This Is W.A.R. Part 2

The expression on the girls' faces said it all. Rose might as well have stormed the attic stark-naked except for a pair of cowboy boots or a sombrero or some other ridiculous "Mexican" accessory. She was doing it again.

She wasn't thinking.

And look where that had gotten her last time.

"Get. Out."

The tone of Madge's voice and the thickness of the air made Rose light-headed. She stepped backward, her memory slipping back to the beginning of July: docked, expensive yachts rocking along the pier. She'd spent an entire afternoon agonizing over the perfect outfit only to have Willa stop her in the parking lot before she'd even stepped foot on the Gregorys' ship. Quick fingers had unb.u.t.toned her tunic, forced her out of her shorts, and tugged the scarf from her hair, cinching it around her waist instead. Madge had b.i.t.c.hed and moaned about wasting time until Rose's shirt had become a dress, the scarf tightened around her thin waist, her wild hair unpinned and free. A tiny smile had pulled at the corner of Willa's mouth as she surveyed her handiwork. And while Madge huffed behind her sister, Rose did catch a flick of her eyebrow as she looked her up and down.

Today there was no Willa to save Rose from her stepsister. Today Rose had to fight her own battle.

"I know what you're planning, and I want to help?" Her voice was barely a whisper.

Maybe they hadn't heard her. The words had sounded so much louder in Rose's head. "Was that even English?" Lina asked.

Sloane had the decency to avert her eyes. Madge's smile was lethal, and her eyes were too bright as she advanced on Rose.

"I said I want to help." Rose practically shouted the words this time, carefully enunciating every syllable like a kid doing speech therapy exercises. As Madge drew near, Rose edged closer to the doorway.

"Fabulous." Madge stood and extended her hand, palm up. "The cost of admission is twenty-five thousand dollars."

Rose blinked.

"What? You said you wanted in, right?" Lina demanded. "Well, it's a club, and there are dues. Maybe your mom can take out a cash advance. There's got to be a Quick Cash near your house." Lina held her hand out in front of her, tilting it back and forth, a.s.sessing her nails, not bothering with eye contact.

Rose's face caught fire.

"You guys, her mom works at the Club!" Sloane cried. "We can't let her in." Rose blinked. Interesting. Maybe Sloane was the cruelest of all of them. Mocking Rose so directly, with such an obvious- "I was kidding, Sloane," Lina explained.

"Now if you'll excuse us." Madge approached the attic door, positioning herself inches from Rose. She pulled the door open and raised her eyebrows, waiting for Rose to do as she'd been told.

She would never be able to look at these girls again. What had she been thinking coming up here? Did she just expect them to welcome her with open arms? Instead they made up fake dues for their ridiculous little revenge scheme. She paused to take one last look around the room, but as her foot made contact with the top step, she froze. If she left now she knew she'd never come back. And she couldn't go back to her normal life. She couldn't forget.

And then it hit her.

Before she could stop herself, she took a deep breath and spun back around. "You need me," she said with an authority that sounded completely foreign to her ears. She might as well have said the words in Spanish.

Lina sat up a little straighter, Sloane shut her mouth, and Madge lowered her arm.

"My dad is a detective. I have access to information on the Gregorys, on everyone." Rose was met with silence. She looked from the girls to the trunks and armoires and boxes of old papers and doc.u.ments. The girls had as much of a history as the things in this attic, a story woven with threads of Willa. She might not have their history or their money, but if they were serious about getting revenge, she had something much more valuable.

"Whatever. Her dad's lame-a.s.s files can't be worth twenty-five grand. Buh-bye." Lina stretched her neck over the arm of the couch.

"I might be able to help cover part of it." Sloane c.o.c.ked her head in Lina's direction. Apparently Sloane was still going with her little joke. Hilarious.

This was pretty much Rose's worst nightmare. Scorned by the very Club Brats she and Mari had spent the past three summers ripping apart. There had to be an easier way. She'd get Mari to talk to her again. She'd do whatever it took. Anything would be better than this humiliation. Rose turned to walk back down the stairs, back straight, head high. Just because she was embarking on her own personal walk of shame didn't mean she had to advertise it.

"Wait." Madge's voice stopped Rose.

She didn't turn. Madge grabbed her and spun her around.

"Welcome to the War."

"The War?" Rose repeated. She wasn't sure what side she was on.

"That's what it is, and this is what it takes if you want in." Madge paced back and forth across the room as she spoke. "You guys want to show her?" She twisted her key between her fingers while Lina and Sloane began digging through their bags.

Rose, Mari, and the rest of the staff had spent a lot of time discussing the key Madge always wore looped around her neck. Rose suspected it must open a safe where she kept her inheritance. Mari liked to imagine more sinister scenarios, her favorite being that the key unlocked a large puppy mill in the Ames-Rowan back yard.

