“Blake!” the shirtless boy called again. He reached back and took Alex’s hand with an utterly open smile.

A giant poked his head out of a doorway. “Gio, you fuck,” he said. He wore shorts and was shirtless too, cap backward like it was some kind of uniform. “You were supposed to clean the toilet.” So Gio was a pledge or some other kind of lackey.

“I was cleaning downstairs,” he explained. “Do you want to meet … Oh God, I can’t remember your name.”

Because she hadn’t said it. Alex just winked.

“Clean the fucking toilet first,” the giant complained. “You cockshiners can’t just keep shitting on top of shit! And who the hell is—”

“Hi,” said Alex, and—because she never had—she tossed her hair.

“I. Hey. Hi. How are you?” He tugged his shorts up then down, removed his cap, ran a hand through his tufty hair, set the cap back in place. “Hi.”

“I’m looking for Blake.”

“Why?” His voice was mournful.

“Help me find him?”

“Absolutely. Blake!” the giant bellowed.

“What?” demanded an irritated voice from a bedroom down the hall.

Alex didn’t know how much time she had left. She shook off Gio the Lackey’s hand and forged ahead, making sure not to look into the bathroom as she passed.

Blake Keely was slouched on a futon, sipping from a big bottle of Gatorade and playing Call of Duty. He was at least wearing a shirt.

She could sense the other boys hovering behind her.

“Where’s your phone?” Alex asked.

“Who the fuck are you?” Blake said, tipping his head back and assessing her with a single arrogant glance.

For a moment, Alex panicked. Had Mike’s magic powder worn off so fast? Was Blake somehow immune? Then she remembered the way the powder had burned her throat. She yanked the cord from the wall and the game went silent.

“What the—”

“I’m soooo sorry,” Alex said.

Blake blinked, then gave her a lazy, easy smile. That’s his panty-dropper grin, thought Alex, and considered knocking his teeth in. “No worries at all,” he said. “I’m Blake.”

“I know.”

His grin widened. “Have we met? I was pretty wasted last night, but—”

Alex shut the door and his eyes widened. He looked almost flustered but utterly delighted. A kid on Christmas. A rich kid on Christmas.

“Can I see your phone?”

He stood and handed it over, offering her his spot on the futon. “Do you want to sit?”

“No, I want you to stand there looking like an asshole.”

He should have reacted, but instead he just stood smiling obediently.

“You’re a natural.” She gave the phone a shake. “Unlock it.”

He obliged and she found his gallery, pressed play on the first video. Mercy’s face appeared, smiling and eager. Blake stroked the wet head of his penis against her cheek and she laughed. He turned the camera back on himself and gave his stupid, shit-eating grin again, nodding as if to the viewers at home.

Alex held up the phone. “Who did you send this video to?”

“Just a couple of the brothers. Jason and Rodriguez.”

“Get them in here; make them bring their phones.”

“I’m here!” said the giant from behind the door. She pulled it open. “I’m Jason!” He was actually raising his hand.

While Blake scampered off to find Rodriguez and Jason the Giant waited patiently, Alex found the texts he’d sent, deleted them, then deleted the rest of his messages for good measure. He’d obligingly named one of his photo albums Pussy Vault. It was full of videos of different girls. Some of them were bright eyed and had purple tongues, some just looked wasted, drunk girls with glazed eyes, their tops off or pushed to the side. One girl was so far gone only the whites of her eyes were visible, appearing and disappearing like slivers of moon as Blake fucked her, another with vomit in her hair, her face pressed into a pool of sick as Blake took her from behind. And always he turned the camera back on himself, as if he couldn’t resist showing off that star-worthy smile.

Alex wiped the photo and video files clean, though she couldn’t be sure they weren’t backed up somewhere. Jason’s phone was next. Either he had a shred of a conscience or he’d been too hungover to send the video to anyone yet.

She heard panting from down the hall and saw Blake dragging Rodriguez along the filthy carpet. “What are you doing?”

