The Rules (8 page)

He’d heard that collegiate coaches would look the other way, sure, but not if someone publicly denounced him before he even got accepted to a university. He’d be blackballed before he even got his chance to make his mark, hopefully go pro. He was a superstar at Callabrese, but high school was almost over. Who would he be without football?

I have to talk to August,
he thought desperately.
Alone.

He could feel the vein in his forehead throbbing in time with his accelerated heartbeat. At school they laughed and called him Hulk on the field, but they had no idea how accurate that nickname was. His strength and speed came from rage. It was a side effect that he usually kept under control.

Alexa must have told August that he got her some speed to help her lose weight. And now August was making him sweat.

All I did was get it for her,
he thought, ripping the dangling measuring tape off the box and stuffing the steroids into the pocket of his letter jacket.

Morgan let go of him and picked up the sea lion. “Alexa collected sea lions,” she said. “This is weird.”

Then she crossed her arms over her chest and stomped on the nearest chattering doll.

Obviously he wasn’t the only one standing there with a guilty secret.

“Oh my God, she was so uncoordinated,” Morgan said in a rush. “I don’t know why she even tried out for the squad. She had to
see
what a klutz she was.”

“Shit, Morgan,” he said as they gave each other a long, hard look.

Confessing.

“What was I supposed to say to her? ‘Alexa, you’re too short and too weird to be a cheerleader’? So I told her what we always tell girls we don’t want. What’s he going to do about it? He can’t do anything. Because I didn’t
do
anything.”

Cage was rooted to the spot. “Morgan,” he said thickly, feeling both dizzy and sick, the blood roaring in his ears. It sounded like the world was crashing down around him. “I have to talk to August.”

“What a crummy trick,” she said. “Lure us all here for one last major party, fool us into playing for big prizes, and then dis us. I didn’t do anything illegal.”

But I did.
He was reeling. They say sometimes you just
know
things. And he had a funny feeling that his life was over.

From out of the dark, the figure in the hood and duster shot toward them, a baseball bat in his gloved hand. He slammed it against the back of Cage’s skull. The impact spun Cage around just as his attacker swung it again, hard, against his face. His nose broke and he grunted as he staggered backward.

Morgan tried to run, but the figure grabbed her, yanking her head back by her hair and forcing her into an arch, but finally he let go. She went sprawling.

The bat came across Cage’s knees, then his face again. All Cage was, was pain. The force kept coming down and down and down.

August,
he immediately thought.
God, stop.
He couldn’t speak.

The bat came down again.

Why?
he thought. But he knew why. He knew several reasons why:

His last image was of Alexa at the party. Of her crying and saying, “I need to go home. Can you take me home?”

And he hadn’t. Not just blowing her off, but laughing at her, too. Saying, “C’mon, Alexa, just call your private helicopter or whatever. Or your brother. That’s why you don’t get invited to our parties. Because you can’t even get from point A to point B in a shitty little town like this.”

He never saw her alive again.

I didn’t even really know her,
he tried to tell the person in the ski mask. The person he assumed was August.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Then he wasn’t sorry anymore.

He was dead.

MORGAN’S RULE #1:
Do what it takes to stay on top.

The masked figure turned on Morgan. Pain skittered through her body as she tried to move. He pried her mouth open and stuffed something into it that was thin and pliant and tasted like plastic.

He picked her up and flung her over his shoulder, trapping her arms against her sides. She tried to spit out the plastic but it was stuck. She moved her head from side to side, fighting to catch the plastic on his coat and work it loose from her mouth. It remained lodged in her throat.

He carried her deep into the cave, skirting piles of junk. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, where he was taking her: away from Cage, and escape.

Cage, be alive,
she pleaded.
Save me.

They went down at an angle, descending a spiral of cement stairs surrounded by rock. She felt like she was doing cartwheels as she spun dizzily, gagging and sucking air through her nose.

They ended up in some kind of room. Dusty crates and barrels were stacked, broken alcohol bottles strewn all over the place. He carried her through the room and into a small, narrow tunnel. It twisted and turned as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

When she came to, she heard crashing waves, the smell of the sea, blood, and an odor that reminded her of cars. He flopped her down in the darkness. A light flared on and all she saw was a coat, a hood, and gloves.

Morgan could only manage a dry, husky retch. The ski mask loomed over her. The gloved hand reached into her mouth, pulling out the plastic and automatically clamping his hand over it, hard. She got out one ragged, hoarse shriek, but the hand muffled it. A fist slammed against the left side of her head and her skull clanged like a gong. Everything went black, and then yellow dots bubbled and popped behind her eyelids.

