Maureen Johnson - Devilish

Copyright

First published in hardback in the USA by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

a division of Penguin Young Readers Group in 2006

First published in paperback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2012

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © 2006 by Maureen Johnson

Published by arrangement with Razorbill, a division of Penguin Young Reader’s Group, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Maureen Johnson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Source ISBN: 9780007484515

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007479931

Version: 2017-02-01

Dedication

For J.W. Keeley, my little piece of hell on earth,

and my friend for all eternity. And Mr. Jones,

wherever he may be.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

two weeks earlier…

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Acknowledgments

Jack the Ripper returns…

Bedlam breaks free…

About the Publisher

So this was how it ended. The revelers had deserted, leaving plates of Spanish almonds and sushi and cupcake wrappers. Now there would be no more grand ballrooms with Assyrian kings and pampered dogs and English pop stars and the A3. No more midnight rides through the skies of Providence. No more Calculus II with Brother Frank. No more stolen moments with 116-year-old boys or staring at the golden brick mansion across the fields. It had come back to this mad room of antique perfume bottles and disagreements.

Only a handful of people would understand the real meaning of this event. The general public would be horror-struck. They would wonder how two best friends, two otherwise unassuming girls on the verge of adulthood, could have ended up like this. There would be new specials and magazine articles: ‘Teen Tragedy Stuns Providence,’ ‘Rhode Island Rampage.’ I would be cast as the brainy troublemaker — the angry little blond punk. Allison would be portrayed as my sweet, devoted friend — the one I had tricked and mislead and taken down this tragic path. The real villain would not appear in the stories at all.

Oh, I had no doubt that they’d blame the whole mess on me, probably just because I had spiky hair and a tendency to talk too much. That was the story of my life. And that life was over.

It doesn’t matter how old you are when you die, I’d been told. When you die, that’s the right time for you. I’d also been told my life was a small price to pay.

I was glad to pay it for Allison.

My hand fell away from the phone. The room grew dark and I felt myself slipping down the side of the sofa, down to the prized Oriental rug. This was my final move in the game, this graceless thud to the floor. There was only one question left in my mind…

Had I played it right?

two weeks earlier…

The reviews from the Junior Judges had gone up on the website in the middle of the night. This was how they described me:

JARVIS, JANE; CLASSROOM 2A: If you are trying to find Jane Jarvis, look down. Jane is the shortest person at St. Teresa’s, the littlest big. But that tiny body contains a huge brain. We must give this to her. Famously argumentative — we all remember fondly Jane’s impromptu speech during last year’s ‘Celebration of the Spirit of Womanhood’ assembly, when she openly debated with the visiting bishop about the rights of women in the church. We like a little less her brittle, bleach blond spikes. A retro no-no in our book. If you are the angry, brainy type, consider Jane. She can be your personal Yoda.

Nothing new there. I went right on to Allison’s. The first word struck me, and it was all downhill from there:

CONCORD, ALLISON; CLASSROOM 1A: Forehead first…Allison Concord has a showstopper. We have never seen anything quite like it. It’s kind of like an unused billboard or a makeshift landing strip at a small midwestern airport. Sexy. Comparable only to her gums, which are truly a sight to behold. The pinkest smile we’ve ever seen. She is best known for counting down every second to the junior prom — and then showing up without a date and looking very boo-hoo. Tragic. If you haven’t got anyone else for your big and no one else will take on a second…Well, we do what we must.

When there is blood on the water, the sharks will rise to the surface. And Big-Little Day, our yearly celebration of sisterhood, was one of the bloodiest days of the year.

Big-Little Day was a major school benchmark when seniors would officially ask a freshman or a new underclassman to be their ‘little.’ Enterprising freshmen would actively campaign the most popular seniors, leaving notes and tokens and generally sucking up in a really gross manner. It was a massively big deal to have a good little. Any self-respecting senior, it was understood, had to have at least three freshmen courting them. A few luminaries might have eight or ten offers. And selection was rapid. There was only one forty-five minute period at the start of the day to get it all done. By the end, we were expected to pull off our class rings and pass them to our chosen freshmen, who got to wear them for a day — making the whole thing a little creepily marriage-like as well.

The buildup to this event had been going on since school had started… clandestine meetings in the bathroom between classes, lunchtime congresses, a fury of note taking and illegal texting. But the really serious part was the evaluation by the Junior Judges, a group of self-nominated juniors who offered commentary on all the seniors on the day itself.

No one knew who the first Junior Judges were. The tradition was known to go back as far as the eighties. Back then, they got their message out using photocopied sheets that they stuck in all the freshman lockers. And every year since then, a group of juniors rose up and took on the task.