LITMIR.BIZ

      Harley was the kind of girl who could get away with anything. That was the first thing Liv learned when she arrived at the Virginia Sloane School for Girls in mid-October. It wasn’t only that Harley flouted the dress code and skipped class and ignored the curfew without ever being reprimanded. There was something disquieting yet seductive about her, like walking on the edge of a cliff while gazing down at the violent beauty of the ocean breaking below. Somehow it seemed as if Harley could jump—would jump—but instead of falling, she’d spread her arms and fly like a blackbird.

      Liv had known girls who acted like Harley before, but never someone quite so successful at pulling it off. Harley was definitely the most interesting thing about the Sloane School, and from the first time Liv saw her—walking into class twenty minutes late, dressed in tight jeans and boots instead of the uniform, her black hair wind-tossed and wild—Liv didn’t know if she wanted to be Harley or if she wanted to kiss her.

      Harley’s friends, too, seemed to benefit from her apparent invincibility. They lived together in Eleanor Castle Hall, a small, turreted fantasy of a dorm on the edge of campus. Castle had twelve rooms, all singles, each taken by Harley and her group. Everybody knew they went out dancing every night until three in the morning, and they never got caught, even though the campus gates were locked at 10:00 p.m., and every dorm had a resident advisor who knocked on your door if you even played your music too loud. The rumor was that Harley had a rich father who had given so much money to Sloane that Harley—and everybody she liked—was immune from the rules.

      Liv wanted to be immune, too. Her parents had transferred her to Sloane after she got in trouble at her old school in New York City for missing curfew too many times. Liv was pretty sure her parents had chosen Sloane because there was nothing to miss curfew for in Middlebury, Massachusetts, the quiet town where Sloane was located. If Harley somehow got off campus to party every night, Liv wanted in, but neither Harley nor any of her friends seemed the least bit interested in getting to know the new girl. Their collective cold shoulder annoyed Liv, who was used to being noticed for all the right reasons, and it only made her more determined to figure out how they got away with what they did.

      One afternoon about a week after she first arrived at Sloane, Liv walked into Middlebury to buy shampoo at the drugstore. As she approached the shop, she saw a pink neon hand in the window upstairs. The sign next to the hand read Madam Sofia’s Fortunes & Favors. Liv was gazing curiously at the sign—it seemed, almost, to beckon to her—when the door next to the drugstore that led upstairs opened. A girl dressed all in black barreled out onto the sidewalk, nearly smacking into Liv.

      “Hey, watch it!” Liv cried.

      The girl didn’t stop, tossing her only a brief glare before she continued down the street in the direction Liv had come from. She recognized the girl; it was Paige, one of Harley’s friends. Liv watched Paige disappear around the corner, then glanced at the door she had come out of. There was a small placard in the glass window. Sale: Five Minutes for Ten Dollars. Find Your Future Here. Impulsively, Liv opened the door and went up to the palm reader’s shop.

      A gray-haired woman in a green velvet dress turned from the window overlooking the street when Liv entered. The woman’s eyes narrowed on her. “Can I help you?” she said.

      “Are you Madam Sofia?” Liv asked, glancing around the shop. It was stuffed with knickknacks and baskets of trinkets.

      “Yes.”

      “I saw your sign in the window,” Liv said. “‘Five minutes for ten dollars.’”

      An odd expression passed over Madam Sofia’s face; it reminded Liv of a key turning in a lock. “Follow me,” the woman said. She led Liv through the cluttered shop to a back room hung with curtains and furnished with a round table and two chairs. Madam Sofia sat down and took out a kitchen timer from beneath her chair. She set it for five minutes and placed it on the table. “Give me your hand,” she said.

      Liv sat across from the fortune-teller and placed her hand in the woman’s palm. The instant they touched, Liv felt a strange sensation run through her, as if she were a marionette and the puppeteer had tugged on her strings. She watched as the woman bent over her palm, studying the lines in her skin. The rapid ticking of the timer in the background began to make Liv nervous, as if it were counting down the seconds to—well, Liv didn’t know what, but it was unsettling, and she had the sudden urge to leave.

      As if she could sense Liv’s change of heart, Madam Sofia’s hand tightened over hers. “You want to know about the girl who was just here,” she said.

      “How—how did you know that?”

      “It’s my job to know what brings you into my shop.”

      The ticking of the timer seemed to grow louder, and Liv had the disconcerting sensation that she was shrinking while the room around her was expanding.

      “You should stay away from those girls,” Madam Sofia said, her voice sounding like liquid smoke.

      “What girls?” Liv’s palm was sweating.

      “The girls who live in the castle.”

      Castle Hall. “Harley and her friends?” Liv asked.

      “Yes.”

      “Why?”

      “They’re dangerous. You should stay away from them.”

      Liv hated it when anyone told her what to do. “I’ll hang out with whoever I want,” she said.

      Madam Sofia gazed at her with small, dark eyes. Liv twitched under the scrutiny and tried to pull back, but the woman wouldn’t let go of her hand. “They are playing with forces beyond their control,” Madam Sofia said. “If you value your life, you’ll stay away from them.”

      The cautionary words only stoked Liv’s curiosity. As that venturesome emotion snaked through her, she said, “I thought you were supposed to tell my fortune, not give me a warning.”

      “I’m doing both,” Madam Sofia said, and she dropped Liv’s hand as if it had burned her.

      Liv cradled her hand to her chest—it trembled now, free from the woman’s grasp—and stood. “You’re crazy,” she said, and turned to leave.

      “Ten dollars,” Madam Sofia said, her voice ringing in the small room. “You don’t want to owe me a debt.”

      Liv stopped, feeling as if the woman had grabbed her with an invisible hook. Liv reached into her pocket with her other hand—the one Madam Sofia hadn’t touched—and pulled out her wallet. She fished out a ten-dollar bill and tossed it at the fortune-teller. It caught in the air and fluttered to the floor.

      Madam Sofia gave her a shrewd smile and said, “You’re welcome.”

      * * *

      Everything Liv learned about Harley was like finding another piece to a puzzle. The problem was, she had no idea what the puzzle was supposed to depict.

      All the girls at Sloane had definite opinions about Harley and her friends. They were stuck-up; they were slackers; they were daddy’s girls. Beneath the criticism, though, was a palpable yearning to be one of them. To be part of that tight-knit pack of girls who prowled the campus like panthers, beautiful and cunning. To dance every night—no one knew where, but it had to be good—and come to breakfast with last night’s makeup on, leaning on each other and laughing about what they had seen and done until dawn.

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