The Rules (3 page)

What a load of bullshit,
Mick thought, feeling the idling of the van through his boots.
August DeYoung does not know the Rolling Stones.
But then he looked at the Porsche. It was tricked out. Probably some kind of limited edition. Maybe August DeYoung
did
know the Stones. That was the bewildering thing about their client. It was obvious that he had tons of money, and every now and then, something amazing would happen to August, at least according to Drew. For example, he had recently gone to visit Walt Disney’s family in Napa. If he was so connected, why on earth was he living in Callabrese? Was his family in the Witness Protection Program or something?

“C’mon, Mick, chill,” Stacy said. “We’re going to be famous, but right now, we’re still broke.”

That was true. Samurai was going to pay the expenses for making their first record, but that was it. When it came to food, clothing, shelter, and gas money, Maximum Volume was on their own.

Stacy’s right. This is a paying gig. What’s the worst that can happen?

He took his foot off the brake and the van rolled down the drive.

An electric guitar wailed as Jacob Stein coasted his motorcycle into the cannery yard and planted his feet on either side. He turned off the engine. Whoa, creepy place. Jack the Ripper scary, even. Mass murderers on every floor. August liked the dramatic and all, but he had taken it to a new level of
Final Destination.

Jacob chortled and took off his helmet, giving his hair a rearrangement before he pulled his phone out of his leather bike pants to check the time. No cell reception here, no surprise, but he was super early for the party. August would say he’d cheated because he had not waited for his little texted riddles and then sent his answers to get the next clue like a lab monkey rewarded with bananas. But hey, it wasn’t his fault that Hiro Yamamoto, the drummer for Maximum Volume, had come into the bike shop last Thursday. Hiro had been looking to buy some leather gloves and he spent a lot of time talking about this weird gig at an abandoned cannery he was going to play the following Saturday night. Jacob had been invited to August’s party that Saturday and Maximum Volume was playing it. So he had listened carefully, done a Net search, and voilà.

August had announced that tonight was his last hunt
ever.
“The farewell tour,” he called it. He was graduating and moving on, just like Jacob. It was going to be a party people would talk about for years. Legendary. Something like a dozen juniors and seniors had been invited. Plus August confirmed that he had summoned Thea Ward from the land of high school nobodies to be Jacob’s scavenger hunt partner. Jacob’s mouth watered at the thought. Thea was
hot.
He had lusted after her since last summer, when he had seen her at the pool in the world’s tiniest bikini. Those scraps of string had made a thong look like an old-lady swimsuit. Somehow he had told Beth about his undying lust—
how
and
when
he wasn’t sure—and now Thea was on tonight’s guest list. Behold the awesome power of August.

August was pretty cool, for a head case. It was too bad about Alexa.

I should have never slept with Alexa,
Jacob thought.
She thought it meant something it didn’t. And I shouldn’t have left her at the pool that night. I just couldn’t take any more of her insanity.

But I didn’t lock that gate. I don’t care what anyone says. I didn’t do it.

It had been a Friday, his turn to throw a party. It was just going to be a small get-together at his house. Just the “in crowd.” The coast was clear: his parents were out of town.

He was texting everyone about when to come over when he spotted Alexa DeYoung coming out of her parents’ restaurant. She’d left town months ago. To go to rehab, people said. The girl was an out-of-control freak. Seriously scary. People steered clear. There’s living on the edge, and then there’s jumping off the cliff without a parachute.

He grinned as a plan hatched: Morgan totally hated her, and he was pissed off at Morgan because she had scraped the new paint job on his motorcycle with her car door and refused to pay for it. Time for a little revenge.

So he sauntered up to Alexa, flashed his Jacob Stein smile, and invited her to his party. He told her that Morgan had specifically asked him to invite her. She was so grateful that he actually felt guilty. He had watched her working hard to be liked ever since the DeYoungs had moved to Callabrese. They all had. She was completely clueless about how to fit in.

Hours later, he had left her crying in the country club swimming pool because she thought he had actually
liked
her, when all their hookup had meant to him was a good time. Tears running down her cheeks because he did not want to plan their future right then and there, like she did. Then the crying and screeching had begun. Calling him a bastard. Saying that he’d used her. Then after that it was as if she had forgotten how to speak English. Sounds and words just exploded out of her, and she was scaring him.