"Twenty-five grand." Lina slapped down a stack of one hundred dollar bills. The thwack made Rose jump. "I might need some back if my dad notices the cash advance on the Amex."

Rose just stared at the pile of money. Two hundred and fifty $100 bills. $25,000 in cash. The most money she'd ever seen in her life was when her mom brought home $1,000 a member gave her as a tip after his daughter's wedding. They'd gone out to dinner to celebrate the next day. She still remembered the furrow in her dad's brow when he watched her mom pay for the meal in cash.

Sloane was still digging in her bag and finally came up with several small stacks of money and a few crumpled twenty dollar bills. "I think this is everything. If I'm short, just let me know. There might still be some money stuck in the bottom of my bag."

Rose forced herself not to stare. Lina was already sitting on the edge of the couch cushion like she expected Rose to sweep the money off the table and make a run for it.

Madge pulled something out of her pocket and made her way toward Sloane. "As discussed, the money will be kept in the bank, but if this is going to work we'll all need access." She looped a gold chain around Sloane's neck. A tiny key rested at her collarbone. "My mother left me a safety deposit box before she died. I had copies made. We're the only ones with them so our investment will be safe." She handed a necklace to Lina.

A safety deposit box. Rose had been right. Her first instinct was to text Mari. Then again, they weren't friends anymore. And they'd never be friends again, not once Mari found out about her time with these girls.

"They're engraved. W.A.R. Willa's initials," Madge continued matter-of-factly.

"War," Lina repeated. The girls let the word hang in the air for a moment.

"Does that make us soldiers?" Sloane asked.

"Something like that," Madge whispered. She sat up straighter. "My money is already in, and I'll make another deposit tonight." She gathered Lina's crisp bills and Sloane's wads and placed them into a large, padded envelope.

Lina and Sloane exchanged a quick glance. "Madge, we thought after everything that happened with your dad's company ..." Lina began, but was interrupted.

"You thought wrong," Madge snapped. Sloane's cheeks turned pink. Madge's family's financial troubles weren't exactly a secret. Long before Willa died, Rose had overheard Club gossip about the Ames-Rowans' "situation." But apparently things had changed, and Madge was more than ready to contribute her share. Maybe this "War" wasn't a joke after all.

"As members of the War, you can withdraw money as you see fit. But the funds are to be used exclusively for the destruction of the Gregory family. Anything more than one thousand dollars has to be approved by all of us. Deal?"

Rose nodded along. Madge didn't have a key for her. Of course not. They couldn't have known she would show up. Nor would they trust her. But it still stung to once again be on the outside looking in. To be present, but not included.

"Have you guys ever heard of the Guardian Angels?" Madge paused directly in front of Lina and Rose, her eyes flicking between theirs.

"Aren't those the guys who fly the planes?" Sloane chirped from the chair across from them.

"Those are the Blue Angels, S," Lina said softly. Before she could stop herself, Rose let out a short bark of laughter.

"Something funny?" All five foot ten inches of Lina were up and towering over her in a split second.

Rose felt like she was walking on a tightrope. She'd a.s.sumed that Sloane was making a joke, but clearly Lina didn't think it was funny. Or maybe this was just another one of their games, another way to mess with the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

Madge just stared at her expectantly.

"Er, I, um, it's just that ... weren't the Guardian Angels some vigilante group from the seventies?"

"Point one for the new girl." Madge resumed her pacing and rolled her key between her fingers. "The Guardian Angels single-handedly stopped almost all of the violent crimes on subways. The police weren't doing their job," Madge looked at Rose to really drive the dig about her dad's obvious inept.i.tude home. "So the Guardian Angels did it for them."

"So, we're going to, like, arrest James Gregory?" The words tumbled out of Sloane's mouth. Rose felt Lina watching her and was careful to control her reaction to Sloane's comment. The whole situation was completely surreal. Sloane had the voice of a sixth grader and apparently the intellect to match. Rose didn't get it. Sloane hadn't been mean before; she'd been imbecilic. Or had she? She was a National Merit Scholar, and her parents were two of the most well-renowned doctors in the Midwest. Rose could have sworn she was dating the Jude Yang, who skipped three grades, had a perfect score on his ACT, and headed to Yale early. But still most surprising of all was the fact that she was actually talking. Out loud. Based on Rose's extensive observations over the past few summers, Sloane's preferred method of communication was a shake of the head, a smile, and wide eyes. Rose always thought Sloane used silence like a weapon to prove just how much smarter she was than everyone else, and she'd hated her for it. But this version of Sloane who frequently blurted out stupid thoughts was either messing with all of them or a complete idiot. Rose had no idea which.

