The Cinderella Society (25 page)

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

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 lower lip. “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 good 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”?

“Yes, we did and, like you said, mission accomplished,” Paige said. “There’s more going on here than just your mission, Jess. If we’re going to stop the Wickeds, we need to do it across the board. One person at a time won’t get us there fast enough.”

“But they still want Heather. Lexy said she’s going to test her.”

“That’s Heather’s cross to bear. You can’t always fight other people’s battles for them.”

“But I can help. Isn’t that the point?” I looked from one Sister to the other. “Or are we just doing spy work here?”

“Of course we want to help Heather,” SJ soothed. “Paige just means we need to look at the big picture and figure out how best to do that.”

By sticking up for her, obviously
. Was I really the only one who saw that? “If we let them use Heather, they’ll keep blackmailing other girls because they know they can. How many Reggies do they have to hurt before you step up?”

Sarah Jane tried to calm me down in her peace-and-light way, but Paige simply studied me like I was an experiment gone awry. When she spoke again, there was a hint of admiration in her voice laced with caution. “Don’t get in deeper than you can get out of, Jess. There’s only so much we can do to protect you.”

Given Lexy’s fascination with torturing me, that wasn’t a news flash. “I’m not turning my back on Heather. If she needs me, I’m there.”

“As long as you understand the consequences.”

“Crystal clear.”

Paige gave me a stiff nod and picked up her stuff to go to the lounge. Space was a good thing for both of us right then. If they gave me a mission, they needed to trust me to see it through and not run away at the first sign of trouble. And if they wanted me as their leader, they needed to know I wasn’t going to back down from doing the right thing just because Paige wanted me to keep my nose clean.

Yes, I worried a little that I’d made her mad. I liked Paige.
But I had to think she’d have been disappointed if I’d let an innocent Reggie get hung out to dry. She would’ve taken the same stand, wouldn’t she? Because if she wouldn’t have …

I didn’t even want to go down that road.

*   *   *

Sarah Jane set down the last of the paint buckets on a tarp covering the gym floor. We’d set up shop for the banner party there, and the other cheerleaders were starting to stream in. I dropped the box of paintbrushes with an echoing thud. “How exactly does this work?”

She had me unroll the giant paper, stopping every fifteen feet or so to let her cut the banners. Nichele, the awesome alternate, put the rocks we’d collected on the corners to keep them from rolling back up, and Kyra started outlining the slogans with a thick black marker.

“We can start painting as soon as Kee’s done sketching the letters,” SJ said. “We try to knock out as many banners as we can before the guys get here. Things usually get a little crazy after that.”

The door burst open as Lexy dragged in a heavy tarp and positioned it along the far wall. It was the most work I’d seen her do since I’d moved to Georgia.

“We’ll do a massive banner on that tarp.” SJ gestured toward Lexy. “The football players put their handprints and signatures on it, and we fill in around it with markers.”

A shiver ran down my spine in anticipation of seeing Ryan again. I
had
dreamed about the lake, the jerk. Not once, but twice. Talk about not wanting to wake up.

Kyra made quick work of the slogans, and we started working in groups of three or four on different banners. SJ, Kyra, and I huddled together to paint
Mt. Sterling ROCKS!
in a glossy rainbow of colors.

“So,” Kyra said, way too casually. “Ben and I saw you and Ryan at the lake.”

“Why didn’t you say hi?” My voice gave nothing away. “I didn’t see you.”

Her auburn curls hung down, half hiding her grin, as she painted the exclamation point. “I’m not surprised.”

My face flushed, and I shushed SJ and Kyra’s laughter before they drew attention to us. Fortunately, everyone else was involved in their own chat fests and didn’t notice my flaming glow.

I gave them the abbreviated version of our date. Very abbreviated.

“As long as he gave you a good-night kiss this time,” SJ teased.

“Ryan’s a great guy.” Kyra dipped a brush into a container of vivid purple. “It’s been a tough couple of years for him. I’m glad to see him happy.”

“What was he like? After it happened?”

SJ’s brush slicked a red ribbon of paint inside the M. “He never talked about the accident. Not to us, anyway. Mark said he never talked about it with him either.”

“It’s against the guys’ code of silence.” Kyra made a face as she swirled purple paint in the dot over the
i
. “It’s like they think talking about something other than football will suck the testosterone out of them.”

I painted the
R
in bright blue strokes and wondered if Ryan would talk to me about what happened. If I was his girlfriend—a yet unknown status—it seemed like he probably would. What kind of relationship would it be if we only shared the surface stuff?

All I knew about that day was that Lexy and her mom were driving in town the fall before last when a drunk driver
ran a stop sign and hit the driver’s side. Already drunk at five o’clock, and the driver walks away with barely a scratch. Lexy suffered a concussion and a broken arm, and Ryan’s mom was killed instantly.

A life extinguished all because of someone’s stupid buzz fix. I didn’t know how Ryan could stand it.

