THE NEW MISSY

“I don’t get it,” Constance Talbot said. Sun shone through the skylight at the center of the Easton dining hall, turning her red hair golden. “Who could have sent the plans to the county? We’re the only ones who have seen them.”

Around the table, my Billings friends wore varying expressions of concern, suspicion, and disappointment. Normally we took up two tables in the cafeteria, but for the moment, every last one of us was gathered around one table, and they were all leaning in over one another so they could hear my story. Even London Simmons and Shelby Wordsworth were there. After the insanity that had occurred on my birthday, we had all voted and decided to relax the rules that governed the Billings Literary Society—the secret club that I had started back in January. In fact, we’d kind of abandoned the thing entirely, giving up on the midnight meetings in the Billings Chapel and all the crazy talk of witchcraft. It just hadn’t seemed right to go back there, after all the terror and misery the BLS and the book of spells had brought us. And although I knew that Kiki Rosen was still experimenting with some spells on her own, the rest of us hadn’t dabbled at all, content to try to get things back to normal. Which also meant that London, Shelby, and Constance had been hanging out with us again. Everyone was back together. Well, everyone except for Missy.

“Actually, that’s not exactly true,” I said, leaning back in my wooden chair at the head of the table and tucking my brown hair behind my ears. “My architect and contractors have them, of course—”

“But none of them would send them to the county if they knew it meant getting shut down,” Tiffany Goulborne pointed out. “They’d be out of a job.”

“True,” I conceded. “But I also sent them to some of the wealthier alumnae.”

“WTF? Why did you do that?” Portia Ahronian said, clutching the dozen gold necklaces around her neck. “You have enough money to build this thing ten times over.”

“I know, but I thought it would be nice to get other people involved,” I said. “The more they feel like part of the new Billings, the more they’ll be invested in its future.”

“She’s right, you guys. We need the alums,” Rose Sakowitz said, looking around at the others. She looked even tinier and more adorable than usual in a pink plaid sundress with her red curls held back by a tortoiseshell band. “Think of how many times they’ve supported us when things have gone . . .” She trailed off.

“I think ‘awry’ is the word you’re looking for,” Tiffany put in, shifting in her seat. “Like when Cheyenne . . . passed away and we had to elect a new president? They don’t usually have to come up with two presidential gifts in one year.”

I squirmed a bit, recalling the amount of cash and all the expensive presents that had been dropped in my lap after I’d been elected in the fall—not to mention the very thorough and useful files on the current Billings Girls and our alums that I’d been gifted.

“And how Suzel told us about the secret passage at Gwendolyn so we could get to the Legacy last semester?” London added, clicking a rhinestone-encrusted compact closed after checking her lipstick. “She’s, like, a total asset.”

“Seriously,” Shelby said, checking the end of her dark blond braid for split ends. “The alumnae have been keeping us afloat for years.”

“Yeah, but after everything that’s happened, can we really trust any of them?” Astrid Chou said as she reorganized her paintbrushes inside a funky, polka-dotted carrying case. “I mean, if this was three months ago, you probably would have sent the plans to Cheyenne’s batty mother.”

I swallowed hard, my eyes flicking to Noelle. She was the only one not participating in the conversation, choosing instead to sit at the far end of the table and page through Vogue. My phone beeped loudly.

“Is your phone possessed or what?” Amberly Carmichael asked, pressing the palms of her perfectly manicured hands into the edge of the table. “It hasn’t stopped since we got here.”

I groaned, pulling my phone out to silence it. “Sorry.”

Astrid did, of course, have a point. I always thought Cheyenne’s mom, Mrs. Martin, was a cool woman, someone who loved Billings and would have done anything for us. Until I found out she believed in this hundred-year-old curse and thought that five of my friends and I needed to die in order to break it.

“I don’t know, you guys. Most of the people I sent the plans to seemed really excited. Some of them even donated money,” I told them. “I can’t imagine that any of them would have wanted to sabotage the project.”

Everyone around the table exchanged wary glances, as if waiting for one of us to confess. Finally Kiki Rosen leaned forward, wrapping her earbud wires around her iPod before she shoved it into her battered canvas backpack.

“Okay. Forget who screwed us. The real question is, how do we get unscrewed?” she asked.

“We have to go back to the drawing board. Literally,” I said with a sigh. “I already spoke to my architect and she said she could modify the plans, but since a lot of the materials have already been ordered, it’s going to cost a lot more money. Plus it takes a while to get some of these green materials, so that will cause some serious delays.”

“How serious?” Amberly asked.

I licked my lips, dreading what I had to say next. My phone rang again. One more ignore. “Billings might not be ready by the fall. It might not even be ready until the following fall.”

“What?” Lorna Gross gasped, her dark brown eyes wide. “But most of us will be gone by then.”

“Everyone but Amberly,” I said flatly.

“This sucks,” Astrid said, shoving a potato chip into her mouth.

“Tell me about it,” I replied.

Suddenly, Lorna sat up straight and leaned back, out into the aisle. “Hey, Missy!” she called out loudly, giving a wave.

I turned around to see Missy Thurber striding right by our table, her wide-nostriled nose in the air as she completely ignored us. Her French braid swung haughtily down the center of her back, and she didn’t even blink when she heard her former best friend calling out to her.

This was the new Missy. It wasn’t just me she’d been ignoring. She had stopped returning any and all calls from the Billings crew, had stopped saying hello to us in the hallways, had stopped even looking in our direction, unless it was to shoot me evil glares. It was like all of us, and everything we’d been through together, had been excised from her brain.

“That girl puts the ‘lone’ in ‘loner,’” Vienna said, rolling her eyes.

Instead of turning toward the small corner table she’d been occupying by herself for every meal since March, she hooked a left and walked right over to a table full of guys. Senior guys. Popular senior guys and a few of their female hangers-on. Graham Hathaway greeted her with a smile and made a big show of pulling out a chair for her. Missy sat with a self-satisfied twist of her lips. Then Graham ran off to the food line to get her lunch.

“Since when are those two BFF?” Portia asked, clearly annoyed.

I glanced over my shoulder at the table where Josh; his roommate, Trey Prescott; and some of his other friends were sitting, and saw that they had noticed Missy and Graham as well. Josh and Trey, in particular, shot Graham annoyed looks as he returned seconds later with a bagel sandwich and iced tea for Missy. I sat back hard in my chair and slumped.

Call me crazy, but the idea of my worst enemy at Easton and Josh’s worst enemy at Easton hanging out together made my blood run cold.