Unforgiven (19 page)

“More where that came from,” Luis said with a lopsided grin.

“Really?” Lilith asked. She would love this to become a regular thing. She couldn't afford to hire a tutor for all the subjects she was failing.

“What do you got after lunch?” Luis asked, sipping the foam from his Coke before it spilled.

“American history,” she groaned.

“I have an amazing rock opera breaking down the battles of the Civil War,” he said. “It's one of my best.”

“Lilith?” A tap on her shoulder made Lilith spin around. Cam was holding out a lunch tray of her favorite: lasagna.

“I'm not hungry,” she said. “What part of ‘die' did you not understand? Do I need to say it louder?”

“Dude, I'll eat that lasagna,” Luis said.

Jean Rah had gotten up from his table. “What's going on, guys?” he asked.

Cam passed the tray to Luis as Lilith said, “Cam's out of the band.”

“What'd you do this time?” Jean said, shaking his head. Next to him, Luis was forking lasagna into his mouth, wide-eyed.

“Lilith thinks I photocopied her lyrics and spread them all around the school,” Cam said, tugging at the collar of his T-shirt. “It's unclear
why
she thinks I would do that, but she does.”

“Naw, Lilith,” Luis said, wiping sauce from his lips with his hand. “I'm the library aide, and I had to make some copies yesterday. That copy job was right ahead of me in the queue. All I knew was it was like a thousand pages long.” Luis rolled his eyes. “You have to have a code when a job's that big. This one was sent from an external computer. It came from the account ‘King Media.' ”

Jean frowned. “So it was either Chloe King or—”

“The intern,” Cam muttered. “Luc.”

“Whatever,” Lilith said, weirdly angry that the story she'd believed about Cam was falling apart. “Cam's still out of the band. Jean, Luis, I'll see you guys after school for practice.”

But when Lilith got to the band room after school, her friends weren't there. Instead, the Perceived Slights were getting ready to practice.

Or rather, their new guitar tech—a quiet girl named Karen Walker, who sat next to Lilith in biology—was setting up their instruments. She chewed her lip as she plucked the strings and turned the pegs of Chloe's gleaming electric guitar. Lilith could tell Karen didn't really know what she was doing, but the band members weren't paying much attention. They were lounging on the risers, drinking smoothies and playing on their phones.

“Um, June, did you just send me your geeky classical Spotify station?” Teresa asked the blonde to her left.

“It's Chopin, and I listen to it when I fall asleep,” June said.

“Dork!” Chloe said without looking up from her phone. “My lucky station right now is All Prince All the Time. Dean and I listened to it last Friday night.”

Lilith thought about angelic-looking June lying in bed, dreaming to Chopin's waltz concertos. Lilith had tried sleeping to music. It was torturous. She hung on every note, marveling at the chord changes, trying to discern the various instruments.

Maybe music left other people alone, allowing them to relax. Music never left Lilith alone.

“Did somebody take down the sign outside that said No Freaks Allowed?” Chloe said when she noticed Lilith standing in the doorway. “Are you here to dump more of your crappy lyrics on unsuspecting victims?”

Lilith didn't like Chloe, but she knew her well enough to realize that Chloe wasn't lying—she actually thought Lilith had passed around those photocopies herself.

Which meant Chloe wasn't the culprit.

Yet Luis said the copy job had come from a King Media computer. She remembered Cam suggesting that Luc might have made the photocopies. But that didn't make sense. Why would the Battle of the Bands intern try to sabotage her?

“Have you seen Luis and Jean?” she asked Chloe. “We've got practice in here.”

“Not anymore,” Chloe said, her lips twisted into a venomous grin. “We kicked those losers out. This is
our
turf now.”

“But—”

“You guys can use the concrete slab out by the dumpster. Go on,” Chloe said, making a shooing gesture with her hands. “Skedaddle. We're about to get started, and I don't want you stealing our sound.”

“Right,” Lilith deadpanned as she shoved open the band-room door. “Because I might be tempted to copy the groundbreaking way you show off your cleavage when you play guitar.”

Lilith found Jean and Luis in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of Jean's baby-blue Honda. The temperature had soared since lunchtime, and a haze of heat rose from the pavement. The sun was a muted orange dot behind a smoky cloud. Luis's brow was damp with sweat when he offered Lilith the dregs of the huge bag of Doritos he was holding.

“I could use some Cool Ranch right about now,” Lilith said.

“Chloe kicked you out, too?” Jean asked, kicking his feet up onto his car's headlight.

She nodded. “Where are we going to practice now? My house is definitely not an option.”

“Mine neither,” Luis said between chomps. “My parents would kill me if they found out I was in a band. They think I'm staying late today for an extra SAT prep course.”

“My place is no good either,” Jean said. “I'm the oldest of five kids, and you guys do not want to deal with my siblings. Especially not the twins. They're psycho.”

“So basically we're screwed,” Lilith said. She thought about Rattlesnake Creek, but they'd need a generator to power the mics, the speakers, the synthesizer. It would never work.

“What about Cam's place?” Jean said. “Anyone know where he lives?”

“I'm sorry, are you referring to the Cam who's no longer in the band?” Lilith said, narrowing her eyes.

“He didn't sabotage you, Lilith,” Jean said. “I know you're embarrassed, but it wasn't Cam. You should talk to him, clear the air. We need him.”

Lilith didn't answer. She liked having Jean and Luis as friends, and she didn't want to mess that up, but she'd draw the line if they forced her to let Cam back in the band. Still, now that Jean mentioned it, Lilith
was
curious about where Cam lived.

“Library aide to the rescue,” Luis said, scrolling through his phone. “I have access to the student database with everyone's address.” He tilted his head back, shaking some of the hair away from his eyes. “Here it is, Two Hundred and Forty-One Dobbs Street.” He shoved the last of the Doritos into his mouth, then tossed the wadded-up bag into a nearby trash can. “Let's go.”

“This doesn't mean I'm letting him back in Revenge,” Lilith said to the boys who were already climbing into the car. “We'll just go check it out.”

Luis offered Lilith shotgun, which she thought was a chivalrous gesture, and Jean's GPS directed them toward the gritty side of town. He cranked up the stereo—insisting on introducing them to one of his favorite new albums, which they all loved—and drove past the strip mall Lilith always passed on her way to school. They turned into Lilith's neighborhood and drove right past her street.

She held her breath until she could no longer see her driveway in the side-view mirror, as if Jean or Luis might be able to tell that the hideous house at the end of the lane was the one Lilith called home. She thought about Bruce inside, watching old episodes of
Jeopardy!
with Alastor on the couch beside him, and she felt like she was betraying him simply by being ashamed of where she came from.

It surprised her that Cam would live on this side of town. She remembered an early conversation when he'd told her he'd slept outside the night before. At the time, she thought he'd been joking. He seemed to have plenty of money. He drove his own motorcycle, and his leather jacket looked expensive. He'd brought her groceries, served her caviar, tried to give her flowers just this morning.

Jean turned sharply left and braked. “This can't be right.”