Ruthless

Chapter 6 A FALLEN STAR

The following morning, Spencer perched on the edge of a green velvet chair in the auditorium at Rosewood Day. In her hands was a ragged copy of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth with all of the lines for Lady Macbeth, the character she was playing in the Honors Drama production, highlighted in pink marker. As she thumbed nervously through the first scene, Pierre Castle, the brand-new Honors Drama teacher and director, clapped his hands.

“Okay! Lady M, up on the stage!” Pierre, who insisted that students use his first name, refused to utter the name Macbeth in fear of the centuries-old curse—apparently, those who dared speak it aloud had succumbed to deadly fevers, suffered severe burns, endured stabbings, and gotten mugged. Today was Pierre’s first rehearsal as director, and he’d started off by calling the production “The Scottish Play” and addressing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth by their initials, which confused most of the freshmen. Pierre had been called in to pinch-hit when Christophe, the school’s venerable old teacher-director, moved to Italy with his boyfriend. Everyone said Pierre had been a score, though. He’d been a dramaturge for a production of Cymbeline in Philly and quite a few Shakespeare in the Park seasons in New York City.

Tucking the script under her arm, Spencer climbed the risers, her knees wobbling. Last night, she’d tossed and turned until the wee hours of the morning, trying to figure out how the horrible Princeton admissions mix-up had happened. At 2 A.M., she’d thrown the covers back and looked at the letter again, hoping it wasn’t real. But when she’d looked up Bettina Bloom on Princeton’s website, there she was, head of the admissions board, looking smug in her photo.

It was preposterous that there was another high-achieving Spencer Hastings in this world. Spencer had also Google-stalked Spencer F., as she’d begun to call him. Apparently, Spencer Francis Hastings had run for mayor in Darien, Connecticut, as a sixteen-year-old and almost won. On his Facebook profile, he bragged about sailing around the world with his dad last summer and that he’d been a runner-up for the Westinghouse science prize in tenth grade. All of the pictures on his page showed a scrubbed, handsome guy who looked like he was exceedingly polite to old ladies but had six girlfriends at any given time. When Spencer F. received the same Princeton letter Spencer had, he’d probably shrugged and contacted some foreign dignitary or Hollywood director he was BFFs with and asked them to make one convincingly worded phone call to admissions.

This wasn’t fair. Spencer had worked much, much too hard to get into Princeton. She’d also done horrible things in order to secure her spot, including ruining Kelsey’s future last summer. She had to be the Spencer who was admitted.

But while Spencer may not have run for mayor, she did have acting. She had starred as the lead in every play the school put on, starting with her title role in The Little Red Hen in first grade. From there, she’d beat out Ali—really Courtney—for the role of Laura in the seventh grade’s production of The Glass Menagerie, impressing even the seniors with her maturity and fragility. In eighth grade, after Ali vanished—or, rather, after the Real Ali killed her—she’d played Mary in Long Day’s Journey into Night, receiving a standing ovation. Last year’s Hamlet was the only production she hadn’t starred in, and that was because she’d been banned from all school activities because she’d plagiarized her sister’s Golden Orchid essay. It was actually a godsend that Rosewood Day was putting on Macbeth this year and that Spencer was cast as Lady Macbeth—it was a challenging role, one that the Princeton admissions board would be very impressed with. It could be enough to give her an edge over Spencer F.

The floorboards on the stage squeaked under Spencer’s battleship-gray J. Crew ballet flats. Pierre, who was clad in all-black garb and wore what looked suspiciously like guy-liner, tapped a silver Mont Blanc pen against his lips. “We’re going to try your sleepwalking scene, Lady M. Did you run through that with Christophe?”

“Of course,” Spencer lied. Actually, Christophe had been so busy with his relocation plans that he’d assumed Spencer knew her lines and didn’t need to practice.

Pierre’s gaze dropped to the script in Spencer’s hands. “Are you still using that? The performance is in less than two weeks!”

“I’ve almost got all my lines down,” Spencer protested, even though it wasn’t exactly true.

She heard a snicker off to the left. “She would so not get into Yale Drama,” someone said in a low voice.

Spencer whipped around. The voice belonged to Beau Braswell, another new transplant to Rosewood Day and Spencer’s costar as Macbeth. “Pardon?” Spencer demanded.

Beau clamped his lips together. “Nothing.”

