What's Your Status? (43 page)

promgirl → the crew
MAINTENANT!!

“Your headmaster isn’t here yet, but I don’t suppose it would hurt to take a look, would it?” Mr. Patrick asked, hand on the lid.

“Well, um,” I said, trying to think quickly, “actually…”

“Allô?”
I turned and saw Lisa standing at the other end of the desk, banging her palm on it.
“Où est le concierge? Je suis très déçu! Qui est le responsable ici?”

“Oui, mademoiselle?”
Mr. Patrick asked. He turned to Lisa, and I reached out for the box—but his hand remained firmly on it.

“Qui êtes-vous?”
Lisa demanded, taking a step away, trying to draw Mr. Patrick farther down. He took a step but—I saw, my hopes plummeting—he kept his hand resting on the box.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est le problem, mademoiselle?”
he asked, frowning.

“Oh,” Lisa said, looking to me. I could see the panic in her eyes.
“Erm. Donc
…
”

I felt my shoulders slump. It was over. It was done. Dr. Trent was going to arrive in a moment, and Hello Kitty would be in the box. We had come so close. But it was over.

“Mon Dieu!”
Lisa screamed, pointing away from the desk.

She was clearly trying to get Mr. Patrick to turn around, but even
he
had to be able to see through that one—

At that moment, a streaker ran through the lobby.

It wasn’t a true streaker, I saw as the guy ran through the lobby doors and out into the car circle, frightening the limo drivers, who jumped out of his way. It looked like he was wearing a pair of tan boxers. But still. It had worked.

There was pandemonium in the lobby. The harpist seemed particularly unsettled, and Lisa was having some kind of French panic attack. In the confusion, Mr. Patrick let go of the jewelry box. I reached out for it, whisked out Hello Kitty, tossed it into my bag, and replaced it with the Hayes crown. Then I pushed the jewelry box away from me, down the counter, my heart hammering. Had we pulled it off? Had we done it?

“What is this?” I turned and saw Dr. Trent striding up to the desk. “What’s going on here?”

“So…sorry,” Mr. Patrick said, turning from where he had been trying to calm Lisa down, in French. Her eyes widened when she saw Dr. Trent, and she turned her back on him and slunk away. “Just attending to a guest.” Mr. Patrick turned back. When he saw that Lisa was gone, his frown deepened. “I’m afraid,” he said, mopping his brow, “that we’ve had some…irregularities tonight.”

“Yes, well…” Dr. Trent said. He seemed to notice me for the first time, and frowned at my dress. Then he shook his head and turned back to Mr. Patrick. “I trust our tiara has been kept safe?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Mr. Patrick said. He opened up the jewelry box, and there sat the Hayes crown, looking completely innocent and unharmed.

“Well,” Dr. Trent said, adjusting it slightly, “that seems to be in order. Thank you for taking such good care of it.”

“Of course, sir,” Mr. Patrick said.

“Well, I should take this back and prepare for the crowning. You’d better get back, too, Madison,” he said. He checked his watch. “The codes should be going out now.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” I said as cheerfully as possible.

Dr. Trent tucked the jewelry box under his arm and headed back to our ballroom. I let out a breath, wishing that I had time to collapse for a few hours. But I didn’t. My phone beeped with the voting number, and I texted back my choices, crossing my fingers that we might actually be able to pull this off.

Then I turned around and made my way back to the area outside the Putnam ballroom. As I headed down the service staircase, I found that I couldn’t stop smiling. Schuyler was standing outside the door to Conference Room B, twisting her hands together.

“Shy!” I yelled gleefully, running toward her, not really caring that all night we’d tried to keep our voices down. Who cared about that now? We were home free. “Shy, guess what? We did it!”

“Um, Mad,” Schuyler said, her voice quavering. She pointed behind me, and I followed her gaze.

Dell was standing there.

CHAPTER 26

Song: Right Back Where We Started From/Maxine Nightingale

Quote: “Boom goes the dynamite.”

—Brian Collins

I stared at him. It was unmistakably Dell, wearing a tuxedo and a satisfied smile. The dreads were gone, and his hair had been cropped short, but it was him.

“Hello, Madison,” he said, taking a step toward me. I forced myself not to take a step back, and even made myself stand up straighter, as I was a few inches taller than Dell in my prom heels.