The hand moved away.

“Help,” she ground out. Her voice sounded like she had eaten broken glass. “Help me!”

“Tell me you know why,” a voice whispered gruffly over the roar of the ocean, as if he were trying to disguise who he was. But wasn’t it too late for that?

“I’m sorry.” Tears ran down her face. “I
did
say she was too fat. And…and I
did
lie about the vote.”

The blank black hood moved closer, the fabric brushing against her nose. She could smell something sweet. She began to panic. What was that smell?

What did it matter? It didn’t matter. She had to concentrate on things that mattered. On getting out of this alive.

He stayed where he was, and her mind darted back to what she had been saying. Her confession. He must already know, but maybe he wanted her to admit everything and ask for his forgiveness. If she begged him, promised him she would make up for it, then maybe all this would stop.

He tapped the other side of her head and she sobbed, a jolt of pain coursing through her as a painful reminder of how hard he had hit her.

“The vote,” her attacker whispered.

“Okay,” she said, gasping. “Okay, whatever you want.”

“Tell me.”

“Alexa…,” Morgan sobbed, “tried out for j-junior varsity cheer when she came to Callabrese.”

The masked head nodded. So far, so good.

Morgan cried harder. He raised his fist and a shudder went through her entire body. “I got everyone to say that she was too fat but that she could try again in the fall. She came back.” She spoke in a rush, almost babbling. She would tell him anything he wanted to know. She would tell him what she knew about Heather and her teacher if he wanted that, too.

“She was pretty g-good. I didn’t expect it.”

Her attacker waited for her to go on. When she heaved and panted, he hit her again. Her entire body convulsed.

He waited.

“Then w-we voted on all the girls who tried out.” She tasted blood. Oh God, blood was streaming all over her face. Her left ear was still ringing. She could barely hear herself speaking. “I counted the votes alone. The other cheerleaders had voted Alexa in. But I lied and told them she didn’t make it.”

The hood nodded encouragingly. She burst into tears and began to hiccup with fresh sobs.

“We all had a terrible fight. But then she stopped coming to Callabrese, and it didn’t matter.”

“It didn’t matter?” he whispered.

“You can’t be a cheerleader for a school you don’t go to!” she cried desperately. Snot ran down her face. “Oh, please, August, please let me go. I won’t tell anyone you did this. I’ll never tell.”

The hood moved out of her field of vision. Receding footfalls echoed in the tunnel, and tears and blood and mucus made her gag as she prayed that he was leaving, letting her live.

“She didn’t die because she didn’t get to be a cheerleader,” she said. Then she shut her eyes. That was a terrible thing to say.

The wrong thing to say.

The footfalls stopped abruptly. She sucked in her breath, held it. She heard him walking back toward her.

Coming closer.

He jerked her head sideways, exposing her right ear, and bent down low.

“You’re a liar. All you do is lie. This time, you won’t get away with it.”

He clamped her nostrils shut with his other hand and pushed down hard on her mouth.

The roar of the waves.

The roar in her head.

The roar of the crowd in the stands at her last football game washed over her as Morgan drifted far, far away.

“You guys, something touched me!” Thea cried, twisting right. Her elbow collided with something hard.

“Thea, Thea, Thea,
ow,
” Beth said, rubbing her chin. She waved her flashlight at the sky and a white-winged moth circled it. Probably the same moth that had tickled Thea’s cheek. “Good Lord, have you considered medication? Is this post-traumatic Jackson disorder?”

Thea clamped her jaw shut so she wouldn’t yell at Beth for making jokes at her expense when she was so scared. They were only halfway down the stupid cliff, and it was steep and dark. It was Jackson plus this whole creepy night. She didn’t like being trapped out here in the middle of nowhere with no car and no cell.

They inched down the rest of the way. As they reached the bottom of the trail, Thea felt her ankle turn and sucked in her breath. She abruptly stopped, causing Beth to bump right into her.

“What’s wrong
now
?” Beth asked.

“Are you okay?” said Robin, turning around to face her.

“Perfecta.”
Thea flashed them a very weak half smile, even though she didn’t want to. Robin was always so nice. But Beth had turned into such a major bitch.

“Well, let’s start looking,” Beth said.

Robin and Beth took off toward the breakers, leaving Thea alone in the dark, their flashlight beams bobbing up and down farther and farther away. She waved her flashlight back up at the trail. If Thea knew she could make it back by herself, she would already be gone. But it was so steep she was afraid she’d get dizzy and fall.

