Sara Shepard - Ruthless

A corner of Ezra’s mouth drooped. “You don’t want to introduce me to her?”

Downstairs, Ella’s heels clacked on the wood floor. Aria’s mind scattered in ten different directions. “I . . . I haven’t had time to prep her.” She stared at Ezra’s blank expression. “You were my teacher last year. My mom went to a parent-teacher conference with you. Don’t you think that’s a little awkward?”

Ezra lifted a shoulder. “Not really.”

Aria gawked at him, surprised. But there was no time to argue. “Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him down the stairs just as Ella shut herself inside the powder room. She grabbed Ezra’s coat from the hall closet, thrust it at him, and shoved him out the door.

Outside, the world smelled like sunbaked sidewalks and smoking chimneys. Aria walked down the stone path toward Ezra’s Volkswagen, which was parked at the curb. “We’ll talk about New York soon, okay?” she babbled. “I have a ton of cool apartments to show you.”

“Aria, wait.”

Aria turned. Ezra had stopped at the edge of the porch, his hands in his pockets. “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“Of course not.” Aria took a few steps toward him. “But I’m not ready to explain to my mom what’s going on right now. I’d rather do it alone, when I can compose my thoughts.”

Ezra stared at her for a few beats more, his eyes dark, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Or . . . wait.” Aria squeezed her eyes shut. “I have a school thing tomorrow.” It was the only performance of Macbeth , and Aria and Ella were going to watch Mike and then go to the cast party. There was no way Aria was bringing Ezra to something at Rosewood Day. “How about Sunday?”

“Sunday it is.” Ezra kissed her cheek, climbed into his car, and drove off.

Aria watched him go, hugging her arms to her chest. A shadow shifted to her left, and she turned. In the thick brush that separated her house from the neighbor’s, something moved. Aria caught a flash of blond hair. Footsteps slid across the wet leaves.

“Hello?” she called.

But the woods suddenly went still, the figure gone. Aria closed her eyes tight. The sooner she and Ezra got away from Rosewood, the better.

An hour later, Aria strode into Bixby’s, a local coffee shop on the Hollis campus, and found Klaudia sitting at one of the back tables, dressed in a tight black sweater, an even tighter denim skirt, and black booties with heels. Her white-blond hair shone, her skin was porcelain-doll flawless, and every guy in the café was sneaking looks at her.

“It take you long enough,” Klaudia said prissily when she noticed Aria, the corners of her perfectly lined lips arching into a scowl. “I wait almost fifteen minutes!”

“Sorry,” Aria slammed her art history text on the table, then walked to a counter for coffee, which made Klaudia squeak indignantly. The line was long, with everyone ordering complex lattes and mochas, and when she returned, there were bright splotches on Klaudia’s cheeks.

“I have plans, you know!” Klaudia protested. “I am meeting for date with Noel!”

I get it , Aria wanted to say. You stole Noel from me. You won. She leaned forward. “Look, do you mind if you spoke like a normal person around me? I know you can.”

A slimy smile appeared on Klaudia’s face. “Suit yourself,” she said evenly, instantly losing the ditzy accent. She tapped her own art history textbook with a hot pink pen. “Since we’re being honest, I was wondering if you could do my half of the project. My ankle still really hurts.”

Aria stared at Klaudia’s ankle, propped up on a spare chair. It didn’t even have a cast on it anymore. “You can’t milk that forever,” she said. “I’m doing my half of the project, and that’s it. We can work together, but I’m not doing the work for you.”

Klaudia sat up straighter and narrowed her eyes. “Then maybe I’ll tell Noel what you did to me.”

Aria shut her eyes, suddenly so sick of being pushed around. “You know what? Tell him. It’s not like we’re together anymore.” Just saying it made her feel light and free. Soon enough, she would be out of Rosewood for good. What did it matter?

Klaudia sat back, her mouth making a small O . “I’ll tell your new boyfriend, too. Mr. Novelist. Wasn’t it so nice that he let me read his book? Isn’t it so sad how the male character dies in the end?”

Aria flinched at the mention of Ezra’s novel—she so wasn’t playing Book Club with Klaudia right now. “Well if you tell them what I did, I’ll tell them what you told me on the chair lift and that your whole blond bimbo thing is an act. Remember how you said you wanted to sleep with Noel? Remember how you threatened me?”

Klaudia’s brow crinkled. She jammed her book into her purse and stood. “I strongly suggest you think about doing my half of the report. I’d hate to be the one to ruin things between you and your new poet boy.”

“I’ve already thought about it,” Aria said firmly. “And I’m not doing your half.”

Klaudia slung her bag over her shoulder and wove angrily around the tables, nearly knocking into a college-age guy carrying a coffee and a muffin on a plate. “See ya!” Aria called after her triumphantly.

A folk singer in the front window launched into a Ray LaMontagne cover as Klaudia flounced out. Aria opened her textbook, enormously satisfied. Working alone was a much better idea, anyway. Consulting the index, she found the section on Caravaggio and flipped to the page about his life.

She began to read. In 1606, Caravaggio killed a young man in a brawl. But he got away with it, fleeing Rome with a price on his head.

Yikes. Aria flipped to the next page. Three more paragraphs described how violent and murderous Caravaggio was. Then, Aria noticed that someone had affixed a yellow Post-it note to the lower right-hand corner of the page. A hand-drawn arrow pointed to the word killer in the text. There was also a note.

Looks like you and Caravaggio have something in common, Aria! Don’t think you’ll be spared from my wrath, murderess. You’re the guiltiest of all. —A

On Saturday night, Rosewood students, parents, and townspeople crowded into the Rosewood Day auditorium for the one and only performance of Macbeth. The air had an electrified, anticipatory quality about it, and within minutes, the lights dimmed, the crowd quieted, the three witches took their places for the first scene, and the curtain opened. Dry ice swirled around the stage. The witches cackled and prophesized. To the audience, everything seemed composed and flawless, but backstage it was chaos.

“Pierre, I still need makeup!” Kirsten Cullen hissed to Pierre, running up to him in a servant’s uniform.

“Pierre, where do they keep the armored vests?” Ryan Schiffer asked quietly.

Seconds later, Scott Chin approached, too. “Pierre, this sword looks really lame.” He held up the blunt, foil-decorated ninth-grade art project and made a face.

Pierre glared at all of them, his cheeks turning a darker shade of pink. His hair stood up in peaks on his head, his shirttail was untucked, and he had a single women’s high-heeled shoe in his hand for reasons Spencer couldn’t even begin to surmise. Maybe it was another Macbeth superstition.

“Why didn’t you people figure these things out a little earlier than five minutes before your scene ?” Pierre groaned.

Spencer sat on a props box, smoothing down the hem of the velvet Lady Macbeth dress. Usually, backstage on opening night was one of her favorite times, but today, as she listened to the witches on stage, she felt nervous for her entrance, which was in a matter of minutes. Thy met me in the day of success , she kept repeating to herself, her first line. But what came after that?