Alice in Wonderland High (16 page)

“I know,” Whitney said.

Guilt took residence in my stomach. I'd messed things up for everyone. Even Kingston, who, it seemed in an ironic twist, had put Chess before his own needs.

“No.” Kingston kicked the wall with his foot. “My problem might not be as time sensitive as Chess's, but it's still a problem. It still needs to be fixed! Whitney, come on.” Sweat dripped down his forehead. “You promised.”

The tension was so thick it pushed against my lungs. No one said anything, not even Whitney. She could have made more promises to calm him down, but she didn't. Kingston swiveled to face me. “Alice.” There was something in his eyes that I might have described as
pleading
if I weren't talking about Kingston. “You have to know. One side will get you closer, the other side will get you farther.” He bent down in front of me. “You understand?”

“One side of
what?
” I glanced over Kingston's shoulder at Whitney. She shrugged.

“The mushroom.” Kingston waved the bag in my face. “What do you think I mean? The group! Obviously. They're giving up. I'm not. I'll get you closer.”

Blood gushed in my ears. Chess's breath was heavy against my neck—and oh, it felt good. Everyone waited for me to speak, to choose. There wasn't a choice, even with the group disbanded. Even with Whitney probably hating me. “I'm staying with them, Kingston.”

He straightened. “Fine. I don't need you. Or your keys.” He stalked toward the door and perched his hand on the lock. He'd already had the last word, but apparently that wasn't enough. “I'll fix this myself.”

He slammed the door. Silence boomed for several beats.

“Well.” Whitney sat up, breaking the tension. Chess let out a breath. “That fixes one problem,” she said. “But there's one more.” She set her eyes on me.

Whitney may have been a master of riddles, but I didn't need to be a CIA code cracker to decipher the obvious message: Whitney didn't want me here. I slid off Chess's lap, a lump swelling in my throat. I hoped I could make it outside before I choked on it.

“Where do you think you're going?” Chess tugged the bottom of my shirt.

I pivoted to address them both. “I'm sorry I messed up whatever you were trying to do. I wish I could have helped.”

“Then consider me a genie,” Whitney said.

Chess chuckled at whatever he saw in my expression. “Whitney . . . ” He gave her an exasperated look.

“Fine. We're done with Kingston. Not you.”

“But why keep me over Kingston?” I divided my gaze between Whitney and Chess.

Whitney pulled herself out of the rocking chair and dusted off her pants. “He's not seeing straight.”

“He's too focused on revenge,” Chess translated, rising from the bird's nest. “Not just on you, on everything that's hurt him. He's sabotaging us with his blackmail and surveillance stuff instead of concentrating on what's important.”

“Important. Ah, yes, doing drugs at school is vital to saving the planet,” I joked.

“Those aren't magic mushrooms. They're shiitakes. He's obsessed. I'd say it's weird but . . . it's Kingston.”

I chuckled as I followed them to the door. “How do you know you can trust me?” I paused. “Wait. That came out wrong. I mean—”

“Alice, I'm not blind.” Whitney held the door for me. “I've known about your sister for a while.”

“I wish you'd told me,” Chess shook his head at me in a reassuring, I'm-not-mad-at-you gesture.

“There's a lot of things Alice could have told us.” Whitney pulled the door shut behind her. “Like what she knew.”

I paused in the hallway while they continued down it. When they realized I wasn't following, they both turned back to me. “I want to make one thing clear. I won't spy on my sister,” I said. “Just like I won't feed information to her.”

“Worth a shot.” Whitney padded back down the hallway. Chess held out his hand for me to take. A smile broke out on my face as I wrapped my fingers in his.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I'm going home,” Whitney said over her shoulder. “I don't want to be around for whatever Chess has planned.”

Redness spread over his cheeks. “Well, I want to have that . . . talk soon. But I really do have to get to work.”