“What are you doing here, Dell?” I asked. I looked over at Schuyler, who was just staring at Dell like she’d seen a ghost, her bottom lip trembling.

“I think I could ask you the same question, Madison,” he said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be in this area of the hotel, now, are you?” Involuntarily, I looked back at our conference room, filled with nothing but incriminating evidence—the clothing and props and equipment we’d used to get through the night. Dell nodded. “I didn’t think so.”

“Why are you here?” I asked again.

Dell stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled at me. “Now, you disappoint me, Mad,” he said. “I thought you would have figured it out by now. Because that’s your little hobby, isn’t it? Solving mysteries?”

“Maybe you should explain it,” I said. I looked at Schuyler, expecting her to step behind me as usual. But she was standing next to me, showing no signs of moving.

“I am disappointed,” he said again, even though his smile stayed in place. “This is an easy one, after all. And frankly, I’m amazed you weren’t expecting it. You certainly should have been. One word. Seven letters.” He took another step closer to me and lowered his voice. “Revenge.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You didn’t expect me to let you get
away
with what you did to me, did you?” he asked. He gave a short laugh. “Come on, Madison. You got me expelled. That carries consequences.”

“You hacked my profile!” I said, incredulous. “You stole from people, and made copies of databases….”

Dell waved these allegations away with one hand. “I performed a job I was hired for,” he said, his voice cold. “Hacking you was nothing personal. When you tried to ruin my life, you made it personal. And I got my revenge.”

“And, um, how did you do that, again?” Schuyler asked, looking from me to Dell.

“Well, I didn’t do it alone,” Dell said. “I had some help from my cousin.” He turned to look around the corner,
and Isabel stepped out, smiling pleasantly. Dell looked at Schuyler and me. “I assume you all have met?” he asked.

“Your
cousin
?” I asked, stunned.

“Yes,” Isabel said, and I could see from her expression how much she was enjoying this.

“When you had me sent to boarding school, I called up the one person I knew who’d gone,” Dell said. Now that they were standing next to each other, I could see a family resemblance. The same dark eyes and hair. The same warped moral compass. “And just imagine how thrilled I was to find out there was someone who hated one of your little friends as much as I did. And so we began planning.”

“I got to help a family member in need
and
get my revenge on you,” Isabel said, glaring at Schuyler. “Even though I had to wait three years. But it was so worth it.”

“And now, the moment I’ve been waiting for,” Dell said to me, pulling out an iPhone. “I get to see the look on your face when I destroy your life. It’s only fair, after all, Madison. You have to admit that.”

“What are you doing with that?” I asked, looking at the iPhone.

“Oh, we’re about to watch streaming video of the Hartfield crowning,” he said. “We’re about to see the Hartfield queen get crowned with your precious Hayes crown. The one you had responsibility for. The one that, if you misplaced it, would get you expelled. And I get to watch your face while you see that.”

“How could you do all this?” I demanded. “How
did you even know that I’d been put in charge of the crown?”

“Well, for God’s sake, Mad, you update your status constantly with all the details of your precious life. It wasn’t that hard.” Dell tapped the screen and sent a text, then looked up at me and smiled. “But as it turns out, I had someone giving me some help.”

“Who?” Schuyler asked, brow furrowed.

“One second,” Dell said. He turned to look around the corner again, and a moment later, Ruth came out.

She gave me a hard look and stood next to Dell, her arms folded. Dell smiled at me. “It’s nice to have loyal friends,” he said. “Ruth was invaluable.”

“It’s time,” Isabel said, checking her watch.

“Oh, excellent,” Dell said. He tapped his iPhone and held the screen out to me. I could see the stage of the Lily Ballroom, but nobody was being crowned. Instead, Sarah was holding center stage, grabbing the mic with both hands and belting out, for all she was worth, “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina.”

I couldn’t help smiling. She’d come through for us. And she was on pitch, too.

“What’s going on?” Isabel asked, staring at the screen. “What is that?”

“Andrew Lloyd Webber,” I said. “
Evita.
” I raised my eyebrows at Isabel. “I’m surprised you don’t know it.”

“Get her off the stage,” Dell snapped, looking at Isabel.

“What am I supposed to do from down here?” she asked sharply.

“Well, in the meantime, why don’t we watch
our
crowning?” I said, turning to Schuyler, who was pulling out the ShyPhone. She tapped it, and streaming video of the Rosebud Ballroom appeared.

