They All Fall Down (2 page)

My only thought is … 
Conner
. Is this how my brother felt when the conveyor belt yanked him down? When his neck snapped? When his world went black and cold and—

A thud stops everything. The car, the spinning, the dark thoughts. There’s just a steady pounding of rain, a mechanical clicking, and a low hum with a soft ding that resonates through the silence.

It takes a full five seconds for me to turn to the side, peer through the rain to see the bright yellow arches, and realize that the McDonald’s sign is right side up. Then I must be, too. And best of all … I’m alive.

But I don’t move, doing a silent, swift inventory of my body, waiting for the howl of pain … somewhere. But nothing hurts, and the only sound is a repeating hum on the seat next to me.

My phone, my addled brain realizes. A text.

Mom! Joy and horror collide in my chest as the what-ifs
play out like a movie. Mom … hanging on by a thread as a police officer knocks on our door with the worst news …

It would kill her to lose another child. But we averted tragedy this time. Somehow. The only bad news is my car definitely has no brakes and probably will never see a hundred and fifty thousand miles, but who cares? I’m alive. And, oh, God, I’m sorry for saying that I hate my mom.

Desperate to talk to her, I flatten my hand on the passenger seat, rooting around until I find my phone. My hands are trembling so badly I can barely slide the screen lock. I manage to get to the texts, looking for Mom’s picture at the top of the message list, but it’s a phone number I don’t recognize.

I shake my head, not caring about anything but calling my mother, apologizing, getting home, and figuring out a way to downplay this near miss so she doesn’t freak out completely. Like that’s even possible.

The phone dings and vibrates in my hand, another number I don’t recognize, and I see the message attached to it.

Caveat viator, Quinte.

I’m a little off my translation game, but I squint at the screen as my brain registers the Latin words.
Let the traveler beware, Fifth
.

What the hell? I look up and try to see through the rain-washed windows. Did someone see me? Is that a warning? A fifth warning? A joke from someone in my Latin class? Someone who just saw …

Very slowly, lights come into focus, moving up the opposite side of Route 1. High, bright beams on a … big black pickup truck.

I don’t know why, but instinct makes me duck. No, not instinct. Common sense. That jerk tried to mow me down.

I lie on the console, my heart hammering into the emergency brake handle that just saved my life, when my phone vibrates and dings again. I refuse to look at the text, squeezing my eyes closed and praying for someone to help me. Someone … not in that truck.

My phone vibrates again and I let out a soft whimper. Another text. And another. And another. What is going on?

Finally, I have the courage to look at the texts, letting out a soft cry of relief when I read
Molly Russell
at the top. My best friend would come to my aid. Then I scan the rest of the texts. More from Molly. But there are at least twenty new texts from kids in school, names I recognize, some I barely know, and a couple of unknown numbers.

Why was I text-bombed? I thumb Molly’s text first.

OMG, Kenzie! Answer me! Did you see?
You’re FIFTH on the list!

The list. The list? Not the … No, that wasn’t possible. I could never make
that
list. I touch more texts, barely processing a single message, because all I can do is stare at one word that pops up over and over and over.

Fifth
.

CHAPTER II

T
his morning, the aftermath of my accident has almost died down, but Mom is still wrung out from the long night. After I called her from the car, she got Dad to pick me up and file the accident report. In spite of their separation, which has had him living in a town house a few miles away for the past year, he performed his dad duty and took care of everything, including the tow to a garage.

As always, he was the calm during our family storm, exactly what my mother needed to get through the ordeal. And as always, I had to wonder why those two can’t rise above the statistics that say parents who’ve lost a child inevitably divorce. They’re on their way to the inevitable, it seems, but haven’t yet signed the papers. So I remain hopeful, although my car accident last night did nothing but rip scabs off barely healed wounds.

I leave Mom to nurse those wounds and wait outside for
Molly to pick me up for school. She arrives at eight in her VW Bug, and I jump in to escape the late-October chill.

“You don’t look any different,” she says when I slam the door shut.

“I didn’t get hurt,” I reply. “I told you last night, it was just a spinout.”

“I mean, you know, the list.”

