I leaned into the railing and reached for the last piece of twine. But as soon as I shifted my weight, the floorboards seemed to fly out from beneath my feet, as if my toes had pushed them in the opposite direction. My stomach swooped end over end as I lost my footing and a loud, wailing groan filled the night air. Ivy screamed, the safety railing collapsed in front of me, and before I could even let out a surprised yelp, I was falling.
FRIEND OR FOE
“Would you believe I’ve never broken a bone before?” I said, wincing as I opened and closed the fingers on my left hand. The cast was annoyingly pink and impossibly heavy. Ivy had already signed her name in big, elegant letters, and now Noelle was working on her own message. Her long hair grazed the bare part of my arm, just above my elbow, tickling my already itchy skin.
“Really?” she said, her eyebrows popping up. “I always imagined your childhood in West Nowhere, Pennsylvania, to be all swinging from trees and falling off barn roofs.”
“Okay, there were no barns in my town. And I wasn’t Huck Finn,” I told her with a forced laugh. “I was just a tomboy.”
“What kind of tomboy never breaks a bone?” Ivy said as she sat in the vinyl chair in the corner of the small, curtained cubicle where we awaited my release forms.
“A careful one, I guess,” I said.
“Done.” Noelle capped the Sharpie the nurse had left for us and tossed it on the bedside table. I glanced down at the message. It read, Smooth move, Glass-Licker. xoxo Noelle.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“That’ll just remind you that next time I tell you to stop doing something, you should stop doing it,” Noelle warned, crossing her arms over her slim-cut black jacket.
“Noted,” I replied.
My phone rang and I glanced warily at my bag. Noelle dug through it until she found my cell and turned the screen in my direction. A picture of Josh smiled lazily out at me.
“Hit ignore,” I said without hesitation.
Noelle arched one eyebrow, but did as she was told. She tossed the phone back into my bag and snapped the clasp. “Why are we not telling le boyfriend we’re in the hospital, exactly?”
Before rushing me to the emergency room, Noelle had told Ivy to call Josh, but I’d shouted at them, through my excruciating, mind-bending pain, not to. Since we were, at the time, limping away from the wreckage of the stage, neither of them asked any questions, but now that I had my stitches—four in the temple, two along the jaw—and my cast, I supposed it was time to fess up.
I looked at my two best friends, the words right at the tip of my tongue. I wanted so badly to talk to someone about this, but I didn’t want either of them to be suspicious or scared or even wary of Josh. He was my boyfriend and I loved him. It didn’t seem fair to start spouting off about him before I knew what was really going on. I used my thumb to fiddle with my promise ring and cast my eyes down at my lap.
“He’s just been really busy and stressed lately and I don’t want to make it worse,” I said.
“You do know he’s going to freak when he sees you and realizes you didn’t let him rush to your side all heroic,” Ivy said flatly.
I swallowed hard, suddenly recalling vividly how Josh had done just that for Ivy on the night she was shot.
“I know.” I picked at the thin bedspread underneath the dirt-stained leg of my jeans. “I’ll deal with it. But can we talk about what we really want to talk about here?”
Noelle and Ivy exchanged a knowing glance. “You mean why, exactly, did the stage collapse under you?” Noelle suggested.
“For starters,” I said, my pulse skipping ahead as I remembered the awful, swooping sensation of my fall. “Two days ago that thing stood up to the weight of more than a dozen people, but tonight it couldn’t handle just me?”
“Well, you were going Godzilla all over it,” Noelle reminded me, lifting her hair over her shoulder.
“But she does have a point,” Ivy said. She narrowed her eyes, leaning forward in her chair. “Did it seem at all unstable on Saturday?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I remember a couple of creaky boards, but that’s about it.”
“So the real question is . . . did someone tamper with it?” Noelle asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed, near my feet. “And if so, who?”
“And what about MT?” Ivy said.
“Exactly,” I said, turning up the palm on my good hand. “Did he send me there because he wanted me to find the banner and get rid of it before anyone else saw it, or because he knew the stage was going to cave in and he wanted me to fall?”
All three of us let the words hang in the air as we pondered the question. I felt sick to my stomach from all the uncertainty, all the not-knowing.
“MT . . . friend or foe?” Ivy said, adding a weak, sarcastic laugh.