Deceitful (Rules of Deception 1)

Eyes and whispers followed me all the way to the lunch room. Ana glowered at anyone who dared to look at me for longer than a second. I really liked her. She reminded me a lot of Holly.

“Can we sit somewhere quiet? I need to talk to you,” I whispered after we’d purchased our slices of pizza. Ana led us to a table at the end of the room, delightfully close to the bathroom. No wonder no one had chosen it yet. But it was perfect for my purposes, as it also gave me a fantastic view of the room.

We sank into the hard plastic chairs and I started chewing my pizza. Too much cheese with the texture of chewing gum, dotted with unidentifiable pieces of some kind of sausage. Bleh. I dropped the slice on my plate. Ana hadn’t even started hers yet. She was too busy watching me.

I wiped my greasy hands on a napkin, buying myself some more time to word my question. “Um, why did I break up with Ryan?” So much for eloquence.

Sadness flashed on Ana’s face. She smiled tightly. “You never told me.” She shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal but her voice and eyes told another story. She was hurt and disappointed to be left out. “I’ve always thought it was because he cared more about his buddies than you, but you were kind of secretive about the whole thing.” Her eyes searched my face.

I’d hoped for another answer. If Devon wouldn’t talk, that left only one other person who might know why I broke up with him—Ryan. And I wasn’t sure if talking to him about it was the best choice.

“So you really don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “I have a lot of blanks in my memory. I wish I could remember more.”

“Maybe it’s good that you don’t remember everything.” She picked the pieces of sausage from her slice and arranged them in a tiny circle on her plate.

“No, it would help if I remembered. Then maybe the killer wouldn’t still be out there.” The words came out harsher than I’d intended.

Ana’s eyes grew wide and her hands froze. “Sorry, of course. I just meant—” She trailed off, her eyes darting away.

I reached out for her hand. “I know. It makes me nervous to think of what really happened. You really don’t know anything else, like if Ryan and I had a fight or something?”

Ana’s hands balled to fists. “No. I mean, you told me you and Ryan had grown apart, but never anything about a specific incident. Though there were the other rumors.”

“Rumors?”

“About you and another guy.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.” She kept glancing at a table across the room. The popular kids—it was easy to tell who they were because the entire lunch room seemed to center around them. Ryan and the girl with the bob haircut sat there. Another familiar face was beside them—Franny. She was throwing glances our way.

I’d never attended high school before but I knew enough about hierarchy, which was Major’s favorite topic. Madison must have been one of the popular kids to date Ryan.

“Why aren’t we friendlier with them? Weren’t we part of their group before I was attacked?”

Ana’s face darkened. “No, we left their group a while ago.” She began fumbling with the remaining sliver of her pizza slice.

“Why? What happened?”

Devon entered the lunch room with a group of boys and smiled when his eyes found me. He sat with his friends, but I could tell he was keeping an eye on me. I allowed myself a look around the rest of the cafeteria. A group of goths sat behind Devon and his friends. The table to their right was occupied by two chubby girls wearing nearly identical outfits, and at the edge of the room, all by himself, was Phil. His eyes darted up to meet mine for a millisecond before he returned his focus to his plate.

“Like I said, when you broke up with Ryan some people thought it was because you’d cheated on him. Franny apparently saw you one night—with another guy.”

“With who?”

Ana grimaced. “I don’t know. No one does, Franny couldn’t tell. She just said the guy was shorter than Ryan and definitely wasn’t him. Franny likes to hear herself talk. She’s a liar. But the group was on Ryan’s side and so we left and just did our own thing. They called you a skank and a whore. I hate them.”

“You left your friends for Ma—me?” I’d almost said Madison, but managed to catch myself before the name escaped my lips.

“They weren’t real friends or they wouldn’t have talked shit about you.”

“Was Kristen one of them?” I asked, following a sudden intuition.

“Yeah, she was the worst, always talking shit about you. She and Franny were best friends.” Guilt flashed across her face. “I got in a big fight with Kristen a day before she died. I called her horrible things. I still feel really bad about it.”