Dead Little Mean Girl. Eva Darrows

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      “No. Tomorrow or your mother. Which is it?”

      “This is so stupid.” Quinn marched for the door, grumbling under her breath the entire time. She was about out of the classroom when Mr. Riddell called her name. She turned, eyes bulging with barely suppressed rage. I sensed the imminent threat of combustion. The art room easels would be strewed with glittery entrails, lacy underwear and Midol.

      “Which is it, Quinn? That wasn’t rhetorical.” At Quinn’s blank stare because rhetorical had too many syllables, Mr. Riddell sank into his computer seat, his hand drumming on the desktop. “Tomorrow, or should I call your mother today?”

      “Tomorrow,” she spat, her temper barely in check as she stomped her way into the hall. Nikki and I shared a look and headed out, both of us thinking Quinn would get her phone back tomorrow and that’d be it.

      Noooooope.

      Quinn avoided Mr. Riddell calling home so she could deliver her own slant to her mother after school. She made it sound like Mr. Riddell had screamed at her mercilessly before amputating the arm attached to the phone. The complaining went on for hours, Quinn saying what a jerk Mr. Riddell was and how boring class had been so, really, it was his fault that she’d been texting in the first place. She actually screeched in rage because she had to use something as archaic as the house phone. It couldn’t even look at the internet, she reminded us, and she had to go all the way upstairs to check her Instagram on her computer! And how stupid was that? OH MY GOD!

      How we survived her hissy fit is a wonder. It probably had something to do with Karen getting Quinn out of the house at dinnertime so no one accidentally impaled her in the forehead with a butter knife. And by “accidentally,” I mean totally on purpose because the whining made me crazy.

      “She’s going to buy her off, you realize,” I said to my mother after they left. Mom gave me a look for stating the obvious, but sure enough, two hours later Quinn walked in with a dress bag in one hand and an ice cream sundae in the other. My mom gave Karen the hairy eyeball for it, but there were certain battles she wouldn’t pick. Karen’s lackluster conflict-management skills was one of them.

      Quinn got her phone back the next day and was, by all appearances, properly chastened. If she was a sane person, that would have been the end of it, but no. A week after the confiscation, Mr. Riddell made the tragic mistake of coming to school sick. He was pink and sweaty and clearly uncomfortable. I was guessing he was feverish because he took off his vest, his tie and divested himself of the stuff in his pockets, like the extra weight made him hotter. Halfway through class, while we painted watercolor animals, he excused himself and rushed out the door for the bathroom. This wasn’t noteworthy until Quinn noticed Mr. Riddell’s phone on the corner of his desk.

      “Oh. Oh, ho,” Quinn said, standing. She whispered to the girl next to her, Melody Cohler, who was in the larval stages of BFFness. Melody’s scandalized giggles spurred Quinn onward. Quinn sauntered over to the phone, and by the utter joy spreading across her face, I could tell Mr. Riddell hadn’t password protected it. Her thumbs flew over the keypad before she paused and eyed the door, her smile turning feline.

      I glanced at Nikki. She scowled at Quinn’s back. And then she was sitting up straighter in her chair, her mouth falling open. I followed her gaze and then my mouth fell open. Quinn was in the corner lifting her shirt, snapping off selfies of her boobs with Mr. Riddell’s phone.

      “What the crap are you doing?” I asked because no one else in the class could articulate. They were all too stunned to speak.

      “Stay out of it, Emma,” she replied as she took more pictures from the side view. My classmates started snickering, and one of the guys in the back made whooping noises, but Quinn spun around to stab a talon in his direction. “Shut up, Aidan. Everyone shut up or I swear I will kick your asses. This is between me and Riddell.”

      Quinn took some less risqué pictures. There was a picture of a vase and some art on the walls, a few shots of the paintbrushes drying on the window ledge. I didn’t understand why until Nikki snorted, looking down at her half-finished painting of a goat. Other people painted pandas or parrots or ponies, but my new best friend picked a goat. Because she was weird.

      “She’s burying the pictures. This can’t go well for him,” she said.

      The ramifications didn’t occur to me when Quinn returned the phone to the desk. Nor did they occur to me when I went home from school. No, I didn’t quite get it until the next Monday when I walked into art class. Standing at the front of the room was a woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven with Principal Ahadi at her side.

      “Everyone, this is Miss Glass. She’ll be taking over for Mr. Riddell for the foreseeable future. I assure you, you’re in great hands. Any questions, you know where to find me.”

      My stomach dropped to the floor.

      She ratted him out. Those pictures got out, or she told someone about them or forwarded them and now he’s gone.

      I didn’t want to believe that Quinn could be so catty as to compromise a guy’s job for scolding her, but when I saw her sit back in her seat in the front row, her arms folding over her chest, her smugness a living, breathing thing threatening to gobble all the space in the classroom, I knew she was responsible.

      “Oh. Oh, wow,” I whispered, sinking into my seat, my face flushing hot. “I cannot believe she did that.”

      Nikki shook her head so hard her silver cross earrings smacked against her cheeks. “I can. That girl makes Hannibal Lecter look like a saint.”

       Chapter Four

      “If you tell the school about the Riddell thing, I’ll end you.”

      One minute I was shoving a bologna sandwich in my face at the kitchen table, a book open before me, the next Quinn loomed over me in her workout pants and tank top like a perfumed vulture.

      “That’s nice. You’re in my light. Move?”

      She batted my book away. The pages rustled and settled somewhere in the middle that was distinctly not my place. It irritated me. I was at a really good spot, when Katniss... It’s not important. You don’t mess with my The Hunger Games and she messed with my The Hunger Games and for that I wanted to snap her like a twig.

      “You don’t have to be a dong about it.” I snatched the book and tucked it beneath the table where her grimy tentacles couldn’t touch it.

      “You’re not listening to me, Emilia.”

      This was a new thing, the Emilia bit. I have no idea where she got it from, but it was stupid.

      “I am listening. Don’t tell anyone about the Riddell thing. Now can I go back to reading?”

      “No, see. You don’t get me.” She leaned down, until her lips were an inch away from my ear, her breath lashing at my skin. I could feel her body heat against my back. “If you tell anyone, I will make you so miserable at school, you’ll wish you were dead.”

      She was threatening me.

      Awesome.

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