“Yeah, I did, but when I put it in my mom’s car, it was blank.” I plopped down on the thick carpet to stretch. “Monica is totally trying to keep me off the squad.”
And probably trying to kill me.
The list of things I couldn’t tell my best friend was getting way too long for my personal comfort.
“That witch! I hate her,” Jess said, and for once I really believed she hated someone. Of course, pom squad was the one thing that Jess was super-serious about and had been since we were tiny. It was natural that anything or anyone getting in the way of our dream would drive her crazy. It would have been driving me crazy too . . . if I didn’t have so many other things on my mind.
The review hadn’t gone as badly as I’d anticipated, but it hadn’t gone really well either. The Elders hadn’t reprimanded me for using a third-stage command. In fact, they’d been positively thrilled about how powerfully I was manifesting, certain I was going to be something really special in the Settler world.
I, of course, wasn’t so thrilled. Especially when I heard about some of their plans for me, plans that involved special training camps in the summer that would put me on the fast track to an Enforcement career straight out of high school. Enforcement was so
not
my idea of the world’s most perfect job. If Protocol were the police of the Settler world, Enforcement were the FBI. It was a scary, difficult, dangerous career, and I wasn’t into any of those things.
Considering SA had shelled out the cash to resod our lawn and fix our garage door in the middle of the night so none of our neighbors would see the results of the fire, however, I wasn’t in a position to argue with the Elders at the moment.
Even if I hadn’t caused a major cover-up situation, they actually believed
I
was to blame for the clones. They thought my overabundance of power had negatively interacted with the energy of a murder victim or something lame like that. No matter how many times I told them about the threatening phone call, they seemed unimpressed.
They believed someone at my school had been raising corpses through black magic, but they were convinced the clone situation was unrelated because no teenager could complete such a complicated voodoo spell. Ethan had helped confirm this theory because he’d drawn an Unsettled during the day when we were training together. Even close contact with my power was enough to up his power, something SA had never heard of.
The Elders thought this was really cool . . . and really dangerous. Nothing had been decided yet, but there had been talk of security. Like, big-time security, not a junior Protocol officer like Ethan.
My mom and I had been followed by one large, intimidating Enforcer guy all afternoon, and there was talk of adding two or three more to Megan detail. Like the one guy wasn’t bad enough. Barker was freaky, and it gave me the creeps to even sit in the same car with him.
He was the one who had dropped me off a block from Jess’s house and who would be waiting to escort me back home—where he would also be staying—after we were finished practicing for tryouts. Until SA decided what to do with me, tall, dark, and scary would be
living
with us.
The situation sucked. Especially because I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like if it was Ethan in our guest room instead of the Enforcer thug.
“Hey, I got the music from London, so we’re good to go. It’s okay—don’t look so sad,” Jess said, laying a hand on my leg as she leaned deeper into her stretch.
“Thanks. Good thinking.” I tried to smile, but it was so hard. All I could seem to think about was Ethan. How he’d testified about his daytime Unsettled without even looking at me. How he’d rushed from headquarters without saying hi and jumped into Monica’s car, looking positively thrilled with his new assignment. I’d been upgraded to Enforcer thug bodyguard, so Monica had my Ethan as her bodyguard.
Not
your
Ethan. He made that clear.
Even if Monica was lying about whatever had happened on her porch, Ethan was obviously not into me. If he were, he would have called, text-messaged or . . .
something
to let me know that the thing with the Monicster was just an assignment and that the kiss last night had been more than a reaction to a stressful situation.
But he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t and I’d probably never kiss him ever again.
“Megan, are you crying?” Jess asked, grabbing my hand.
“No, no, I’m just . . . stressed.” I sniffed, forcing myself to swallow past the lump in my throat. I would not let Ethan make me cry. I had to hold it together. “Mrs. Pierce was giving me a hard time today, and Monica’s being a jerk, and . . . other stuff.”
“What other stuff?” Jess waited a few seconds while I tried to figure out what I could tell her that wouldn’t break Settler secrecy. “Come on, Meg, you know you can tell me anything, right?”
“I . . . ” No, I couldn’t tell her anything! I wished I could, but I couldn’t. “I swear, it’s nothing. I’m overreacting.”
“Okay,” Jess said, sounding like she didn’t believe me. “Well, let’s get started. I told Kyle I’d call him after we were done, so we’ve only got about an hour. Otherwise Clara will crack down with her phone curfew and I won’t be able to call until tomorrow.”
“She’s so weird with the phone stuff. I mean, you’re almost sixteen years old—you should be able to talk on the phone after nine o’clock. The way she checks the cell phone records to make sure you’re not calling after phone curfew is just weird.”
“I know! She’s such a freak.” Jess went off on a tirade, like I’d known she would, saving me from any further best-friend prodding about my fragile emotional state.
Still, I felt awful the entire time we were practicing. Jess had been a great friend to me for, like, forever. If I couldn’t tell her about the Settler stuff, who could I tell? Maybe once all this craziness was over, I’d find a way to break the news—after swearing her to secrecy, of course. It would be so nice to have someone normal to talk to about all the weird undead drama.
