Free Kiss of Death by Lauren Henderson Page B

utterly absorbed in the map showing Holyrood’s layout—“Plum was very nasty with Alison and Lucy. You know, because they were Scarlett’s friends. Not straight after the party: it started a few days later, after Scarlett was expelled. Plum never left them alone. They called Scarlett the Kiss of Death girl in the newspapers, of course, so Plum would get everyone to make kiss noises at Alison and Lucy.”
    “Well, that’s not so bad,” Lizzie starts hopefully, but Sophia’s flat voice cuts right across her.
    “Because Dan died of an allergy,” she continues, “like a poisoning, Plum was pretending that Alison and Lucy might be poisonous too. No one would sit with them at meals, or near them in class. It was quite bad for them. All the younger girls copied it too—they would scream if they walked close to Alison and Lucy in the corridors. Only the teachers didn’t know what was happening. Everyone else knew.”
    That’s so unfair! I’m screaming in my head. Alison and Luce didn’t have anything to do with Dan dying! They weren’t even there! And then I’m struck by the timing—it started “after Scarlett was expelled.” That would mean just after I went back to school to clear out my locker: once the inquest verdict on Dan (death by misadventure) had come in, the headmistress of St. Tabby’s asked me to leave (I wasn’t expelled, technically) because of all the press camped outside the school. Plum confronted me, with her posse behind her, and I humiliated her in front of them, slamming her into a locker, seeing naked fear in her eyes for the first time ever.
    She took it out on Alison and Luce, I realize slowly. I made her look weak in front of her sidekicks, and she took it out on my best friends. I went off with my stuff, free from her for a while, at least. And she promptly turned round and tortured Alison and Luce, until Luce snapped with “anger issues.”
    “She pushed Plum down a flight of stairs,” Sophia’s telling Lizzie now. “Plum landed on Mam’selle Bouvier and twisted her ankle.”
    Good for Luce! I think, grinning from ear to ear, but still pretending to be deep in concentration on the leaflet. Bet Plum stopped giving you a hard time after that! Plum’s scared of physical confrontation: I saw that when I held her against that locker. And tiny though Luce is, gymnastics, with all the conditioning that we do, means that she punches far above her weight.
    And then the penny drops. She pushed Plum down a flight of stairs.
    My breath stops. My heart sinks.
    “So they call in Lucy’s parents and say she has anger issues and must go to see a therapist,” Sophia says.
    Lizzie snorts.
    “Sounds more like she has Plum issues!” she comments.
    “Hah! That is very good. Yes, she has Plum issues,” Sophia says approvingly.
    “Come on, girls,” Miss Carter says, bustling up behind us, chivvying us along. “The best is still to come—don’t you want to see Mary’s private rooms?”
    Sophia and Lizzie follow her, and as I walk slowly in their wake, Taylor falls in beside me.
    “You hear all that?” she mutters.
    I nod, not trusting my voice quite yet.
    “She pushed Plum downstairs !” Taylor hisses. “I think that’s very interesting!”
    She’s quite right. But I can’t manage a response; I’m haunted by the wording of that note left in our room last night. Right now, it does feel exactly as if I can’t outrun the past. My own past—my guilt about what I did to Alison and Luce. Not only abandoning them to go to a party; now, as it turns out, leaving them behind at St. Tabby’s to be tormented by Plum as scapegoats for me. I couldn’t help being sent away from St. Tabby’s, but it’s awful to know that Alison and Luce ended up paying for stuff I did. They were already furious with me for dumping them. It must have been real salt in the wound to be taunted by Plum in my name.
    And then there’s my family’s past: my family’s and Jase’s, the Wakefields’ and the