Chapter 21: Teagan Falls

Cassie did not ask permission.

She climbed the stage steps with her laptop open, set it on a speaker cabinet, and plugged a cable into the board beside the podium.

"Seven ten tonight," she said into the microphone. "The booth hallway. It has a microphone that logs everything, and nobody ever remembers."

Teagan said, "Cassie, don't you dare."

Cassie pressed a key.

The gym speakers crackled. Then Teagan's voice came out of them, clear and bright and unbothered, filling the ceiling.

"Relax. Nobody can hear us. It's a stupid hallway."

A second voice laughed. It was a girl's voice, and I knew whose.

"You sent the badge photo to Drake's dad yourself?" it said.

"On Tuesday, before I posted it," Teagan's voice said.

"I emailed the picture to the Hargrove Holdings office and tagged the manager. You think that woman got fired by accident?"

The girl in the pale green scarf had stopped breathing.

"She got herself fired," the voice went on. "I just made sure somebody important saw it."

A sound went across the gym, low and ugly.

"And the cards at the dinner?"

"I wrote them in my best handwriting. She walked up there so proud. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen."

My mother had sat at the back of that hall in her church coat.

I stood there with my hands curled into fists, and I did not move.

"Five accounts," Teagan's voice said, warm and delighted. "Nobody ever checks. Drake thinks he can leave me for the scholarship girl?"

"What if he does?"

"He won't. Give it a week. I'll have her ruined and run out of school, and he'll come back to me like he always does."

Cassie pressed the key again, and the recording stopped.

The gym was so quiet that I heard someone's bracelet clink.

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