Free Kiss of Death by Lauren Henderson Page A

Taylor suggests.
    “The thing is, together they’re unstoppable,” I comment, looking over at them as we move into the king’s bedchamber, girls oohing and aahing at the state bed, canopied with red damask trimmed with gold, heavily frilled, its cornice and headboard painted red and gold too, looking as regal as you could imagine.
    “If they were making friends again last night,” Taylor adds, “they weren’t running around setting smoke bombs or trying to push you downstairs.”
    “Unless that was their idea of bonding,” I say jokingly.
    But now I’m staring at Alison and Luce, who are absorbed in talk. Alison’s fiddling with her long mane of hair, which I think she must have lightened in the last months; I remember it being more carroty. Now it’s a strawberry blond, straightened out of its frizzy curls, and it looks really striking. She’s wearing the unofficial St. Tabby’s uniform this season—a rock-chick look, narrow jacket and T-shirt over leggings tucked into slouchy suede boots. For Alison, who used to live in exercise clothes, this is a really big deal. Equally so for Luce, who’s in a variation of the same outfit, but with ballerina shoes. Clever—they keep her tiny little wiry body in proportion. In the boots everyone else is wearing, Luce would look as if she’d pulled on her mum’s Wellingtons.
    They look so smart now, Luce and Alison. Wearing makeup, trendy haircuts, scarves draped fashionably round their necks. Like they’ve had the kind of makeover I did, when I went to a fashionable boutique and threw myself on the mercy of a surprisingly nice salesgirl.
    So maybe, I think hopefully, they don’t care about my betrayal of them anymore, now that they’ve turned into full-blown, head-to-toe St. Tabby’s girls.
    And then Luce, sensing my gaze, swivels her head away from the hangings of the state bed to look directly at me. Our eyes meet.
    The shock is huge. I feel like she punched me in the breastbone. It’s the first time Luce and I have truly looked at each other since our awful breakup. For a brief, breath-holding moment, I have a blinding flash of hope that everything will magically be all right; that she’ll manage a small smile for me, or even make a gesture that says I should come over and talk to her and Alison.…
    And then she squinches up her eyes, crinkles her nose, and pokes her tongue out at me in an unmistakeable grimace of contempt. I’ve seen Luce pull this face at people before: a girl in one of our gymnastics competitions who tried to do what Taylor would have called trash talking, or a bus inspector who lectured us about having proper ID to prove we were under sixteen and entitled to free fares (as if any of us looked our ages back then).
    But she’s never done it to me.
    It’s achingly familiar, and it really hurts. I’m shocked at how painful it is. Luce looks really embarrassed that she did something so childish; she goes bright pink and whips away out of the room, dragging Alison with her, saying something to her urgently. Tears actually spring to my eyes at the sight of Luce and Alison scurrying away from me.
    “She should be more careful,” Sophia observes behind me, her tone serious. But since Sophia’s tone is always serious—she has no discernible sense of humor—I pay little attention to this comment.
    “What do you mean?” Lizzie, perpetually curious, instantly asks.
    “Lucy,” Sophia says, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “She was sent to therapy last term, for anger issues. She should be careful not to look angry in front of the teachers.”
    It takes me a moment to realize she’s talking about Luce.
    “Really?” Lizzie is immediately agog, and so am I; I sidle toward Lizzie and Sophia, ears pricked up, whipping open the Holyrood information leaflet that up till now has been scrunched up, ignored, in my hand.
    “Yes,” Sophia informs her. “After Dan died”—I sense Sophia and Lizzie look sideways at me, and I pretend to be