The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

CHAPTER 1

The piece of paper could have been anything.

The spotlight behind me flashed acid green, then pink, then went dark. The pink still seared my retinas, lending a rosy glow to the folded page clenched in my fist.

I stared at it for a few seconds, then reopened it.

The six-inch square had just dropped out of Jack Bishop’s bag.

Jack Bishop, the new guy, who had transferred to Lakehaven High at the beginning of this week. Who had shown up here at lighting tech rehearsal, even though he was the last person I’d expect to be a theater kid.

He’d glanced at his phone and hurried down from the catwalk, and was now making his way across the stage below, his footsteps echoing through the theater. His white T-shirt went orange with the next floodlight, then blue, a bright spot in the dark.

I made sure no one was watching, then smoothed the paper flat again.

It was a photo. A photo of a girl with long dark hair and matching dark eyes focused just out of the frame.

The girl was me.

CHAPTER 2

I watched Jack until he disappeared.

On the other end of the catwalk, Lara Sanchez, the lighting director for the spring play and the person who forced me to come today, leaned over all the new theater techs to demonstrate how another light operated. It made the whole structure shudder.

I clutched at the wire mesh with white-knuckled fingers and glanced at the photo again. In it, my lips were slightly parted, my head turned, like I was talking to someone. He must have gotten it online. Lara posted a ton of pictures. For Jack Bishop to go to the trouble of searching one out meant . . . Well, there weren’t many reasons a guy would be carrying your picture around.

I suddenly realized how stagnant the air up here was. Hot. Stuffy. I was doing better than I thought I would, but I wouldn’t say no to an excuse to get down.

I scrambled to my feet. “Sorry,” I whispered to Lara as I stepped over legs and backpacks. “Excuse me.” I didn’t stop until I was on solid ground. I brushed off my jeans, shoved the picture into my messenger bag, then pushed open the heavy theater door.

B Hall looked especially drab after the neon stage, but Jack, halfway to the gym and looking at his phone, might as well have had a spotlight on him.

Since he’d started at Lakehaven on Monday, Jack had been invited onto the yearbook committee and half the school’s sports teams, and into EmmaBeth Porter’s pants, and those were just the offers I’d overheard.

Meanwhile, I’d spent the whole week fighting the flutter in my stomach that started when he sat next to me in sociology class. And got worse when he smiled at me in calculus. And then he’d showed up at lighting, which meant I’d been staring at the tattoo on his forearm for the last half hour instead of paying attention.

I wasn’t just fascinated with his forearms, though, or his deep gray eyes, or the dimple in his right cheek. He was ridiculously attractive—not pretty, but good-looking in a chiseled way, his jawline an angle rather than a curve, not a strand of espresso-colored hair out of place—and to a lot of people, that would be enough.

To me, though, there was more. Jack was the new kid, like I was. Like me, he said no to all the invitations. I never saw him talking to anyone for more than a couple of minutes. But he seemed so confident about it. It was like he actually . . . didn’t care.

I pretended I didn’t care. About friends. About boys. About having a life. Sometimes I thought I’d actually gotten the hang of it, but then I’d find myself sneaking out of lighting rehearsal because there was a traitorous part of me that wanted to know if this guy I’d been watching for the past week had been watching me, too.

Jack made an abrupt right out the exit to the courtyard.

I should have stopped following him. What was I planning to do, anyway? But when I got to where he’d turned, I heard a voice echoing back into the hall through the plink of raindrops. “Why would he be coming here?”

I stopped short, confused. Carefully, I peered through the propped-open doors. Maybe it was somebody else.

It wasn’t. All I could see was his left arm, but it was Jack. His compass tattoo was facing me, north pointing to the ground.

“Have you got any idea when?” he said, and I tried to make sense of it. Unless my ears weren’t working, Jack Bishop was speaking with a British accent.

He glanced behind him, and I shrank flat against the lockers.

“No, I haven’t seen him yet. Aren’t there more important things to worry about?” He paused. “What would the Dauphins want with her?”

Her? My hand flew to the front pocket of my bag, where I’d tucked the photo.

“Sir?” Jack’s voice changed from agitated to confused. “Certainly,” he said. “Level one priority. I understand.”

I shook my head. Of course he wasn’t talking about me. But what was he talking about?

“I’ll do it by tonight, then,” Jack said after a pause. “Yes, sir.”

He must have hung up the phone, because he cursed under his breath, and his footsteps squelched away on the rain-soaked sidewalk.

I sagged against the lockers. The last few words of the conversation played out in my head. Level one priority. Sir.

An old teacher of his, maybe. A strict British grandfather. It was none of my business, but the uncertainty in Jack’s usually calm voice had unsettled me as much as the accent had.

I tucked a strand of dark hair behind my ear and took out the picture again, studying my face in the dull fluorescent light.

Wait.

I looked closer. This photo was taken in the front yard at my house. I recognized the spiky pine tree.

I didn’t remember Lara taking pictures there, and I never posted photos online.

And if that was the case, where had Jack gotten it?

CHAPTER 3

Avery June West!” I jumped. I’d spent too much time thinking about the picture, and now I was about to be late for next period. I turned to find Lara bouncing down the hall toward my locker, her blue-tipped hair swinging. “Dude, thanks for running out on me. What is your problem?”

For some reason, I didn’t want to tell her about Jack. “I told you I don’t really like heights,” I said instead.

I spun my lock, jiggled the handle, and smacked the corner of the door with my palm. It sprang open. Being the new kid in the middle of the year means you get a lot of leftovers. Lockers are no exception.

“And we agreed lighting would be good for that, remember?” Lara pulled a pack of Twizzlers from her backpack and offered it to me. I shook my head. “And then you get to hang out with me. If you did set design, you’d have to deal with Amber Leland the rest of the year, and gross.”