It always happens the same way. As soon as I’m comfortable with a last name, I’m forced to forget it. My parents’ cover will be in jeopardy or we’re being watched and we’ll have to get out of town. And every time we load up the car in the middle of the night and drive down our street for the last time, I feel like a piece of me is stripped away. I’ve never told my parents that. I don’t want to make them feel bad. But it’s like a version of myself—Reagan Moore or Bailey or Schultz or whoever I was there—dies and becomes a splintered shadow for anyone who ever knew that Reagan. When I get my new name and new cover story, it’s like that Reagan—that fractured piece of myself—never really existed. I don’t talk about it. I don’t tell anyone the truth about where we were or what my life was like. I have to make up a whole new set of lies and repeat them over and over again until they become truth. I make the girl I was just a few months ago disappear.
“Hey, girls,” Malika says, setting her tray down next to me. She lifts up her left leg to climb over the bench, forgetting about her very short red skirt.
“Holy inappropriateness,” Harper says, covering her eyes with both hands.
“What’d I do?” Malika asks, settling into her seat.
“You kind of just gave the entire school a look at the goods,” I say and pat her bare knee.
“Well, it’s not like I’m not wearing underwear,” Malika says, and throws her slick black hair over her shoulder.
“Yes. I like the pink flamingos, Mal,” Harper answers, and gives her a wink.
With a Japanese mother and Pakistani father, Malika is hard not to notice in WASP-y New Albany, Ohio. Plus, she’s what I like to call stupid pretty. So beautiful, she strikes you dumb and stumbling.
“Malika, what do you think this is, a strip club?” a voice says from behind me. I know who it is before I even turn around. Everyone knows the low, raspy voice of Madison Scarborough. “But then again, it’s nothing half the guys in this room haven’t seen before.”
“Hey, I’m only a make-out slut,” Malika says, pointing a finger to her chest. “I don’t take off my clothes.”
“Whatever. A slut is a slut,” Madison says, rolling her startling blue eyes. I open my mouth to zing her but she’s already turned on her heel to head to the field hockey girls’ table.
“Don’t worry,” I say, linking my arm with Malika’s. “I’ll get her back later.”
I learned how to hack into computers during one of my summer training camps in China. In about ninety seconds, I can hack into the school’s computer system and change grades, attendance records, anything. It’s child’s play compared to the other systems I’ve mastered. By tonight, Madison will have a D in physics and the field hockey captain will be promptly benched for Saturday’s rivalry game against Upper Arlington. I’ll change it back Monday. Madison totally deserves the D for all the mean-girl crap she pulls on a daily basis. But I only use my spy skills for short spurts of vengeance evil.
The rumor-spreading, shit-stirring Madison Scarborough is what bonded us last year. I noticed Harper and Malika on my first day of school. Malika because she’s gorgeous and Harper because she has the type of effortless coolness money can’t buy. But they didn’t hang with the field hockey and lacrosse crowd, the self-anointed “popular” girls. They were what Madison and her friends liked to call “fringers.” Invited to the big parties but never the exclusive sleepovers or birthday dinners. They were known around school but never the center of attention. They quickly became my target group of friends. I needed to get into a small, uncomplicated group and blend as quickly as possible, so when I caught wind of terrible rumors Madison was spreading about them, I knew it was my chance.
Madison has had the same boyfriend for over a year: A preppy lacrosse senior who wears salmon shorts and mirrored sunglasses at parties and uses the word summer as a verb. Even with a d-bag boyfriend, girls think twice about getting involved with anyone Madison’s ever dated. When Madison’s ex-boyfriend asked Harper to homecoming, she spread a rumor that she was a lesbian and that none of the field hockey girls felt comfortable sharing a locker room with her. Then when Madison heard that Malika kissed a guy who dumped her two years ago, she started a rumor that sweet Malika made a sex tape even though Mal had never even had sex. Still hasn’t.
During study hall, I hacked into Madison’s Twitter account (@PrincessMaddie. Cue the eye roll) and had Mal and Harper help me compose a stream of hilarious apology tweets to every person she’d ever terrorized. They were deleted twenty minutes later but that act cemented my place in our little group.
I almost hate to
