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“You weren’t the only one shocked by that.” I mimicked her tone, stepping closer to her as the train stopped at Seventy-seventh Street to make way for people exiting the train. Ashley pressed closer to me, swinging around to face the doors and accidentally whacked the businessman with her bag again.
“Ash, take your bag off,” I whispered, stifling a giggle. “You’re taking out all the commuters.” She rolled her eyes and slid the bag down between her feet, holding the strap tightly.
“You know, Em, you had a boyfriend when you were a freshman at Keansburg High, too,” Ashley reminded me after the train doors slammed shut and the subway started barreling through the tunnel again. Crap. She had me there.
“Yeah but he wasn’t a boyfriend-boyfriend. Matt and I knew each other since we were kids,” I explained about my sweet, if dippy, freshman-year boyfriend. “That was less a real relationship and more friends that made out every now and then.”
“I wouldn’t mind that.” Ashley grinned, leaning against the subway doors with a dreamy look on her face. Uh-oh.
“Just don’t rush into anything, okay?”
“There’s nothing to rush into—not at Vince A, at least. Brendan’s the only good one. The guys at this school are so annoying,” she whined, coiling one of her red ringlets around her finger. “I mean, I guess there are a few cool ones, but it’s a lost cause. It’s embarrassing,” she added softly, “because they all know about the Anthony thing, and all those stupid rumors he spread about me. It would be nice to meet someone who hadn’t heard anything about me.”
I immediately felt guilty for dismissing my cousin’s interests outside Vince A as an overzealous case of the boy crazies. More than anyone, I understood what it was like to be talked about. “I completely understand,” I replied. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine, you’re probably right anyway.” She was quiet for a minute then gave me a sideways glance. “You know, you never told me what Brendan said when you asked if he had any hot cousins or friends for me.”
“It’s a dead end, Ash.” I chuckled as I remembered what he said. “I’m paraphrasing here, but the quote was something like, ‘All my friends are a bunch of pirates.’”
“Pirates?”
“Yeah. He said all his friends aren’t worth your time, they’re too shady.”
“Even the basketball team? And how would he know what’s worth my time?” she challenged, raising an eyebrow and adopting a haughty look. “I could be shady!”
Smiling at her indulgently, I shook my head. “Ashley, you’re perpetually sunny, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.” She folded her arms, pouting until the train came to a stop at Eighty-sixth Street. “Pirates. Why can’t you let me be the judge of that?”
I just raised an eyebrow at her—she’d refused to believe my insistence about Anthony’s true character at first—and Ashley relented.
“Fine.” She sulked, and was silent as we joined the crowd of people headed up the stairs to the sidewalk. After we arrived on the sidewalk—and made a quick stop in a deli so I could buy a sandwich to take on the class trip—Ashley turned to me with a glint in her eye.
“Since I clearly have no taste in guys, you two should come with us to the Battle of the Bands tomorrow night, and you can pick out a guy for me.” Ashley gave me a wide, toothy smile and nodded her head eagerly.
“Sorry, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that I’m going to be a no-show,” I said, and she frowned at me, fussing with the jeweled clip in her flame-colored curls.
“That’s a pretty clip,” I said, hoping to change the subject from my and Brendan’s avoidance of school functions. Ashley pulled it out of her tangle of curls and gently pushed it in my hands, nearly tripping over her own feet as she walked down the sidewalk.
“Here, you can wear it today,” she huffed as she pulled a black elastic off her wrist and pulled her hair into a messy bun. “My hair’s all frizzy and the clip won’t sit right.”
“Thanks!” I fastened it in the back of my head, putting my hair in a loose updo.
“You look good with your hair up. It’s kind of regal,” she observed, before her lips twisted in a smirk. “You can rip it down and wave your hair around in front of Brendan like a hot librarian or something.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “You watch too much porny late-night TV.”
