“You don’t care about justice. You just want revenge.” Em’s voice was a low growl.
Ty smiled again—this time, it was both beautiful and terrifying. “I guess we take what we can get,” she said.
And then Ty was gone. As though she’d turned to ashes and scattered, dust blew around the room for a second and then settled.
Em was left alone, gasping as though suffocated by smoke and fire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the cold light of day—the air had literally cooled to a seasonal thirty-five degrees—Skylar knew that Gabby wasn’t to blame for any of last night’s disasters. It wasn’t Gabby’s fault that “Dot-Crotch” was still ringing in Skylar’s ears; it wasn’t Gabby’s fault that when Skylar had looked up after tripping over the log, all she’d seen were faces distorted by laughter, like reflections in a fun-house mirror. But that didn’t stop Skylar from obsessively recalling Gabby’s face shining down through the shadows, full of pity. Every time Skylar pictured it, she wanted to puke.
Which was why she’d been screening Gabby’s calls all day. She’d slept as late as possible, and then watched several hours of bad television while Aunt Nora was at the indoor farmers’ market and running errands. Every time she finally started to relax, strains of “Let Me Entertain You” would seep back into her consciousness.
And out of her humiliated haze, she remembered Em talking to her. Her memories were fuzzy and Em had seemed to be babbling, but some of the words stuck with her—something about Meg and her cousins being dangerous? Something about them knowing her secrets?
She squirmed on the brown suede couch, finding it impossible to get comfortable. The question rang in her mind: Meg couldn’t possibly know the full story of her Dot-Crotch past, right? No one could. It must have been a coincidence that those boys had somehow found that old video. . . . A terrible, humiliating coincidence . . .
She just needed to lie low for a few days. Figure out how to do damage control. Maybe if she called Meg and asked her a few veiled questions, she could figure out how much people knew. . . . But when she dialed Meg’s number, there was no answer.
? ? ?
She still hadn’t heard from Meg by Sunday evening, nor had she picked up any of Gabby’s calls. Or showered. Or changed out of her sweatpants. Or thought about her homework. Earlier Aunt Nora had tried to figure out why Skylar had been moping for a day and a half. “Anything you want to talk about, sweetheart?” Skylar had answered with a curt “No.”
As her aunt continued to pry (“Did you go to a party last night?”), Skylar’s eyes fell on the turquoise pendant that hung around her neck. Guiltily, she found herself wondering whether Nora had noticed that some of her other necklaces were missing. If she had, she hadn’t said anything about it.
“I hope you’re hanging out with the right people, Skylar,” Nora said. “I’ve been meaning to ask, have you run into a girl named Drea? Drea Feiffer? Her mother and I used to be friends—”
Skylar interrupted. She didn’t need her aunt’s social charity. “I have enough friends, Aunt Nora. I just need some space.” Now her aunt was out cooking meals for an elderly neighbor, something she did every Sunday. Skylar was grateful for the silence. She was heating up a can of tomato-basil soup on the stove when the doorbell rang, interrupting her self-pitying reverie and causing her to drop the ladle with a clang.
She peered through the lace curtains that bordered the front door. Gabby was standing on the stoop, juggling her purse and a giant tote bag. “Let me in,” Gabby mouthed. Skylar hesitated, but only for a second.
Then she opened the door a crack, finding it difficult to make eye contact and wondering vaguely what her hair must look like. “What do you want?”
“I was worried about you, Sky,” Gabby said, pushing her way in the door and down the hall. “You haven’t answered my calls.”
“I’ve been . . . busy,” Skylar mumbled.
Gabby raised her eyebrows, and Skylar could feel her eyes sweeping over the sweatpants, the ratty sweatshirt, the mussed-up hair. She knew she looked the opposite of busy.
But Gabby just chirped, “Are you cooking something? It smells good.”
Skylar trailed Gabby into the kitchen, suddenly having lost her appetite. “Soup,” she said sullenly, noting that Gabby, too, was wearing sweats—only hers looked fresh and stylish, like she’d just come from a clarifying yoga class.
“Skylar, babe, look at me,” Gabby said as she unloaded her things onto the kitchen table, dropping her voice the way she did when she wanted to be taken seriously. She put her palms on the table and leaned forward. “I know why you haven’t been picking up my calls. But listen. Do not give the party—or anything that happened that night—another thought.”