“This is awesome. You’ll definitely win.” He forced his lips to curve, but they just twitched and drooped back down. “Way cooler than that messed-up haunted house. They’ll never win. Their hall is covered in trash bags.”
I pumped my fist in the air. “I knew we had it in the bag. Wait till you see the rest.”
Heat seared up the back of my neck as I guided him down the red carpet, past the theater, and around Hollywood Hill. After our kiss, and now this almost-fight with Will, I didn’t know how to act around him.
I stopped in front of my door. “This is me, but you should check out the Hollywood Bowl at the end of the hall.”
“I’ll be right back.” He took off down the corridor.
I tried to open my door, but something pushed back. I bent down, picking up a silver tray with a paper triangle on top. The note read, Prize for the Best Scream Award. How did that get around so fast? More importantly, who could’ve put the tray in my room? I thought we’d locked it.
When I lifted the paper, a pair of eyeballs rolled back at me.
In a split-second, my dorm room disappeared.
The rest of the real word faded away, too.
As if I stepped through a portal to another world, suddenly I found myself in the archway of a Gothic cathedral. With a blonde girl dressed in white staring at me like she needed something. She held up her own silver tray—except the eyeballs were real this time. Lolling back and forth like they were still alive.
When she looked straight at me, I knew who she was.
Her eyes weren’t eyes any more. They sparkled like diamonds.
She was St. Lucia. She had to be, just like the “priest” showed us at the church.
She stretched out her finger, not at me exactly, but over my shoulder. I swiveled around like a marionette.
Something was shrouded in the darkness.
Then the onslaught came.
Shadows laced with sparks and lightning rushed at me. Wraith-like claws lunged for us, shrieking and seething in a burst of fireballs that exploded like fireworks—aimed in my direction.
I screamed.
A flash of light snapped me back into the real world.
Girly jitters erupted down the hall.
I dropped the tray with a crash of metal on hardwood. A peeled grape squished under my heels.
What had just happened?
I blinked, dazed and confused, but relieved to be back in my dorm room.
I bolted out of my room just in time to see snatches of brass and honey-blonde hair, along with a swatch of red dress zipping to the end of the hall. The door slammed as the evil blondes disappeared into Monica’s room.
Bryan jogged up to me. “What happened?”
I retreated to my room, plopping with a thud into Shanda’s butterfly chair. “I don’t know. I had the strangest vision. I think Monica and Colleen got a picture of it.”
“What? You’re joking, right?” His jaw dangled.
I shook my limp head at him.
“That’s perfect. She’s had it out for me ever since we broke up. It’ll be all over Instagram, Snapchat, everywhere, in five minutes.” He scooped the tray off the floor, one grape skittering into the corner. He chucked the metal tray across the room, hard. It clanged against the cement brick. “Were there two of these?”
The expression on his face said it all. The fear in his eyes mixed with anger. I couldn’t make a sound. I just nodded again.
“Worse than I thought.” His phone buzzed in his pocket, showing the awful picture on his screen. Me, with my eyes half rolled back in my head, a horrified expression on my face. “Much worse.”
“Why would they do something like this?” I rubbed my fingers into my temples, closing my eyes. The vision of St. Lucia flooded back to me, her sunken eyes sparkling like colored diamonds of crystal, amber, and black. Those jeweled eyes seared through me as if they could see into my eternal soul. I blinked fast, forcing my eyes to stay open. Then the realization hit me. This was much more than a Nexis prank. What if this, and the church fire, were part of the consequences for experimenting with the dark powers?
Bryan twiddled his thumbs over his phone’s keypad. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure this is taken down as soon as possible. But it may be too late.”
Laughter wafted in from the doorway. So it began.
Shanda strolled through the open door, followed by Laura, Brooke, and Lenny. “Screaming Psycho? What is this, Lucy, some kind of joke?” She foisted her cell at me.
“Yeah, thanks for rubbing it in my face.” I swiped it away like a cat. “Monica and Colleen’s revenge, I guess.”
Her laughter died a silent death.
“They sent it out to everyone we know, the whole school. It’s gone viral. That’s cyber-bullying.” Laura’s pale cheeks whitened a few shades. “I’m not surprised Colleen’s behind this, but Monica, too? Are you sure it was Monica with her, and not Julia or someone else trying to get back at you?”
I shook my head. “Not unless Julia suddenly dyed her hair blonde and stole Monica’s red dress.”
She gasped. “How could she do something like this? I thought she was so nice.”
Shanda slipped out of her heels, pitching them in her closet. “That’s exactly what she wants you to think. I’m going down there to give those dumb blondes a piece of my mind.”
She met my gaze, and I pursed my lips at her, nodding my thanks. A sliver of hope swelled up in my heart with that determined look in her eyes.
Bryan nodded. “Take Lenny with you. Maybe he can work his hacker magic and erase it from her phone or computer, or both.”
“So devious.” Shanda narrowed her gaze at him. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
His jaw stiffened back to marble as he matched her glare. “Only when necessary.”
“I’m on it. Let’s
