Chapter 1
You doing okay?” Bryony asked.
“Better,” I said, mostly to the ground. I was sitting on a nearby bench, bent over my knees. When we’d gotten off the ride, Bryony had taken one look at how pale I was and had hustled me over here. Then she’d gone to Angry Dogs to get me a Sprite that she insisted that I drink to settle my stomach.
It had been about ten minutes, and my inner ear was getting back to normal. But my mind was still churning, in a way that I really would have preferred it wasn’t.
I took another sip of the soda, then placed the bottle by my feet and straightened up.
“So!” I said, making my voice upbeat and positive.
“What should we do now?” I tried to think of things that didn’t involve getting back on a ride…
or eating anything. “Um, we could keep trying to find the Mickey ears?”
“Sure,” Bryony said, but she sounded distracted. She glanced back at the ride, circling around and around in its loop. “That was weird, though, right? I mean…we keep running into people you know.”
“It is weird,” I agreed, glad that we could actually talk about it. “Like, I know there’s a lot of schools here, but I was not expecting it.”
“And everyone—seems to be mad at you?” She put a comedic spin on this, but I could see that her eyes were troubled.
“I’m not happy about it either,” I assured her.
I kept my voice light, like I was trying to shake it off, but it wasn’t shaking easily.
It wasn’t that I thought that all the people from my previous schools disappeared the second I left.
I understood about object permanence, after all.
But I really hadn’t let myself think too much about my old friends, the people who’d once meant so much to me—especially Bruce, in Washington.
It was like I’d pushed those memories down into a box and closed the lid firmly after each move, trying not to notice that each time, doing this got harder and harder.
But tonight, actually seeing Greta and Nora—and even Reagan and Zach—was making me feel rattled in a way I was having trouble getting my head around. I just wanted to put it behind me.
“So, you just didn’t say goodbye to them?”
“We moved,” I said, feeling like this seemed to be getting lost in all these conversations.
It wasn’t like I was ever choosing to go.
I was being yanked along on my dads’ whims. I shook my head, trying to stop this train of thought.
It had been a long time since I’d even complained about one of our moves—we were a team, after all. “It’s not like it was my choice.”
Bryony nodded, but I could see that she still looked unsure. “I just…”
“I think they were just mad that they didn’t do better at Regionals,” I said, ready to move past this. “Easy to scapegoat me, you know?”
She looked at me for a moment longer, then grinned. “I can’t believe you did something called academic quiz bowl.”
I laughed, feeling some tension leave my shoulders. “I’ll have you know it was very cool in Arizona. We had jackets and everything.”
“Well, see, I didn’t know about the jackets. Where should we go? Cars Land?”
“Sure!” I didn’t care where we went, really—I was just glad Bryony and I could go back to having fun. “Sheridan did say there’s a DJ. And maybe at some point I’ll be able to go on a ride again and then…”
“Radiator Springs Racers?”
“I mean, while we’re there, we might as well.”
We headed over, and as we made the right turn into Cars Land, I smiled when I saw the famous tow truck from Cars, Mater, with a mortarboard—Materboard?—and a line of teens queueing to get pictures with him. I turned to point him out to Bryony, when something caught my eye.
It was a large, stylized poster on a stand, seeming to glow under the flashing lights.
ETON MESS was printed across the top in capital red letters.
Underneath was written, LIVE! ALL THE WAY FROM ENGLAND!
SHOWTIME 12:00 A.M. And then under this was a black-and-white picture of four guys in their deconstructed prep-school uniforms, the same picture Bryony and I had seen over by Pixar Pier, only bigger.
“Hey!” I stopped short when I realized I recognized one of the faces on it.
The guy who’d spilled orange soda all over me—and had caused me to briefly lose my power of speech—was one of the four guys in the band.
FREDDIE, read the name under his picture.
And he, at least, seemed to understand this was all a little ridiculous.
Where the other guys were smoldering, he was raising an eyebrow that seemed to indicate that he was very much in on the joke.
He held a bass guitar and wore a striped tie over a T-shirt.
I realized after a moment that it was the same one I’d seen him in earlier tonight, the one reading EXCALIBUR!
The changing lights seemed to linger on his silhouette for just a second longer than they should have, before moving on.
One of the other band members had a microphone slung around his neck, and was pursing his lips at the camera.
NIALL was written under his picture, which rang a bell for me.
Hadn’t the guy—Freddie, apparently—said something about a Niall?
The other two also had their names written under their images—TRISTRAM and ALFIE.
“What?” Bryony asked, also leaning closer to look at the poster.
I pointed to it. “It’s the guy who spilled orange soda on me! I thought he was just here as a senior, but apparently not.”
“He’s in a band?” She shook her head. “Man. And I thought you were far gone before.”
“I was not,” I protested weakly, even though I knew it was pretty much the truth. I shrugged and shook my head, giving up the pretense. “It was the accent. And the hair.”
Bryony nudged me with her shoulder. “It was cute! I feel like I haven’t seen you that flustered around a guy before.”
I nodded, realizing this was true. “I mean, there was my ex from SLO.”