Ugh. Spencer turned back around and pushed up the sleeves of her Rosewood Day blazer. Beau had moved here from Los Angeles, and with his high cheekbones, longish dark hair, intentional bad-boy scruff, and beat-up Indian motorcycle, he’d quickly become the It Boy of Honors Drama. To every girl except Spencer, that is. Last month, when all the early college acceptances rolled in, he’d casually mentioned that he’d gotten into Yale’s drama program. If “casually mentioning” was pompously talking about it Every. Single. Day. The Yale reference especially stung today, now that Spencer’s future was so precarious.

“All right.” Pierre tapped his pen against his script, and Spencer jumped. “Let’s take it from the start of the scene. Doctor? Gentlewoman?” He looked at Mike Montgomery and Colleen Lowry, who were in the scene, too. “You’re watching Lady M’s predicament from the sidelines. And . . . action!”

Mike, playing Lady Macbeth’s doctor, turned to Colleen, Lady Macbeth’s maid, and asked how long it had been since Lady Macbeth first walked in her sleep. Colleen answered that apparently Lady Macbeth got up in the middle of the night, wrote something on a piece of paper, then sealed up the secrets tight.

Then Pierre motioned to Spencer, and she stumbled into the scene and started feverishly rubbing her hands. “Yes, here’s the spot,” she said passionately, trying to sound like a madwoman who was wracked with guilt for killing the king.

“Hark, she speaks!” Mike recited.

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” Spencer bellowed. She glanced down at the script and said a few more lines. When she got to the part about how she could still smell the king’s blood on her skin, Pierre let out a long sigh.

“Cut!” he yelled. “I need more emotion from you, Spencer. More guilt. All of your evil deeds are catching up to you, making you have nightmares and see blood on your hands. Try to picture what it really feels like to murder someone.”

You don’t know the half of it, Spencer thought with a shiver, instantly thinking of Tabitha. What if the Princeton admissions board somehow got wind of that? What if A told them? She winced and shut her eyes as the scene continued.

“Spencer?” Pierre prompted.

Spencer blinked. A few lines had gone by that she’d completely missed, and now the director was staring at her. “Um, sorry, where were we?”

Pierre looked annoyed. “Mike, can you repeat your line?”

“This disease is beyond my practice, yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep and died holily in their beds,” Mike said.

Spencer glanced at the script. “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown . . .”

But as she was saying the words, her thoughts drifted again. What if Princeton somehow knew about what had happened with Kelsey last summer? The police said they wouldn’t put the bust on Spencer’s permanent record, but maybe Princeton had found out another way.

The summery June night when she’d first met Kelsey swirled in her mind. It had been at a bar called McGillicuddy’s on the University of Pennsylvania campus. The floors were sticky with beer, there was a Phillies game on the flat-screen, and the bartenders were lining up neon-colored shots on the counter. The room was stuffed with summer students, most of them underage. Spencer stood next to a guy named Phineas O’Connell, who sat behind her in AP Chem III.

“You’re taking four APs in six weeks?” Phineas asked her over a pint of Guinness. He was cute in a layered-haired, vintage-T-wearing, Justin-Bieber-goes-emo way. “Are you insane?”

Spencer shrugged nonchalantly, pretending she wasn’t freaked out by the brutal course load. When she’d received her end-of-year grades at Rosewood Day, she’d gotten three Bs for the year—and had slipped to twenty-seventh in the class ranking. That simply would not do. Taking—and acing—four APs was the only thing that would save her GPA and get her into an Ivy.

“I’m taking four APs, too,” said a voice.

Behind them was a petite girl with cinnamon-red hair and sparkling green eyes Spencer had seen around the Penn dorms. She wore a faded T-shirt from St. Agnes, a snotty private school near Rosewood, and a pair of oat-colored Marc Jacobs espadrille sandals that had just come out in stores. Spencer was wearing the same exact shoes, except in blue.

Spencer smiled in commiseration. “It’s nice to know someone’s as crazy as I am.”

“I think I need to clone myself to get all the work done.” The girl laughed. “And murder the girl who lives next to me. She listens to Glee songs nonstop—and sings along.” She put her finger to her temple and made a pow noise, simulating a gun.

“You don’t need to clone yourself—or switch rooms.” Phineas spun a green class ring around his finger. “If you girls are serious about acing four APs, I know something that can help.”

Spencer placed her hands on her hips. “I’m serious. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Phineas looked at the other girl. “I’m serious, too,” she said after a pause.

“Well, then, come on.”

Phineas took Spencer and the second girl’s arm and led them toward the back of the bar. As they walked, the girl turned to Spencer. “Do I know you? You look really familiar.”

Spencer gritted her teeth. That was probably because she’d been all over the news and People magazine as one of the girls who’d been tormented by their old, presumably dead best friend. “Spencer Hastings,” she said in a clipped voice.

