Sara Shepard - Ruthless

“Where are my manners?” The girl slowly traced her finger over the label of her handbag. “I’m Kay.”

“I’m Emily.” She gave the girl a big smile and handed over her unlisted phone number. She’d vowed not to give it out to anyone besides family and very close friends, but all of a sudden, that felt like something scared Old Emily would do.

And tonight, she’d left Old Emily behind.

The following morning, Spencer perched on the edge of a green velvet chair in the auditorium at Rosewood Day. In her hands was a ragged copy of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth with all of the lines for Lady Macbeth, the character she was playing in the Honors Drama production, highlighted in pink marker. As she thumbed nervously through the first scene, Pierre Castle, the brand-new Honors Drama teacher and director, clapped his hands.

“Okay! Lady M, up on the stage!” Pierre, who insisted that students use his first name, refused to utter the name Macbeth in fear of the centuries-old curse—apparently, those who dared speak it aloud had succumbed to deadly fevers, suffered severe burns, endured stabbings, and gotten mugged. Today was Pierre’s first rehearsal as director, and he’d started off by calling the production “The Scottish Play” and addressing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth by their initials, which confused most of the freshmen. Pierre had been called in to pinch-hit when Christophe, the school’s venerable old teacher-director, moved to Italy with his boyfriend. Everyone said Pierre had been a score, though. He’d been a dramaturge for a production of Cymbeline in Philly and quite a few Shakespeare in the Park seasons in New York City.

Tucking the script under her arm, Spencer climbed the risers, her knees wobbling. Last night, she’d tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning, trying to figure out how the horrible Princeton admissions mix-up had happened. At 2 A.M., she’d thrown the covers back and looked at the letter again, hoping it wasn’t real. But when she’d looked up Bettina Bloom on Princeton’s website, there she was, head of the admissions board, looking smug in her photo.

It was preposterous that there was another high-achieving Spencer Hastings in this world. Spencer had also Google-stalked Spencer F., as she’d begun to call him. Apparently, Spencer Francis Hastings had run for mayor in Darien, Connecticut, as a sixteen-year-old and almost won. On his Facebook profile, he bragged about sailing around the world with his dad last summer and that he’d been a runner-up for the Westinghouse science prize in tenth grade. All of the pictures on his page showed a scrubbed, handsome guy who looked like he was exceedingly polite to old ladies but had six girlfriends at any given time. When Spencer F. received the same Princeton letter Spencer had, he’d probably shrugged and contacted some foreign dignitary or Hollywood director he was BFFs with and asked them to make one convincingly worded phone call to admissions.

This wasn’t fair. Spencer had worked much, much too hard to get into Princeton. She’d also done horrible things in order to secure her spot, including ruining Kelsey’s future last summer. She had to be the Spencer who was admitted.

But while Spencer may not have run for mayor, she did have acting. She had starred as the lead in every play the school put on, starting with her title role in The Little Red Hen in first grade. From there, she’d beat out Ali—really Courtney—for the role of Laura in the seventh grade’s production of The Glass Menagerie , impressing even the seniors with her maturity and fragility. In eighth grade, after Ali vanished—or, rather, after the Real Ali killed her—she’d played Mary in Long Day’s Journey into Night , receiving a standing ovation. Last year’s Hamlet was the only production she hadn’t starred in, and that was because she’d been banned from all school activities because she’d plagiarized her sister’s Golden Orchid essay. It was actually a godsend that Rosewood Day was putting on Macbeth this year and that Spencer was cast as Lady Macbeth—it was a challenging role, one that the Princeton admissions board would be very impressed with. It could be enough to give her an edge over Spencer F.

The floorboards on the stage squeaked under Spencer’s battleship-gray J. Crew ballet flats. Pierre, who was clad in all-black garb and wore what looked suspiciously like guy-liner, tapped a silver Mont Blanc pen against his lips. “We’re going to try your sleepwalking scene, Lady M. Did you run through that with Christophe?”

“Of course,” Spencer lied. Actually, Christophe had been so busy with his relocation plans that he’d assumed Spencer knew her lines and didn’t need to practice.

Pierre’s gaze dropped to the script in Spencer’s hands. “Are you still using that? The performance is in less than two weeks!”

“I’ve almost got all my lines down,” Spencer protested, even though it wasn’t exactly true.

She heard a snicker off to the left. “She would so not get into Yale Drama,” someone said in a low voice.

Spencer whipped around. The voice belonged to Beau Braswell, another new transplant to Rosewood Day and Spencer’s costar as Macbeth. “Pardon?” Spencer demanded.

Beau clamped his lips together. “Nothing.”

Ugh. Spencer turned back around and pushed up the sleeves of her Rosewood Day blazer. Beau had moved here from Los Angeles, and with his high cheekbones, longish dark hair, intentional bad-boy scruff, and beat-up Indian motorcycle, he’d quickly become the It Boy of Honors Drama. To every girl except Spencer, that is. Last month, when all the early college acceptances rolled in, he’d casually mentioned that he’d gotten into Yale’s drama program. If “casually mentioning” was pompously talking about it Every. Single. Day. The Yale reference especially stung today, now that Spencer’s future was so precarious.

“All right.” Pierre tapped his pen against his script, and Spencer jumped. “Let’s take it from the start of the scene. Doctor? Gentlewoman?” He looked at Mike Montgomery and Colleen Lowry, who were in the scene, too. “You’re watching Lady M’s predicament from the sidelines. And . . . action !”

Mike, playing Lady Macbeth’s doctor, turned to Colleen, Lady Macbeth’s maid, and asked how long it had been since Lady Macbeth first walked in her sleep. Colleen answered that apparently Lady Macbeth got up in the middle of the night, wrote something on a piece of paper, then sealed up the secrets tight.

Then Pierre motioned to Spencer, and she stumbled into the scene and started feverishly rubbing her hands. “ Yes, here’s the spot ,” she said passionately, trying to sound like a madwoman who was wracked with guilt for killing the king.

“ Hark, she speaks! ” Mike recited.

“ Out, damned spot! Out, I say! ” Spencer bellowed. She glanced down at the script and said a few more lines. When she got to the part about how she could still smell the king’s blood on her skin, Pierre let out a long sigh.

“Cut!” he yelled. “I need more emotion from you, Spencer. More guilt. All of your evil deeds are catching up to you, making you have nightmares and see blood on your hands. Try to picture what it really feels like to murder someone.”

You don’t know the half of it , Spencer thought with a shiver, instantly thinking of Tabitha. What if the Princeton admissions board somehow got wind of that? What if A told them? She winced and shut her eyes as the scene continued.

“Spencer?” Pierre prompted.

Spencer blinked. A few lines had gone by that she’d completely missed, and now the director was staring at her. “Um, sorry, where were we?”