Ashley ignored my dig. “So what are you guys going to do this weekend, then, since you two are, like, all overdramatic with the ‘Oh, no! No public appearances!’ thing.” Ashley turned her head away from me, throwing her hand across her face overdramatically.
It was my turn to ignore her dig. “No big plans, really. We’re just going to hang out. We’ve spent practically no time together lately. But Brendan’s mom left to meet his dad this morning and we have his house to ourselves.” Brendan had sworn he would cook for me; I had sworn to not snoop around for the cartons of takeout he probably planned on passing off as a home-cooked meal.
“His dad travels a lot, doesn’t he?” Ashley asked, stepping over a large puddle pooling by the crosswalk as we hurried against the light on Park Avenue, and got stuck waiting on the center island in the middle of the two-way road. I explained that Aaron Salinger was overseeing the opening of some resort in South America, and Ashley got a saucy look in her crystal-blue eyes.
“So, does Brendan get that big town house to himself a lot?”
“Well, if his mom’s not there, yes,” I said hesitantly, not quite sure what she was getting at. I hope she doesn’t want to throw a party. “But she’s always either traveling with Brendan’s dad or working on her charity stuff so it’s not like she’s there when Brendan gets home from school. He’s pretty self-sufficient—he’s going to be eighteen next month, remember?” Never mind that Laura Salinger was not the type of woman to have peanut butter crackers and apple juice waiting when her son got home from school anyway.
“So you guys get a lot of alone time, huh?” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down suggestively and I instantly got her hidden meaning.
“Looks like someone put on her pervy pants this morning,” I observed.
“Well, someone else put on her I-don’t-tell-my-cousin-juicy-details pants. And let me tell you, those pants are not a good look on you!”
She gave me a wide-eyed, so-there look, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “C’mon, I don’t have a boyfriend, so I have to live vicariously through you,” Ashley cajoled, tugging at my sweatshirt sleeve. “Give me some details! How did you get him out of this sweatshirt? What else have you gotten off him? I know you said you haven’t gone all the way yet but there’s a lot that happens in between kissing and doing it. Come onnnnnnnn!” She drew the last word out so long I thought she was going to pass out from lack of breath.
“Go watch Cinemax and stop harassing me for dirty details.”
“Come onnnnnnnn!” Ashley repeated as I smirked at her.
“I’m so not talking about this when we’re across the street from school,” I said adamantly as we waited for the Park Avenue light to change. Never mind that there wasn’t much to tell from our four-and-a-half month relationship beyond kissing and some wandering hands. My virginity was still firmly intact. I mulled this over as Ashley pouted, and felt even guiltier not telling Brendan about the spell immediately. Brendan hadn’t once tried to pressure me into anything, respecting my boundaries whenever I put a halt on anything physical—and he had so many notches in his bedpost the damn bed was in danger of falling down.
I sighed, looking up at the entrance to the school as we crossed the street—and spied something that effectively ended the conversation.
“Oh, yeah, I’m definitely not talking about this now,” I said, catching sight of Brendan from the back. He was standing near the bus, wearing an army-green military-style jacket that I didn’t recognize. I was surprised he was waiting outside so late—Ashley and I were cutting it close. I had two morning classes before we were due to leave for the Cloisters.
“Well, let me know if you guys decide to go to that Battle of the Bands thing,” Ashley said, calling out her goodbye as she raced into the ornate entrance of the school. The main building of Vincent Academy was an old mansion that had been converted into a school—and the marble entrance looked less like a high school, more like some posh old billionaire’s home.
I approached Brendan from behind, appreciating the way his black pants hung on him. I pinched his butt before throwing my arms around his waist in a big hug.
“Guess who?” I teased—but Brendan’s body just stiffened. He spun around with a confused expression on his face—which I then realized wasn’t Brendan’s face at all. It was Liam.
