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“Who are you talking about?” I ask.
“You haven’t heard, Callie?” It’s Sarah Harger, a B-lister.
“Would I be asking if I had?”
I don’t really know these girls. I mean, I know their names. Snow Creek High School is a small school.
“Diana Steel,” the second girl says. Her name is Mary. I think her last name is McCullough.
“What about her?”
“She’s in the hospital.” From Sarah.
My jaw drops. “Is she all right?”
“We don’t know,” a third girl, Lavinia Ross, says. “No one’s heard. They say she has alcohol poisoning or something.”
“From what?”
“No one seems to know,” Sarah says. “Probably from that stuff Friday night at the bonfire. Didn’t you have any?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t, but Rory and Carmen did.”
“I did too,” Sarah says. “I’ve never been so trashed.”
I don’t add anything, but I do remember Carmen looking really pale. Of course, she’s fair and redhaired anyway, but something was different about her. She was out of it. And Rory? Rory is always outgoing and boisterous. She’s a singer. A performer. Her personality has always been flamboyant. Plus she was just crowned homecoming queen and was on top of the world as the most beautiful and popular girl in school. She drank a whole cup of the punch.
“Wow, Callie,” she said after downing it. “That is the sweetest stuff I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
I was pretty close to tasting it myself…until I saw Carmen acting like—no lie—she was about to walk right into the bonfire. I nudged her away from the fire and kept one eye on her the rest of the evening until her cousin picked her up and drove her home. I also made Rory promise not to drink any more of it.
And now…Diana Steel. The sweetheart of the Steel family and the freshman class homecoming attendant. In the hospital? With alcohol poisoning?
“Do you know when Diana went to the hospital?” I ask.
“No,” Sarah says, “just that it was sometime after she went home. But haven’t you heard? The Steels are offering a reward for anyone who can tell them who spiked the hairy buffalo.”
“Could have been anyone,” I say.
“But they want to know,” Lavinia says, “because it wasn’t spiked with just alcohol.”
I resist the urge to widen my eyes. Lavinia’s words are surprising yet not surprising. I saw how that stuff affected Carmen and Rory.
“You think someone drugged it,” I say.
“No one knows.” Mary applies a stroke of blush to one of her cheekbones.
Except the Steels know. If Diana is in the hospital, she probably had her blood tested.
“How much are the Steels offering for this information?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Sarah says. “I heard it was ten thousand dollars.”
Again I resist the urge to widen my eyes. Ten thousand dollars? Wow. We Pikes sure could use ten thousand dollars.
But anyone could have spiked the punch. The punch at bonfires is almost always spiked. We’re all disappointed when it isn’t. Usually it’s just alcohol, though, and never enough to cause any significant damage. Finding out who did it this time will be near impossible because usually no one cares.
“Let me know if you hear anything else,” I say.
