I leaned in and gave Coriander an impromptu hug. “I’m glad I came out with you tonight.”
She responded by bursting into tears. I would’ve been alarmed, except that Coriander was excellent at bursting into tears. She did it when somebody shoulder-checked her on the sidewalk because she was staring down at her phone, taking up the whole walkway, or when it looked like somebody might beat her in tennis—basically, whenever she wanted to make someone feel bad. How long would it work? I wondered. Everybody felt bad for a sobbing teenage girl. Nobody pitied a sobbing middle-aged woman.
Anyway, I sat for a moment, waiting for her to get the worst of it out. Once she was sniffling and dabbing at her flawless mascara with a tissue plucked from her black leather The Avenue clutch, I said, a little wary, “Why do you want me to feel bad for you right now?”
Coriander sniffled again, dabbing at her cheek. Upon closer reflection, it was hardly wet. Okay, now I was more than a little wary. She’d definitely done something bad and didn’t want me to be angry. “Cor?”
Millicent’s hand alighted on my bare arm like a butterfly. “We only did it because we love you.”
“You did it?” My mouth dropped open. “You killed Conrad Phlume?” Images flashed through my head: Coriander, furious about my tricking her into wearing ugly glasses; Conrad taking a swipe at Millicent’s boob or something; the two of them losing it and shoving him off the landing.
“What?” Coriander squawked at the same time Millicent cried, “Oh my God, no!”
So much for that. I thought I’d be disappointed once again at not finding the culprits, but instead I found myself relieved. Having one friend go down for murder was more than enough for one lifetime, thank you very much. “Then what are you talking about?”
Coriander’s lower lip pushed out. I really hoped the tears weren’t about to restart. “The mean posts about you. And also the mean article about you. We were the ‘anonymous sources.’?”
CHAPTER
Twenty-Three
My jaw literally dropped at Coriander’s confession that she and Millicent had been behind the mean posts and mean article, but not because I was shocked. They’d done meaner things in the past, honestly; this was nothing. It was that I kind of wanted my teeth out to bite them.
Maybe the effects of the drug hadn’t entirely worn off. I shut my mouth firmly so that there wouldn’t be articles the next day about how Pomona Afton had left unsanitary teeth marks in her friend’s arm and should be put down for the public’s safety. “What? Why? How could you?”
“We missed you so much,” Millicent said, her voice wobbling now too. Impressively so, considering I could hear it over the music. “After Opal went to jail, you, like, dropped off the face of the planet. You wouldn’t answer our texts or calls even thoughwedidn’t even kill anyone.”
“Yeah,” Coriander said, as if I were the one who’d betrayed them, as if not murdering someone’s relative was the highest bar of friendship. “So after the gala, we were kind of drunk.”
“A lot drunk,” said Millicent.
“Okay, a lot drunk,” said Coriander. “The pink drink named after you that you served was really good, actually.”
“Thank you,” I replied, oddly pleased. At least I’d done one thing right that night.
“We were jealous of all your new important friends and your boyfriend you were spending all your time with. We thought that maybe, if they didn’t like you anymore, you would come back to us.”
I probably should’ve been angrier than I was, but, having had one friend murder a blood relative already, other friends saying mean things about me on social media wasn’t really that bad. Also, they loved me! They’d been bullying me out of love! I mean, probably part of it was because they enjoyed the attention they got from hanging out with The Pomona Afton, but at least part of it was that they actually liked me. Hopefully.
Still, I couldn’t let this go unpunished, or they’d keep leaking secrets about me. I fixed my face into the sternest expression I possibly could, carefully facing away from the dance floor so that nobody would be able to snap a pic of me looking angry. Who knew how they’d spin that? “Wow. I can’t believe you would do that to me.” I shook my head slowly, taking a long sip of water to let them marinate in their shame and fear a little longer. “And you’re supposed to be my friends.” A little lie to drive the guilt in even deeper. “Mybestfriends.”
They gibbered and cried some more as I sipped my water, crossing and uncrossing my legs. Honestly, this was kind of okay. The more upset they thought I was, the more they’d do to make it up to me in the future. Coriander would get me into the good graces of her cousin, a designer who created the absolute best high-end kitchen implements—maybe I could finally get off the waitlist for that personalized baby-pink mixer. Millicent had a phobia of show tunes, but I bet she’d go see something on Broadway with me now, maybe the jukebox musical I knew Vienna wouldn’t be caught dead at.
Marginally more cheerful, I stood, still frowning very hard.“I’m going to go home now and cry myself to sleep. Don’t even try to follow, or I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Pom!” they both shrieked tearfully behind me as I walked off in a mostly straight line, relieved that the effects of the drug seemed largely to have worn off. I made sure to keep a smile fixed to my face as I pressed buttons on my phone to call my driver.
And then I actually did go home and sniffle a little into my pillow, Squeaky curled into the back of my knees. But, of course, it had nothing to do with Millicent and Coriander. It was that empty side of the bed, the one that ached with Gabe’s absence, the one you might think Squeaky would spread out into but, nope, he’d rather stick as close to me as possible and stab me with his claws whenever I moved.
I was still sad the next morning when I woke up, the backs of my legs speckled with claw marks. I did not want to be alone. So I called Vienna.Please pick up.
She did.I love you, Vienna.“Hi!” I said. “I’m going through a little bit of a crisis. What are you up to?”
“Hi!” she said back, not thrown even a bit. We’d been through so many crises together. “I was actually about to text you, because, weirdly, Persimmon just texted me to go out to brunch. Apparently it was something you said? Are you two hanging out without me now?” She was joking, but also not joking.
“Of course not,” I said. “We ran into each other last night. We’re cool now. Where are you going?”
“I’ll send you the address.”
