Curse of the Wickeds (The Cinderella Society, Episode 2) (11 page)

A setup, heinous and premeditated, to get a Reggie under their thumb. It was one thing catching other people’s mistakes in action. But to purposely set someone up to try to get dirt on her? The Wickeds were pure evil.

“Did you see her take the picture?”

“I didn’t see anyone. Nichele Stanton was hanging around for a while, but I didn’t see her afterward.”

Nichele definitely wasn’t in with the Wickeds. It was possible Nichele could’ve been a target, but it was more likely that a Wicked had been lurking nearby. The Wickeds were master of stealth when they wanted to be.

I squeezed Heather’s wrist for reassurance, trying to figure out how to help. “What are you going to do about Cameron?”

This was clearly the wrong question since it prompted more tears.
 

“Sorry, you don’t have to tell me. But Heather?” I waited until her bloodshot eyes met mine. “What does Lexy want from you?”

I watched as her mind slowly reengaged. “She wants me to give her opinions.”

Lexy asking other people’s advice? That didn’t compute. “What kind of opinions?”

“Weird stuff. Like she wants me to picture things and tell her what I see. Or hold a piece of something and tell her what I think about it.” She looked at me nervously. “It’s not like I have ESP or anything. But my mom had a gift for knowing things. She once helped the police find a girl who wandered off outside our church after service. Back before my mom died.”

Why was Mt. Sterling such a scary place for moms? I needed to give mine a five-alarm hug when I got home. “I’m sorry about your mom, Heather.”

“She died when I was born, so I never knew her. People tell me I look like her, though.” She smiled, a tiny crack in her misery. Then her face fell. “I don’t know how they even knew about the intuitive thing. And I’m not really like her anyway. Sometimes I get a glimpse of things, but it’s more like intuition that says
Don’t go down that road; it’s bad news
. It’s nothing like what Lexy thinks it is.”

I wondered if Nan would call that a spiritual gift. Most people would be afraid of it. No wonder Heather kept it under wraps.

“Did you ever get a sense of anything for Lexy?”

A light glinted in Heather’s eyes. “Not usually. And even when I got a hunch, I didn’t tell her. I just made stuff up as I went along.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Ten points to the Reggies.

Heather laughed too, and it felt good to let loose for a minute. We laughed harder than we really needed to, but it was more of an emotional release mixed with a mini-celebration of finally getting one over on the Wickeds.

When the laughter subsided, we sobered up again. “So,” I said, drumming my fingers on the Formica tabletop, “what happens next?”

“I think Lexy’s onto me. She thinks I’ve been sending her on a wild goose chase, so she said she’s going to test me.” She shuddered. “There’s something they want at school. I’ve figured out that much. Something under the school, I think, but that doesn’t make sense.” Heather shrugged. “I don’t get it. But whatever they want, they want it bad. The look she gets in her eye when she thinks I’ve given her a lead gives me the heebies.”

I thought about the day after cheer practice. The excitement on Lexy’s face had given me the heebies too.

“What if you don’t help her?”

“She’ll give the pictures to Cameron.”

I sighed. “You need to tell him, Heather.”

“I know. I just don’t know how.”

I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if Ryan ever cheated on me, and I wasn’t even sure we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I didn’t envy Heather the job ahead of her. “If you tell him, the pictures have no meaning.”

“If I tell him, our relationship has no meaning.”

Touché.
“I’m here if you need me, okay?” I jotted down my cell number on a napkin. “Call me anytime.”

“I wish I was more like you. The way you stand up to Lexy . . . you’re a role model. And not just to me.” She shook her head. “But you don’t want a piece of this, Jess. You’re already on her list.”

I already had a piece of it. This was exactly what I needed to know to put the full weight of the Cindys behind me. As glad as I was that I’d achieved my mission and confirmed their blackmail scheme, knowing I could help Heather mattered more.

“Don’t worry about me. Just watch your back where she’s concerned, and call me if you need backup.” I got up to go, since I was technically still on the clock. “There’s a bathroom through there if you want to clean up. Take as much time as you need. My grandma won’t care.”

“Okay,” Heather said, picking up her stack of tissues. “Jess?”

I paused at the door. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for listening. And for helping.”

“That’s what friends do.”

Chapter Nineteen

Grateful for my office, I slid into the seat and exhaled long and slow. I was feeling guilty about having to cut my volunteer hours way back right when the Humane Society was gearing up for their big summer adoption events. I’d recruited Mel to help, and now I would barely even be there myself. Some example I set.

But I was already an assignment behind in my
CMM
because of work and my leader stuff plus the Heather mission on top of it. Most days, it felt like my head was spinning.

And that little tiny bit of brain space I had left over? That part was devoted to Ryan.

Or to Tina, more specifically, and the nagging suspicion that she might be right. That Ryan
didn’t
want to be seen with me in public.

After moving past the depressing incident at The Grind on our first date, things seemed to be going so well with Ryan. Yet I couldn’t help but notice all of our bonding happened off the beaten path. On IM or on the phone, we were golden. But that was private. He’d taken me to the Fun Zone, but that wasn’t in Mt. Sterling. The only person we’d seen there was Matt. At the lake, Ryan and I kept to the far side, away from the beach where everyone usually hung out.

I’d been trying to tell myself it was because Ryan wanted to be alone with me. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t measuring up. I might look better than I had, but I was no Fake Blondie.

Not the time to dwell.

I shook my head to clear the woe-is-mes and pulled out the recruitment-surge file Paige had given me. Maybe I could at least prove my worth as leader.

I started jotting notes about what we knew for sure and what we suspected was true.

1 - Doubling their new recruit class (strength in numbers)

2 - Targeting people in key positions (either directly or by getting to someone close to them)

3 - Getting the Reggies to do their dirty work (building spy network to boost intel?)

