The Rules (5 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me I wasn’t actually invited?” Robin knew she was yelling but she seriously doubted anyone but Beth and Thea could hear her.

“I invited you,” Beth said coolly.

“This is August’s party,” Robin insisted, and Beth pursed her lips.

“Would you have come if I had told you?” Beth asked, as if that would prove some kind of point.

“Are you kidding? Now I’m stuck here with no way to call someone to come pick me up,” Robin shot back, and Thea started biting her thumbnail—her nervous habit.

Beth gently pushed Thea’s hand away from her mouth. “Oh my God, sweetie. All August was worried about was the logistics of the hunt. It’s not as if he doesn’t like you.”

Robin opened her mouth for a retort, but Beth obviously didn’t want to hear it. “At least you could have thanked him,” Beth said.

“Oh,
right.
For his good manners. Sure.” Robin narrowed her eyes at Beth and turned to do just that.

Immediately, Beth grabbed her wrist, digging her nails into Robin’s arm. Painfully.

“Wait. I’m kidding.” Beth smiled her plastic smile, finally letting go. “I
am,
okay? You don’t need to apologize to him. We’re here. He said yes. Everything is fine.”

Robin didn’t like Beth’s version of “fine.” Beth had kissed up to August and every single person here and it had sickened Robin to watch. Beth was practically starving for their approval. It was obvious to Robin that they were only playing along, acting like they liked her.

Robin was about to say something she knew she would later regret, but she was saved when the members of Maximum Volume returned, climbing onto the stage to play an electrified version of the traditional funeral march. Everything seemed to be fine now, for them, at least. The band ended their song with a flourish, and August appeared on the stage.

“Thank you, Maximum Volume!” he said into his wireless mike. “They’ll be playing again in a little while, and a final set when I announce the winners. Now it’s hookup time!”

Cheers rose up as Beth caught Robin’s arm. “We’re exempt. We’re already paired up.”

“Paired up?” Robin echoed. She saw three girls, two of whom she recognized from school: Heather Smirnoff and Morgan Alcina. A third girl shook her head and laughed. Cage and Larson sidled over to them as they all checked each other out. Robin’s face felt warm. She wasn’t sure she was going to enjoy this “hookup time.”

August dangled a black bandana. “Who will do the honors? Beth?”

“Oh,” Beth murmured, sucking in her breath. She beamed at August before starting to walk forward, Miss America on her way to her tiara.

“Why don’t you have your friend Thea help us out?” August finished.

Beth flinched but just as quickly recovered. “Showtime,” she muttered. “Do me proud, Thea.”

Like a stage magician, August gestured for Thea to come forward. She took her time, looking supremely cool. August handed her the bandana, then pointed at Cage. Cage imitated Thea’s runway model gait and planted himself in front of her, bending his knees so that he and Thea were closer in height. August gestured for her to place the bandana over his eyes, and she did, tying it in place.

While she was doing that, Heather, Morgan, and the third girl dashed over to their purses and pulled something out of them. Perfume bottles. Morgan gave herself a spritz, her shiny curls bouncing as she tipped her head left and right, and Heather tipped a vial over, dabbing it behind her ears. The third girl pulled out a white handkerchief and waved it back and forth in the air.

The girls moved toward the blindfolded Cage, Morgan and Heather slinking around like pole dancers while the third girl moved her hankie back and forth very, very shyly. She glanced at the band, and Robin saw a quick flare of interest on the bass player’s face, followed by longing and…regret? Robin looked back at the girl, who was twirling in an awkward circle with both arms extended.

Larson, August, Beth, and the entire band hooted and applauded as the Callabrese girls really put their sexy on. Heather and Morgan performed full-body rolls.

“Yikes,” Robin murmured, dying of embarrassment. “Um, Beth?”

“Be cool,” Beth said. “It’ll be fine.”

Heather blew Cage a kiss and the onlookers chuckled. Cage cocked his head to sniff the air.

“You know Heather,” Beth said in Robin’s ear.

Robin did. Heather was one of those blondes with perfect hair, tons of makeup, and big diamond earrings. She was the queen of the drama department, literally, with a mirror in her locker that looked like one of those clapper things they used in movies when the director called “Action!”

“She’s moving to L.A. after graduation. She got a part in a TV pilot,” Beth said.

“Yeah, I heard,” Robin replied, and she could hear herself working overtime to sound unimpressed. “Makes sense. Guys think she’s hot.” Which was also kind of bitchy of her, she supposed. Heather was a good actress. She had real talent. Robin was just very nervous.

The girls circled Cage, still doing their slinky-girl dance moves. He inhaled deeply, then reached out both arms and lunged forward, nearly grazing Heather’s arm.

“Hot is right,” Beth whispered. “Heather is hot for a teacher. And said teacher is hot for
her.
”

Robin jerked back her head, her mouth dropping open in shock. “No way.”

Beth made a show of fanning her with the clue envelope. “Way. Want to know who?”

“Beth, you can’t be right. Do you know how careful teachers have to be these days?” Robin said anxiously. “My father had to take sexual harassment training every semester.”

“Well, it looks like someone else flunked,” Beth retorted.

“You don’t
know
that,” Robin insisted. “If this is just gossip, it could really hurt someone. Even get them fired.”

Beth threw up her hands. “Only the guilty. And I
do
know. I know it’s true.”