I wanted to ask them more about the accident, but I didn’t want to risk Lexy overhearing. Although when I looked around, Lexy had conveniently disappeared. Probably to take a spa day after doing five minutes of actual work. Nichele and Penny were left to paint the
Go–Fight–Win
sign by themselves.

Nichele looked much more relaxed with Lexy gone. I couldn’t get Heather’s comment out of my head:
I saw Nichele Stanton hanging around for a while
. Nichele would no more take a photo of Heather in a compromising position than I would. Then again, I would’ve said the same about Leah Michaels. With Nichele acting so nervous around Lexy, I couldn’t rule out blackmail as a possibility.

I needed to catch her alone and pump her for information. As subtly as possible, of course.

We moved to a
Panther Pride—Catch the Fever
sign, and Sarah Jane eyed Kyra’s giant bubble letters. “This would go faster with the wider brushes. Do we have any in Coach Trent’s office?”

“I can check.” I was starting to get antsy knowing the guys would be showing up soon. It would do me good to work off my nervous energy. Not nerves about seeing Ryan—those butterflies were in good shape—but nerves at how everyone would react to Ryan and me together. I’d never been on the social scene as part of a couple before. It was the ultimate moment of acceptance: when the whole world
could see that someone chose
you
over everyone else.

I’d even dressed in a sparkly tank for the occasion. It was a little clingier than I was used to—more
sleek
than
sporty
, but they were in the same ballpark, I figured. I’d decided the occasion called for a little extra spice. I didn’t want any of the Wickeds or Villains to think Ryan was settling for a frump.

I headed down the back hall and took the shortcut across the science wing to get to Coach Trent’s office. I rounded the corner by the chem labs but pulled up short at a loud clattering in the janitor’s closet.

“I swear to God, Lexy, if a mouse runs over my foot, I’m out of here.”

Lexy
. In the
janitor’s closet?
I stepped back to look at the door plaque. Not janitor’s closet, but electrical room.

“Keep your voice down, you idiot. Where’s the light?”

A tiny strip of light peeked out from underneath the door.

“Lock the door and put the blueprints up here.”

Their voices got quieter, and I strained my ears to pick up what I could. Science wing … bomb shelter … equipment room …

Blueprints of the school? This had to be about Heather’s blackmail.

“That little witch sent us to an electrical closet!” Definitely Morgan’s voice. I’d recognize that hiss anywhere.

The little witch had to be Heather. They were definitely on to her.

“She thinks she screwed us over,” Lexy said, “but this might be exactly what we’re looking for.”

I pressed my ear against the door, hoping no one would come wandering down the hall. Or worse, that Lexy would
swing the door open without warning. I figured I’d at least hear the door unlock before it crashed into me.

“There!” Lexy sounded way too excited. “Look at that switch panel. Science wing, shelter, storage, equipment room. It follows the layout of the school, so it should match the blueprints, right?”

“Do I look like I know anything about electricity?”

“It’s a standard circuit panel. Anything with power running to it is hooked into here. It follows a straight path across the school, so it should match the blueprints.”

Morgan sounded bored. “I guess.”

“The blueprints go from the science wing to the bomb-shelter stairs straight to the equipment room. Nothing about a storage area. If the vault is underground and supposed to be secret, where do you think it would be?”

Long pause.
Loooong
pause. I could feel Lexy’s impatience radiating through the door. What a drag it must be to have friends who were mentally vacant. Of Lexy’s favorite Wicked pals, Morgan was definitely the lap-dog sidekick, along for the ride as Lexy’s number one groupie, but not contributing much beyond that. Tina was the one who could match Lexy play-by-play in their manipulative games.

“Here,”
Lexy growled, giving up on her sidekick entirely. “It would be right next to the bomb shelter, and not on the blueprints where anyone in the county clerk’s office could see it.”

I heard feet shuffling and bolted to safety a few classrooms down, ducking behind the edge of the locker row. The electrical-closet door opened a few inches as Lexy made sure there was no one around. I watched Morgan finish zipping a long duffel bag around the blueprints as Lexy locked the door with … a set of keys?

Assistant Janitor Rick. It looked like money could buy all sorts of interesting resources if you knew where to lay it down. I wondered who else was on their payroll. I just hoped they weren’t as well funded as we were.

“Take the bag out to the car and put it in the trunk,” Lexy instructed. “We’ll need the prints when we put the screws to Clark Bar.”

“What are you going to do?”

Lexy linked her elbow through Morgan’s. “I’m going to figure out how to make the little schemer pay.”

*   *   *

By the time I got back to the gym, the first carload of guys was arriving. Just like that, the gym went from assembly line to flirting session.

The girls poured the trays for the guys’ hands, and the football players got to work. Mike Braille chased Lexy around the gym, trying to put two red handprints on her butt (which I actually thought was pretty funny), and the other guys filed into the locker room to wash their hands. I handed them markers on their way back out so they could sign under their handprints, all the while keeping one eye on the open gym doors and trying to figure out how to keep Lexy from making Heather’s life a living hell.