“That is just wrong,” Landon added, covering his mouth and nose as well.
“Call Animal Control and then burn this place down!” Palmer said, his face screwed up in disgust.
“I am going to kill Martin Tsang!” Lexa shouted, running back to her room and slamming the door.
Palmer looked at Landon and Ariana, breathed through his mouth, and placed his hands on his hips. “This. Is. War.”
BRILLIANT PLAN
“What a day,” Maria said as she settled onto a settee at the Hill that night. It was a gorgeous fall evening, slightly warm with the sun still glowing off the brightly colored leaves outside. Most of the glass doors and windows of the junior/senior lounge were thrown open to let the fresh air in. Maria sucked down half of her espresso, a breeze teasing the wisps of brown hair around her face.
“Please. You never even saw the cows,” Ariana said as she and Kaitlynn sat down across from her at the marble coffee table.
“That’s because a smart girl knows when to stay inside,” Maria replied with a smirk.
“Well, we have to do something and we have to do it fast,” Lexa said, dropping down in a high-backed chair. “I know Martin Tsang is behind this. He’s been walking around with that stupid grin on his face all day.”
She glanced over her left shoulder to where, a few tables away, Martin and some of his friends were noshing on cookies and laughing it up. Martin noticed them looking and laughed even harder.
“We can’t let him think he’s won,” Lexa said with a shudder, facing forward again. “You can’t just walk into Privilege House and defile the place.”
“Exactly,” Palmer said, coming up behind Lexa with Landon, Jasper, Conrad, and Tahira’s boyfriend, Rob, in tow. “Which is why we’re going to retaliate. Tonight.”
Ariana and Palmer exchanged a glance, and Palmer gave her a private smile as the guys squeezed in around the table. Jasper took a seat next to Ariana on the couch, forcing her closer to Kaitlynn’s side. Ariana wished that Palmer could have sat there instead—that they could have just come out and told everyone they were together already—but now hardly seemed like the moment. Landon dropped down on the end of Maria’s settee and she gave him a brief, private smile. It made Ariana feel better to be reminded that she wasn’t the only one engaged in a secret relationship around here. Ariana wondered what Maria would have done if Landon had been two seconds behind Adam during the scavenger hunt, rather than the other way around. She was sure that her friend was in Stone and Grave, and that she wanted her boyfriend to get in too. Would she have had enough—or any—pull to save him?
Ariana watched Palmer as he pulled over another chair and sat next to Lexa. She had a hunch that Palmer wasn’t just a member but was the president of the Atherton-Pryce Hall chapter of Stone and Grave. It made sense, considering he was president of the student body, captain of the gold team during welcome week, and the person everyone looked up to around here. Would he have been able to save her if she had been the last to complete her task?
“So do you guys have a plan?” Lexa asked, taking a sip of her coffee.
Palmer bit his lip. “Uh . . . no. You?”
There were blank stares all around. A pair of senior girls walked by on their way up to the coffee counter, fresh from a workout and wearing their APH Track hoodies. Ariana smiled at their retreating forms, recalling one of her own greatest all-time pranks—one she’d pulled on a bitchy classmate back when she was a freshman at Easton.
Before she could announce the idea, Kaitlynn leaned forward and looked around at the group. “Come on. Someone here must have pulled a good prank back in grade school,” she said. “Something we can use as inspiration.”
“Lily, what about that story you told me last week?” Ariana said, looking Kaitlynn in the eye. “That prank you pulled at your old school?”
Kaitlynn went wide-eyed, like a deer in headlights. “Which prank was that?” she asked Ariana. “I’ve pulled off so many, it’s hard to remember which ones I’ve bragged about,” she joked casually, looking around at the others.
“The one with the gum?” Ariana replied. “It’d be perfect!”
“Oh, right! The gum prank!” Kaitlynn said, faking a laugh.
Lexa raised one eyebrow. “Come on girls, spill.”
“You tell it,” Kaitlynn said, nudging Ariana’s knee.
“God, Lily. You’re so modest.” Ariana sat forward, giddy as all eyes turned on her. This was already working like a charm. “Back at Lily’s old school, there was this girl who always wore hoodies. Every day, it was the same hoodie in a different color, and whenever she stepped outside, she would lift the hood over her hair.”
Maria drained the rest of her espresso and leaned in with interest.
“It was totally ridiculous,” Kaitlynn chimed in, playing along now as if the story truly was hers. “That silhouette did nothing for her.”
Maria smirked.
“So one day in English class, Lily sat behind her, chewed up a nice, big wad of gum, and placed it in her hood,” Ariana said.
“No!” Lexa cried.