” Asher whispered. “But I believe you’re being paged.”
Vivvie immediately turned to look. Stealth wasn’t her strong suit. “I’d say that’s more of a beckoning,” she told Asher after a moment’s deliberation.
“A summoning, perhaps?” Asher countered, wiggling his eyebrows.
On the other side of the Hut, Emilia Rhodes narrowed her eyes at me and crooked her finger. Asher was right. I had been summoned. With one last glance at Asher and Vivvie, I gritted my teeth and went to see what Emilia wanted.
“We’re polling strong with the robotics club and the jazz band.” Maya Rojas ran her fingers along the tip of her straw as I took a seat at their table. “I can deliver the girls’ basketball team, and Tess having nominated you seems to be carrying some weight with freshman females.”
“But,” Emilia prompted.
“However,” Maya said, hedging slightly, “Henry is also polling well with freshman girls. And sophomore girls. And most of the junior class.”
“And John Thomas?” Emilia was undeterred.
“He’s got strong support from some of the party crowd, as well as a large contingent of freshman and sophomore boys.” Maya’s mother was a pollster who crunched numbers for the president. Apparently, Maya had picked up a thing or two about the art of polling along the way.
“We need the underclassmen,” Maya said. “They don’t know any of the candidates that well, so their votes are the most up for grabs.”
Emilia turned her attention from Maya to me. “You’re the freshman whisperer,” she said bluntly. “Any suggestions?”
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.”
Whatever. I noticed that he didn’t attempt to leer at me again.
“If you ask me,” he announced, his voice louder this time—and designed to carry, “someone did Miss Priss a favor. No one should be wound that tight.”
I reached the front of the line and gave the cashier my student ID to pay for my food.
“The picture makes her seem more human,” John Thomas continued behind me. “Like she really knows how to have a good time.”
Once the cashier handed my card back, I turned to leave. The expression on my face never changed. Eventually, John Thomas would realize he hadn’t gotten a single verbal reply out of me.
Some people weren’t worth the breath it took to shoot them down.
I’d made it halfway to our normal table when I noticed that Emilia had a visitor at hers. Mr. Collins. He was the photography teacher. Even from a distance, I could see the disapproval on his face and the flash of panic that crossed Emilia’s as he led her out of the room.
“Pity,” John Thomas said, coming up behind me once more. “The Hardwicke administration has never been known for their approval of good times. Especially,” he added, “when someone is careless enough for that good time to be caught on camera.”