Secrets, Lies, and Scandals
Amanda K. Morgan
For my family
More Blood
There should be more blood.
He lay there, sprawled across the floor, his lips parted as if he were about to speak. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t even breathing. His left eye was partially open, revealing a half-moon of jelly-white eyeball.
Her breath caught somewhere deep in her throat and stuck there, a hard knot just below her vocal chords. She pressed her hand against her chest and swallowed, over and over again. She wouldn’t be sick. She couldn’t. Not here. Not now.
When someone dies, there should be more blood.
Ivy
Friday, May 29
Girls like Ivy McWhellen did not get embarrassed. And if they ever did happen to be embarrassed, it was in an adorable way. Like in an Oh my gosh, I can’t believe he thinks I’m cute way, which was just ridiculous because girls like Ivy McWhellen knew they were cute. They were born knowing.
Which is why anyone would expect Ivy McWhellen to be doing something amazing with her summer. Like maybe sunning on the beach in Cabo. Or having some sort of whirlwind summer romance with the captain of the hockey team (if her school even had a hockey team). Or, at the very least, hanging with her best girlfriends/understudies.
One would not expect a girl like Ivy McWhellen to be trapped desperately on her back underneath a vending machine, slowly suffocating to death. Which happened to be where Ivy was at that exact moment.
It wasn’t her fault. Ivy had been, until very recently, the queen bee. Then she made a really bad decision by following the advice of every terrible chick flick ever that told her to follow her heart.
What those chick flicks never told Ivy was that hearts are bad at directions, and that following her heart would eventually lead her into the high school over summer break and right up to a vending machine. And that her ex–best friends would tip it over on her and leave her there to die.
Stupid, stupid heart.
At least there weren’t cameras. There had been some student council vote about using low-energy ones, and so the old ones had been taken out last week, and the new, not-yet-installed cameras were apparently on back order. The last thing Ivy needed was a stupid video getting stolen and going viral.
Of course, that wouldn’t even matter, if she died.
Ivy took a deep, slow breath, and the vending machine crushed her ribs a little further. And then she lifted up as hard as she could.
The hulking monster of a machine moved two full millimeters.
Ivy lay back. Maybe she should just concentrate on breathing. And try not to think about the way Klaire—who had been her best friend since that time in kindergarten when Ivy convinced her to eat paste—had laughed while Johann, the quarterback, had held Ivy down. Then his two linebacker goons had slowly lowered the vending machine onto her body.
That bitch was going to pay. And so were Johann and the linebackers.
Ivy took another deep, slow breath, and pushed upward. The machine actually moved . . . maybe an inch. And then it teetered and slid, and pain rocketed up her arm as the weight shifted. Ivy sucked in as much breath as she could and tried to scream, but she hardly had anything left in her. All that came out was a pathetic little whimper, like a dying kitten, or like Marc Selver last year when he got sucker punched in the stomach.
“Ivy?”
Ivy tried to pivot her head. It couldn’t be him. Please, God, say it wasn’t him.
He took a step closer.
It was him.
Garrett.
Ruiner of Lives.
Kisser extraordinaire.
Also known as the ex-boyfriend who had cost her everything she loved when he had the nerve to dump her . . . and then the rest of the school had decided Garrett was the Cool One, as he had officially earned the status of the Only Guy to Ever Dump Ivy McWhellen.
And Garrett hadn’t even been cool before that. He’d been, like, unseen. A nobody. But she had seen him, and gotten all of this Love Bullshit in her head, and he had ruined her entire life forever.
“Are you okay under there?” he asked, kneeling down, his stupid hipster Chucks way too close to her head. His face appeared above her, and he looked ridiculous and pudgy from this angle—like her face did when she accidentally forgot to flip the camera lens around and she surprise-selfied herself.
She wheezed throatily, and his eyes widened.
“Wait here a minute, Ivy girl. I’ll save you. I promise.”
He pushed himself up and she heard his Chucks tapping down the hall.