The girl paused, then gave a quick nod. “I’m Kelsey. By the way, I love your shoes. Are you on the Saks Secret Shopper list, too?”

“Of course,” Spencer said.

Kelsey bumped Spencer’s hip. And that was all she said about that. Spencer wanted to kiss her for not bringing up Alison DiLaurentis, twin-switching, or a certain text-messager named A.

“Lady M?” a sharp voice called. Pierre looked like his head was about to explode.

“Uh . . .” Spencer glanced around. Mike and Colleen had left the stage. Had the scene ended?

Pierre shooed Spencer toward the seats. “Witches? You’re up next!”

The witches, who were played by Hanna’s stepsister, Kate Randall, Naomi Zeigler, and Riley Wolfe, jumped up from an impromptu manicure session at the back of the auditorium.

“Hey, Beau,” Riley said as they climbed on the stage, batting her pale, stubby eyelashes at him.

“Hey,” Beau said, shooting each of the girls a winning grin. “Ready to cackle and cast magic spells, witches?”

“Of course,” Naomi giggled, tucking a piece of blond hair behind her ear.

“I wish I could really cast a magic spell,” Riley said. “I’d have Pierre put me in the role of your wife and kick Spencer to the curb.”

All three of them shot Spencer daggers. Spencer didn’t interact with Naomi or Riley very often, but she always felt wary of them. Once upon a time, they’d been Real Ali’s BFFs. Then, when the switch happened, Their Ali—Courtney—dumped them abruptly, and they were no longer popular. They’d had it in for Spencer and her old friends ever since.

Spencer turned back to Pierre, who was assiduously making marks in his script, probably about how poor her performance had been.

“I’m really sorry about my scene,” she said. “I was distracted. I’ll get it together tomorrow.”

Pierre pursed his thin lips. “I expect my actresses to give one hundred and ten percent every day. Was that your one hundred and ten percent?”

“Of course not,” Spencer squeaked. “But I’ll be better! I promise!”

Pierre didn’t look convinced. “If you don’t start taking this part more seriously, I’ll have to give the part of Lady M to Phi instead.”

He gestured to Spencer’s understudy, Phi Templeton, who was sitting in the middle of the aisle, her nose buried in the Macbeth text. Her legs, which were clad in black-and-white striped stockings, extended into the aisle like those of the house-flattened Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. A piece of toilet paper was stuck to her Doc Marten shoe.

“Please don’t do that!” Spencer cried. “I need a good grade in this class.”

“Then get your head into this play and focus.” Pierre slapped his script shut. A red velvet bookmark covered with kissing lips floated out, but he made no motion to grab for it. “If you nail this role, I’ll give you an A for the year. But if you don’t . . .” He trailed off and raised his eyebrows ominously.

A cough sounded from the left. Naomi, Riley, and Kate snickered from the witches’ cauldron. Everyone stared at her from the audience, too.

“I’ve got it under control,” Spencer said, marching off the stage and up the aisle as confidently as she could, pointedly stepping on the strap of Phi’s backpack.

Pushing open the auditorium’s double doors, she emerged into the windowed lobby, which was filled with Macbeth posters and smelled like spearmint gum. Suddenly, a faint whisper swirled in her ear.

Murderer.

Spencer shot up and looked around. The lobby was empty. She walked quickly to the stairwell, but there was no one there, either.

A creak sounded, and Spencer jumped again. When she turned, Beau was standing behind her.

“I can help you practice, if you want,” he said.

Spencer stiffened. “I don’t need your help, thank you very much.”

Beau pushed back a lock of silky brown hair that hung in his face. “Actually, I think you do. If you look bad, I look bad, and Yale wants all my performance tapes. It will impact what classes I’ll get into in the fall.”

Spencer let out an indignant squeak. She was about to turn away, but the letter from Princeton whooshed back to her. Beau had gotten into Yale Drama. Pompous ass or not, he probably knew a thing or two about acting. She needed all the help she could get.

“Okay,” she said frostily. “If you really want, we can rehearse together.”

“Great.” Beau pushed against the auditorium door. “Sunday. At my place.”

“Wait!” she called. “How am I supposed to know where you live?”

Beau gave her a strange look. “My address is on the drama club call sheet, just like everyone else’s. You can find it there.”

He pivoted into the auditorium and swaggered down the rows of seats. Naomi, Riley, Kate, and all the other drama club fangirls nudged each other and gawked at him appreciatively. Even though Spencer would have died if Beau had caught her, she couldn’t help but ogle his cute butt as he moved down the aisle, too.