So he’d bailed.

I had nothing to do with her death,
he reminded himself.
I didn’t lock her in. I know I didn’t. I checked. But I shouldn’t have left her there.

He wouldn’t think about that. Tonight was not about regrets. It was about fun. And Thea. He would make sure she understood from the get-go that it was just a hookup.

It was also about stuff. Their jaded little in-group actually competed for the swag that August provided because it was that awesome. Last time, Larson Jones had won an all-expense-paid trip for two to watch a Mogwai recording session in Scotland. This being the last party, August was going to deliver something even better. So rather than let Albino Man know he’d arrived early, Jacob decided to have a look around. He’d see if he could find some of the objects August would have put on the list and memorize where they were. So yeah, okay, that was cheating.

Whatever.

Stabs of moonlight pierced the fog as he walked his bike out of sight before starting a methodical search of the grounds. There was a lot to cover. The warehouse itself was huge, along with an extended building with a rusted corrugated roof and two or three smaller sheds. There looked to be a cave set into the cliff opposite the warehouse, but in the watery light, he couldn’t be sure. He’d check that out, too. A cave would be a perfect scary place to hide something in a scavenger hunt. August was sly like that.

Jacob’s boots crunched down on the pulverized shells scattered like gravel. He could hear the tide rushing in and out, like an asthmatic giant. As he walked, generators rumbled like jackhammers and gas exhaust clung to his nostrils. The motors must be powering the lights and the band equipment.

After a few minutes, he heard someone’s noisy footfalls, and he ducked behind the large brick warehouse to wait out the intruder. He prudently turned sideways so that no one would see him if they were looking through any of the windows in the back rooms.

The footsteps died away. There was nothing but the
putt-putt-putt
of the generators, the
whoosh
and rush of the water. An owl singing to prey.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.

And the guitar. Whoever was playing it had skills. No wonder Hiro’s band had been signed to a label.

Jacob started to walk on.

Then something cold and sharp slid into his back, pushing out all the breath in his body.

He didn’t feel the shells stipple his face as he fell forward, hard. Didn’t feel his nose breaking. Didn’t feel the serrated hunting knife being yanked out and thrust back in again.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Didn’t feel the blood spilling into his lungs, filling them like water balloons, pouring into his esophagus.

He wouldn’t feel anything ever again.

“This is
it
?” Thea said anxiously as Beth led the way to the door of the warehouse. Thea kept gathering up her ponytail and stroking it like a cat. “I thought we were going to some kind of mansion.”

“Where would be the fun in that?” Beth grinned at the glittery, glow-in-the-dark sign August had placed above the door:
INFERNO: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Nice touch.

At first it hurt Beth’s feelings when August had told her that he was going to plan the hunt alone. It was the very last one, ever. She’d helped him throw four amazing hunts and God knew how many smaller parties since forming the Pact, and she’d been looking forward to really pulling out all the stops on this one. She knew he wanted to make it super scary (although it would be hard to top Halloween) and she’d been creating storyboards and flow charts of clues for months. But then just after spring break, he’d told her he wanted her to have a chance to play. In all the time they’d known each other, she had never gotten to be a guest. So he was going to run this one on his own.

“This is payback,” he’d said sweetly, and she couldn’t seem to convince him otherwise. She liked playing hostess. In fact, being just a guest was a sort of demotion.

Then he reminded her that if she was a scavenger hunt contestant, he could pair her up with Larson Jones and offer a prize such as a fully crewed getaway—sailors, steward, cook—on the DeYoung yacht,
Guilty Pleasure.
That had caught her off guard. She hadn’t realized he’d noticed that she’d been crushing on Larson. What
else
had he noticed?

“I don’t like stuff like this,” Thea said anxiously. “I hate horror movies and scary rides and those walk-through haunted houses.”

“This will be totally different,” Beth promised, although she had no idea if that was true. She
did
know August had specifically asked her to get Thea Wade to the party. Jacob Stein had a crush on her and August wanted something from Jacob. To her consternation, August wouldn’t tell Beth what it was. It probably had something to do with motorcycles, since Jacob worked at the local motorcycle dealership.

“Maybe I’m getting something for
you
at the biker store,” August had told Beth, and Beth had smiled her sweetest smile.