"No arrests. And not just James. I'm suggesting we destroy the Gregorys. All of them." Madge turned to look out the small circular window in the center of the room and opened a tin of mints, slipping one into her mouth. "James might have been the one on the boat with Willa that night, but they all had a hand in this. Covering everything up. Protecting their precious boys."

"But how do we destroy something that's indestructible with seventy-five thousand dollars and some ghetto local police files?" Lina took out her phone and started swiping and dragging her finger across the screen.

"They killed my sister." Madge's words seemed to echo in the cramped attic.

It took Rose a second to process them. Somehow Madge held both James and Trip responsible for what had happened to Willa. But that didn't make any sense. No matter how many times she tried to convince herself otherwise, everyone knew that James was with Willa when she died. How could she possibly hold Trip accountable for the sins of his brother? Trip might be a narcissistic a.s.shole, but Rose couldn't imagine him taking anything seriously enough to be an accessory to murder. Of course, a month ago she would have said the same thing about James.

"There's no way we can take them both down. We need to focus our efforts on James. He's the one who was there." Lina didn't stop texting the entire time she talked. Her glossy nails flew across the screen as she asked all of the questions Rose wouldn't dare.

"It was both of them. You guys didn't see what I saw." Madge's voice trembled.

Rose felt the pit in her stomach grow. She might not have seen the same things Madge had seen that night, but she'd seen enough. Too much. "Trip is unstable, and James was obsessed with Willa. She got caught between them. Just because James was the last one seen with her doesn't mean Trip wasn't involved."

"James was obsessed with Willa?" Rose couldn't stop the question from slipping off the tip of her tongue.

Madge raised an eyebrow in her direction. "Uh, yeah. Where the h.e.l.l have you been all summer? He totally loved her forever. He just couldn't admit it. But on the Fourth they were on in a major way. Everyone a.s.sumed they'd get married because ..." Madge shook her head and looked back toward the window as though maybe she'd find the words she was looking for through the gla.s.s.

"But they were only seventeen!" Rose bit her lip to stop herself from saying more.

"Old money, old families, you know how it goes," Madge added.

"Actually she doesn't." Lina sniped. "Besides, their relationship was a joke. Willa loved James and James loves himself. Same old girl-loves-boy, boy-loves-his-mirror bulls.h.i.t."

"Regardless," Madge interjected smoothly, "both of the Gregorys were involved, and both of them are lying about what really happened that night. Translation: they both need to be punished."

"This is the worst idea ever. Remember what happened to Violet Garretson when she reported James for refusing to let her get out of his car when he was wasted?" Lina paused, waiting for a response.

Rose had absolutely no idea what happened to Violet. She used to be a regular at the Club, but then she'd just sort of disappeared a couple of summers ago. There had been some rumors about rehab, but no one ever confirmed or denied anything. She was just gone.

"Well, let me jog your memory. After going to the police a couple of weeks later, someone conveniently found c.o.ke in her desk drawer. Now she gets to split her summers between Betty Ford and Jesus Camp."

Rose fully expected Madge to start sobbing on the spot. To give up. To give in. Rose felt tears welling in her own eyes, and she barely knew Willa. She looked up to prevent them from falling, but saw Sloane wipe furiously at her cheeks. Even Lina struggled to remain composed. But Madge just stood there, stone-faced.

"Girls like Violet are exactly the reason why we have to do something. I'm done letting them control me. And I refuse to sit back and let them get away with murder. What's to stop them from doing this again? There were no punishments. No repercussions." Madge fixed her eyes on Sloane. "Nothing to guarantee that this exact same thing isn't happening to your little sister two summers from now. This ends now. With us. Who's in?"

"I am," Sloane answered immediately, her eyes still shiny with tears.

"Me, too," Rose whispered, but Madge wasn't looking at her. She was staring at Lina.

"Fine. I'm in." She shook her head as if she were already regretting her decision. "But if we're going to do this, we better do it right. Nothing can ever be traced back to us. And the War is over as soon as the Gregorys are."

Madge nodded and turned to Rose. Without thinking, Rose nodded in response. Flooded with a sense of purpose, the mere act of being in this attic with these girls meant she was going to do something. Something to avenge what had happened to their best friend, a girl who was still a mystery to Rose. Did they know Rose was here to atone for different sins? Could they sense her secrets? Rose didn't know and she wasn't sure she cared. She was here. She was taking action. And like Mari, she was going to find her own way to rail against the Gregorys. To right their wrongs.

And then to Rose's complete surprise Madge grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the couch.

"First things first, we're going to need some information."

