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You can’t hide from the truth, little liar. You’re going to get what you deserve.—A
22
SHE’S MADE HER BED …
The next morning, there was a loud knock on Spencer’s door. “Spencer?” Reefer called. “Are you in there?”
“Go away,” she answered in a muffled voice. “I’m sick.”
“What’s wrong?” Reefer sounded worried. “Can I come in? Please?”
Spencer hid her face with a pillow and groaned. She’d remained in her room for as long as she possibly could. Texts had come in from Aria, Hanna, and Emily, bright and early, reporting that Hanna hadn’t yet been able to sneak on Naomi’s computer and find out anything else. Then Emily and Aria had called, asking Spencer if she wanted to run through the talent show routine one more time—the performance was that night, and they still hadn’t nailed all the dance steps. They’d stopped bugging her after she said she wasn’t feeling well, but Reefer hadn’t given up. “Pleeeease?” Reefer drawled again.
Spencer sighed, stood up, and hobbled toward the door, wincing as she put weight on her twisted ankle. The light was bright in the hall, and she squinted. Reefer’s jaw dropped when he saw her. “What happened to you?”
“What part?” Spencer turned away. “The fact that I smell like vomit, or the fact that there’s gum all through my hair?”
“All of it!” Reefer cried.
Spencer glanced at her reflection in the sunburst mirror in the hall and shuddered. It was bad enough that she’d spent the whole night vomiting because of some bad shrimp scampi she’d eaten at dinner—or, well, she assumed it was the shrimp, even though other people had eaten the same thing and hadn’t even gotten a stomachache. That morning, she’d also awakened to a huge glob of chewing gum as a brand-new hair accessory. It was going to take a miracle to get it out without chopping off all her hair.
“Someone put it in my hair in the crush to get out of the café after dinner,” Spencer said. “I turned around, and suddenly it was there.”
Reefer sat down on the desk chair, looking puzzled. “Did you see who did it?”
“No.”
“Maybe you were chewing gum before you went to sleep and forgot to take it out.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I never chew gum before bed.”
Reefer walked over to her and hugged her waist. “Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you that we shouldn’t sneak around anymore.”
Spencer wriggled out of his grip. “We have to sneak around.”
“Still?” Reefer put his hands on his hips.
“I told you,” Spencer said. “I don’t think it’s fair for Naomi. And you said you were fine with it.”
Reefer sniffed. “I didn’t know you were going to be so serious about it.”
Then Reefer ran his hands through her hair, seemingly not grossed out by the gum. She tried to resist, but Reefer smelled like sunscreen and chlorine, and in a second, his lips were on hers and they fell onto Spencer’s bed. His skin was warm from the sun. Spencer shifted positions so she could help Reefer pull his shirt over his head.
Crack.
Suddenly, the bed was on the ground. The floor shook. The picture of the ship hanging above Spencer’s bed wobbled on its nail, then fell. Spencer covered her head just before it crashed to the mattress.
Reefer blinked. “I knew I was wild, but I didn’t know I was that wild.”
Spencer crawled to the carpet and stared at the bed frame. All four legs splayed horizontally, as though no longer able to bear the weight of the mattress. The wood wasn’t splintered, as she might have expected, but had broken off clean, as if it had been sawed through.
Then she stood up and examined the nail on which the picture over the bed had hung. It dangled precariously from the wall, in danger of falling out itself. It had clearly been messed with. The first evening of the trip, the seas had been rocky, and though Spencer and Kirsten’s tubes of toothpaste had tumbled off the shelf in the bathroom, not a single piece of furniture or decoration had budged. They’d both joked that everything in the room was probably bolted down, not hanging by a faulty nail.
Spencer’s skin prickled. The thought that had been quietly, insidiously swirling around her head for the last twenty-four hours pushed to the forefront of her mind. “That’s it,” she announced. “I can’t take it anymore. This has gone far enough.”
“What are you talking about?” Reefer asked.
“Don’t you see?” Spencer cried, her voice cracking. “The slip on the floor, the food poisoning, the gum thing, and now the bed? Someone is doing this to me!”
The smile faded from Reefer’s face. “You’re serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
“Who would be doing this to you? And why?”
She took a deep breath. “Isn’t it obvious? Naomi!”
Reefer’s eyes widened. “Come on. She’s not that crazy.”
“Yes, she is!”
Spencer peered around the cabin nervously. “Does that TV look like it’s sitting too close to the edge to you?” she asked. Then she looked at the untouched breakfast tray she’d ordered from room service and gave the pastries an experimental sniff. “Will you taste that muffin to make sure Naomi didn’t lace it with acid?”
Reefer stared at her. “Um, Spencer, if it’s laced with acid, then I’d be on acid. But you’ve lost all perspective. Naomi isn’t gaslighting you.”