“Oh! I’m so sorry! I, um, thought you were Brendan! I mean, obviously, I just… Oh, God. I pinched your butt,” I stammered, embarrassed, to the sophomore I had just accosted in the middle of Eighty-sixth Street. I hadn’t realized that he’d started styling his black hair to resemble Brendan’s messy, very unstyled hair. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I’d be collapsing at the adorableness: Brendan—aloof, hotheaded Brendan—had accidentally cultivated a little mini-me.
“Oh, my God, you just startled me,” Liam gasped, his palms up.
“You and Brendan look a lot alike from the back,” I explained, positive my cheeks were about to burst into flames.
“So you were checking out my butt?” Liam said with a smirk and I smacked his arm.
“Your hair, Liam,” I repeated dryly, and he let a nervous laugh escape.
“Hey, at least I get to tell people I got to first base before lunch,” he teased before putting his hands up again in protest. “No, I won’t! I’m kidding. Oh, my God, Brendan would murder me.” His brown eyes widened in terror.
“He probably would,” I agreed, stifling a snicker at Liam’s mini-freak-out—especially since Brendan would probably find the whole thing entertaining. Still, I couldn’t believe I’d pinched his butt. Why don’t you go feel up the black-haired barista at Starbucks next, genius?
“Don’t you usually come with your cousin?” Liam asked, looking around the street.
“She went in—we’re late,” I said, pointing to my wrist as if I had a watch on.
“Oh. Yeah, I should probably get inside,” Liam said, falling into step alongside me as we entered the building. “I have to talk to Coach during my free period this afternoon.” He grimaced.
“Brendan thinks you’ll be fine—and from what I could see, it was a big nothing,” I promised him, and Liam’s worried face relaxed a little. I had to race up the stairs to my history class, with barely enough time to pull my sweatshirt off and slide into my desk before the bell rang. It wasn’t part of the school uniform—and was a surefire ticket to detention. Although you might be safer sanding the pencil grooves in detention than strolling around Manhattan, doomsday girl.
“Cutting it close, Connor,” my friend Jenn Hynes whispered, turning around in her desk in front of me to wink at me as Mrs. Urbealis walked into the room, calling the class to attention. This would be an easy class today—we were watching old news footage of U.S. protests of the Vietnam War. I tried to focus on the grainy black-and-white telecast—sticking to my earlier vow to just treat today like a normal day—but sitting there, with time to think, the spell I’d done with Angelique began rattling around in my head. Finally I resolved to tell Brendan on the bus ride to the Cloisters instead of waiting until school was over. He had a right to know.
I had math immediately after history, so I stayed in my seat and chatted with Jenn as other students filed in. Jenn was a little bleary-eyed from staying out too late last night, and was filling me in on her weekend plans—she was going to crash with her sister at the NYU dorms. Suddenly she stopped talking and grabbed my forearm, twisting around even farther in her seat.
“Call me crazy, but why does it feel like everyone’s whispering and looking at you?” she hissed, pulling her honey-brown hair in front of her face to hide what she was saying. She might as well have cupped her hands around her mouth—she was as obvious as if she’d been doing semaphore.
“Because they usually are,” I replied, nonplussed. I didn’t even bother lowering my voice; it’s not like it was a secret.
“No, I mean—” Jenn flipped her hair back, glanced around then pulled her curtain of hair back “—it’s different this time. It’s not the usual ‘Ooh, there goes Emma, I heard Anthony was in Monaco’ or some crap. They’re really staring and whispering.”
The serious look on Jenn’s face made me pull my eyes from her (slightly bloodshot) ones. I pretended to scratch an itch on my chin, rubbing it on my shoulder as I stole a look around the classroom.
Madison Wefald and Rebecca Curry were speaking in animated, hushed tones. Nicole McAllister leaned so far over in her desk to murmur in Paul Cuevas’s ear, she was practically lying on the top of the desk, her butt sticking in the air and giving Marcus Colby a first-class ticket to Hineytown. And they were all casting furtive glances my way.