Oh, God, the freaking Hottie List. “There was so much going on, I forgot about it.”

“You forgot?” Molly flips a honey-blond strand, making me notice that she’s not wearing her usual ponytail today, and …

“Do you have makeup on?” I ask her, unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice.

She shrugs. “I figure we’ll get a lot more attention today than usual.”

I almost snort over that. “Because of that list?”

“Kenzie, don’t you get it? That list makes royalty out of ten junior girls every year and you are
on
it.” She can’t keep the awe out of her voice and I can’t say I blame her, but not because I am suddenly “royalty.” I’d known the list was coming out this week—every kid in Vienna High knew that. But I never, ever dreamed I’d be on it.

With dark-brown hair that always has an annoying wave despite the flatiron, blue eyes that rarely get much cosmetic attention, and unremarkable features, I’m not a girl who stops traffic. I can’t imagine how I ever landed on a list of the most attractive girls voted on by the entire male population of Vienna High.

“Oh, please. Royalty?” I scoff. “First of all, that list is obsolete, meaningless, and unbelievably immature, starting with
the cringeworthy name of Hottie List. I mean, who even says that anymore?”

“They said it in the eighties when they started voting on the list.”

“Started, I’d bet my life, for no other purpose than sexualizing and stereotyping girls, not to mention getting them to do God knows what for votes.”

“I heard Chloe Batista gave blow jobs to the entire lacrosse team.”

I roll my eyes. “My point exactly.”

“And she only got second.”

“Must have given second-rate blow jobs,” I mutter, tucking my bag under the dash.

“Well, Olivia Thayne was kind of a shoo-in for first place, wouldn’t you say? I mean, she’s gorgeous.”

I try not to look south on Route 1 when we turn, relieved we’re going the other way and I won’t have to pass the scene of last night’s accident. “Whatever, Molly. It’s not like being on that list is something I can put on my college app.”

“No, but that list is still a ticket to a better life.”

I shoot her a look. “A better
life
, Moll?”

“Better than what we have now. You’re going to get to go to
list
parties, Kenzie. I’ve heard they’re so much fun and every cute guy from miles around goes to them. Don’t you want a boyfriend?”

“Not as much as I want to get into Columbia.”

“Still Columbia, Kenz?” She can’t hide her disappointment. Since middle school, we’ve talked about being roommates at Pitt, but that was before I was old enough to realize that the town of Vienna, where we live, is really a bedroom community
of Pittsburgh. The university is less than forty-five minutes away—too close to Mom for me to breathe.

“Oh, I won’t get into Columbia.” I try for casual, but my voice cracks. Because I
might
get in. “Anyway, we have a year to worry about it.” I don’t want to hurt Molly by admitting just how badly I want to get as far, far away as possible from everything in Vienna. The only way I can justify that is if I get into an Ivy League—no ordinary college would be enough for Mom to let me move away—and live with relatives. My aunt Tina has already offered to let me live in New York with her, so Columbia is my ticket to freedom. Of course, there’s a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year price tag on that ticket. “Don’t forget, I need a scholarship.”

“You could get one.”

I might be smart, but an academic ride to Columbia is next to impossible unless you’re National Merit, and I’m not. I don’t play sports, either. “I’d have a shot if I won the state and national Latin competitions. Then I might be able to get a classics scholarship, but you-know-who won’t even sign the form to let me go to State in Philadelphia this winter.”

“Might snow on the roads?” Molly adds a smile to her joke, but that does little to ease the sting of the truth.

“Yeah, and she pulled out the drunken-bus-driver line.”

“Always.” Molly nods with pity, long aware of my mother’s obsessive nature and the reason behind it. She was next to me on those dark days after Conner’s accident, and she knows I live with the specter of a lost sibling. Of course, she doesn’t know … everything. No one knows exactly why Conner went down to that storeroom. No one except the person who asked him to go … 
me
.

“It’s still a big deal,” she says.

I pull myself back to the conversation, stuffing guilt and grief into their proper boxes. “To get a scholarship to Columbia? No kid—”

“To make the list!” She sighs, exasperated with me. “Kenz, enjoy the moment, will you? You’re a year from even applying to college, and that is going to be the very year you reign on the list.”

