balcony. By the time I crawl to the balustrade and pull myself up, he’s escaped through the garden. But there is a figure down there, standing under the floodlights surrounding the pool. Strands of golden hair circle her face like a halo.
Mackenzie.
This is the first time she’s ever come to me, and I don’t understand. Is it about the party? I arrived late because Dad’s incompetent lawyer needed some papers copied. When I got there, Noah had already stormed off and Gabriel was wasted on some concoction of alcohol and pills, so I had to get him home. Then she hadn’t been to school and she wouldn’t answer my texts, and now she’s here, at my house, with some thug?
Mackenzie lifts her chin, her head tilted to the side, watching me. “Did you like your present?”
“You mean my new boyfriend?” My voice cracks as fresh pain blooms across my skull. “Oh, sure. He’s lovely. We had a tea party.”
“Tiberius wasn’t your present. You’d better turn on the light, Eli.”
Panic hits me. What’s she done?
I slam my fist against the light switch, bathing my room in light. The walls – usually a calming blue and covered in sports posters and college flags – are now decorated with red paint. It drips down the walls onto my bed and furniture, and over the decapitated head of Mr. Buttons, the stuffed bear I’ve kept on my nightstand ever since Mackenzie gave him to me for my eighth birthday. Under my bed, two wide saucer eyes stare at me from the darkness – my cat Gizmo trembling in terror.
Nausea gathers in my stomach as the red paint coalesces into words. The same sentence repeated over and over.
YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME.
Fuck.
“She’s a fucking psycho!” Noah screams down the phone.
My heart rate rockets up again. Gizmo whimpers as my fingers tighten in her fur. I’ve done nothing but hold her and stroke her and feed her treats for the last hour, but she’s still terrified.
I’m pretty rattled myself. That guy broke into our house without a trace – Mom didn’t even notice. I can’t believe Mackenzie would do this and yet… Noah had a visit from a masked stranger, too. “This guy broke into my room and wrote all over my walls in red paint. Grace found it, and she freaked out. The police are swarming all over the house.”
Poor Grace. “What did they write?”
“‘This cat has claws’!” Noah yells. “What’s she talking about? What cat?”
I pull my phone from my ear as Noah screams curse words, and scroll through my messages. It’s already blowing up. Callum, Daphne, Cleo, Brandy… everyone’s had a visit from one of Mackenzie’s shadowy men.
“Alec’s in the hospital,” Noah says. “She burned her initials into his forehead.”
“Fuck me dead.” That’s dark. But also… I can’t say I felt sorry for Alec.
Why did Mackenzie do this? Because of the party? Because of the things that had been happening at school? It’s a little crazy and yet… Mackenzie was always a law unto herself.
I open a drawer in my desk and rummage around until I find what I’m looking for. It’s a strip of Polaroids we took in a photobooth at Disneyland when we were… eleven, I think? I remember the day well. Mackenzie came to school late and ready for a fight. She sat at the back of class and refused to participate. She called the teacher a bitch to her face, then said, ‘what are you going to do about it?’ because she knew she was untouchable. A girl offered Mackenzie a cupcake, and Mackenzie pushed her into a trash can.
I saw Mackenzie closing in on George, who sat by herself on the edge of the playground. I knew this pattern of hers – Mackenzie’s father did something awful, so she came to school and lorded it over the other kids to feel good about herself. I couldn’t bear that stormy look in her eyes, and I didn’t want to watch what she had planned for George – all I wanted was to see her smile. So for the first time ever, I skipped school. We took a bus down to Anaheim and spent the day at Disneyland. It was one of the best days of my entire life. We didn’t have to pretend – we could be completely ourselves.
I hold up the photo strip to the light – the pair of us crowded inside the booth, dressed in sparkly Mickey Mouse ears and feather boas we got from