Alice in Wonderland High (10 page)

His face relaxed. “Yeah.”

“That's exactly why I want to do this. I feel like I owe it to them to make it happen.”

He was already shaking his head before I even finished. “Bad idea. Too public. It would draw too much attention to us.”

“But—” Words died in my throat. I'd thought for sure they would help me if I could get in good with them.

“Option A?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

I couldn't maneuver my lips into a
yes
. I had too many questions. “Does your dad still do this stuff? What happened to your mom?”

“Mom died when I was four. Cancer, the aggressive kind. And my dad stopped a while ago. Everyone did, which is why I started.” He chuckled. “And for the record,
that's
the reason for all the rumors. Whitney started them to get suspicion off me because of my connection to my dad.”

I relaxed. “So the rebel comment was a lie? I feel so betrayed!” I slapped a palm against my chest and scoffed. “Why did you really get kicked out of boarding school?”

He nudged me with his shoulder. “I never said I got kicked out.” He sighed. “My dad lost his job, so we couldn't afford it anymore. Simple as that.”

“Oh.” I reached out to touch his hand. “I'm sorry. And I'm sorry about your mom.”

“We're dealing.” He shrugged. “It's fine.”

We sat in silence for a moment, hands connected. His mouth curved into a quarter-smile, only a portion given away. Just like his answers.

“What did you mean when you said you would have noticed if I was interested in this stuff? Because of my parents?”

Chess curled one hand around my shoulder, meeting my eyes with a new intensity. “It's because I kind of . . . staked you out. Not, like, in a creepy way.”

“So you weren't the guy sneaking into my window to watch me sleep? Crap, I thought I'd solved that.”

He laughed. “When I came back to school, I wanted to find you. I thought you might join up with me. But it seemed like you—I don't know—you didn't care like your parents had, so I left you alone.”

“That's because I hid it from everyone until recently. I kind of made a fool out of myself freshman year, and I didn't want to do it alone the next time.”

He flipped the car into drive. “Okay, I'll take you to Whitney's.”

“How'd you hook up with her anyway? I mean—” As soon as the words
hook up
came out of my mouth, my mind supplied a mental image except with me in the starring role. My brain should be rated R. Thank God the darkness hid the blush spreading across my cheeks. “Meet! Didn't you just move back here?”

“About six months ago. Sort of. I didn't actually live in Wonderland all summer, but when I came back, I caught Whitney stealing some seeds at the Garden Center. I let her off the hook in exchange for her help.”

Lines indented my forehead. “What kind of help?”

He looked away. “Whitney will kill me if I tell you. Keeping the group's secrets is, like, the one rule we have. Well, besides ‘don't get caught.'”

“Does that mean I'm not in? Even if we're going to Whitney's?”

He sighed. “I like Whitney and Kingston and all, but you . . . you're different. Wholesome.” He didn't see it, but I cringed. “I was kind of hoping we could be . . . ” He glanced at me. “Friends or whatever. Just the two of us.”

My heart raced. I hoped
whatever
was a synonym for
making out
. But as much as I wanted to explore that kind of friendship, I couldn't shut off my curiosity about Whitney and her missions. “It doesn't have to be that extreme. We could still be . . . friends, and I can still join your group.”

His eyes held mine. “I like a girl who can read my mind.”

He said something else, but I couldn't hear him. I was still stuck on the word
like
.

“You brought her, I see.” Whitney leaned against the conglomerate of open doors forming a pastel tunnel into her house. Her arms shook as if the doors would spring closed any moment and knock her over.

“Nothing gets by you.” Chess relieved her of doorman duty and held them open with more ease.

She gave him a dirty look, then turned to me. “Think of this like a verbal contract. You enter, you keep your mouth shut.”

