Chapter 5

Sophie chased after the retreating backs of Ophelia, Kayley, and Madeleine as they walked out of the studio. She had to get to the bottom of this “killing her own sister” business. Emma had disappeared completely.

“Hey, wait up!”

Poised at the top of the stairs, the three girls turned as if choreographed to give her a nasty look.

From the bottom of the staircase, Sophie said, “You guys, I have no idea what you were talking about back in practice.”

Ophelia crossed her arms and stuck out her hip. Sophie noticed that Ophelia’s turnout was perfect even in that small, casual move.

“Seriously? You expect us to believe you?”

Madeleine and Kayley shared Ophelia’s stare of disbelief. Even Madeleine wasn’t tempered by any sort of empathy. She just looked sad and disappointed. Kayley blew a bubble and let it pop, loud.

Suddenly, Sophie was tired. All that crying, all that fighting, and now this. It had been a hard two days. Her sister was mad at her and dating her crush. And now even her best friends wouldn’t talk to her. For something Sophie was pretty sure she hadn’t done. Everything seemed to catch up with her at once.

Her shoulders slumped and she turned away. “I don’t expect anything anymore. Whatever. Have a great dinner.”

She walked down the hall to her room, slowly, feeling like the weight of the world was on her shoulders. She opened her door, and without even taking off her blue Uggs, she fell back flat on her bed. She felt like she could sleep for the next fifteen hours and be OK with that. But a knock came at her door. A timid knock, quiet and subdued.

She ignored it. She was too tired to talk to anybody. And anyway, it was probably a former friend who was going to tell her she was awful or a sister who was going to steal her crush and then inexplicably freak out on her.

Sophie heard a shushing sound as something slipped under the door onto her hardwood floor. Curious, she sat up and checked it out. A letter, plain and white. She got off her bed and picked it up, turning it over.

The envelope wasn’t sealed, and she lifted out the paper inside with ease. Unfolding it, she saw, in magazine cutouts that looked like a vintage ransom note:

I BELIEVE YOU

She turned over the letter to see if there was more, but there was nothing. She opened the door and looked down both ways of the dark hallway.

Nobody.

Of course, with the thick carpet and a student body full of people who were light on their feet, the chances of catching someone sneaking down the hall were slim to none. In fact, during previous adventures, Sophie and her sister had counted on those odds. How many nights had they snuck to each other’s room and had a slumber party?

Sophie sighed. Whatever this note meant, whatever person believed that she hadn’t done whatever is it she was supposed to have done didn’t matter to Sophie. What she wanted most desperately was her friends and her sister to believe her. She fell back in bed and crashed out.

Ballet class was brutal.

Not physically. Sophie welcomed the release of jumps and twirls and arabesques. Just brutal in every other way. Sophie wished desperately that she was back in bed and that this strange nightmare would end.

The minute she got into class, people started whispering. She had been late again—earning another dirty look from Madame—and had started her warm-ups like usual. But soon she noticed the stares, the hard looks from almost everyone in her vicinity. Even the boys were huddled around each other in one corner. At one horrible point, Sophie saw Trey look at her, say something to his group of friends, and then watched them laugh at her.

Her face burned. What was going on?

During rehearsal, she tried to get close to Madeleine, Kayley, Ophelia, and Emma, but they all seemed to be protected by an invisible fortress of mean.

The only soft looks came from the girl she’d run into the other day. The one she actually had caused harm to. When Sophie caught her eye across the room, the girl—Chloe, was it?—gave her a tentative smile. Sophie smiled back sadly. She now knew how lonely it must be for the girl. Except, Sophie would have loved to go unnoticed at the moment. The stares and whispers were going to kill her soon.

After class, Sophie meant to grab Emma or Madeleine or Ophelia or Kayley and make one of them tell her what was going on, but Madame Puant stopped her as she walked out.

“This is the second day in a row you were late. And you missed one practice entirely.” Madame’s eyes bored into hers. “One more lateness or missed practice and you’re out of the next performance.”

All Sophie could do was nod, because for the billionth time in two days, she was about to burst out crying.

She ran to her room and sobbed on her bed. Worst. Ballet. Practice. Ever.

Once again, a knock sounded at her door. Sophie bolted upright and wiped her eyes angrily. If the letter writer was in the hallway, maybe she’d finally get some answers.

She opened the door and almost fell back. It was Emma. In tears. For a wild moment, Sophie thought Emma might have come to make up, to give her a big hug, and to say they should start over.

Instead, she saw Madeleine, Kayley, and Ophelia come into view behind her sister.

“I’m not going to stop dating him, so you can stop with the threats already!” Emma said.

Sophie’s jaw dropped. What in the world was Emma talking about?

From behind Emma, Madeleine said, “Sophie, this isn’t like you. And none of us have wanted to do anything because we thought maybe you’d stop. But if this keeps up, we’re going to have to tell Madame. And you will get kicked out.”

Emma hung her head.

Sophie threw up her hands and said, “I. Don’t. Know. What. You’re. Talking. About. Can someone please tell me what I did?”

“You know what you did,” Emma said. “You are the only one with the password to my computer and the only one I trusted enough to give a key to. And you were gone from class when the first note appeared on my laptop—which gave you all the time in the world to do it. ‘Stay away from Trey/or you won’t see another day.’”

Behind her, Kayley snorted. “Not even a great rhyme.”

Emma continued, “But the one today …” She stopped and sobbed. Madeleine put her hand on her shoulder. “That one is just off the charts, Sophie. How could you? I’m you’re sister!”

Sophie tried to process all the information coming at her. A tendril of worry was starting to wind through her. Her sister was getting threatening notes?

“What did the second note say?”

“You want a reminder of your handiwork?” Emma said. “You want me to let you know I really got the message? OK. Fine. You wrote, ‘Keep hooking up with Trey/and you will die in the next few days/I’m watching you.’”

“Seriously. That’s terrible poetry,” Kayley said.

But Sophie barely heard her. Someone was threatening her sister. Not just threatening her sister but threatening her sister with death.

Before Sophie could say anything, Emma said, “Stop threatening me or I will go to Madame.”

She let out a sob and walked away. Ophelia and Kayley shot Sophie another nasty look. Madeleine’s eyes lingered on Sophie’s face before she followed them.

Sophie didn’t care at this point what anyone else thought of her. She didn’t care that she’d been unfairly accused or that her friends weren’t talking to her.

The most important thing, the thing that fired her up and made her blood run cold: someone was threatening her sister.

And she was going to put a stop to that.