Twisted

Chapter 13 Seduction and Secrets

Spencer stood at the back of the Kahns’ smorgasbord line, eyeing the food spread. Some of this crap looked like cat vomit. And who in their right mind drank soured milk?

Two hands grabbed her shoulders. “Surprise,” Zach Pennythistle said, waving an uncorked amber-colored bottle in her face. Inside was a greenish liquid that smelled like nail polish remover.

Spencer raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”

“Traditional Finnish schnapps.” He poured a few slugs into two foam cups from the stack on the table. “I snuck it from the bar cart when no one was looking.”

“Bad boy!” Spencer shook her finger at him. “Are you always so deviant?”

“It’s why I’m the black sheep of my family,” Zach teased, lowering his dark eyes at her, which made Spencer’s insides whirl.

She was thrilled Zach had accepted her invitation to the smorgasbord party tonight. Ever since the dinner at The Goshen Inn on Sunday, she couldn’t stop thinking of their fun, flirty banter. Even after they’d sat down at the table with the rest of the family, they’d continued to shoot one another feisty looks and secret smiles.

They drifted through the living room and set up camp on the Kahns’ stairs. The party was getting raucous, with a bunch of Rosewood Day kids Irish-jigging to the polka music in the Kahns’ enormous living room and some of the adults already slurring their words. “I usually don’t peg Harvard boys as the black sheep of their families,” Spencer said to Zach, picking up on their previous conversation.

Zach sat back, frowning. “Where’d you hear I was going to Harvard?”

Spencer blinked. “Your dad said so at dinner. Before I found you at the bar.”

“Of course he did.” Zach took a long drink of his schnapps. “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely sure Harvard and I are a match made in heaven. I have my eye on either Berkeley or Columbia. Not that he knows that, of course.”

Spencer raised her glass. “Well, here’s to getting what you want.”

Zach smiled. “I always get what I want,” he said meaningfully, which sent more tingles up her spine. Something was going to happen between them tonight. Spencer could just feel it.

“Is that booze?” cried an outraged voice. Zach’s sister, Amelia, emerged from around the corner with a plate full of food.

Spencer sighed and shut her eyes. Her mother had been thrilled that she’d invited Zach to the smorgasbord—it would be a good way for the two of them to get to know each other, she said. “In fact, why doesn’t Amelia join you, too?” she’d chirped a millisecond later. Before Spencer could protest, Mrs. Hastings was on the phone with Nicholas, extending the invitation to Zach’s pinched-faced sister.

Did Amelia even want to be here? A hideous scowl had settled over her features as soon as she’d stepped through the Kahns’ door. When Mrs. Kahn put on a traditional Finnish folk dance song, Amelia had actually winced and covered her ears.

“Want some?” Zach pushed his cup toward Amelia. “It tastes like peppermint patties, your favorite!”

Amelia moved away, making a face. “No thanks.” Her idea of party wear was a striped Brooks Brothers button-down tucked very tightly into a denim pencil skirt that fell to her knees. She looked exactly like Mrs. Ulster, Spencer’s substitute Calc II teacher.

Amelia leaned against the banister and glowered at the Rosewood residents. “So are these people your friends?” She said friends like she might have said bedbug-infested mattresses.

Spencer surveyed the crowd. Most of the Rosewood Day senior class had been invited, as well as a smattering of the Kahns’ society friends. “Well, they all go to my school.”

Amelia made a dismissive uch. “They seem really lame. Especially the girls.”

Spencer flinched. Other than Kelsey, she hadn’t hung out with St. Agnes girls in ages. But she had been to a couple of their parties back in middle school; each clique named themselves after a European princess or queen—there were the Queen Sofias of Spain, the Princess Olgas of Greece, and the Charlottes of Monaco, daughter of Princess Carolina. Hello, lameness?

Zach drained the rest of his drink and set his cup on the stairs. “Oh, these girls look like they might have some dirty little secrets up their sleeves.”

“How can you tell?” Spencer teased.

“It’s all about watching people, noticing what they do. Like when I met you at the restaurant on Sunday—I knew you were in the bar area because you were escaping from someone. Taking a breather.”

Spencer gave him a playful slap. “You’re such a liar.”

Zach crossed his arms over his chest. “Wanna bet? There’s this game I sometimes play called She’s Not What She Seems. I bet I can suss out more secrets than you can.”

Spencer flinched for a moment at the name of the game. For some reason, it reminded her of the postcard they’d received last night. Even though Spencer pretended it didn’t matter, flickers of anxiety threatened to ignite inside of her. Could someone know about Jamaica? A lot of people had been staying at the resort—Noel, Mike, that group of kids from California they’d gone surfing with, some party-crazy boys from England, and of course the staff—but Spencer and the others looked up and down the dark beach after everything had happened and hadn’t seen a soul. It was like they were the last people on earth. Unless . . .

She shut her eyes and swept the thoughts away. There was no unless. And there was no new A. The postcard was just a big coincidence, a lucky guess.

A bunch of girls on the Rosewood Day newspaper staff flitted into the living room with plates of meatballs, potatoes, and sardines. Spencer turned back to Zach. “I’ll play your little secrets game. But you realize I know these people, right? I have a home-court advantage.”

“Then we have to pick people you don’t really know.” Zach leaned forward and gazed around the room. He pointed to Mrs. Byers, Mason’s mom, who was decked out in head-to-toe Kate Spade. “Know anything about her?”

