“We’ll do it during class today!” he said.
Do what?
Lara frowned. There was something going on here. Maybe Caroline refused to talk to her sister about it—for some completely nonsensical reason—but Lara would figure it out herself.
Suddenly, the warning bell shrieked. Lara covered her ears with her hands. By the time the awful noise stopped, Caroline and the boy were gone.
She wanted to know more. But try as she might, she could not think of any practical way to spy on her sister during class.
Lara sighed and scurried back to the seventh-grade hallway. At least she’d learned one thing: Caroline and her new friend were doing something very odd. Something that involved fake blood.
She scribbled in her notebook:
PROBLEM: C. is up to something with a v. suspicious boy. He likes fake blood (seriously eww).
It appeared as though FIASCCO’s work was far from complete.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE DISTRACTION
Caroline found it pretty much impossible to concentrate on anything during her first few classes of the day. Even getting to second-period language arts proved to be a difficult task. After numerous wrong turns, Caroline just barely slipped into the classroom on time. Actually paying attention in class was not going to happen. The whole time, she felt squiggly spirals of paint swirling around in her mind—yellows and oranges, mostly, with a few streaks of red. Bloodred, of course.
Finally, the moment arrived. Experimental Art class with Micah—and Marissa.
Micah was already waiting for her at their usual table. He winked at her and Caroline gulped in about a gallon of air.
Logically, Caroline knew that their plan was still top secret. Even so, she felt certain that anyone who happened to look could see “PLANNING TO DO A VERY BAD THING” painted across her forehead. In fancy red script.
Marissa was sitting on the far side of the room, surrounded by a group of admirers as she lined up her colored pens.
“We have to wait for the right moment,” Micah told Caroline in a whisper. “Not right away.”
Caroline nodded. It made sense. At the same time, she couldn’t help but hope that the right moment—whatever that was—wouldn’t arrive today. Or any other day, for that matter.
Soon enough, Caroline was sculpting away at her giraffe. At least, she attempted to sculpt. She nearly cut the poor thing’s left ear off before giving up.
“Are you ready?” Micah asked her. He didn’t even pretend to work on the charcoal drawing in front of him.
Caroline didn’t want to say yes. But she didn’t want to say no, either. Instead she gave her friend a small, tight smile and hoped that would be enough.
Sometimes, not talking with mouth-words had its perks.
“Cool,” he said. “I’ll be the one doing the . . . you know. You can be the distraction. When I say it’s time, you’ll start the distraction. I’ll take care of everything else.”
Caroline stared into the nostrils of her clay giraffe and wished fervently for a fire drill.
They’d talked about all of this before, of course. Caroline had even come up with a plan for how to cause a distraction. Except with the big moment looming ahead, she could not remember any of it.
She had to tell Micah that she just wasn’t ready. Yet when she glanced over at him and saw the beginnings of a bursting grin . . . well, she didn’t want to be the one to talk the smile off his face.
How hard could it be to make a distraction, really? She could make something up when the time came.
“It’s time,” Micah whispered at last.
Caroline tore her eyes away from the giraffe, which had started to take on a rather sad expression. Before she could think too much about it, she marched to the other end of the room where slabs of clay were kept. Closer to Marissa.
Even though she didn’t need more clay, Caroline cut herself a nice big piece of it. The feeling of the cool, wet clay in her hands soothed her.
Okay. Now she needed to distract.
Instead of returning to her own workstation, Caroline wandered over to Marissa’s table. She managed to get close enough to see Marissa’s drawing. It was a rather nice drawing, full of brightly colored flowers. Whatever else one might say about Marissa (and Caroline had plenty of not-nice things to say), she was not without artistic skill.
“Hello? Are you lost?”
Caroline snapped to attention.
Without her tablet, she could only shake her head.
“Sorry? I don’t think I understood you. You might want to try actually talking.”
“That’s not very nice!” another girl scolded. “She can’t help it that she’s . . . you know.”
Caroline clenched her teeth. She did not know exactly what her supposed defender meant to call her, but she knew she didn’t like it. “You know” indeed!
Face-to-face with Marissa’s awfulness once more, Caroline didn’t feel at all bad about what she and Micah had planned. Well, not too bad, at least.
Still clutching her slab of clay, Caroline moved closer to Marissa. She didn’t have a destination, she didn’t have a plan. She just knew that she wanted to wipe that annoying smirk off Marissa’s face.
Caroline tripped. The clay flew away from her hands and headed straight toward Marissa.
The other girls shrieked. Caroline covered her ears at the sound. She really, really hadn’t meant for this to happen.
And yet it had been the perfect distraction.
Marissa had managed to dodge out of the way before being hit with a clay projectile. The girl next to her—the one who had tried to defend Caroline—was not so fortunate. Wet clay now clung to the front of her frilly white shirt. She gave Caroline a glare so vicious that Caroline would have gladly turned to clay herself.
Without her tablet, Caroline couldn’t really say sorry. She hoped that this girl would know that she really did feel sorry.
Chaos descended on the art room as Ms. Williamson rushed forward to offer the girl several trees’ worth of paper towels.
“It’s no use! I can’t