“Wait!” she croaked as she chased after the two girls. She wrenched her ankle again but forced herself to keep going.

Robin and Beth stood beside a couple of beached rowboats riddled with rusty holes. It looked as if someone had shot at them with a machine gun.

“Look at what someone’s written on this one,” Robin said, playing her light over some spray-painted words:

“ ‘Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub,’ ” Beth read.

“And what better place to have soap than in a tub?” Robin asked triumphantly. “Check
this
out.”

She and Beth focused their flashlight beams on the rope that was resting in the bottom of the boat. It was thick, long, and coiled like a snake ready to strike, and for some reason Thea shivered when she saw it.

“Don’t touch it,” she murmured.

Neither of the others seemed to hear her, or if they did, they didn’t care. They hauled the rope out.

“The envelope!” Beth shrieked, jabbing both forefingers machine-gun style at the white rectangle. It was so white it nearly glowed.

“Remember, we can’t open it until we take this back to the party,” Robin cautioned.

“Gross. It’s wet.” Beth turned and wiped her hands on Robin’s jeans.

“Not on the bomber jacket, please. You should have worn scavenger-hunt clothes,” Robin teased, clearly in a better mood now that they’d found their object.

“How did you know?” Thea blurted.

“Know what?” Robin asked as Beth bundled the rope in her arms. “Blech, you’re right. It is wet.”

“Told you,” Beth said.

“How did you know there’d be boats? You couldn’t have seen them from where we were. But you came straight here.”

Robin shrugged. “Lucky hunch. Now help us carry this thing. We’ve got to get it back to August so we can move on to our next clue.”

Thea gathered up a section of the slimy rope, still trying to parse how Robin had zoomed in on it so fast. What she didn’t want to say was that she hadn’t made any of the connections Robin had. She was the one flunking physics.
And
trig. Maybe she was just stupid. She tried to imagine going through life as a stupid person and all her anxiety flooded back over her. Her ankle hurt. Not only did she have to climb up that narrow trail, but she also had to do it lugging this rope.

But there was no way Beth and Robin could be convinced to give up now. Even she could see that.

“Okay, let’s do this!” Robin said, and Thea trudged through the sand, keeping her fingers crossed that they could barrel through all the other clues just as fast and get this dumb hunt over with. She still had hopes that a certain guy might be into sneaking off. Except if Beth found out, and it got around…

“If you ever cheat on me, I will kill you,”
Jackson had once promised her. He wasn’t in one of his bad moods when he said it, either. He had stared her right in the eyes and said it as though he was saying something sweet.

And right there was proof that she was very, very stupid indeed.

AUGUST’S RULE #2:
No one is worthy of trust.

The band’s lead singer was falling-down drunk.

“I’m sick,” she moaned, her voice echoing around the room. August pressed a button on his black box sound mixer and the little robot bats in the rafters squeed in response. She just stared upward as though mesmerized. It was so pathetic it slightly took him aback.

Larson and Praveen arrived, Praveen carrying a black sweater decorated with little white picture-frame shapes. By the looks of Larson’s wrinkled brow and faint smile, it was obvious that he was pleased they had found their object but was confused by Praveen’s skittishness. She was scratching her arms and chest the way she did whenever she was nervous. Beth had told him that Praveen was rumored to have some icky skin condition, but that she had never seen any blotches, bumps, or anything else on Praveen’s smooth, dark brown skin. Beth said Praveen was a neurotic hypochondriac.

August didn’t know for certain but was absolutely positive that she was a neurotic kleptomaniac. She stole things just for the thrill, or for some other whacked-out need her twisted psyche required.

How far will they go?
August wondered.
How much will they put up with to get what they have coming?

Praveen held out the sweater and he gestured to one of the coffins containing an undulating corpse. Over the coffin read
TEAM PRAVEEN AND LARSON
. He had put the signs up after the teams had formed and run off into the night. He was going to ask the band to help, but they’d scattered during the break he’d given them. You’d think for the money he was paying they’d offer to pitch in. But no, they were rock stars. Or so they thought. August predicted an extremely short career trajectory for Maximum Volume.

Praveen laid the sweater down in front of the coffin like an offering to the gods, and Larson’s arm brushed against hers as he detached the white envelope.

Larson usually got what he wanted, but not tonight. August had seen to that. Larson was as horny as usual, and for Larson, any girl would do. There was no way Praveen was going to hook up with him, not if Beth’s intel that she was secretly dating someone was correct. And August would thwart Beth every way he could to keep her from having her heart’s desire.

“Before you read your next clue, you have to decide Truth or Dare,” August reminded them.