It was the first time Madge had ever touched Rose. Her grip felt like an anchor. They might want to destroy the Gregorys for completely different reasons, but their goal was the same. And in that moment, it bound them together like a blood oath.

Chapter 7.

Rose's palms were sweaty enough to leave twin damp spots on her khaki shorts. Her knees trembled as she stood in front of the receptionist at the police station. But she kept lying.

The entire time she rambled about her dad's misplaced gla.s.ses, she thought of Trip Gregory's toothy smile. And when she slipped through the door to her dad's office, she pictured James kissing Willa. And when she typed two names into the criminal record's database, the computer dully clicking as it worked, she saw Willa's blue-tinged lips. But it was the Captain who was on her mind when she selected print and shoved the thick stack of papers into the satchel slung over her shoulder, the Captain holding forth on his yacht while Willa's body was plucked from the water.

That morning, Madge had counted out five one hundred dollar bills, explaining that Rose would probably only need a hundred, but better to be safe than sorry. It annoyed Rose to think that her "type of people" could be paid off with so little. It annoyed her even more that the three girls considered one hundred dollars to be so little. And it drove her absolutely mad that she was even considering paying off somebody in the first place. But she was in. This was War.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" her mom called when Rose returned home from the station.

Meat was browning on the stove top. The news blared from the television in the family room, and Rose knew without looking that her dad was camped out in his recliner either dozing or nursing a beer.

She placed a protective hand over her bag, not that anyone would ever question what was inside. She was never without whatever novel she was currently reading, and she usually toted around a few backups just in case. Her mom was always nagging her to ditch the books and actually socialize for once. If she only knew ...

"I just want to unload some books I checked out from the library. They ordered in a few for me," Rose mumbled, half up the stairs.

"Dinner's in thirty, and I need your help with the salad!" her mom called after her, but Rose was already twisting the lock on her bedroom door, yanking the papers out from her bag. The salad could wait.

The files told a story. The story. They filled gaps in Rose's mind, jogged her memory of events leading up to the Fourth of July-events she couldn't completely understand until all the details were lined up in a neat row. As she skimmed the papers, the black and white picture she'd created of the Gregorys began to develop into vivid Technicolor.

Criminal background check, Charles Cornelius Gregory III. Requesting party: Hamilton Girls and Boys Club, after-school mentor program.

Rose closed her eyes for a second and smelled rain. Her book bag had been extra heavy that day, jammed with textbooks to prepare for midterms. She'd been running, thunder pushing her forward before the skies opened up. And when they did, she didn't stop or look both ways or slow down. After the horn ripped through the driving rain, she recognized them immediately-James Gregory in the driver's seat, hands up, eyes narrowed, and Trip on the pa.s.senger side, a hand cupped over his mouth. Their ridiculous car seemed entirely out of place on the city streets, and Rose hated knowing them, or even knowing of them. It was all so typical. She looked like a drowned rat, while the Gregorys sat in their gleaming BMW: privileged, fortunate, dry. She had figured they either were lost or on some sort of hunt for drugs or hookers. Probably both.

But maybe she'd been wrong. At least about Trip. "Rose! Salad!" Her mom's voice yanked her from the grey downtown streets and back to her cramped bedroom.

"In a minute," she mumbled, not nearly loud enough to be heard, turning a page.

Noise complaint cited 12/31 at Gregory estate, warning issued.

Rose looked down at the pattern of flowers on her bedspread. She'd heard about the Gregorys' infamous New Year's Eve parties. The Captain rang in the New Year on some exotic island every year, but the boys stayed local. Based on the whispers that swirled around them for weeks afterward, it was the best party of the year. That is, if you could afford to go. Apparently there was a cover charge, and not to pay for some lame band or the nasty keg or even a variety of drugs lined up in some sw.a.n.ky bathroom like candy as Rose had always imagined. But to play.

Rose tapped her finger on the paper. There were at least five identical New Year's Eve citations listed in Trip's report, all resulting in a warning, a slap on the wrist, none even mentioning anything about gambling. Not that Madge, Lina, or Sloane could complain about that. Rose imagined they were there just like everyone else, blindly throwing money at whatever obstacles they might come across. The Gregorys were officially above the law. Maybe all rich people were. Maybe the rules only applied to people who didn't have thousands of dollars to spare for elaborate revenge schemes or to pay a fancy lawyer to make everything disappear.

Rose still wasn't even sure how the War girls were planning on using that much money or why it was even necessary. She couldn't help but wonder if it was more habit than anything else. Driver's license suspended? Pay off the cop. Sister killed by a drunk rich guy? Pool $75,000 and use it to destroy his family. She skimmed the remainder of Trip's file, glossing over traffic citations, fingerprint checks, one open container violation on the beach. Nothing even remotely useful ...