On Monday morning, Maya was somewhat muted as she told Emilia that her approval ratings were at an all-time high among freshman and sophomore girls. Given that muted wasn’t typically an adjective that described Maya Rojas, I didn’t need the pollster’s daughter to tell me that, like Ivy, her mother had worked through the weekend, or that President Nolan’s approval rating was at an all-time low.
Opposite Maya, Di flipped her white-blond hair over one shoulder. “Hands,” she said, her Icelandic accent making the word sound sharper. When none of us moved, she rolled her light blue eyes. “I do not bite,” she said. “Much. Give me your hands.”
Maya offered hers, and Di whipped out a pen and wrote something on the back of Maya’s right hand. Then she turned her light blue eyes to me.
“Hand.”
“Pass,” I said.
“You cannot pass,” the ambassador’s daughter said, waving my words away. “You are the one who started this.”
I glanced over at Maya’s hand. Di had written four letters on the back. ISWE.
As in: I STAND WITH EMILIA.
“The freshman girls are writing it on their hands.” Di gave me a steely-eyed look. “Now we write it on ours.”
Emilia remained strangely silent. A week ago, she would have ordered me to play along.
I held my hand out to Di, appraising Emilia the whole time. The words thank you hadn’t left Asher’s sister’s lips once since I’d gotten her back in the race. I understood that she couldn’t thank me—not without acknowledging, even if just in her own head, that this wasn’t just about the election.
I watched as Di wrote the letters on my hand. ISWE.
“I come bearing donuts.” Asher appeared next to our table. “And the bearer of donuts,” he intoned, “was greeted with trumpets and pomp.” He waited patiently—presumably for both trumpets and pomp.
Instead, he got Emilia giving him the look of a sibling who knew her brother all too well. “What did you do?” she asked him flatly.
“Nothing,” Asher answered with a charming smile.
Emilia’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What are you going to do?”
“Can a boy not just bring his dearest, darling twin a sugary confection in celebration of the beauteousness that is Monday?”
“No,” all four of us answered at the same time.
“Perhaps I am overwrought with filial guilt,” Asher suggested. “For I have betrayed my family by standing in this election with that rogue Henry Marquette.”
“Perhaps,” Emilia countered, “you blew something up and want me to be the one to break it to Mom and Dad?”
Asher winked at her. “That is possibly not entirely false.”
“Do I want to know what you blew up?” Emilia asked him with a long-suffering sigh.
“That would depend on how attached you were to the stone gargoyle that used to sit on our front porch.”
I snorted and snagged a donut.
Asher took that as an invitation to plop down beside me. “How goes the campaign?”
We didn’t get the chance to answer.
“Better than some people’s, I’d wager.” John Thomas strolled over but didn’t sit down. He probably enjoyed towering over us, looking down. “I just heard the most unsettling rumor,” he said, relishing the words.
Until that moment, I’d forgotten about John Thomas’s promise that Henry was going to be his next target. With everything that had happened, I’d forgotten to ask Ivy if it was possible that Congressman Wilcox might know what she’d covered up for the Marquette family.
I’d forgotten to ask her if there was any way that the congressman’s son might know the truth about Henry’s father, too.
“Now would be a good time for you to leave,” Asher said. His voice was cheerful enough, but I could hear a thread of warning underneath.
“I just wouldn’t feel right walking away,” John Thomas countered. “The least I can do is warn you about what I heard.” He gave every appearance of sincerity, except for the slight uptick of his lips. “Addiction is a disease. I had no idea Henry’s father had gone through such a rough time prior to his death. In and out of rehab—”
Asher stood up. “Don’t,” he gritted out. “Talk. About. Henry’s. Father.”
Asher was a person who was constantly in motion—always laughing, always smiling.
He wasn’t smiling now.
“I’m not talking about Henry’s father.” John Thomas stared Asher down. “I’m just telling you what other people are saying.”
Addiction. Rehab.
John Thomas doesn’t know that Henry’s father killed himself. That should have come as a relief. He doesn’t know that Ivy covered it up.
But apparently, that wasn’t the Marquette family’s only secret.
“Asher.” Emilia’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Don’t.”
Don’t waste your breath. Don’t let him get a rise out of you.
Emilia’s warning drew John Thomas’s attention. The congressman’s son leaned down and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. Emilia stiffened under his touch. Her breath went shallow.
“Don’t touch her,” Asher said, his voice razor sharp. He had seriously considered jumping off a building to save his twin even an ounce of scrutiny. The desire to protect her ran deep.
“Didn’t your sister ever tell you?” John Thomas met Asher’s eyes as he rubbed Emilia’s hair back and forth between his fingers. “I was her first.”
Emilia shuddered. One moment Asher was beside me and the next John Thomas was on the ground and Asher was on top of him.
“If she told you she didn’t want it,” John Thomas whispered, “she lied.”
Asher snapped. There was no other word for it. He moved with manic fury, his fist plowing into John Thomas’s face again and again.
John Thomas smiled the whole time.
“Asher,” Emilia said. He didn’t hear her, didn’t hear me, didn’t hear anything, lost to a haze of fury.
There was a blur of movement to my right as someone pulled Asher off of John Thomas. It took me a moment to process the fact that it was Henry. Asher struggled against his hold, lunging forward. Henry jerked him back. His arms tightened around Asher’s torso.
“Enough, Ash,” Henry said.
When teachers descended on us a moment later, John Thomas was still lying on the ground bleeding. He was still smiling. He caught my eyes, and I could practically hear him gloating, You’re not the only one who can execute a plan.