Robin was thunderstruck. She didn’t know what else to say. Did her dad know? Was it someone who had been over to the house? Before her dad’s accident, her parents had been very social, inviting other teachers and the lacrosse team over for dinner all the time.

Cage inhaled again. There was a big, goofy grin on his face as he held out his hands and began to advance on Heather. Blowing him a kiss for the benefit of the onlookers, she darted out of his way.

“Morgan,” he guessed.

“Nope,” August said. “Try again.”

Cage lurched in the vague vicinity of the third girl but she stayed out of his way. She was wearing a green top with loose sleeves with a matching sweater wrap over it.

“That’s Praveen. She has the coolest clothes,” Beth said reverently. She looked from Praveen to the sweater she had on, smiled, then lifted her chin. Robin translated: Beth and Praveen were wearing the same shade of green. It must be the color of the week.

“Praveen goes to Porters. It’s a private school,” Beth said.

“How does August know her?” Robin asked.

“Praveen used to hang out with Alexa. His sister. You know about her, right? She died.”

“I heard,” Robin said. It had been all over the school. Rumors had flown: that she’d OD’d, cut her wrists, been murdered. The story that stuck was that she had drowned in the country club swimming pool. Even when the news had been fresh, Robin felt bad about the level of her own ghoulish curiosity. But then her father had gotten hit and tragedy was no longer a spectator sport in her world.

The doctors told them that Brian Brissett would live…but that he would be paralyzed from the waist down.
“Tough times don’t last. But tough people do,”
her mom said.

But how did you get tough? What made you weak? Was it just the way you were born, like being athletic? Had Alexa missed out on the survivalist gene, or was she just unlucky? She had only attended Callabrese High for a year and a few weeks, and half the school gossip had been about her meltdowns and over-the-top antics.

I think I’m tough.
Robin tried the thought on for size.
Or maybe I just know that someone’s got my back. I’ve got my family.

That being the family she had lied to tonight to come to Club Pervo.

“It’s Morgan!” Cage shouted as he grabbed Morgan around the waist and whirled her in a circle. He buried his face against her neck.

“Yup!” she laughed. “You cheated. You could see through the blindfold!” She batted his shoulder and yanked off the black cloth.

Cage made a show of covering his mouth in horror. “Morgan, honestly. I would
never
cheat.”

August guffawed into his mike. “Tickets are now on sale for Cheater Theater. We’ll let it go. We’ll get a new blindfold for the next round. And how about you do the honors this time, Robin?”

“No, that’s okay,” Robin said, waving a hand at him.

“Just. Do. It,” Beth murmured. “Please.”

Sheesh.
“Okay, I’m in,” Robin said as Larson reached up to get a bandana from August. She didn’t want to touch him. She thought he was a slime bucket.

“Okay, no more lurking, bachelor number three,” August said, and he turned his head toward the shadows. “Dude, you show up late and then you don’t mingle.”

Dark on dark—a shape glided through the black perimeter of the room and moved in front of the coffins occupied by the writhing figures. It was about six feet tall, and as it passed behind a lantern, the warm light cut out a silhouette. Slightly turned up nose, broad shoulders and chest, with almost no butt on long legs. Robin’s heart stuttered. It was Kyle Thomas. She hadn’t known he would be here.

“Hey, Robin,” he said, smiling at her. Right at
her.

His velvety brown, sun-bleached hair was longer now that her father couldn’t order him to cut it. His letter jacket, T-shirt, and jeans looked as elegant as the tux he’d worn at this year’s winter formal, to which he’d brought some girl from another school.

“Hmm,” Beth murmured beside her. “Do we have something to share?”

Robin was absolutely certain there was nothing she wanted to share with Beth about her secret crush on Kyle.

Despite all her best intentions, Robin swallowed hard when Kyle smiled quizzically at her. She translated that smile: she was not a rich kid, not a hanger-on, not a partier, so what was she doing there?

Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. He was the big everything at Callabrese High—class president, Ice King at the formal, and lacrosse team captain—a position her dad had given him before his accident. Robin couldn’t get it out of her head that with a couple more team meetings at their house, Kyle would have finally realized there was more to Robin Brissett than the fact that she was his coach’s daughter.

“Will this do for me?” Kyle asked, reaching over to one of the round tables covered with black tablecloths positioned around the room. He picked up an oversized black napkin and waited for Robin.

“Thea, why don’t you go ahead and cover up Larson’s eyes?” August asked.

“How’s your dad?” Kyle asked quietly as he handed the cloth to Robin. He smelled like cinnamon, one of her favorite things. He squatted down, facing her, and as she reached up to position the cloth across his eyes, she realized she would have to put her arms around him to tie the blindfold behind his head. His face would practically be buried in her chest. Her pulse began to race. How many times had she daydreamed about being held by Kyle? Sometimes at practice, when she had waited for her father, she’d stared at him, memorizing the shapes of his muscles, the way he moved. Lacrosse was an aggressive sport—some said brutal—and she figured herself for some kind of cavewoman because it was thrilling to watch Kyle in action, playing with everything he had.

“He’s good,” she said automatically. He looked at her and she shrugged. “Pretty good. It was hard sitting out this season. He was really touched when the team came over after you won the CIF championship.”

“Maybe he could coach from his wheelchair,” Kyle said.

“He’s going to walk again,” Robin said. She sounded terse. She smiled to take away the sting. “And I am going to kick your ass in this scavenger hunt.”