I knew he meant we would do anything
but
talk, and that scared me as much as it excited me. Now new, concrete questions pounded in my brain. Chess was clearly keeping something from me based on the wet hair (showering at school? Why?), not to mention the mission of the group. If he was going to let me into his . . . well, let's go with heart, just like he let me into the group, I had to trust him. And he had to trust me. They'd chosen me over Kingston, and that meant I should be privy to the info. All the info.

“Oh, right. I forgot you took an extra shift.” Whitney turned to me. “Alice, if you want I can help you get your garden in shape.”

“You don't want to face Kingston!” Chess teased.

“I'm not scared of him, but that doesn't mean I have to put myself in his war path.”

Chess dropped us off at my house. Digging her fingers underneath the soil, Whitney uprooted almost everything I'd worked so hard to position. She replanted them in a chaotic matrix. In some spots, flowers crowded while she left others so sparse, a forest of animals could make their nests in the empty space. She allowed my thriving white rosebush to remain in place, towering over the other flowers. Whitney told me one of the reasons my plants weren't growing was because I'd mixed friends and enemies together, planting my asparagus too close to the onions in my vegetable garden. She also suggested I buy oyster shells and soak them in the plant water, because it removed acidity.

After she finished, I went inside and brought out my parents' photo album, the one she'd been eager to see when I first tried to join the group.

“Oh cool, I almost forgot about this.”

I held it out of arm's reach. “Only if you tell me what your agenda is.”

“You have to talk to Chess.”

“He told me the same thing about you a while ago.”

“That was just an excuse for him. It's not
my
place to tell.” One thing about Whitney I both admired and despised: she fiercely kept everyone else's secrets, including mine.

“He's going to play the same game of monkey-in-the-middle.” I handed over the album, only because I wanted to watch what she focused on. It might give me some clue.

She flew through the pages, barely even pausing at any of the pictures. When she came to the end, she pursed her lips. “This wasn't as helpful as I hoped.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Doesn't matter. It wasn't here.”

I snatched the book back up. “It matters to me.”

“Fine, I was looking for photos of people I don't know, so I could try to find out who they were. I recognize everyone here.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm trying to identify everyone who might have been involved in this stuff.” She pushed herself off the ground and wiped off her hands. “To warn them.” A question formed on my lips, but before I could get it out, she said, “Those are the only answers I can give you.”

“If I'm going to help you do illegal things, I need to know why.”

“I know. I think it's time. And if I think it's time, it must be late.”

During gym the next day, I let Di, Dru, and Quinn go ahead of me to the track while I lingered behind, waiting for Chess to come out of the boys' locker room.

“Hey,” I said when Chess emerged from the gym, trailing behind his teacher. Kingston followed, hands jammed in pockets, baseball cap on his head. Neither acknowledged the other, but both glanced in my direction.

“Need an escort to class?” Chess propped out his elbow for me to take.

The students marched in a funeral procession toward the track, obviously trying to use up as much time as they could before the teachers put them to work. The teachers ushered the students inside the track gates, blowing whistles like prison guards.

“Yeah, I probably should be going to class.” I looped my arm in the crook of his elbow. It was silly, we were just going to gym, not Homecoming or anything, but I couldn't keep the giddiness out of my step.

“Well, if it were up to me, we would all be sleeping, but the teachers don't seem to agree.” He steered me past a few girls sneaking peeks at their cell phones.

“Right. See, you get it. There are more important things than gym.” Like kissing him. Or finding out why he had two people doing his bidding. I shivered from the crisp fall air. Chess drew me closer to his body, sharing his body heat with mine. “And I consider this walk of great importance.”

“Great importance?” Kingston said from behind us. “You consider the genocide of innocent blades of grass important? You're trampling all over them!” I twisted around to see him cupping the side of his mouth and whispering to the grass. “You owe me.” He glanced up and met my eyes, then said in a louder voice, “You're pathetic.”

This from the guy who lost all his friends because of paranoia. Guess that really was a side effect of pot.