Taking that vow, I stepped through the doors, then paused at the décor inside. Hats—ranging from formal top hats to the artistic creations usually found on the Queen of England—dangled from a chandelier. I spotted the trucker hat Kingston had been wearing in gym perched delicately on one of the hooks. White polka dots covered a purple wall in front of me. Curvy stripes of varying widths alternated in teal and subdued candy-apple red on a different wall. The mirror in front of me distorted my body like a fun house.

Whitney must have seen me staring because she said, “My mom's an installation artist.”

“What does that mean?”

“It's art you have to go see. Experience.” She gestured at the five-door concoction. “It's really a pain sometimes, everything in the house has been remodeled into something else—something far more annoying.”

We followed her into the kitchen. Large, metal spikes poked out of the refrigerator door instead of a torture-chamber wall where they belonged.

I pointed to it. “New diet regimen?”

She flicked her eyes toward the fridge. “Obstacles for our basic survival needs.”

“It's a bitch to open that thing,” Chess said. “You have to hold your arm at the right angle or you might end up in the hospital explaining you weren't trying to slit your wrists.”

“That sounds like a case for Child Protective Services.”

She shrugged. “I keep essentials in the basement fridge. That one I haven't let her revise.”

“Your house is like a museum.” I set the box of days-old cakes on her counter.

“Yep. Look, but don't touch.”

“If you charged for tickets,” Chess said, “that would cover some funds.”

“But then what would Kingston be good for?” Whitney chuckled to herself and stopped in front of the kitchen counter. Bending underneath, she pulled a blender out of the cabinet.

Chess reached above her and retrieved cups off a tall shelf. They were repurposed from various found objects. A shellacked paper-towel roll had become a highball glass. Layers of buttons were welded together in a closed formation. He even set a conch shell wrapped in tightly coiled wire on the counter.

Whitney slid a cutting board and knife over to me. “Chop this.” She tossed me an array of herbs.

I spotted lavender and basil among a bunch I didn't recognize. They smelled flowery and a little musky, too. “What are these?” I pointed to several unfamiliar herbs of various shapes and textures.

“The special ingredient.”

“Where's Kingston?” Chess asked, shaking some spices into the blender.

“Finishing up a sale.”

“Does he work at the Garden Center, too?”

Whitney snorted. “No. He'll be here in a sec. Then we'll have a little huddle.”

I chopped the herbs until Whitney snatched them away and added them to the blender. Chess angled his body over the fridge and pulled out some kind of murky liquid without submitting himself to a bloodletting ritual. He boiled the liquid on the stove and added some other ingredients that looked like cherries and coffee beans. Then Whitney dumped the contents of the blender into the pot. I watched in awe, trying to figure out this odd recipe.

Kingston arrived fifteen minutes later, wearing a cowboy hat. Whitney poured the foamy substance from the stove into the four glasses. They each grabbed one and left the last, shaped like a perfume bottle, stopper and all, on the counter with no further instructions. I clutched the delicate glass in my hands, unstopped it, and brought it to my lips.

Definitely the same stuff from the other day. Healthy but dangerous at the same time. Like them.

“Here's the deal, Alice,” Whitney leaned against the counter. “You kept your mouth shut. Noted.”

“But you still fucked everything up.” Kingston watched me like he was trying to dissect me with his eyes. I diverted my gaze.

Whitney shot him a look. “Language.” She turned back to me. “We like to be a little more incognito than that.”

“I know. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I mean—”

“You think we have instructions?” Whitney scoffed. “That's not how this works.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

“I checked with the plants. They're against her.” Kingston plopped into a chair and put his shoes up on the kitchen table. He talked to plants. Why was I not surprised? “For the record, my vote's still no.”

Chess met my eyes. “Well, mine's still yes.”

“I feel like I always have to do everything around here.” Whitney stomped over to Kingston. There were only three seats around the table—a musical-chairs art installation?—so she scooted in beside her stepbrother and gestured at the empty seats.

“Really, I won't mess things up anymore.” I plopped into one. “I respect what you're doing. You're making a difference.”

