“Since when did you get such a hard-on for the rules?” I demanded. My finger flew to my wrist, pressing at the dark smudge to remind myself not to think about the kiss, not to fall for this guy’s bullshit.
He ran a hand through his hair. It stuck out on one side of his head in this disheveled, totally gorgeous way. “I don’t. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Why would I get in trouble? What are they doing, anyway?”
Quinn focused his eyes at a spot over my shoulder. “They have to go down and run air tests in the gymnasium, to see if the toxicity has gone down enough that they can open the wing again. That’s why they check we’re all sleeping like good little students first. If any of us are caught down there, they’ll be sued.”
“Uh-huh.” Dr. Morgan said all the students were at the party. They knew we were all breaking school rules, and they didn’t care. But did Quinn know that? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.
“I’m begging you, Hazy.” We crossed over the covered bridge and Quinn held open the dormitory door for me. “Go to bed. The others are starting to head back from the party. If they see you walking around in their dorm…”
“They’ll what?” My hand rested on my throat. “They’ll try to kill me again?”
Quinn winced. “That was never supposed to happen. Trey got carried away. There’s so much you don’t know—”
“Yeah, whatever. What Idoknow is that I should be filing assault charges against your friend. Against all of you.” Tears pricked at my eyes, but I was too angry to cry. “Don’t pretend you weren’t under orders to get me to that party, or to kiss me like that so I’d let my guard down. Youletthem steal my clothes.”
Quinn’s face told me everything I needed to know. “I didn’t know he’d dothat,” he said.
I shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. If Trey tells you to throw me off a cliff, you’d do it. You’re just his little errand boy.”
Quinn’s lip curled up. “You don’t know, Hazy.”
I snorted. “Yup. That’s the truth. And I don’t want to, either. I just want to get my diploma and get out of this fucking place.”
“That’s what we all want.” Quinn squeezed his eyes shut, and such an expression of pain wrote itself across his face that even though I fucking hated him, my arms itched to slide around his neck and pull him close.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor behind us. Drunken laughter bounced off the walls. Quinn glanced over his shoulder. “Go,” he hissed, shoving me down the stairs toward my dorm. “Sweet dreams, Hazy.”
“Rot in hell, Quinn.”
I crept back down the stairs just as Courtney’s trilling laugh blasted overhead. I shoved my key into my room and slipped inside, my heart pounding.
I felt certain that Quinn was lying about what the gymnasium. The way he wouldn’t look at me, the fact that the teachers were all wearing those black robes and carrying candles, and that flash of pain in Quinn’s face when he spoke about graduating, told me that something was off. Something was going on at this school, and it had nothing to do with bullying.
What were the teachers really doing down there?
Chapter Sixteen
I had to bide my time for revenge on the Kings. The first step was to enlist Greg’s help. That was easy – I told him what Trey had done at the party, how Quinn had got me there, and how Ayaz had known about it but chose to give me a feeble warning rather than stop his friend. Greg agreed that the Kings had to pay.
I didn’t tell him about the teachers’ late night foray to the gymnasium. Something about Headmistress West’s face, about the fear in Quinn’s eyes as he dragged me back from the staircase, told me this was something that could put my friend the hopeless gossip in danger.
“So we’re doing this,” Greg whispered from across our library table. He whipped his head around to make sure no one was in earshot before adding, “Howare we doing this?”
“Can you get access to the chemistry lab for unsupervised experiments?” I asked. I wasn’t taking chemistry, but it was Greg’s top subject. He said that he might want his own makeup line one day.
Greg screwed up his face. “Not normally, but Mr. Ellery has a fondness for me. I can probably swing something. What do you have in mind?”
I leaned forward. For the first time since we nailed our audition, I was excited about something at this school. I’d thought long and hard about how to make the Kings and Queens pay without getting in trouble ourselves. I didn’t want either of us to lose points over this. “Do you remember what you told us about the rose hips being the active ingredient in itching powder?”
A slow smile crept across Greg’s face as I outlined my idea. With our plan set, all we had to do was set it up and wait for the perfect time to use it. When we weren’t studying or rehearsing, Greg and I were walking around the gardens, picking the last of the fruits before winter hit in earnest.
It was weird, but ever since the party, the monarchs had been…nicerisn’t the right word. Courtney and her friends still hissed at me in the halls. I still caught Trey and Ayaz looking at me with contempt. But they seemed to have pulled back on the bullying. Quinn still openly flirted with me, even though he seemed to be back with Courtney. Ayaz and I even had a couple of semi-pleasant conversations while working on our history project.
I thought about calling off the revenge plan. This new peace was nice. I wasn’t constantly looking over my shoulder. My stomach unknotted itself. I could concentrate more on my schoolwork and the production. I’d even managed to earn 450 points. I didn’t want to go back to having to constantly worry about when they’d strike back.
But Trey had nearlykilledme. I couldn’t let him keep believing he could treat another human like that. All the monarchs thought they could get away with anything because they were rich and powerful, and they needed to know that wasn’t true.Ineeded to believe that wasn’t true.