“Reign?” I snort out a laugh. “It doesn’t make me some kind of princess, Moll.”

“And fifth! Not tenth, Kenzie.” She’s totally not listening to me. “You are hotter than five other really hot girls. Big names, too.”

“Oh, yeah, Chloe Batista and Olivia Thayne are virtual celebrities. Watch out for all the paparazzi in the junior parking lot.”

She ignores my sarcasm. “You got more votes than Shannon

Dill.”

“Dumb as a rock, that one.”

“And Bree Walker! They’re superpopular, pretty girls. And we’re …” She trails off and I have to laugh.

“We’re not,” I finish for her, stating the obvious.

“Well.” She manages a laugh. “We’re nerds.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m not in the band.”

“You’re the president of the Latin club, take four AP classes, and tutor calculus. Card-carrying nerd.”

So I’m a little geeky. “I don’t see how a stupid list changes that.”

“You’re fifth!” she exclaims again, like she just can’t say that number enough. “I mean, you are right after Kylie Leff and
Amanda Wilson, captain and cocaptain of the varsity cheerleading squad, and homecoming princesses three years running.” She recites their positions like she’s reading their resumes.

“Together on the list as they are in life. Don’t those two ever separate?”

“Don’t change the subject. You know our lives are about to change.” She throws me a grin. “Yeah, I said ‘our lives.’ I hope you don’t mind me riding your coattails to popularity, ’cause I’m totally on that train.”

“By all means, climb on the train of mixed metaphors.”

She shrugs. “Joke all you want. This is big.”

“I guess you’re right,” I concede. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been text-bombed last night.”

“Really?” She repositions herself in the driver’s seat like a bolt of excitement has just shot through her. “Anybody good? Read me some.”

“Some … interesting.”

“Like?”

“Just, you know, kids.” I’m not sure I want to read that weird Latin one to her. But last night, before I went to sleep, I read every single message, and that one was still the most bizarre.

Caveat viator, Quinte.

Sent from a number that didn’t show up on Google, anywhere. An area code I couldn’t even find in the United States. It had to be some bonehead in my Latin class. But why was “the traveler” warned right after I had an accident?

Ignoring the full-body creeps that shudder through me, I reach into my backpack on the floor to get my phone.

“Let’s see,” I say, scrolling through the list. “I got texts
from, oh, mostly the lunch crew and Latin club members. Drew Hickers said, ‘Grats, girl.’ ”

“Grats?” She gave a good guffaw. “Who
says
that?”

“Icky Hicky,” I reply, calling up our seventh-grade name for the first boy I ever kissed. “It’s mostly everyone trying to hide their utter amazement and not insult me with a ‘how did this happen’ even though we all know someone probably miscounted the votes and I got three. Counting Hick-man.”

“I don’t know. I heard the vote tallying is closely watched. But who knows? That list is shrouded in secrecy.”

“ ‘Shrouded in secrecy’?” I choke out a soft laugh. “Who says
that
?”

“Well, it is. Do you know who counts the votes?”

I don’t answer her because I’m still scrolling. I’ve been through the whole list and can’t find the Latin text. I start from the top again.

“I heard that the guys really get pressured to vote,” Molly says. “Like there’s hazing or something if they don’t cast a ballot.”

It’s gone. The text I read first after the accident is gone.

“And someone once tried to start a movement to get the list name changed to the Hot List, but …”

I barely hear her. How can that be? Texts can’t disappear, and I certainly didn’t delete it. Did I?

“They were killed.”

“What?” My head shoots up in shock.

“I think that’s just band-room folklore,” she says with a sheepish grin, her dark eyes sparking with humor. “C’mon, we’re almost there. Read me the messages. Did anybody really popular write to you?”

“Molly!” I know she’s always been a little more obsessed with popularity than I have, but this seems over the top. “Why is it so important?”

“Because for the first time, some doors are open that have always been shut and locked,” she admits quietly, pulling into the junior lot behind the gym. “So sue me if I’m a little excited to elevate my social standing. Hey, you gotta have a list party! At least I know I’ll be invited to that one.”