“What did you do now?” Jenn asked, her expertly made-up eyes wide. I shrugged, slinking a little lower into my desk self-consciously.
Mr. Agneta, the math teacher, strode into the room and took one look at the chattering students. He grabbed the large wooden compass, which he used to draw arcs on the blackboard, and pressed the chalk end on the board, causing it to screech uncomfortably—and the low buzz of voices stopped. Nicole flopped in her seat, and Marcus visibly frowned at the end of his free show.
“Yes, yes, so exciting. Well, math is exciting, too,” he said, and I knew I wasn’t imagining him shifting his eyes to glance my way. And I definitely didn’t imagine hearing Marcus Colby whisper, “Salinger, really?” to Nicole before bending over in his seat to check out her butt again.
My hand twitched to pull out my cell phone and text Brendan. Immediately the spell Angelique and I did assaulted my mind. What if Brendan was the target, not me? Was he hurt? Sick?
I thought about leaving the classroom to use the bathroom and text Brendan, but the expression on Mr. Agneta’s face every time he scanned the classroom and saw me craning my head to look out the door told me that wasn’t going to fly. I don’t know what I expected to see out there—it’s not like Brendan was going to be holding up a big neon sign in the hallway spelling out what happened. But it was clear that something had happened—something big. I nervously spun the Claddagh ring Brendan had given me around my finger, my stomach twisting into knots like it was trying to win a Boy Scout badge.
At the end of the class, Mr. Agneta screeched the chalk end of the compass against the blackboard again—he just loved doing that—shouting, “Just a reminder, all art history students need to report downstairs for the trip to the Cloisters.”
And then, my fears were confirmed when he looked straight at me. “That means you, too, Miss Connor. The bus leaves in fifteen.”
I grabbed Jenn’s sleeve as I pulled my backpack on.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked her, worried.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised. “Drop your books off and I’ll meet you at the bus.”
I scrambled down the stairs to my basement locker—a chill coming over me as it did every time I stepped into the room where Anthony first confronted me. As a latecomer to the school, my locker was in the highly undesirable, out-of-the-way basement. After last year’s winter formal, the school had tried to find me another locker, but considering the main building was actually an old mansion, it wasn’t exactly built with a locker room in mind. There just weren’t any free ones—even in the annex. And I was not about to take over Anthony’s now-vacant locker. I was way too much of a magical novice to tackle whatever exorcism that would entail. So Brendan let me leave whatever I wanted in his fourth-floor locker, which admittedly had become jam-packed with more and more of my stuff.
I threw my books in, grabbed a spare notebook and slung my bag on my shoulders as I raced back upstairs, finding Jenn talking to our friend Cisco Fernandez in front of the bus. And for once, Cisco wasn’t smiling. And Jenn’s eyes were open so wide I could practically see inside her skull.
“Okay, Em, what have you heard so far?” Cisco asked, his dark brows knotted in worry.
“Nothing, other than overhearing Brendan’s name. What’s going on? Is he okay?” I fretted. Cisco jerked his head toward the bus.
“Let’s get on and I’ll tell you all that I know,” he said, his voice low. I followed him onto the bus, guilt eating away my insides like I’d just drank battery acid. The spell foretold something about Brendan, not you. And you didn’t warn him. Your fault. After he begged you to always tell him if something concerns you. “Just please don’t worry so much that you don’t talk to me,” he’d said. And you didn’t talk to him. Your fault.
Cisco led me and Jenn to the highly undesirable three-seater in the back of the bus, right on top of the engine. They sat on either side of me on top of the very loud, rumbling engine that would mask what we were about to talk about.
“Cisco, what is going on? Please tell me,” I implored, grabbing his hand.
“Okay, so I was in chem this morning, and I got there early because it was Brendan’s turn to do the lab report and I needed to copy it.” Cisco and Brendan were lab partners and had worked out a little schedule where they alternated doing homework. It was brilliantly sneaky and meant they each did half the work. “He gets there early, he’s his usual self—I mean, he’s fine, Emma. He’s not acting sneaky or weird about anything.”
