MARGOT HASTENED DOWN THE HALLWAY WITHOUT A BACKWARD glance. The last to leave the computer lab, she waited a full two minutes after Kitty’s exit before she slipped out of the room, and she was halfway across campus before she slowed her pace.
As cool and collected as she’d tried to appear in front of the girls, Margot was freaking out on the inside. Ronny had been murdered, and even if she hadn’t been the one to take a baseball bat to his head, what if by choosing him as the next DGM target, she’d unwittingly signed his death warrant? Wouldn’t she be just as guilty as the murderer himself?
Margot kept her eyes glued to the floor as she hurried to her locker. The hallways were filled with students eating lunch, but the usually boisterous mood was significantly subdued. Cliques huddled closer than usual and spoke in hushed tones, and Margot couldn’t help but think that everyone was staring at her with suspicion in their eyes.
You’re being ridiculous.
There were exactly six students at Bishop DuMaine who even knew her name. She was invisible at school, a ghost who moved through the hallways with anonymity, and she estimated her chances of being a named suspect in the investigation at approximately 572:1. No one even gave her a second thought, let alone suspected her of being involved with DGM.
She rounded the corner to her locker and stopped short at the sight of someone leaning against it. No, she was wrong. There was one person who suspected her.
Ed the Head.
“Dude,” he said, eyes wide. “I can’t believe it.”
“Believe what?” Margot elbowed him aside and dialed in her locker combo without looking at him.
“Are you mental?”
The panic of Ronny’s murder washed over her afresh. “I heard the announcement.” Why couldn’t he leave her alone?
“How can you be so casual?”
Margot gazed at him coolly. “It has nothing to do with me.”
Ed the Head shoved his arm across her open locker, barring her from retrieving any books, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Margot, we’re talking about murder, and your friends in DGM are at the top of the suspect list.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Margot swallowed hard and tried to keep her breathing steady. She couldn’t let him see her fear.
“Look.” Ed’s voice softened. “Personally, I don’t give a shit about Ronny. Cruel? Maybe. But he’d only been at school for like a hot minute and he’d already stiffed me on a half-dozen Snickers bars, joined up with the ’Maine Men, and I caught him face raping Olivia Hayes outside the boys’ locker room. Kinda hard to mourn his loss.”
Margot had to appreciate his bluntness.
“But shit just got real. I mean, maybe you should tell them to just turn themselves in? Let the police figure it out?”
Margot looked up at him sharply. “I do not have any connection to DGM.” For some reason, she desperately needed him to believe her. “It was a guess about the assembly, based on their previous exploits. An educated guess. Don’t think I’m their secret keeper all of a sudden just because I predicted their last move.”
“Sorry.” Ed the Head dropped his eyes to the floor, suitably chastised. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
Margot took a deep breath and tried to center herself. “I’m going to be late to class.”
Ed leaned forward and his usual mask of cocky glibness fell away for a second. “Be careful, okay? There’s something rotten in Denmark.”
Margot nodded. She’d never seen Ed the Head drop the clown act before, and she realized that despite their business arrangement, he actually cared about her. No one at Bishop DuMaine cared about her, and Ed’s moment of kindness touched her so deeply she wasn’t even tempted to correct his misuse of the Hamlet quote.
“Right.” Ed the Head straightened up, his old self again. “Watch your back. That’s all I’m saying. Because if anything happens to you, my earning potential at this school is going to take a serious nosedive. Speaking of, I’ve got new odds on the murder investigation. Three to one they never find out who did it. You in?”
“Am I ever?”
“Touché, mon frère. I am considerably”—he snapped and gave Margot two finger pistols—“out of here.”
Margot pressed her head against the open door of her locker and closed her eyes. She’d been careless to let Ed the Head have a glimpse into her association with DGM. Unless he was significantly stupider than she gave him credit for, Ed didn’t buy her proclamations of innocence for a nanosecond. While he couldn’t know she was directly involved, Ed believed she had some connection to DGM. She just prayed he’d keep that hypothesis to himself.
It was so unlike her to trust anyone with anything. But she’d needed his help to dig up dirt on Amber Stevens, and she’d been blinded by hatred where that goal was concerned.
Margot sighed. There was nothing she could do about it now. The best way to protect herself was to find out who actually killed Ronny before the police and Father Uberti uncovered the truth about DGM. She pulled her calculus textbook out of her locker, grunting with the weight of the college-level tome, and froze.
A large manila envelope tumbled to the ground.
She stared down at the yellowish brown envelope on the tile floor. A white address label had been printed with her name, centered on the front. The print-and-peel label was the standard one inch by two and five-eighths, thirty to a sheet. The font was Times New Roman, also standard, and the envelope appeared to be the generic brand sold in every office supply store.
Margot gingerly picked up the envelope, handling it with care as if it were made of porcelain, and examined the back side. It had been sealed with a single piece of tape, meticulously positioned dead center on the flap.
Who would go through the trouble of leaving this envelope in her locker? And why?
There was only one way to know. Margot forced her finger under the flap and broke the seal.
Inside was a photograph.
Margot clenched her jaw so fiercely she thought she might crack a tooth. It had been years since she’d laid eyes on that photo, years since the humiliating image of her twelve-year-old self had made life no longer worth living. And yet she remembered every nuance of the image, because she had seen it every single day of her life for the last four years, burned into her memory. Eyes open or closed, she saw that image, like the single dot of light branded into your retina after looking directly at the sun.
It had been taken from outside her house four years ago, long after sunset, when the light from her bedroom window cast an orangey glow on the large sycamore tree. Her bedroom, less austere and more childlike, her stuffed animals and toy shelves not yet replaced by bookcases packed to the brim with academic texts. Her bedspread of bright flowers instead of plain gray, and the walls covered with teen idol photos instead of framed certificates of merit.
Even the girl in the photo was a different Margot. She stood in the middle of her room, dressed only in a training bra and panties. A roll of fat blossomed from either side of her belly button, her lumpy thighs looked like overstuffed sausages, and her bubble butt was so enormous and out of place, it looked as if it was artificially enhanced.
Twelve-year-old Margot held something in her hand, a roll of plastic wrap, which she was twisting around her midsection.
That photo had made Margot the laughingstock of junior high. It had almost killed her.
So why had someone left it in her locker?
