Page 6 of Winterveil

Spring 2037

Belle, West Virginia

Giselle Buckley had just given the worst performance of her life.

It wasn’t in front of a panel of judges, nodding inscrutably as they ticked the boxes on their scorecards, and it wasn’t in front of the audience usually composed of her fellow competitors’ grousing families, local reporters, and the occasional model scout—if, of course, they could be persuaded to make the journey from New York or LA to her corner of Appalachia, where America’s last functioning coal mines still coughed out a few hundred union jobs a year.

She wasn’t laced into a sequined gown; she wasn’t wearing false lashes so thick she could hardly blink; she wasn’t, at least, woozy from forty-eight hours of fasting. And she wasn’t angling for a tiara or a ribbon or her fourth Miss Teen title. She was, at the moment, just trying to convince her backstabbing weasel of an ex-boyfriend to unlock her cell door.

“Please, Sutton,” she’d whimpered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I want you back.”

Even Sutton Reeve, who had dropped out of high school in tenth grade in the hopes of being a professional motocross driver, could tell she was full of shit.

“Shoulda thought of that before. Shoulda kept your promise.”

Giselle wrapped her fingers around the bars. Pressing her face as close to Sutton’s as she could manage, she said softly, “I know. I’m sorry.”

It came off far more convincing this time. Pageants weren’t acting—they were performing, which was more than just a slight difference in semantics. But pageants still required Giselle to pretend to be something she wasn’t. And she was good at that; she always had been.

So she could play penitent. She could play ashamed.

Sutton shook his head fiercely and stepped away from her. “I don’t believe you.”

“I made a mistake.” Giselle strained to meet his gaze. “I wish I could take it back. More than anything.”

His gaze dropped, but Sutton didn’t retreat any farther. For all his bluster, his six-foot-three frame, and the wispy beard he’d been trying to grow since freshman year, Sutton Reeve was actually on the verge of crying. Giselle’s heart fluttered with hope.

Sutton raised his head to look at her, a swallow rippling in his throat. The glaze of unshed tears in his eyes turned her stomach hollow.

Maybe it was so easy to play ashamed because, deep down, she really was. Not because she had made Sutton cry. He deserved that, and the four flat tires on his ATV. He had done her in, ratted on her, out of jilted, petulant humiliation. All because of one stupid photo.

Sutton’s voice was more whiny than tremulous. “Did you take my ring off when you kissed?”

Giselle flinched. It was a promise ring, not an engagement ring—he had repeatedly made that clear—and when Sutton had gotten it at Walmart he had asked very meaningfully about the return policy. Still, Giselle knew, it had been no minor expense, given that his only current work was being paid under the table at Jiffy Lube. Another quiver of guilt went through her.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But it didn’t mean anything. I swear.”

Tears were still pooling at the corners of Sutton’s eyes, and it did make her stomach clench, just a little bit. If nothing else, Sutton was a known quantity. He had been after her since fifth grade, making moony faces over his lunch tray, scrambling to sit next to her in class, inviting her to his motocross races or on fly-fishing trips. Sutton, in isolation, was harmless. But that was discounting his blood.

Maybe her biggest mistake, then, had been running around with the sheriff’s kid. She suspected that, had Sutton gone to anyone else but his own father, he wouldn’t have been believed. After all, what was the concrete evidence of her crimes? Whispers about her lingering suspiciously around checkout counters and lottery terminals?

“Shit.” Sutton wiped at his face. “You’re a real good liar, you know.”

A bolt of anger finally cracked her charade. Giselle tensed. “You’ve picked up some tricks of your own. Did you tell your daddy where you got your new NASCAR jacket?”

Immediately he flushed bright red. “You keep your mouth shut.”

“I don’t think he’d be too pleased to hear that you bought it with stolen credit card numbers.”

Another reason Sutton probably wouldn’t have ratted on her to anyone but his father: He had enjoyed the profits of her criminal behavior, too. So had all their friends. Giselle had been convinced it was safer that way—no one could narc without damning themselves, too. What was the term for that? Mutually assured destruction? Belle High wasn’t exactly rated for its academics, but they’d all lived through enough duck-and-cover drills to understand the fundamentals of nuclear war.

She hadn’t accounted for her own slipup. Well, really, she hadn’t accounted for Cody witnessing it. Cody Simms—Sutton’s best friend and fellow high school dropout—was not someone Giselle considered sly or clever. And maybe it wasn’t cleverness, just cruelty. What else would have provoked him to not only snap the photo, but to send it to everyone at their school? He had to have known it would end like this.

After the photo had been circulating for three excruciating days, her mother and grandmother had sat her down for a talk.

“You know we don’t support that,” her grandmother said quietly. “Not in this house.”

Her mother, at least, had the decency to cry. But she didn’t protest; the deed to the double-wide was in her grandmother’s name. Giselle was given an hour to pack her bags, to hug her little sisters goodbye, to flip off her mother’s deadbeat boyfriend one last time. And then she was out, into the hopelessly heavy dusk.