“Sneaky? Why would he act sneaky?” I asked, confused.
“Let me finish. Mr. D walks in, class begins, the usual.” And then Cisco frowned.
“And then what?”
“About twenty minutes into class, Principal Casey comes storming in, interrupting Mr. D’s lecture, and says, ‘Brendan Salinger, come with me immediately.’” I groaned internally as Cisco mimicked our principal’s aggressive swagger. Casey, with her orange lipstick and “power suits” was about as cuddly as a rusty chainsaw.
“What did he do this time?” I asked, my thoughts running to a basketball team prank on a rival school to a saucy remark in class to countless uniform violations. All had landed Brendan in Casey’s crosshairs before.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think anything. He looked surprised, to be honest. He even pointed at himself and went, ‘Me? You sure?’ And here’s where it gets weird,” Cisco added, leaning forward, his fingers nervously curling around the base of his black tie.
“Brendan stands up to get his bag, and Casey tells him to leave it. Brendan says, ‘All my stuff is in there.’ And she sends a cop in to take his bag and they escort him out.”
I gasped, almost choking on my own breath.
“A cop? What the… Why would they even… I don’t even…” I stammered, not sure what to say.
Jenn popped her head up, checking out the students who were sitting around us. I didn’t have to look to know they were all probably gawking at us as if we were giant talking chickens. I was suddenly glad for the loud engine, even if it did reek of diesel fuel. “They would only have cops there if they thought Brendan did something illegal.” She paused. “Did he?”
“Like what?” I asked. Apart from some minor trespassing and graffiti offenses, and a few fistfights, Brendan wasn’t really bad. Okay, maybe he is a little bad.
“Let me finish,” Cisco continued, running his hands through his dark brown hair. “Brendan just looks at me and shrugs in this, ‘Well, this should be interesting’ kind of way. I mean, he didn’t look nervous or worried or anything, Emma. He didn’t do anything, that I’m sure of,” he added reassuringly.
“I know he didn’t,” I said loyally. However, you didn’t do anything to protect him. You should have told him…should have said something…’cause he’s so clearly being set up by someone.
“Anyway, I go to my next class, and it’s Latin, which I have with Frank, who had a free period that morning.” Cisco stopped, his head snapping up as Dr. McNelly came around to take attendance.
“Everyone’s accounted for,” she announced. Everyone except Brendan. And it’s your fault.
The bus kicked into gear as McNelly began her lecture on what we were going to see at the museum.
“So anyway,” Cisco continued, “Frank says—”
“Everyone needs to listen,” Dr. McNelly announced loudly, steadying herself by holding on to the backs of the red pleather seats as she walked closer to the rear. “And that includes the back of the bus.”
I fidgeted as we sat there with our mouths shut, my stomach twisting and turning like double Dutch jump rope as she droned on and on about the key pieces we would see, including the famed Unicorn Tapestries. Originally I had been excited to see them: maybe it was because a unicorn had been the centerpiece of the silver medallion I used to wear. Or maybe it was because, hey, I’m a girl. I’m genetically hardwired to like unicorns and kittens and hearts and all that crap. But right now, all I could think about was that Brendan was in trouble and getting farther and farther away from me with each spin of the bus’s wheels.
Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, McNelly’s lecture ended, and Cisco jumped right back into the story.
“So Frank had a free first period, and he asks me what happened in chem that morning. I tell him, and he tells me he got to school late, and when he went to his locker, there were two cops standing with Brendan by his locker, going through it with rubber gloves and everything.”
“What the hell did they think he had in there, some kind of super-flu?” I asked, and then it dawned on me. They thought he had drugs in his locker. And the school had a zero-tolerance policy.
“Emma, does he…?” Jenn asked, trailing off.
“Hell, no!” I practically cried, and a few people turned their heads. I didn’t care if they heard me.