Not for the first time, she wondered if he suspected that for the last three months, she had been laying the groundwork for Life after August. She assumed he would be good for using his parents’ connections to get her into the college of her choice—that being Oberlin—and maybe there’d be one more great summer, but after that, he’d be going away to college and their bond would weaken. It was inevitable.

She had to be practical and brutally honest with herself. People were going to pretend to like August for the rest of his life because he was rich and his family was important, and for the rest of
her
life, she might have to continue to pretend to like people like him. It all depended on how much friendship from other people she could purchase in the time allotted. So while she had the reputation of being August’s friend, she had to line up social clout for senior year. Beth hoped he understood.

There were advantages to losing August, though. It would be cool to have a real boyfriend. Someone to take her to prom next year. Hopefully it would be Larson, who was also a junior. She hadn’t tried to hook up with Larson because she knew that boy-girl besties could get awfully jealous if one of them hooked up with someone else. Three definitely was a crowd. Yet the fact remained that Larson Jones was incredibly hot and she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She loved his curly dark brown hair and deep-set eyes, caramel with sugary gold flecks. He had adorable freckles on a slightly twisted nose that only added to his unusual looks.

As they reached the door, Thea stiffened like she was going to run away shrieking, and Beth suppressed her sigh of exasperation. Thea had been dating a guy in a gang, and she was afraid of a little bit of spooky? Thea owed Beth for talking her into breaking up with Jackson. A few serious heart-to-hearts, a couple of good cries, and Thea had finally kissed Jackson White goodbye.

“It’ll be fun,” Beth promised Thea, who was playing with her ponytail again. “I don’t need to tell you that on the other side of this door, the cream of the social crop are gathering. You really can’t imagine the things I’ve gotten to do because I hang out with them. Last summer I spent three weeks in Maui, and August’s parents paid for
everything.
Then I went skiing at Lake Tahoe during Christmas break. Heather’s going to invite me down to L.A. after she films her pilot. She saw Jessica Biel at the farmer’s market. And Praveen’s talking about a big shopping trip to San Francisco.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Thea scowled at Beth. “You have this great, fantastic life now. I’m so happy for you.”

Beth blinked. Thea was so dense. “You’re missing the point, sweetie. What I’m saying is just get with it and you could have a shot at all this.”

“Right,” Thea drawled sarcastically.

“I made up these rules for myself,” Beth continued. “And they worked, didn’t they?” She held up her fingers. “One: Be nice. Really nice. Two: Act interested. Everyone wants to feel special.”

“That’s right.
Everyone,
” Thea said, crossing her arms and giving Robin a look that said
back me up.
But Robin just stood there.

“You
are
special, sweetie,” Beth said, trying very hard to sound compassionate, but she could hear the patronizing tone in her own voice. “You got invited to this party, didn’t you?”

“I only said yes after you told me Robin was coming,” Thea said, and Robin lit up.

“Thank you,” Robin said to her.

A frisson of mild alarm shot up Beth’s spine. She didn’t need these two comparing notes too closely. She had only invited Robin to get Thea to show, for Jacob. Robin had been an afterthought, so Beth had lied to Thea, telling her that Robin was already in.

It would pain Beth, but only a little, if Robin figured that out. What mattered is that these two girls had won the golden ticket. If they didn’t make the most of it, that wasn’t on her. It would just go to prove that she’d been right to leave them behind when she had moved on. What was the saying about lipstick on a pig? It was still a pig?

Time would tell.

“The third rule for this crowd is that you have to bring something to the table. You have to know things, or be able to do things, or be funny or smart. You have to have something to offer.”

Thea’s angry expression clouded with humiliation as if to say she would be out of the circle before the hunt even started.

“But rules one and two are more important,” Beth said quickly. “If you act like these people are interesting, they’ll think
you’re
interesting. That’s a start. Then you can figure out what’s missing in the mix.” She smiled brightly at Robin. “Let’s think of something
you’re
good at, Merida. You like to play Clue. How about gaming?”

Robin shook her head. “I play board games with my little brother. That’s it.”

“Well, we’ll think of something. For each of you. Now let’s put on our
game
faces,” Beth said, chuckling at her pun. She smiled brightly. “Do I look good? No lip gloss on my teeth?”

