Page 98 of The Debutantes
“We went too far this time,” Coach says.
“Calmdown.”
Piper stops us behind another float. It’s classic purple, green, and gold, glittering with shiny paper confetti. At the front of the float, a papier-mâché jester juts out like a figurehead, his lips drawn back in laughter, tongue lolling. The Fool’s Float, I realize—one of the legacy floats Deus reuses every year. It’s the float Dad always rides on. Piper’s dad, too.
Stomach twisting, I put a hand on the side of it to steady myself as we creep toward the open runway at the center of the warehouse, where the voices are coming from.
Slowly, carefully, I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, opening the camera and switching it to video. They’re maybe ten feet away from us, but if they walk into the space between this float and the next one, we’ll catch them.
If they don’t catch us first.
“I just need to think,” Marty says. “I’ve gotten you out of your messes before. I’ll do it again.”
Coach sounds desperate. “It can’t be like last time, Dad.”
We both freeze.Dad?But before I’ve had time to fully process that, Coach says something else that makes my heart nearly stop.
“We can’t do to them what we did to her.”
What we did to her.Those five words are like the sinking arc of a missile just before it crashes against the earth, shaking the ground in its wake.
Margot. They killed her. I knew it already—maybe should have known from the moment I met these two obvious suspects, both of them wearing their good-Southern-boy acts like cheap masks—but hearing Coach say it, I could almost forget my fear, run straight for them with nothing but a phone, a camera, and my fists. And maybe I would, too, if Piper didn’t reach for my hand, giving it a quick warning pulse.
“Tell me, then,” Marty says, words laced with condescension. “What wouldyoulike to do with the debutantes in the storage room?”
Piper’s eyes bug out next to me. She dips her head toward the back end of the warehouse, where the storage room is.
And then I realize.Debutantes,plural.
With Piper leading, we creep toward the storage room. My heart is pounding so loud in my ears that I don’t notice the discarded papier-mâché flower in my path until it’s too late.
It crunches under my foot, and I feel it like my own bones snapping.
For a moment, we’re suspended, frozen, but it’s too late.
We run at full speed toward the storage room, their footsteps pounding behind us on the concrete, and we’re almost there, so close I can practically feel the door handle in my palm, when a hand reaches out and closes around my wrist.
“Well, well, well.” Marty grins wide, his accent dripping like molasses as his fingers dig into my skin. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s impolite to eavesdrop?”
37LILY
JANUARY 3, 12:05A.M.
Once upon a time, there was a queen trapped in a castle. It was full of riches and guarded by two dragons with fire on their breath and venom on their tongues, and even though the queen had been in this castle all her life, no one in the kingdom could find her. But that was okay with her. They never could have saved her, anyway, and if they’d tried, she would have warned them: the riches are all made of plastic, but the dragons are real.
And if you’re not careful, they can start to feel like home.
Vivian stares at me in horror, like she doesn’t recognize her best friend, and maybe she shouldn’t. Because I’m not the same.
Or maybe this is who I always was.
“Lily,” she says softly, like maybe if she keeps saying my name, I’ll be who she thinks I am. “What happened?”
“I got my hands dirty,” I tell her. I mean it as a joke, but it doesn’t come out like one, and it doesn’t change the awful pitying look on her face.
“Coach…” She glances at the door. “Did he hurt you?”
I almost laugh at that. Honestly. But she’s looking at me soconfused and desperate for an answer that I decide to give her what she wants.