“You said to get him,” said Blake.

“Just give me his phone.”

Another quick check. Rodriguez had sent the video to two friends, and there was no way of knowing who they’d passed it along to. Damn it. Alex could only hope that Mike had succeeded in gathering enough members of Manuscript and that reversing the Full Cup would work.

“Did they know?” Alex asked Blake. “Did they know about the Merity? That Mercy was drugged?”

“No,” Blake said, still smiling. “They just know I don’t have a problem getting laid.”

“Where did you get the Merity?”

“A guy from the forestry school.”

The forestry school? There were greenhouses up there with regulated temperature gauges and moisture control, designed to re-create environments from all over the world—maybe one just like the Greater Khingan Mountains. What had Tripp said? Lance and T had the lushest, greenest shit you’ve ever seen.

“What about Lance Gressang and Tara Hutchins?” she asked.

“Yeah! That’s them. You know Lance?”

“Did you hurt Tara? Did you kill Tara Hutchins?”

Blake looked confused. “No! I would never do something like that.”

Alex really wondered where he thought he was drawing a line. An ache had started to throb in her right temple. That had to mean the Starpower was going to wear off soon. And she just wanted to get out of here. The house made her skin crawl, as if it had absorbed every sad, sordid thing that had happened within its walls.

She looked down at the phone in her hand, thought of Blake’s girls lined up in their galleries. She wasn’t done just yet.

“Come on,” she said, glancing back down the hall to the open door of the bathroom.

“Where we going?” Blake asked, his lazy grin spreading like a broken yolk.

“We’re going to make a little movie.”

16

Winter

Lauren had given Mercy an Ambien and put her to bed. Alex stayed with her, dozing in the darkened room, waking in the late evening to Mercy’s snuffling tears.

“The video is gone,” Alex told her, reaching down to clasp her hand.

“I don’t believe you. It can’t just be gone.”

“If it was going to break it would have broken.”

“Maybe he wants to hold it over my head so that I come back and … do things.”

“It’s gone,” said Alex. There was no real way of knowing if Mike’s ritual had worked. The Full Cup was meant to build momentum, not drain it, but she had to hope.

“Why would he pick me?” Mercy asked again and again, searching for logic, for some equation that would make this all add up to something she’d said or done. “He could have any girl he wanted. Why would he do that to me?”

Because he doesn’t want girls that want him. Because he grew weary of desire and developed a taste for causing shame. Alex didn’t know what lived in boys like Blake. Beautiful boys who should be happy, who wanted for nothing but still found things to take.

When night fell, she climbed down from her bunk and pulled on a sweater and jeans.

“Come to dinner,” she begged Mercy, squatting by their beds to turn on a lamp. Mercy’s face was puffy from crying. Her hair gleamed in a black slash against the pillow. She had the same thick, dark, impossible-to-curl hair as Alex.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Mercy, you have to eat.”

Mercy buried her face in her pillow. “I can’t.”

“Mercy.” Alex shook her shoulder. “Mercy, you’re not dropping out of school over this.”

“I never said I was.”

“You don’t have to say it. I know you’re thinking it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do,” said Alex. “I had something like this happen to me back in California. When I was younger.”

“And it all blew over?”

“No, it sucked. And I kind of let it wreck my life.”

“You seem all right.”

“I’m not. But I feel all right when I’m here with you and Lauren, so no one gets to take that away.”

Mercy wiped her hand across her nose. “So this is all about you?”

Alex smiled. “Exactly.”

“If anyone says anything—”

“If anyone even looks at you wrong, I’ll take his eye out with a fork.”

Mercy put on jeans and a high-necked sweater to cover her hickeys, the outfit so restrained she almost looked like a stranger. She splashed water on her face and dabbed concealer under her eyes. She still looked pale and her eyes were red, but no one looked great on a Sunday night in the dead of a New Haven winter.