The Rules by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online Page B

teacher is hot for
her.
”
    Robin jerked back her head, her mouth dropping open in shock. “No way.”
    Beth made a show of fanning her with the clue envelope. “Way. Want to know who?”
    “Beth, you can’t be right. Do you know how careful teachers have to be these days?” Robin said anxiously. “My father had to take sexual harassment training every semester.”
    “Well, it looks like someone else flunked,” Beth retorted.
    “You don’t
know
that,” Robin insisted. “If this is just gossip, it could really hurt someone. Even get them fired.”
    Beth threw up her hands. “Only the guilty. And I
do
know. I know it’s true.”
    Robin was thunderstruck. She didn’t know what else to say. Did her dad know? Was it someone who had been over to the house? Before her dad’s accident, her parents had been very social, inviting other teachers and the lacrosse team over for dinner all the time.
    Cage inhaled again. There was a big, goofy grin on his face as he held out his hands and began to advance on Heather. Blowing him a kiss for the benefit of the onlookers, she darted out of his way.
    “Morgan,” he guessed.
    “Nope,” August said. “Try again.”
    Cage lurched in the vague vicinity of the third girl but she stayed out of his way. She was wearing a green top with loose sleeves with a matching sweater wrap over it.
    “That’s Praveen. She has the coolest clothes,” Beth said reverently. She looked from Praveen to the sweater she had on, smiled, then lifted her chin. Robin translated: Beth and Praveen were wearing the same shade of green. It must be the color of the week.
    “Praveen goes to Porters. It’s a private school,” Beth said.
    “How does August know her?” Robin asked.
    “Praveen used to hang out with Alexa. His sister. You know about her, right? She died.”
    “I heard,” Robin said. It had been all over the school. Rumors had flown: that she’d OD’d, cut her wrists, been murdered. The story that stuck was that she had drowned in the country club swimming pool. Even when the news had been fresh, Robin felt bad about the level of her own ghoulish curiosity. But then her father had gotten hit and tragedy was no longer a spectator sport in her world.
    The doctors told them that Brian Brissett would live…but that he would be paralyzed from the waist down.
“Tough times don’t last. But tough people do,”
her mom said.
    But how did you get tough? What made you weak? Was it just the way you were born, like being athletic? Had Alexa missed out on the survivalist gene, or was she just unlucky? She had only attended Callabrese High for a year and a few weeks, and half the school gossip had been about her meltdowns and over-the-top antics.
    I think I’m tough.
Robin tried the thought on for size.
Or maybe I just know that someone’s got my back. I’ve got my family.
    That being the family she had lied to tonight to come to Club Pervo.
    “It’s Morgan!” Cage shouted as he grabbed Morgan around the waist and whirled her in a circle. He buried his face against her neck.
    “Yup!” she laughed. “You cheated. You could see through the blindfold!” She batted his shoulder and yanked off the black cloth.
    Cage made a show of covering his mouth in horror. “Morgan, honestly. I would
never
cheat.”
    August guffawed into his mike. “Tickets are now on sale for Cheater Theater. We’ll let it go. We’ll get a new blindfold for the next round. And how about you do the honors this time, Robin?”
    “No, that’s okay,” Robin said, waving a hand at him.
    “Just. Do. It,” Beth murmured. “Please.”
    Sheesh.
“Okay, I’m in,” Robin said as Larson reached up to get a bandana from August. She didn’t want to touch him. She thought he was a slime bucket.
    “Okay, no more lurking, bachelor number three,” August said, and he turned his head toward the shadows. “Dude, you show up late and then you don’t mingle.”
    Dark on dark—a shape glided through the black perimeter of