The two students in front of us checked over their shoulders, one meeting my eyes, before darting for the parking lot straight ahead. Away from the track. I eyed the teachers on the track; they had no clue. The students near us kept walking, mouths shut, desensitized to cutting class and other forms of rebellion.

I leaned toward Chess's ear. “Did you see that?”

“I did.” His tone was curious.

“Remember how I said I probably
should
go to class?” The breeze blew my hair around my face as I waited for him to nod. “I was lying.” I tugged on his elbow.

“Good idea. Now there'll be some proof to all the rumors Whitney started.” He let me lead him toward the parking lot.

Kingston rolled his eyes as we passed. “Keep on corrupting her.”

When we reached his car, Chess ducked. “I don't usually keep my keys in my gym shorts, only razors, but,” he pulled out a metallic object that glinted in the sun, “I do keep a spare here.” He grinned.

As he fit the key in the lock, my nerves crumbled. He opened the door and stood there, shifting his weight. Maybe he was as nervous as me? His arm traced an arc in front of the door, welcoming me. It took a lot of effort to lift one foot and then the other, but eventually I coaxed them onto the back seat. I slid over to make room for Chess.

Once inside the car, we both sat there for a moment, staring straight ahead. Then we turned to each other and laughed.

“You make me do bad things,” he said.

“Payback.”

A foot of space separated us because I'd slid over too far and he hadn't moved in close enough. Now he inched forward and lifted one hand as though he was going to put it around my shoulder. Except he didn't, he held it there in midair. I turned to look at the hand, wondering what he was going to do with it, and his lips connected with my ear.

Oops.

He sprang back. My heart beat so fast I worried it might scare him. I leaned forward. He took my cue but bent his head in the same direction as I did. Our noses crushed together. This time, I pulled away, giggling.

“At least this isn't awkward,” I joked.

“That would be embarrassing.” He cupped my chin in his palms and brought his lips to mine, slow and cautious. I sank into the moment, savoring what I'd missed. The kiss intensified and so did the warmth spreading over my skin. I wrapped my arms around him, desperate to pull him closer. I couldn't get enough of him, and my heart swelled at the prospect of trying. My fingers grazed the short hairs at the back of his neck, rigid in some places and smooth in others, like he'd taken a razor there and hoped for the best.

“Wait,” I said against his lips, when I finally mustered the willpower. I inched back away from him, scolding myself inside for stopping the kiss. I tilted my head to the side to thwart temptation. “I need to know—everything.”

“What do you mean?” He snuck in another kiss. Sneaky bastard.

I had a lot of questions for him, but my brain refused to sift through them. It was too focused on the blinking neon lights that spelled out KISSING! “The missions and stuff. Why?”

“Alice, let's talk about this later.”

“Okay.” My lips met his again, and this time the kiss revved up faster than a Lamborghini. He leaned into me, pressing my back against the door. It took several pep chats in my head before I convinced myself to pull away. “Chess . . . ” My breath was ragged, in a good way.

He rested his forehead against mine, panting. “It's too embarrassing. I'm afraid . . . you're not going to like me anymore if you know everything.”

“Then you don't have a lot of faith in me.”

He sat back up and closed his eyes. This was the moment before clarity. Finally knowing what it would feel like in my ears as I heard the truth. I imagined this was what sex would be like. Silence, and then sound.

“My dad made me go to boarding school even though I had no interest. Told me he wanted me to have a better education, when really he was just trying to get me away from Wonderland. And because of that, I didn't notice our financial problems until it was too late.”

I grabbed his hand and laced my fingers through his.

“It's my fault. The taxes kept piling up, and if he hadn't paid for boarding school . . . ” He ran his free hand through his hair. “It sucks because I loved living here and now everything's all screwed up.”

“Everything?” I squeezed his hand.

He pulled me to him and stroked my hair. “Well, some good things happened.”

We kissed again, this time less hungry, like we were both holding back. And I was, because that wasn't my only question. Still, it was harder to pull away. I was the superhero of restraint.