Before either girl could answer her, the door crashed open, nearly smashing her in the face. “Hey!” Beth yelled as she stumbled backward and collided with Thea, who bumped into Robin.
Not
the grand entrance Beth had planned.

None other than Larson himself shoved past her on his way out.
Pushing
her. He didn’t even seem to notice. She registered the slight and knew Robin and Thea had, too. She swallowed her heart along with her pride.

“Lar, you startled me,” she said in a high, friendly tone, but he kept going.

“Dude, where you going? Party’s inside,” said a weed-laden voice.

Cage Preston swaggered up behind her as tall as a mountain, gorilla-huge, his arms so muscular he couldn’t lower them to his sides anymore. There were raised veins like long, hard worms underneath his skin. When he went down the football field, people yelled, “Hulk
smash
!” He deserved the gaudy MVP ring he wore on the pinky of his left hand—
MVP
spelled out in glittering rhinestones, with a red enamel
C
just below the
V
, for
Callabrese.

For a second Beth thought Larson was going to ignore Cage, too. Then he moved his shoulders and put his hands in the pockets of his Callabrese High letter jacket. “Gotta smoke,” he said, then stomped off into the darkness.

“You can smoke at the party,” Cage called after him. More to himself, he added, “We always smoke at the parties.”

“Jerk,” Thea muttered.

Beth’s cheeks went hot. Larson was permitted any level of jerkiness, but a nobody like Thea could not get away with commenting on it.

“Let’s go in,” Beth said, leading her two lambs to the slaughter.

Even Beth had to catch her breath as they entered the warehouse. August had outdone himself—correction, outdone himself and
her
—with a huge cavern of a room that was rippling with holographic projections of hellish flames reaching to the thirty-foot ceiling. It was amazing. Animatronic bats squeaked and dive-bombed from way high up in the rafters on filament wires. There was a hanging skeleton whose jaw dropped open with an ear-splitting shriek.

Prismatic tumbles of scarlet- and pumpkin-colored light spilled across the floor, where leering devil faces grinned and stabbed with pitchforks. Along the walls, glow-in-the-dark coffins held shrouded figures clutching nosegays of dead, dried roses. The figures writhed and shifted very subtly. It was like the set of a Hollywood Halloween movie.

Beth started picking out the faces of the usual suspects: Praveen, Heather, Morgan; Cage and Larson were outside. She didn’t see Jacob Stein. “Prince” George Frisen was missing, too. And yummy Kyle Thomas.

A large white banner with dripping bloody letters proclaimed,
WELCOME TO HELL!
August was standing beneath it in a fedora, khaki trench coat, green silk shirt, and tuxedo pants. The mike of a headset curled in front of his mouth. The fedora hid his hideous bleached hair, and not for the first time, Beth considered that if he just had some pigment to his skin, let his hair grow out to its mousy brown, dyed his eyebrows, and got some permanent lash extensions, he would actually look good. He had great bone structure.

He was holding an old-fashioned stopwatch and a clipboard. Combined with the mike, he had standard Pact scavenger hunt equipment.

“Wow, this is cool,” Robin said.

“It’s scary,” Thea whined, and Beth wanted to slap some sense into her.

“Hey, Beth, ’scuse,” Cage said, scooting around the three girls to get inside. “August, my man!”

Cage ambled up to August and clapped him on the shoulder. Two large glowing purple skulls rested on a black coffin-shaped table beside him. One skull was marked
HELLNOTES
and the other one
LIFELINES
.

“Greetings, greetings, you know the routine,” August said to Cage. “Don’t open the envelope. And give me your phone.”

Cage good-naturedly laid his cell phone in
LIFELINES
, which was already filled. A couple of them had the new sparkly cases that cost a bazillion dollars. Then Cage turned to the basket marked
HELLNOTES
and started going through a stack of black envelopes with names printed on them in red.

“Alphabetical, Cage, as usual. I know those pesky letters can be confusing. Don’t break the seal. You
will
be disqualified.” And then August looked at Beth’s entourage. “Robin? Brissett?” he said, in complete shock.

Cage lifted an envelope out of the basket and walked away.

“Hey, August,” Beth said smoothly, moving in front of Robin. “So a bit of last-minute logistics. It’s a very long story, but Robin’s kind of stuck with me this weekend, and the more the merrier, right?”