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But Tara? Kenny? Pierre? My friends, all of them, were pure souls. Innocent as they come. They didn’t deserve shit like this.
I got off the floor and spun around to face the door.
“Kat?” I heard Tara call. But it was too late.
I was already charging down the hall, had whipped my key card out in less than a second, and slammed it against the door handle. My door clicked open, and I flung it aside to find Vivian giggling away on the floor in her skimpy pair of athletic shorts that she used as pajama bottoms and hot-pink hoodie.
“Wow,” she laughed, her lips curling into a smirk only the devil could pull off on a good day. “Look at what the cat draggedi—”
I smacked her across the face.
Her head swung to the side. Her friend’s laughter immediately stopped.
She turned back, glare colder than ice.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, before she could open her pretty, pouty lips. “Don’t you ever hurt Tara likethat.She hasn’t done anything to you. Nothing.”
She simply stared at me, all expression vanished from her face. She was shocked. Didn’t think someone like me, a frail girl with loud makeup and a low tolerance to alcohol, could ever stand up to someone like her.
A prick.
An egotistic, insecure bitch. Yeah, I’ve met the type before, in boy-form.
If I could stand up to them, I could stand up to her, twofold.
“You ruin people’s lives, you know?” I said, my voice shaking like it was the end of the world, and I was standing at its fracturing edge. I couldn’t help the tears from burning past my eyelids. A torrential rain was about to pour down my cheeks. “Maybe you don’t know it, but there’s something called the motherfuckingbutterflyeffect. Sometimes, your actionsactuallyhave consequences. In your case—”
“Kat,” I heard someone say.
I turned around to find Felix standing at the door, watching me with a deep look of concern in his eyes. Probably just came to make sure I hadn’t started a catfight. Ha.
Three days too late.
Felix nodded to motion for me to step back out into the hall. Clamping my jaw tight, I relented, picking myself off the floor before storming back out of the room and slamming the door shut behind us. But I didn’t go far. I planted myself into place right outside my room, crossing my arms as I looked at Felix.
“What?” I snapped.
He let out a rugged sigh. “Kat, there’s something you mightwannasee.”
Oh God. “What now?”
He shoved his hands in his wide front pockets, and scanned the hallway as if to make sure we weren’t being overheard, or spied on. Both were highly likely possibilities at this point.
“When Jason came to talk to us,” he said, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder to gently guide me away from the door, “I think he was trying to help.”
“What?” I repeated, trying my best to keep my voice down. Trying and failing. “What do you mean?”
The rest of the boys seemed to have disappeared into Tara’s room, and in the quiet, we could hear their voices muttering back and forth through the closed door. Felix ignored it, sucking in a deep breath before stepping closer to me so that no one would hear the conspiracy theory he was about to spill.
Might as well have been one. Jason, helping?
He was the one whotookthe damn video.
“When he said not to bring the video to the school’s attention,” he began slowly, trying to choose his words wisely, “I think he was speaking between the lines, if that makes sense. I think… he wanted us to bring it to the school’s attention. At the least, that’s what he was suggesting. Because maybe he knew that Vivian was going to do it, unless we did it first…”
His voice trailed off on purpose, it seemed, as if he were waiting for me to fit the rest of the pieces together.
“You sound like you actually paid attention in high school,” I muttered, which managed to crack a smile in his usually stony, I-mean-business-and-no-bullshit expression. “Between the lines… Okay. You’re saying that he was giving us a warning.Foreshadowing, if you will.”