“The lab partner?”
“Yeah.” At my last high school in San Luis Obispo, I’d dated my environmental sciences lab partner for two months.
But we never seemed to have all that much to talk about, and when we finally decided to end it, I could sense that both of us were relieved.
But I hadn’t had a crush on anyone at Harbor Cove, so it really did feel like it had been a minute.
“I guess I haven’t had a real crush since Bruce.
” A second later, I realized what I’d done. “I mean…”
“Wait, you’ve never mentioned a Bruce.”
“I…haven’t?”
“No, I would have remembered. Because I would have said something like, Who’s named Bruce these days? But seriously, who’s named Bruce these days?”
I smiled, even as I felt my heart squeeze. I’d had a very similar conversation, the very first night I’d met Bruce Preston. “Yeah. It wasn’t a big thing,” I lied. “We were supposed to go to the prom together, but it…didn’t work out.”
Bryony turned to me, her eyes wide and sympathetic. “He broke up with you before the prom?”
I swallowed hard, trying to push the memory away—of the text I’d sent, the way I’d turned off my phone to avoid the fallout. “Something like that.” I nodded toward the Eton Mess poster, more than ready to change the subject. “But maybe we can go see this band later. At midnight?”
“Sure,” Bryony said easily. “Sounds good.”
We headed toward Cars Land, and I glanced back at the poster for one more moment before hurrying to catch up with Bryony.
An hour later, we’d danced to the DJ, and my stomach had settled to the point where we’d been able to go on Radiator Springs Racers twice, in addition to getting ice cream at the Cozy Cone.
We’d finally gone on the Silly Symphony Swings after all, and Bryony had insisted on taking my picture in front of the Aunt Cass Café in San Fransokyo Square.
And then, because it was getting close to midnight, we made our way over to where the crowd had gathered in front of the stage by Pixar Pier.
“Okay,” Bryony said, looking down at her phone. “Emma R. says they’re all here, too. And that the other Emmas have been acting kind of weird….”
“Weird how?”
Bryony shrugged. “She doesn’t say.” She nodded toward the stage. “You think they’ll be any good?”
“I mean, probably not,” I admitted. From the pictures, it kind of seemed like this band was a One Direction knockoff. But hopefully they’d be fun, at least. There was a countdown clock above the stage, letting us know the show would start in ten minutes.
There was nobody on stage yet, but it looked like the stagehands had finished their work—there were two mic stands, a drum kit in the back, and speakers placed all around.
The crowd started to grow, with more people arriving from what seemed like all corners of the park, and you could practically feel the anticipation in the air.
I glanced around, looking for the mysterious celebrity that was allegedly here.
But the only slightly fancy person I saw I didn’t recognize.
She was a woman who looked to be in her late twenties, dressed in an all-black outfit and heels, which made me think she wasn’t a teacher.
She also sported a designer cross-body bag that I wasn’t sure would be in the budget of any faculty chaperones.
I turned to Bryony to mention this just as Emma R. crossed toward us, waving.
“Hey, guys!” she called, maneuvering her way through the crowd. She smiled, but it looked a little strained. “Have you been having fun?”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing behind her to Emma J.
and Emma Z., who were standing next to each other with their arms folded.
You could practically feel the tension zinging off them, the way the air feels just before a thunderstorm.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, lowering my voice.
I remembered they’d been a little bit strange when we’d first gotten to the park, too—and it seemed like things had gotten worse.
Emma R. glanced back at her friends, her expression clouding. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, the band should be fun, anyway,” Bryony said, clearly trying to change the subject. She grinned at me. “Cass has a crush on one of the musicians.”
Emma R. clapped her hands together. “You do?”
I could feel my cheeks get hot. I’d barely interacted with Freddie, so why was I so excited to see him onstage soon? I shook my head, trying to clear it. “I mean, I just think he’s cute. He spilled orange soda on me.”
Emma R. gasped. “A meet-cute!”
Bryony nodded wisely, but I shook my head. “I really don’t think that qualifies.”
“It totally does.”
“But want to know the etymology of the term?” I asked, pleased as always to have a fact to fit the situation. “Meet-cute comes from the thirties, the director Ernst Lubitsch coined it, and—”
“—didn’t even want to!” I heard Emma J. hiss before Emma Z. pulled her away a few steps.
I turned back to Emma R., who just shrugged unhappily. “Don’t ask me.”
A group jostled past me, and I stepped aside for them, then stopped short when I realized I recognized the logo on the back of one of their sweatshirts.
It was a silhouette of a horse, done in green, with green letters underneath spelling out Evergreen High—Home of the Mustangs.
I could feel cold sweat starting to bead on the back of my neck.
Even as I was staring at the sweatshirt in front of me, I tried to tell myself it wasn’t possible.
That it was just a coincidence. That a lot of schools were probably called Evergreen High, and there were only a limited number of potential mascots, that was all.
And who didn’t like a mustang? It didn’t necessarily mean it was that Evergreen High… .
“Cass?”
I looked up and felt my heart sink like a stone.
Bruce Preston was standing in front of me.