“Just know this,” Yael said. “If you start coming after us, we’ll come after you. We know things, too.”
“Yael,” Stevie said. “Stop.”
Yael looked at Stevie and took a deep breath. Then she glared back at me.
“You know what?” Yael said. “I’m not going to stoop to your level. Keep your self-involved games and your power plays and your manipulative backstabbing bitch fests. Just keep them the hell away from me.”
I looked at Stevie to see if she agreed with her in all of this. She was breathing heavily, staring straight ahead at the table, refusing to meet my eye. After a moment, she sighed and began to gather the stacks of checks and pile them into the cash box.
“Here,” Stevie said. She jotted a number down on a Post-it note, threw the calculator into the box, and shut it tight. She stuck the Post-it note on top. “Here’s the revenue from ticket sales,” she said, pushing the cash box toward me across the table.
“Stevie?” I said.
She looked at me then, and I almost wished she hadn’t, because I could see it in her eyes, how deeply I had disappointed her.
“Let’s just go,” Stevie said to Yael, pushing back her chair.
Yael leaned across the table toward me and said so low so that only Stevie and I could hear her: “You’ll make a perfect A, Charlie. All you care about is yourself.”
When they were gone, I marched angrily across the dining hall to the boys’ table. I slammed the cash box down on the tabletop, and Dalton stopped midconversation and looked up at me.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“What’s wrong, babe?” Dalton asked.
“I want to know about the fish,” I said, lowering my voice. It was just Dalton and Crosby at the table. Leo was across the room talking to Mr. Davis, the junior class adviser. But still, I didn’t want to risk anybody’s overhearing.
“What fish?” Dalton asked.
“Dude,” Crosby chuckled, and nudged Dalton’s shoulder. “You remember. The fish in Little Miss Priss’s room? That was sick.”
Dalton started to laugh. “Oh yeah, almost forgot about that.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would you put a fish in Stevie and Yael’s room?”
“To get that little bitch back after what she did to Drew at the disciplinary hearing,” Crosby said. “You don’t recommend expelling an A and just get off scot-free.
“Yo, check it out,” Crosby went on, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone. He opened his photo album and scrolled through his pictures, and then held out the screen for me to see. “Fucking hi-lar-ious.”
It wasn’t a fish, it was the fish—the one Leo and I had stolen from the Poseidon Fountain and hidden in the old prop room. It was lying in Stevie’s bed, half covered in a sheet, and written in what looked like blood were the words Snitching bitches will sleep with the fishes.
“Is that blood?” I asked.
“Yep,” Dalton said. “Look in its mouth.”
I glanced at the gaping mouth of the fish, which had been stuffed with what looked like—
“Do not tell me those are used tampons,” I said.
“That smell was rank,” Crosby said, still laughing.
My stomach twisted. “Why would you do something like that?” I asked.
“Haven’t you ever seen The Godfather?” Crosby asked, looking incredulous. “It’s a classic.”
“Relax,” Dalton said, reaching out and grabbing my hand because he could tell that I was upset. “It was just a joke. You have to admit, Stevie is kind of tightly wound. We were just having some fun.”
“Stevie can be . . . neurotic at times,” I said. “But she’s my friend.” And she didn’t deserve that.