Kingston pointed a finger-gun at me. “You have no idea what we're doing. You just assume you do.”

Chess kept telling me the same thing. Maybe I really
was
only seeing what I wanted to see.

“We each have a purpose.” Whitney tipped the cup to her mouth and took a long drink, spilling a drop on Kingston's lap. He pushed her off his seat and more liquid sloshed over the rim. “I create the missions and provide supplies. Kingston is our security guard, and he funds our projects.” Whitney hopped onto the table. “And Chess—”

“Is the muscle?” He twisted his hands around his mug. “The brains?”

“I was going to say
motivation
.” She shifted her vision to me. “Anyway, Alice, we—”

“How does Kingston provide the funds?” I asked, only because I saw where Whitney was going: they had all the bases covered, so they didn't need me. I needed to distract them until I could think of something I could offer that they didn't already have.

Kingston coughed several times in succession. “There's no way I trust you with that information.”

What did that mean?
I pressed my lips together as I thought back to Chess's earlier comment about catching Whitney pilfering seeds. I could easily see this group justifying stealing from corporations to fund their projects.

“Whit, we discussed giving her another chance,” Chess said.

“Did you tell them about my parents?” I asked him. Kingston rolled his eyes, like I was about to tell them this was my way of rebelling over their restrictions against having a boy in my room or something equally lame.

Whitney squinted at Chess. “No. Is there something I should know?”

“I didn't think it was relevant.” Chess shrugged.

“It is!” I slapped the table in my excitement.

“So you do know the meaning of
it
. That proves it.” Kingston pointed at me. “She's a liar. She lied before.”

I ignored him. “This isn't some fluke thing for me. Chess's dad and my parents used to have a group like yours. I can prove it. I found a photo album with evidence.”

Whitney leaned forward. “I'm listening.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. “But that's it. I just meant that it's . . . in my genes to be part of your group.” I held my breath and tried to keep my face steady instead of shattering from anticipation.

“No, about the photo album. I'd like to see it. And anything else you can find about the stuff your parents organized.” She pursed her lips. “Chess, you should have told me this.”

I shifted in my chair. “Um, okay, but . . . why?”

“All questions can't have answers. Or at least ones I want to share.”

“Can I exchange the album for . . . membership?”

Kingston bolted from his chair, banging his mug down on the table. My teeth clattered together. “That's it? You're going to let her in because she may have some information? We already tried with Mr. Katz and got nowhere, which is exactly where this will get us.”

I contorted my eyes and lips into an expression that would best crown me as an angel, halo and all.

“This is the wrong path,” Kingston continued. “The right one's not even visible. It's covered with leaves and twigs.”

“You do realize we're inside, right?” Whitney kicked him with her foot.

“Only temporarily.”

Whitney nodded as if that made sense. “Well, it's not just the information. There are some bigger things we've wanted to do that we could use an extra hand on. Like that parking lot that used to be the nuclear-power plant?”

I expected Kingston to whine about that with some lame excuse, but he sighed melodramatically like a little kid who didn't get his way. What could have possibly made him give in all of a sudden?

“All right, Alice.” Whitney drummed her fingers on the table. “We're going to do something tonight. We could use you, but we can't get caught and we can't mess up.”

I swallowed hard. Perfection and I weren't exactly cohorts in our endeavors. Usually I lagged behind someone else's lead. Second in the class. Third wheel in friendships. Fourth in their group.

“You get info on a need-to-know basis.” Kingston shot me a smile that revealed a thin, blue line above his gums. He coughed again and took a sip of green liquid.

“It's a probationary period,” Whitney clarified.

I chugged my foamy, green drink, hoping it would give me some kind of liquid courage, like spinach for Popeye. I knew
something
interesting was sure to happen if I drank this liquid. “I'm in.”

Whitney pushed herself off the table. “I have to get some supplies upstairs. Want to start loading the car, guys?”