“Yes,” she says, twisting her hands in her lap. “I guess I don’t need to tell you that I was really upset, and humiliated, and just…so mad at Daniel. He’s always like that. He’s the star of our family, but he still tears me down every chance he gets.”
“Ivy, if you don’t get that you’re a star, too, I don’t know what to tell you,” I say.
I mean it as a compliment, so I’m surprised—and kind of horrified—when she blinks back tears. “Don’t cry,” I add urgently. “It’s not that big a deal.” I can almost hear my mother’s voice in my head, saying the same thing she used to say back when Autumn first came to live with us and her rage would dissolve into tears: Tears are healthy. I’d be more worried if she didn’t cry.
But that was over losing her parents. Not being embarrassed at school.
“I’m not upset about the talent show,” Ivy says. “Not anymore. This is about…what I did after.” She swallows hard. “When I tried to get back at Daniel.”
“Get back at Daniel?” I echo. “What, like—revenge?”
“Yeah,” Ivy says. “I wanted him to know what it’s like to be the laughingstock of the school. I didn’t know how, exactly, but I wanted to do something.”
I’d laugh if she didn’t look so miserable. The idea of straight-laced Ivy Sterling-Shepard plotting against her jackass brother is pretty entertaining, even if I can’t imagine why she thought it would work. Daniel’s way too full of himself to care what other people think about him. “So what’d you land on?” I ask.
“Well, that’s the problem. I was waiting for the right opportunity, but it never came, and then…I was supposed to pick him up at Patrick DeWitt’s birthday party last June. The one he had at Spare Me.”
The uneasy feeling comes back. Not just because that’s our former bowling alley, but because that was the party. The one that ruined everything. “Yeah?” I say cautiously.
“Yeah.” Ivy flushes brick red. “So Daniel texted me to pick him up early because he was bored. But by the time I got there, he’d decided that he didn’t want to leave anymore. The guys had started filming themselves doing tricks, and they were posting the videos on Instagram. Daniel was getting all pumped up because he kept bowling strikes with his eyes closed, or backward, or hopping on one foot. He told me to leave, but I was like—what’s the point? I’ll just have to come back in an hour. So I sat there and felt annoyed, and started organizing bags from the errands I’d just run for my mom and…I got an idea.”
I don’t want to know. I’m positive, with every atom in my body, that I don’t want to know what that idea was. So I don’t say anything, but Ivy keeps going.
“They had a pretty big audience at that point. I thought…I guess I thought it would be poetic justice if I could make Daniel look like an idiot in front of everyone. And I’d bought some baby oil at CVS for my mom earlier. So when the guys took a break to get pizza right before Daniel’s turn, I…” She’s literally shaking now, vibrating in her seat like somebody flipped her on switch and set it to high. “I spilled some of it, on the lane. So Daniel would fall on his ass while he was showing off. Except…”
“Ivy. Holy shit.” Cal speaks for the first time, which is good, because I can’t. “Except he didn’t. Patrick DeWitt did.”
Hell yeah, Patrick DeWitt did. He went flying into the ball dispenser and dislocated his shoulder. The whole thing was captured on Instagram by half the lacrosse team, which turned out to be great news for Patrick’s parents when they decided to sue my mother. Fury pulses through me, hot and white, and it’s all I can do not to slam my fist through Cal’s window.
Ivy’s full-on crying now, and fuck that. Tears might be healthy, but she hasn’t earned these. Other people suffered—really suffered—for what she did, not her. “So what you’re telling me is, you set Patrick’s accident up,” I say in a low, deadly tone. “But instead of telling someone, you let my mother get sued for negligence.”
“I didn’t know!” Ivy says tearfully. “I mean, I knew about Patrick, of course I did, but everyone said he was going to be okay. I didn’t know about the lawsuit. I was out of the country with my mother when it happened, and it was summer, so people weren’t talking about it at home.” She’s still trembling like a terrified rabbit, but I don’t care. I can’t stand to look at her. I can’t believe I kissed her. “And I tried…when I realized what happened,” she goes on. “I tried to make up for it by asking my dad to give your mom a job—”