“Super-lame,” Charlotte said, stifling a yawn.
“They will hereby be known as the Devious Four,” Lili intoned in a mock-dramatic voice, tapping away on her touch screen. “And don’t worry, Mads. My tweet will put them in their place.”
“Yeah, we’ll see who will be bowing down to who soon enough,” Charlotte said grimly, setting her square jaw.
Devious Four Deflower School Property, Emma headlined silently, running her eyes back over the skanky lingerie. The display was tackier than the shark tattoo her last foster brother, Travis, had come home with after a thirty-six-hour drinking binge.
“Whoa,” said a familiar voice. Emma turned to see Laurel coming up behind them, her blue cotton dress billowing in the breeze. Her blond hair gleamed in the sunlight, and her mouth was open so wide Emma could see her molars. “That’s insane.”
At that moment the doors to the school flung open, and Ms. Ambrose, the principal, burst onto the lawn. The students parted for her—she was making a path straight for Emma and the others. Emma watched helplessly as the woman strode closer and closer. The corners of the principal’s lips turned down in a frown. The look in her eyes said, You’ve crossed the line one too many times, girls.
Emma put on her best Sutton Mercer smile. “Hello, Ms. Ambrose,” she said sweetly. “Can you believe someone did this?”
The principal ignored her, grabbing Emma’s arm in one hand and Laurel’s in the other. “Wait!” Laurel cried. “We didn’t do this!”
Her cries were drowned out by the stomping feet of two security guards barreling through the crowd. With swift, deft movements, one of the brawny men grabbed Charlotte and Madeline, and the other took the Twitter Twins.
“You don’t understand!” Madeline cried weakly.
“We were set up!” Charlotte protested.
Ms. Ambrose rolled her eyes. “You say that every time, girls. You’re coming with us.”
Emma felt her legs move under her as the principal pulled her toward the door. Just before the crowd closed behind her, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the four freshmen staring at them, huge, ecstatic, we-got-away-with-it smiles on their faces. The girls had probably just wanted to make their mark on the school—literally—but the real damage they’d done was to the members of the Lying Game.
Devious Four indeed, I thought angrily. Those bitches were going down.
5
THE DEVIOUS FOUR
Ms. Ambrose’s office smelled like sugary donuts mixed with old, mildewed books. The walls were covered with cheaply framed photographs, cheesy motivational posters with eagles soaring over glaciers, and a master’s diploma from Arizona State. A pamphlet for an educational conference in Sedona the following Friday sat on the walnut desk, along with several disciplinary files and a red stapler. Principal Ambrose’s ergonomic chair was pushed back, unoccupied. She had stepped out of the room for a moment, leaving Emma and the others in the office alone.
The eagle posters sparked a tiny shard of a memory: no doubt I’d spent lots of time in here. But my other friends—especially Laurel and the Twitter Twins—looked totally spooked. Charlotte was sitting next to Emma, jiggling her thigh in time with the ticking clock on the principal’s wall. Madeline and Laurel sat in the two high-backed chairs that faced the desk, staring at their fingernails. The Twitter Twins were squished into an armchair meant for one person, looking like a human yin-yang symbol.
Lili let out a long sigh and hunched forward dramatically, resting her face in her hands. “Does anyone have a paper bag I can breathe into?”
“Calm down,” Madeline said with an eye roll. Her porcelain features were set in a stony mask.
“How can you be calm?” Gabby smoothed a wrinkle in her polo shirt. “I swear to God, if this gets in the way of my Ivy-league dreams I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Gabs, your grades will get in the way of your Ivy-league dreams,” Charlotte snapped. “And it’s not like they can punish us. We didn’t even do anything.”
“But they think we did,” Lili moaned.
Charlotte gave her a cold, calculating look. “You wanted into the Lying Game. Sometimes this comes with the territory.”
“Perhaps you’d like us to revoke your membership?” Madeline asked.
Gabby opened her mouth quickly. But before she could say a word, Ms. Ambrose swept back in, a pinched look on her doughy face. She looked eerily like a baseball mitt. Her brown eyes were the color of old, rotten wood. The skin on her face was folded and worn. She wore her frosted blond hair in a feathered, eighties style—probably the last time she’d gone to a hairdresser.
Ms. Ambrose sat heavily back into her chair and stared at all of them. “You girls have spent the last four years turning this school upside down, and I’m putting a stop to it right now.” She focused her attention on Emma, licking her thin lips hungrily.
She was probably dying to get her hands on Sutton Mercer. Little did she know that ship had sailed, I thought grimly.
“Ms. Ambrose, we didn’t do this,” Emma said quickly.
“It was those freshman bitches!” Lili cried.
Ms. Ambrose whirled around to face Lili. “Watch your language, Miss Fiorello.”
“Ms. Ambrose,” Madeline started. “What Lilianna is trying to say is that—”
The principal held up a pudgy hand. “What I’m trying to say is that I know it’s you, and the security cameras will show it.”
Emma sat back. “What cameras?” she challenged. Hollier was a public school. They barely had a budget for security guards, let alone security systems.