We were looking at the pieces—a lot of them, anyway—but something was still missing. The bigger plan of what they were trying to accomplish. Where did the recruitment surge fit in? Why the sudden need for extra Wickeds if they had spies doing their work for them?

Paige walked in, stopping short when she saw me at the desk. “I keep forgetting you might be in here.”

“Sorry. I thought it was okay that we shared the office.”

“No worries. It’s fine.” She opened a drawer and tossed in her purse. “I’m just so used to coming in here when I need to regroup. It’s nice to be able to close out the world when you need it.”

I’d been an almost-leader for less than a week, and I could already see where that would come in handy. “Want me to scat for a while?”

“Not on your life. You need to be here more than I do.” She inclined her head toward my folder. “How’s it coming along?”

“Slowly. It’s hard, because I know some of the players but not all. I don’t really understand how the Reggies operate.”

She pulled up a chair next to me. “You’ve been to a lot of schools, so it’s probably similar to what you’re used to. The Reggies aren’t one group; they’re a community of little groups.
Community
isn’t really the right word, though, because they rarely connect, thanks to the Wickeds. The Wickeds get antsy if any groups show signs of merging. Size matters to the Wickeds, in their own ranks and with the Reggies.”

She flipped to a new page of my notebook and drew a diagram of the cafeteria. Just like at any school, mapping out the cafeteria was the easiest way to show how the groups split out. The drama club, student government, class leaders, athletes, brains, goths . . . the list went on and on. Her map looked slightly different from my lunch period, but the groups were mostly the same. Whether you were sophomores or seniors, groups were groups and cliques were cliques.

I tucked her map into the surge folder for future reference. Being an outsider might help in some ways, but it was an uphill battle to keep all the major players straight with a student body of a thousand and a half. All I wanted was to wrap up my mission and find my new comfort zone.

“Oh!” I dropped my pen—I’d nearly forgotten my good news. “Mission accomplished with Heather,
and
I’ve got intel about the Reggies.”

“Really?” Paige opened the door to the War Room and pulled Sarah Jane away from her earbuds. I filled them in on what I’d seen at the restaurant.

Sarah Jane looked at Paige. “Any chance that’s a one-time thing?”

“I’d be shocked it if were,” Paige said. “It’s a brilliant strategy for them. They can’t be everywhere at once, but the Reggies can. We need to get a research team together for that.”

“Why Corrine?” I asked.

We wandered into the War Room, talking about possible connections. The two columns Paige had separated out—
KEY PLAYERS
and
KEY FRIENDS
—were still there. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t figure out where Corrine would fit.

“Is she a threat to them?”

Sarah Jane gave a half laugh. “Corrine isn’t a threat to anyone except for the Class Nicest award. She’s friends with everyone.”

Paige and I looked at each other. Could it be—?

“She’s a floater,” I said at the same time Paige said, “She’s a connector.”

It took Sarah Jane a second to add our statements together. “So it’s not what she has—it’s what she’s capable of?”

Paige nodded. “Her strength is that she’s easy to talk to and people respect her. She’s one of the few people who could go back and forth between Reggie groups to connect them.”

“So they’re not just targeting people who have something they want,” I said. “They’re getting rid of anything that poses a threat to them keeping the Reggies isolated.”

I grabbed my notebook from the office. Two more pieces of the puzzle went on my list.

4 - Keep the Reggies isolated

5 - Eliminate any strength that poses a threat

Paige made another column on the board called
THREATS
as Sarah Jane passed her the cards for people with strengths that could threaten the Wickeds’ power. People who were connectors (like Corrine), people known for voicing their opinions no matter what the opposition, go-getters who craved success the way the Wickeds craved power. If a target could change the status quo, she was a threat to the Wickeds. The status quo was their friend.

But Heather didn’t fit in that category. Her strength wasn’t a threat to the Wickeds, it was something they wanted to exploit. I added a sixth puzzle piece to my list.

6 - Exploit any strengths that can be used to their advantage

When they’d separated out everyone they could, Paige turned back to me. “That’s huge stuff right there,” she said. “All this and you got through to Heather too?”

I gave them the scoop about Heather’s meltdown, leaving out the more personal details about her and Cameron bonding over their dads.

“I was worried it might be something like that,” Paige said. “A few years ago, the Wickeds got a picture of someone in a compromising position with a substitute teacher.”

Sarah Jane’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “A
teacher
? Geez, I’m naïve about people.”

“Better naïve than photographed,” I said. “Heather’s pretty sure they’re looking for something at school. Maybe under it? What would the Wickeds want underneath a school?”

Paige tapped her pen on her thigh. “Nothing I’d give any merit to.”

“Meaning?”

“There are rumors about a vault under the school, but no one’s ever confirmed it.”

I thought back to the day of the water main break. Grandma Aniston showing up with Principal Zimmer and the other power women in tow. Lexy looking way too excited about the hole the workers dug before being turned away. Now it made sense. “Who fixed the water main break?”

Paige sighed. “You don’t have the clearance, Jess.”

“Then what’s in the vault?”

“No one knows,” Sarah Jane chimed in. “But if the Wickeds are trying to find it . . .” She looked at Paige.

Paige shook her head. “I don’t have that kind of clearance either. Let it go, Jess. You did a good job getting through to Heather. Now we know for sure that blackmail is part of their arsenal. That gives us more to go on.”

I didn’t agree it was enough
or
that I should drop it. “How can I not have clearance? I’m the new leader. You’re the ones who gave me the mission in the first place.” Did they choose me as the new leader because they thought they could use me as their puppet? That I’d do whatever they said, no questions asked, just because I was grateful to be selected in their big “break with tradition”?