Get Even Read Free Page A

The assembly was about to start.
    The near disaster with the remote galvanized Margot’s resolve. She caught up with her class and filed diligently into a row of bleachers, remote gripped firmly in her hand. She didn’t dare scan the gym to find Bree and Olivia, but she spotted Kitty right away, on a bench in the first row next to Mika Jones. Kitty looked so calm and composed, dressed simply in jeans and a blue and white Bishop DuMaine running jacket, her long black hair swept up in a tight ponytail, which swished from side to side as she whispered to Mika. Margot wondered if Kitty really felt so at ease or whether it was all a facade.
    The side door flew open, and Father Uberti marched into the gym. Short and wiry, the school principal was meticulously groomed as always. His salt-and-pepper mustache and Van Dyke beard were neatly trimmed, his dark, wavy hair—dyed, Margot was relatively sure—tamed with a healthy dose of sculpting wax. He moved quickly; the black capuche he wore over his long cassock fluttered about his shoulders, and the tassels of his cincture whipped back and forth from the ferocity of his stride. His entire demeanor was cocky, and before he got halfway across the floor, Margot realized why.
    Two Menlo Park police officers followed him into the gym.
    All of Margot’s panic returned in an instant. Never in her most far-flung calculations had she anticipated law enforcement.
    What if they got caught? She’d get arrested, or worse—kicked out of school. She’d lose any chance at Harvard or Yale and her parents . . . Her parents would kill her.
    Margot’s right leg bounced up and down on the bleacher so furiously she was sure the entire row could feel the reverberations. Through her sweater sleeve, she gripped her knee, trying to squeeze it into submission, but her heart was racing out of control, her upper lip already damp with perspiration. Panic attack in three . . . two . . . one . . .
    “Are you okay?” a voice said, close to her ear.
    Margot let out a strangled squeak as she spun around on the bench and came nose to chin with a boy.
    “Are you okay?” he repeated.
    Margot opened her mouth to say something, but the capacity for rational thought had momentarily abandoned her. All she could do was stare at the most beautiful face she’d ever seen.
    Not that there was anything particularly unique about him. His hair was a typical California blond—streaked by the sun with dark undertones. His skin was tan, and together with broad, muscular shoulders suggested a preference for spending weekends on a surfboard in Santa Cruz. But add in the off-kilter grin and the slightest hint of spicy aftershave, and it set Margot’s heart thundering in her chest once more.
    “Sorry,” he said, with a smile that listed to the left like an unbalanced ship. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
    “You didn’t scare me,” Margot forced herself to say.
    “Oh!” His eyebrows pinched together in confusion. “Okay. I just . . . It looked like I startled you.”
    Crap, Margot. Try not to sound like such a jerk. “I mean,” she started, “I was just thinking. About classes. I have a big paper due.”
    “On the third day of school?”
    “Um, yeah,” Margot rambled on. “It’s an extension class. At Stanford. That’s where my mind was. Why I was tense. No other reason.” Oh my God, stop talking!
    The boy blinked several times, then smiled again, tilting his head to the right as if attempting to compensate for his crooked grin. “I’m Logan Blaine,” he said simply. “I’m new here.”
    “M-Margot,” she said, stumbling over her own name like a halfwit. “Margot Mejia.”
    “Nice to meet you, Margot.”
    Margot was about to respond, when a current of laughter rippled through the gym. Coach Creed stood near the top of the bleachers, glaring down at the round face of Theo Baranski.
    “Baranski!” Coach Creed barked, louder than was necessary. “Why aren’t you in your seat?” He