“If you think they’d play a high school, we should do it,” Jeff relented, pulling the earbuds out of his ears. “This is actually pretty good.”
So it was settled. Angela was going to call her cousin and set things in motion. Gabby would follow up the next day. If it fell through, they’d call an emergency meeting to come up with a backup plan. As the meeting broke up Gabby linked her arm through Skylar’s. “This is, like, amazing luck. You should come with me to the concert,” she said. “It’s like fate brought us together or something—you’re like my long-lost twin!”
Skylar squeezed Gabby’s arm and grinned. Everything was falling into place. She allowed herself to relax ever so slightly.
Then they rounded the corner.
Skylar stopped and gasped. Right in front of them was Lucy, smiling, waving, and covered in blood.
“What’s the matter, Sky?” Gabby squeezed Skylar’s arm, breaking the spell. The girl in front of them was not Lucy. She was a blond girl about Lucy’s height, draped in red streamers that she was removing from the ceiling. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Skylar said, still catching her breath. “I just thought I saw someone I knew.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The phone woke Em up at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Gabby.
“Hey, Gabs,” she said sleepily.
“You missed another meeting,” Gabby said, without offering any greeting. “Another Spring Fling meeting. I called you and your phone was off.”
“Oh no, Gabs, I’m so sorry.” Em cursed herself for forgetting. She’d been at Drea’s rereading a bunch of news reports about “accidents” that Drea believed had been caused by the Furies, trying to locate other copies of the overdue (“missing”) book, and rehashing the strange run-in with the antiquities librarian. She’d been so stressed out recently that she hadn’t charged her phone in days, and it had died. “I—I totally forgot.” She felt like she should just start handing out preprinted apologies, the way she kept letting people down.
“You’re supposed to be cochair of the committee, Em. Do you know how stupid I felt, waiting for you to show up?” Gabby’s voice broke, and Em winced. She wanted so badly to be able to tell Gabby about what she was doing, why she was behaving so strangely. But she knew she’d sound crazy, and Gabby would never understand. Anyway, she couldn’t tell Gabby—she’d made a promise to the Furies.
Instead, Em was left feeling awful—outside her own life, unable to talk to her closest friends about what was going on. She was getting doubly punished: first by the Furies, and now by Gabby and JD. She thought about what Mrs. Haynes had said about the Furies driving people mad. Maybe this kind of cycle of hurt and dishonesty was the core of insanity.
“I had—I needed to study for the SATs,” Em said weakly. “My parents are really riding me about it. They made me turn off my phone.”
“Em, you know how important this stuff is to me,” Gabby said, lending each word a special amount of meaning. Em rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. It was true. For Gabby, much more than for Em, the dances and parties marked important milestones. They were symbols in her personal life. Just six months ago Gabby had announced her “V-Squared” Plan—her intention to lose her virginity on Valentine’s Day, with Zach. Then Em had hooked up with Zach. That asshole. Now he was gone. Off in some recovery facility somewhere—if the rumors were true. Em shuddered, thinking about the gossip that Zach had been in some kind of accident. Deep down, she knew the truth: the Furies must have gotten to him, too.
Without Zach around, Valentine’s Day had come and gone with little fanfare, Em secretly agonizing over JD and Gabby acting more bubbly than ever to preserve her pride. Gabby was doing her best to keep up appearances, to still function as queen social bee of Ascension—even though Em knew that she must often still feel sad, betrayed, and embarrassed. Em dug her heels into the mattress, disgusted by the memories.
“I know, Gabby, and I’m sorry. I really am.” She was. But seriously, a dance was the last thing she could think about right now. How could she get that across to Gabby without sounding like she didn’t care?
“And when people flake, nothing gets done.” The pitch of Gabby’s voice raised. “This dance has to go well, Em, can’t you understand that? I need it to.”