“So what do you think? You ready for tomorrow?” Jess asked, still breathing hard after our third time through our final routine.
“As ready as I’ll ever be. If we practice any more, I’ll be dead.” I collapsed on the floor with a sigh, the room spinning around me. All the late nights were catching up with me. I’d never felt so wiped at the end of a dance practice.
Jess laughed and flopped down next to me. “Make sure you get some rest tonight. Don’t stay up until midnight talking to your man or whatever you’ve been doing that’s making you fall asleep in English.”
“Right. About that,” I said, squeezing my eyes closed as I realized I had to break the news about my lack of homecoming date to Jess. I’d totally forgotten I’d said we’d double with her and Kyle! “It turns out I won’t be going to the dance tomorrow night.”
“What?” she asked, eyes round. “Why?”
“Ethan and I broke up.” Crap. The words hurt so much it was like they were true.
“Oh no! God, Megan, I’m so sorry.” She leaned over and enveloped me in a fierce hug, her obvious empathy only making me feel worse. “That’s awful. What a jerk! The
day
before homecoming, too!”
“Yeah, pretty jerky.” I sighed, knowing
I
was the real jerk.
“Listen, I’ll cancel with Kyle and we’ll stay home and veg as planned,” she said, proving she was the best friend ever. But I couldn’t let her make that sacrifice.
“No way. You’ve got to go—to report on Ethan for me if nothing else. He’s going to take Monica to the dance instead of me.”
“What!” Jess screeched, practically shattering something in my inner ear with her outrage. “Ethan dumped you for Monica? What the hell is wrong with him?”
“I guess he likes older, more popular girls.”
“Older, more horrible girls is more like it.” Jess slammed her hand down on the carpet. “This is awful. He can’t take her! He just can’t!”
“Apparently he can. And today I saw them out driving together in her car.”
“No, this can’t happen,” Jess said, bouncing up to stalk around the dance space. She was as pissed as I’d ever seen her in our four years of friendship. “We’ve got to keep this from happening.”
“No, it’s okay, it’s—”
“No, it’s not okay. They’re both awful,” Jess said, turning flashing blue eyes to mine. “This is what you were so upset about before, wasn’t it? What you weren’t going to tell me about?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why weren’t you going to tell me? I tell you everything, Megan.” She paused, sucking in a big breath before dropping her gaze to the floor. “It really hurts my feelings that you weren’t going to say anything.”
“I’m sorry, Jess. Really, I—”
“Listen, I’ve got to call Kyle for real now, okay? I mean, if we’re not doubling with you and Ethan, we’re going to have to find another ride. He doesn’t get his new car until graduation.”
“Okay.” I stood up and grabbed my dance bag, feeling like the lowest form of scum on the earth. “You aren’t mad at me, are you?”
She crossed her arms, making me wait a horrible moment. “No, I’m just . . . sad, that’s all. It’ll be fine. Just talk to me next time, okay?”
“I totally will, I swear,” I said, giving her a hug before heading to the door of her room.
I felt awful as I trudged to the dark car where Barker was waiting. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to lose my best friend.
CHAPTER 13
I’d just made it back to my house and was sneaking a Dr. Pepper from the fridge—because I still had to study for a stupid
Macbeth
quiz and needed the caffeine—when the phone rang. I pounced on the kitchen cordless, answering before the ringing woke my parents. After our crazy time last night, they’d gone to bed at like seven thirty, right when I was leaving to go to Jess’s house with Barker.
“Hello?” I whispered, highly conscious of said bodyguard.
As far as I knew, he was getting ready for bed, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been given leave to monitor my phone time. My parents were all about giving other people control over my life—especially people who were supposed to keep me from setting anything else on fire.
“Megan, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?” It was Jess, which made me smile. She was probably risking an after-nine-o’clock phone call to tell me that she loved me and that we were still BFFs.
“Why are you whispering?”
“I’m in the kitchen and my parents are asleep. They had a rough time last night,” I said, hoping Jess wouldn’t ask me why they’d had a rough time, because I was so done with lies right now.
“Okay, well . . . jeez, I didn’t think they’d be asleep already. Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Well, I . . . I called Kyle after you left. Right?”
“Right.”
“And I was telling him that Ethan was going to the dance with Monica.”
“Yeah.” There was nothing fake about how upset hearing Ethan’s name made me.
He really
was
an ass. He’d had all day to call and at least leave a message on our home machine saying he was sorry for not telling me about his transfer personally, but he hadn’t. It was now nine thirty, and he apparently hadn’t been able to spare a single second in his busy, Monica-protecting schedule to pick up the phone. It hurt. Badly. I’d thought we were friends at the very least, if not on our way to being something more.
“Well, so I told him I couldn’t believe Ethan had done that to you, and Kyle told me I
shouldn’t
believe it because he was at the senior bonfire, and Ethan and Monica were there too, but . . .” She paused again, and it was all I could do not to freak out and beg her to talk faster.
“But what?”
“Well, he said they were fighting and not looking at all like a happy couple,” Jess said, getting excited. “And that Monica stomped off into the woods after Ethan said something about you.”