Ashley wore a short skirt that was at least a size too small for her. Her boobs peeked painfully out over the cleavage of her tight cashmere sweater. Her makeup looked almost exactly like Julie’s, except she’d gotten the shades subtly wrong—her foundation was too dark, and she’d managed to spread a glittery highlighter over her entire face. It was like looking at herself through a fun-house mirror, distorted and grotesque.
“W-what are you doing here?” Julie sputtered.
Ashley silently plucked Julie’s purse out of her hands, pulling the lipstick out and applying it in the mirror. It was too light for her complexion, but she smacked her lips together approvingly. Then she dropped the tube into her own purse.
“Um, excuse me, that’s mine,” Julie said, staring at Ashley in disbelief.
“But you’re so nice, I thought you’d want to share,” Ashley said lightly, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“Well, I don’t. Please give it back,” Julie said, holding her hand out. That lipstick had cost her two paychecks.
But Ashley just looked at her challengingly. “No.”
Julie shifted her weight, losing patience. She had enough to deal with right now; she didn’t need a stalker on top of it. “You can’t just go around stealing other people’s things. Or looks,” she steamed. “You’re such a freaking copycat.”
Instead of looking taken aback or ashamed, Ashley just smiled at her, looking oddly excited. “Copycat. What an interesting choice of words.”
“Whatever, Ashley. Just get a life already and stop stealing mine,” Julie said, snatching her lipstick out of Ashley’s purse and striding out of the bathroom, proud that she’d finally stood up to someone. Maybe the police could push her around, but Ashley Ferguson couldn’t.
And more important, she had a hot date to finish.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, AVA SLUMPED into film studies, her head down. That was the bitch about school: No matter what happened, no matter who you got in a fight with, who broke up with you, or whether a teacher tried to molest you at his house, you still had to go to the same freaking classes every day. Face the same demons and humiliation. You couldn’t run and hide, no matter how badly you wanted to.
Case in point: There was Mr. Granger pacing up and down the aisles, his fingers laced cockily in his belt loops, a look of superiority on his face. “So,” he spoke to the class, “how is The Postman Always Rings Twice different from the other movies we’ve seen in this unit?”
Silence. When Granger passed Ava’s desk, she intentionally looked down. To her horror, he paused next to her. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body.
“Miss Jalali?” She flinched at the sound of her name. His voice sounded ice-cold. “What do you think?”
Ava looked up through the long curtain of her hair. “Um. One of the things that struck me was how fatalistic it is,” she mustered. “In And Then There Were None, the whole point was that the judge had to punish people because otherwise they’d never be punished. So it’s about humanity scheming to have some control over its own circumstances. But in this movie, it’s almost like fate has set a trap before any of the characters even meet. Cora and Frank are punished because they’re, like, doomed to be punished.”
“Because they’re, ‘like, doomed’?” Mr. Granger sneered. “Very articulate. Anyone have a less obvious point to make? Colette, what do you think?”
Ava sagged in her chair, the droning of her classmates suddenly very far away. All she wanted was to find some way to prove Granger had murdered Nolan so that he would go to jail—and so that she and her friends would be safe.
But then she noticed something sitting on her desk. It was a folded-up piece of paper, seemingly dropped there a moment ago. Ava glanced around at her classmates, but no one was looking at her. The only person whose gaze was upon her, actually, was Granger’s. He glared at her from the front of the room, his eyes dropping to the paper on her desk.
Ava’s stomach lurched. He’d written it.
She slipped the piece of paper to her lap and opened it up. She recognized his scrawl from his comments on her papers.
Some people know to keep their mouths shut—I guess you’re not one of them. I’d be careful if I were you.
And PS: If you show this to anyone, I’ll know. You don’t want to mess with me.
Ava’s mouth dropped open. She looked up at Granger again, but he was facing the board, chalk in hand. Was that a threat? How could the cops not have found those pictures? She thought back to that moment at his house, when he’d caught her glancing at his phone. He must have known she’d seen them and deleted all the evidence.
Finally, the bell rang, and Ava shot up, desperate to be out of that classroom. She had to get as far from Granger as possible.
“Hey! Hey, Ava, wait!”
Even though she knew it was Alex, Ava didn’t slow down. Alex caught up with her in the hallway, gasping for breath. “Hey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“What was with Granger today? He was being a dick. The stuff you said was totally right on.”