The Locket

I looked up to see Rachel leaning against the wall just behind Sarah, glaring down at me. “You didn’t get to be in the talent show, so you decided to find some other way to get attention, didn’t you?”

“What?” She couldn’t really think that. “No way. No, I’d never do that.” I shook my head back and forth, willing Rachel to believe me.

“Oh come on, Katie.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re Little Miss Do-gooder. You’re always helping people. Maybe this time you decided to arrange for—”

“You could have killed someone,” Rachel said, angrier than I’d ever seen her. She was usually the master of calm, cool, and collected. “You could have killed me!”

Natalie appeared behind Rachel with the Coke but froze when she heard Rachel’s shout. Blue eyes darted between the two of us, and I could see that she wasn’t going to take another step toward me. Pretty, popular senior cheerleader or not—even Natalie had a healthy fear of Rachel.

I knew what had happened—I’d screwed up. It was only a matter of time before everyone else found out the truth. The locket hadn’t saved my ass this time. This time, I was going to have to pay the price for my mistake. But that was okay. I’d take whatever punishment I had to take. Rachel was alive. I wasn’t a murderer. I hadn’t killed someone with my scatterbrained stupidity.

“We don’t know if Katie forgot the safety cable or not,” Sarah continued, “but if she did, I know she didn’t do it on purpose. We just need to—”

“She didn’t forget the cord.” Shawn appeared stage right, making all our heads spin in his direction. He blushed and squirmed at being the focus of so much girl-tention, but finally managed to speak up. “I was just looking at the light. The safety cord is still locked and there are pieces of the grid on the stage. The grid broke. That’s what made the light fall. It wasn’t Katie’s fault.”

“Wow.” Sarah let out a shaky breath and squeezed my hands. “If the grid was weak enough for a light to break it . . . you could have fallen through yesterday when you were up there. You’re lucky you’re not dead.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying to smile as Natalie hurried to my side, squatting down beside Sarah, evidently deciding it was safe to be nice to me now that I wasn’t guilty of almost killing Rachel Pruitt. “That’s really going to help with my fear of heights.”

I clasped the Coke Natalie pressed into my hand and took a tiny sip, but couldn’t taste anything but cold. My taste buds had ceased to function in the wake of this latest reveal.

It wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t made a mistake—one that was meant to last or otherwise.

Then . . . why had the locket worked? Why had I traveled back in time? I’d been sure the locket had worked the first time because fate, or a higher power, or something out there in the universe that was bigger than me had decided my slipup with Mitch wasn’t “meant to last” and given me a second chance. A second chance I’d put at risk yesterday with my inappropriate thoughts about Mitch.

But what if the locket didn’t work that way at all? What if the inscription didn’t mean what I thought it meant? What if—

“I want to go home.” I needed to talk to Gran. Maybe now that I’d used the locket again, she would remember owning the piece of jewelry and be able to help me understand.

“I’d rather you stay until Mr. Geery takes a look at the light,” Rachel said, her tone inferring she wasn’t buying my innocence, at least not completely. “Just to make sure it’s not your fault.”

“Come on, Rach,” Natalie said in a sweet voice. “Give her a break. Katie saved our lives. We should be thanking her, not giving her a hard time.”

“Yeah,” Ally said, piping up from the clutch of fashion-show girls hovering near the dressing room door. “We should totally give her a makeover.”

“Because nothing says ‘thank you’ like implying you’re ugly the way you are,” Sarah whispered under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.

I tried to smile at her joke, but my lips were having none of it. Nothing was funny, not yet, maybe not for a long, long time. I had to figure out what was going on with the locket. Now.

“Yes!” Yin, another senior girl with striking white stripes in her shiny black hair, clapped. “That would be awesome. We could take her to my mom’s salon after practice on Wednesday.”

“And I’ve got a bunch of True Religion jeans I can’t wear since I started doing the Shred and lost those last ten pounds,” Melissa said with a smile in my direction. “You could have them, Katie. They’re, like, two hundred dollars a pair.”