A tiny Dr. Trent was standing on the stage, announcing the prom royalty. “By a landslide, Kittson Pearson is your prom queen! And by…four votes…Glen Turtell is your prom king!” The ballroom burst into applause and shocked whispers, and Dr. Trent placed the Hayes crown on Kittson’s head.

“Wait…no…” Dell murmured, growing pale.

“Not what you were expecting?” I asked. “You were right about one thing,” I said. “It is nice to have loyal friends.” Ruth smiled at me and came to stand by my side.

“No,” Dell said, looking at the two of us. “
No.
What is going on here?”

“Should we tell Sarah to stop?” Schuyler asked, looking down at Dell’s iPhone, which had started to shake in his hand.

“Sure,” I said. “Unless she wants to do an encore.”

Schuyler typed something on her phone, and a moment later, the Sarah on Dell’s screen looked at her phone, took a deep bow, and ran offstage.

“What did you do?” Isabel asked, looking from Schuyler to me, her face mottled with rage. “How did you…”

“We just took back what was ours,” Schuyler said. “What you tricked me into giving to you.”

“But how?” she asked weakly. “I had it with me the whole time….”

“Did you?” I asked.

“Give it a sec,” Schuyler said. “It’ll hit you.”

Dell was still staring at me and Ruth. “The prom results,” he said, his voice cold. “How did you do that?”

“How did
you
do it?” I asked. “That’s the question. You rigged the texting codes so that Dave and I would win. And then you set up a betting website, on which we had terrible odds, so that you could make a huge profit.”

“Yes,” Dell said, frowning at both of us. “So?”

“So you registered the site in my name, you jackass,” Ruth said, her voice shaking with fury. “When it was looked into—and maybe you would have been the one to get Dr. Trent to look into it; I wouldn’t put it past you—Madison would have gotten in trouble for rigging the election. And I would have gotten in trouble, again, for profiting off of it. You know that I would have been expelled. And unlike some people, it’s not like I can buy my way out of trouble.”

“Was that your backup plan?” I asked. “In case I didn’t get into enough trouble when the crown went missing? You wanted to be sure that I’d get expelled?”

“Something like that,” Dell said, his voice hard.

“Your mistake was registering it in Ruth’s name,” I said. “When we talked about it, it became clear. Ruth is terrible with computers, and never would have been able to do it herself. And who would want to make it look like she’d done something like that? It was simple. One word,” I couldn’t help adding. “Four letters. Dell.”

“But you weren’t
supposed
to talk,” Dell said, his voice rising. “You two hate each other!”

I looked at Ruth and smiled at her. Ruth had explained in the stairwell what she thought was going on, and it turned out she’d been right. We had been here before—me, her, Dell—and it was much nicer to be on the same side. “It’s time you learned something about real friendship,” I said to Dell. “It’s stronger than almost anything. And it’s certainly stronger than you.”

“I wasn’t helping you,” Ruth said. “I was pretending to so that I could try and find out what you were up to. I tried to warn you, Mad….”

“You did,” I said, remembering the conversation in the parking lot, when I’d dismissed her warnings. “Sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

Isabel was looking from us to Dell, furious. “What is happening?” she spat. “How did they do this to you
again
?”

Dell glared at me. “I can prove you’ve been prom hopping,” he said. “I know that you weren’t where you were supposed to be, all night—”

I shook my head. “It’s not going to work, Dell. Let it go.”

“Let it go?” he asked, his pitch and volume rising.
“Let it go?”

The door to the service staircase opened, and Sarah, Dave, and Lisa stepped out, midconversation, arriving at the rendezvous point. But their conversation died as they took in the scene in front of them. “Whoa,” Dave said, looking around. “Um, what’s going on?”

The door opened again, and Mark, Brian, and Ginger stepped out.

“Marcus?” Isabel asked, staring at him. “What are you doing here?”

Mark smiled at her. “Right,” he said in his normal accent. “About that…”

“You mean,” Isabel said, realization dawning, “you’re…you’re not an earl?”

“Of course not,” Dell snapped. “He’s one of Madison’s
friends.
” He looked around at everyone and seemed to be barely containing his fury. “Oh, you all have no idea what you’ve just done. I have information on you. On
all
of you. And I know what to do with it. You’re going down, all of you—”