“Dare,” they both said, and August smirked. He’d expected that. They had a lot to hide. He reached into his trench coat pocket and held out a black envelope. Larson took it and ripped it open as Praveen stood on tiptoe to read over his shoulder.

“What the hell is this?” Larson asked.

August shrugged. “What does it say?”

“It says we need to stand on either side of the pipe on the north wall, hold hands around it, and close our eyes for a spellbinding surprise.”

“Then I suggest you do that,” August said, before sipping his beer.

“How are we supposed to know which wall is north?” Praveen asked.

August jerked a thumb toward the door. “The ocean’s right outside there. So that’s west.”

Without a word the two of them walked over to the north wall where a massive pipe extended from the ceiling and disappeared into the cement ground. There was barely enough clearance between it and the wall for Larson to slip his hand around it so he could grasp Praveen’s.

“This is ridiculous,” she hissed.

“Yeah, but the sooner we do it, the sooner we can win the hunt,” Larson said.

“Close your eyes,” August told them. “And don’t open them until I tell you to.”

Once he was sure they had their eyes closed, he moved soundlessly toward them, pausing at a box of props. He would have to be fast, but that wasn’t a problem.

“Okay, guys, you’re doing great,” he said, distracting them with the sound of his voice.

“How long do we have to stay like this?” Praveen asked.

“That depends on you.” August lifted a pair of handcuffs. He took careful aim and then slapped one on each of their wrists resting on the far side of the pipe.

He leaped backward out of reach as they both opened their eyes, shouting and jerking their arms away from the pipe.

With their hands cuffed together between the pipe and the wall, they were going nowhere.

“What the hell, August?” Praveen said.

August pulled the key to the handcuffs from his pocket. “You can get out any time you want and continue your hunt. If one of you will admit to why you deserve to be handcuffed for real, I’ll give you this key and you can carry on.”

Praveen flailed for the key, but all she succeeded in doing was pulling Larson’s arm farther through the narrow space between the pipe and the wall.

“Praveen, stop,” Larson barked at her. “You’re about to wrench my arm out of the socket.”

“Shut up, Larson,” she said. “August, this isn’t funny.”

August heard the worry in her voice. He loved it.

“Not really meant to be, Praveen,” he said.

“What are you
doing
?” She clenched her jaw and tried to scratch the arm behind the pipe. Then her chest. She couldn’t reach. He couldn’t help his grin. He hadn’t planned on thwarting her loony-tunes tic, but it was great to see her squirm,
literally.

“Just admit to something you’ve done that would get you arrested and I’ll let you go.”

“I’ve never done anything like that,” she said, the guilt on her face so obvious that he had to laugh. Her brows shot up.

And then she looked scared, and his insides churned.

Do you have any idea how scared she was that night at the party? And then she went to find her sweater on the bed in the guest room? And it wasn’t there?

The door flew open and Kyle came in with one arm around Heather’s shoulders, the other cradling a massive crowbar against his chest. Heather was hunched over, the fingers of her right hand wrapped with a couple of tissues. August could see blood seeping through and felt a glimmer of satisfaction. In her other hand she was holding a cute felt sea lion.

“There,” August said, pointing to the coffin next to Praveen and Larson’s.
TEAM KYLE AND HEATHER
, read their sign. Kyle set the crowbar down with a clunk and yanked free the bright white envelope. Then he noticed the little drama in progress and froze.

“Are we interrupting?” Kyle asked.

August shook his head. “One of them has to confess to committing a crime. You’re just in time to watch them bare their souls.”

Kyle looked askance at August as he checked Heather’s finger. “Okay, that sounds a bit…extreme.”

“Oh my God. What did you two do?” Heather asked excitedly. She sucked on her bleeding fingertips.

“Nothing!” Praveen jerked her arm again.

“Ow!” Larson bellowed. “Shit, Praveen, stop it!”

August could see the panic in Praveen’s eyes. Her big secret would come out. One of them, anyway. The one that mattered to him.

The one that had mattered to Alexa.

Then Larson let out a surprised guffaw. “Hey, wait. Praveen, it’s okay. I’ve got this.”

August was ready to call his bluff. “Oh, ready to confess your sins so soon?”

Larson gave his glossy brown hair a shake. “Sure, this one’s easy. I deserve to be arrested because I’m underage and yet I brought alcohol to this party, I’m drinking it, and I’m corrupting my fellow youth. So call the cops on me.”

August blinked, stunned at his own stupidity that he hadn’t thought of that. It was so obvious. Not humiliating or degrading at all.