“Better yet, let’s take her to Ziggies before the salon on Wednesday,” Rachel said, her attitude doing a three-sixty now that it was clear her underlings were threatening mutiny. “You can pick out a couple of brand-new outfits. On me.” She smiled, but all I saw was bright, white teeth. There was nothing friendly in that grin.

“No, I couldn’t.” I stood even though my knees still felt shaky. “I mean, I really appreciate the offers, but—”

“You should do it,” Sarah said, surprising me. “I mean, it’s your birthday next Saturday, anyway, and—”

“Perfect, then it’s decided. We’ll have makeover girls’ night after rehearsal on Wednesday.” Rachel wrinkled her nose and cast a nasty look at the ceiling. “I’ll get my dad to call some people to make sure this death trap is repaired before then.”

“Come on, Katie, I’ll walk you out to your car,” Natalie said, looping her arm through mine.

I cast Sarah a confused look, but she just shrugged and grabbed my backpack from the wall. “Drive safe. We’ll do that coffee another day?”

“Yeah, for sure.” I waved at the other girls, and they waved back, offering well-wishes and further promises that Wednesday would be a day of “pure awesome.”

“Just wait until Wednesday. Yin’s mom is a genius, she’s going to make you look amazing,” Natalie said, smiling as we pushed out the back door and crossed the lot to my car. “A few highlights will really bring out the depth in your hair.”

My hair had depth? I had no idea. “Sounds great.” Gray clouds hung low and threatening, making the red leaves on the pin oaks surrounding the parking lot look even redder, like the trees were bleeding into the sky. I shivered, suddenly cold. It had been a bright sunny day without a chance of rain before my second do over. Now it looked like a storm would hit any minute. “It’s really nice of y’all to do this for me.”

“You totally deserve it! I mean, if Isaac can’t see how gorgeous you are, we’ll just have to remind him, right?”

“Um . . . right.” My mouth went dry and I forced myself to take another sip of the Coke in my hand.

What did she mean? Had Isaac said something about me to the senior girls? Something about thinking I wasn’t attractive anymore? Despite my own doubts about my appearance, I had a hard time believing Isaac would ever say something mean about the way I looked. He’d always told me I was pretty—beautiful, even. And there was no mistaking the look in his eyes when I came down the stairs for a date wearing my tight jeans.

Or there’d been no mistaking the look in his eyes before this latest do over. Maybe, in this new world, Isaac didn’t think I was the one who did the sparkling in our relationship.

The thought made my hand start shaking again as I dug through my backpack for my keys. I had to find out what Natalie was talking about, even if it made me seem like a freak.

“So . . . did he say something?” I asked, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. I sounded as anxious and pathetic as I felt. “About wishing I’d wear makeup more often or something?”

She shook her head, genuinely confused. “Oh, no. He never said anything, I just . . .” Natalie bit her lip and I watched her decision to lie play out behind her bright blue eyes. “You know, it’s nothing. I was confusing Isaac with someone else.”

Someone else. Someone who had done something to make her doubt that he was happy with his present dating situation. Something like . . . what? I didn’t really want to know, but my lips were forming questions before I could stop them.

“Yeah, totally sure. Boy mix-up.” Natalie twirled her hair between her fingers, giving her hand something to do while she lied to me. Again. Isaac had done something to make her believe he wasn’t happy. There was no doubt about it. Natalie wasn’t mean. She wasn’t the kind of girl who tried to break couples up for no reason. She must have seen something. Or at least heard something. “I had to get up way too early this morning, my brain is fried.”

But she wasn’t going to tell me the truth. She didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. She’d only said something because she thought I already knew what she was talking about. Maybe in this life, I should know. But I didn’t, because I’d traveled through time. Twice.

“Me too,” I said, the sick feeling in my stomach spreading out across my body until even my fingers and toes felt wretched. “I think I’ll go home and snag a nap.”

“Monday.” I waved goodbye and jumped into my car, a nap the furthest thing from my mind.

I had to go see Isaac. I had to see for myself if he still loved me or if I’d ruined my life when the locket decided I should save Rachel’s, by fixing a “mistake” that wasn’t even mine to begin with.