Amelia, who had been watching them both, groaned. “Her? She’s as generic as they come! Soccer mom, drives a Lexus. Snore.”

Zach clucked his tongue. “That’s where you’re wrong. She looks like your regular upscale suburban housewife, but she likes her boyfriends young.”

“What makes you say that?” Spencer asked incredulously.

“Look.” Zach pointed at how Mrs. Byers was eagerly filling the cup for Ryan Zeiss, one of Mason’s lacrosse teammates. Her hand lingered on Ryan’s shoulders for a long time. Too long.

“Whoa,” Spencer whispered. No wonder Mrs. Byers always volunteered to be the team’s travel mom.

Then it was Spencer’s turn. She looked around the room, trying to locate her victim. Mrs. Zeigler, Naomi’s polished mother, glided across the cheerful black-and-white checkerboard floor. Bingo. “She gets secret Botox treatments,” Spencer said, pointing.

“Oh puh-leease.” Amelia rolled her eyes. “All of these women get Botox. Some of the kids probably do, too.”

“. . . under her arms,” Spencer added, remembering how, a few years ago, Mrs. Zeigler always had visible sweat stains on her T-shirts whenever she raised her arms to clap for a field hockey goal. This hockey season, however, those sweat stains had magically disappeared.

“Nice.” Zach whistled.

They went around the room, making up more secrets. Zach pointed to Liam Olsen and said he was cheating on his girlfriend, Devon Arliss. Spencer zeroed in on a Goth-looking caterer and said she was a huge Justin Bieber freak and French-kissed his portrait every night. Zach said that Imogen Smith looked like the type who’d secretly had a sexually transmitted disease, and Spencer hypothesized that Beau Baxter, her hot, reclusive costar in Macbeth, had affairs with older women. And then Amelia pointed halfheartedly at someone in the crowd. “Well, she looks like the type who hooks up with teachers.”

Spencer squinted at who she was talking about and almost gasped. It was Aria. After the girls started hanging out again, Aria had told Spencer and the others everything about her affair with Ezra Fitz, her English teacher. How could Amelia know that?

Then Amelia turned her beady little pea eyes on Spencer. “So what’s your secret?”

“Uh . . .” A chill ran up Spencer’s spine. Suddenly, Amelia seemed weirdly intuitive, like she already knew. Jamaica. How I got into Princeton. What I did to Kelsey. There were definitely a few things Spencer had done she wasn’t proud of.

Zach rolled his eyes. “Don’t answer her. We all have some secrets we don’t want to share—including me.”

Shortly after that, Amelia wandered off into the party to talk to a couple of girls she recognized from candy striping. The party devolved into a giant drunken Finnish clog dance, with the cheesy polka music blaring and Aria and the new exchange student girl dancing wildly at the center.

A glass and a half of schnapps later, Spencer and Zach were still playing She Isn’t Who She Seems.

“Sean Ackard’s a serial masturbator,” Spencer posited, pointing.

“That woman in the head-to-toe Gucci buys all her designer clothes on Canal Street in New York,” Zach countered.

“Celeste Richards loves the smell of her own farts.” Spencer giggled.

“That new Finnish girl is actually a drag queen.” Zach wailed.

“Lori, Kendra, and Madison are into orgies!” Spencer cried, referring to the three soloists from masterworks halfheartedly clogging in the corner.

She was laughing so hard tears flowed freely down her cheeks, probably smearing her mascara. She and Zach had moved closer on the steps again, their legs touching, their hands brushing often, their heads occasionally lolling onto one another’s shoulders.

Eventually, the party began to break up, and everyone started for home. The two of them collected Amelia and piled back into Zach’s car. Spencer took control of Zach’s iPod and blasted St. Vincent, singing along to “Actor Out of Work.” Amelia sat in the back and sulked.

Zach pulled up to the Hastings curb and yanked up the emergency brake. Spencer turned to him, both sad that the night was ending and jittery because this was the moment she’d waited the entire evening for—the goodnight kiss. Surely Zach would get out of the car and walk her to her door—away from his sister.

“You know, we never figured out a wager for your little Secrets game,” Spencer said in a silky voice. “And I think I won—I definitely figured out more secrets than you.”

Zach raised a brow. “Au contraire. I think I deserve the prize.” He leaned closer to her, and Spencer’s heart pounded hard.

Amelia groaned loudly and jutted forward from the backseat. “Would you guys stop flirting? You realize we’re like one romantic date away from becoming stepsiblings, right? If you two hooked up, that would practically be incest.”

Zach stiffened and moved away from Spencer. “Who said anything about hooking up?”

Ouch. Spencer shot Amelia the nastiest glare she could muster. Way to ruin the moment.

When she turned back to Zach, he pecked her politely on the cheek. “Call me. We should do brunch at the Rosewood Country Club. Tons of people have secrets there.”

“Uh, absolutely,” Spencer said, trying not to sound disappointed.

She walked to the front door, avoiding the patches of snow and ice on the sidewalk. As she fumbled for her keys, her cell phone chimed. She pulled it out, hoping it was a text from Zach. Can’t wait to see you without my sis next time, perhaps. Or, even better, I did want to kiss you. I hope I can soon.

But it was a message from an anonymous sender instead. The schnapps immediately drained from Spencer’s head, leaving her feeling instantly sober. She looked around, searching for two eyes peering through the bushes, a figure moving through the trees. But there was nothing.

She took a deep breath and pressed READ.

Hey Spence. Everyone has secrets, indeed. And guess what? I know yours.

–A