The Sixes (14 page)

“I know you went through a lot, Alexis,” Phoebe said. “And I know it must be hard to talk about certain things. But if girls are being bullied or intimidated on campus, we need to stop that immediately.”

Alexis stared at her soda bottle and shook her head quickly back and forth. She said nothing.

“Have you heard the news about Lily Mack’s death?” Phoebe asked.

This time the girl’s brown eyes flickered in response. “What about it?” she said. The lack of surprise indicated she’d already been informed somehow.

“We have reason to believe Lily was part of the Sixes. And we need to find out if they’re connected to her death in some way.”

Alexis had flinched when Phoebe said the name of the group, and now she was stuffing the remains of her pizza slice into the paper bag next to her.

“Will you tell me what they did to you, Alexis?” Phoebe said.

“Don’t ever contact me again,
okay
?” Alexis said, jumping up. “My uncle’s a lawyer. He can get a restraining order against you? Do you hear me?”

Phoebe didn’t like hearing the L-word. She had tussled with lawyers during the writing of each book, and she’d learned not to let them intimidate her, but this situation involved Glenda and the college, and she couldn’t risk causing trouble for either.

Phoebe rose from the table, but before turning to go, she tried to read Alexis’s eyes. The girl seemed belligerent now, more than a little freaked, and Phoebe half wondered if she would let out a scream in the middle of the food court.
That
would be fun.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Alexis,” Phoebe said calmly. “I’m sure this last year has been a terribly upsetting time for you.”

“You have no clue,” the girl said.

“Maybe I do,” Phoebe said. “The Sixes have been after
me
lately. They broke into my home and did something terrible.” She reached into her purse, dug out a business card, and dropped it on the table. “If you change your mind, please give me a call. I want to prevent the Sixes from ever hurting anyone else.”

Alexis’s expression had gone completely blank, as if she’d dove deep inside herself, though the patches of red on her skin seemed to be practically throbbing. Phoebe moved away slowly, hoping the girl might change her mind and call out, but she didn’t. After Phoebe had walked to the end of the food court, she glanced back discreetly. Alexis was hurrying away from the table, back in the direction of the Gap. The pizza bag and soda bottle were still on the table, and so, too, Phoebe assumed, was her business card.

Phoebe kicked herself all the way to the parking lot. She had blown it, totally blown it. And yet she couldn’t imagine what tactic
would
have worked with the jumpy girl.

She was all the way to the car when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, wondering if it was Glenda with news, or maybe even Duncan. The screen read, “Caller Unknown.”

“Yes?” she said, picking up.

No one spoke, though she could hear shallow breaths on the other end.

“Yes?” Phoebe asked again, her pulse kicking up a little.

“No one must ever know I talked to you, okay?” a strangled voice said suddenly. Alexis. So she had picked up the card after all.

“They won’t,” Phoebe said. “Trust me.”

“I mean it. If they find out, they’ll try to ruin me again. At my next school.”

“Why are they doing this to you, Alexis?” Phoebe asked. “Because you wanted out?”

“Yes,” she said, nearly in a moan. “And I said I would tell.”

“Tell about the group? What they’re up to?”

“Yes, I said I would tell the school. About them. About what they did. About the freaking
circles
.”

14

S
OMEHOW SHE HAD
to entice Alexis to meet her. It would be easier to elicit information face-to-face, and the girl would probably be less likely to bolt again if they made a personal connection.

“Can we spend a few minutes together, Alexis?” Phoebe asked gently. She felt as if she was tiptoeing toward a tiny bird, praying it wouldn’t fly off. “I think you’ll feel more comfortable talking face-to-face.”

The girl sighed, obviously undecided. Phoebe stayed silent, fearful of tipping things the wrong way.

“Are you still here—inside the mall?” Alexis asked finally.

“I’m just outside, in the parking lot,” Phoebe said.

Another sigh, this one practically a groan.

“I’ll meet you, but not in
here
,” Alexis said begrudgingly. “There’s this big dumpster—right behind Friendly’s. I’ll meet you there. And I only have ten minutes. That’s all.”

Phoebe had no clue where the Friendly’s was, and she didn’t want to waste precious time running inside to check the map again. She squinted at the back of the huge mall in the bright autumn sunlight. There were hulking dumpsters in both directions—every store had one. She won’t wait if I’m late, Phoebe thought anxiously. As she hurried back toward the mall, she asked a woman struggling with two toddlers and sagging plastic bags for directions to Friendly’s. “Up there,” the woman said, flinging her head to the right. Phoebe broke into a jog and zigzagged through endless rows of parked cars, making her way around the perimeter of the mall. Finally she spotted the back of Friendly’s. Alexis was already there, standing by a green dumpster with her arms wrapped tightly around her and shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

“Thank you for doing this, Alexis,” Phoebe said when she reached the girl, nearly out of breath. She thought briefly of touching Alexis’s arm, just to show support, but quickly scratched the idea. Alexis looked like the slightest touch would make her head blow off.

“Are you sure they’ll never find out?” Alexis said. She shot a frantic look to the left and then to the right, scanning the parking lot as if the Sixes might be lurking behind one of the SUVs.

“They won’t,” Phoebe said. “The only person who knows I’m here is the president of the school. And she’s going to be very grateful for your help.”

“It’s what you said—about not letting them hurt anyone else. I—I just don’t want that to happen.”

“I know. So help me understand. What are the Sixes all about?”

Alexis snorted in disgust. “They’re
supposed
to be about female power. About being fierce and fearless and ruling the world—and getting what you want out of life. It’s always the same type of girl who gets tapped. Pretty and smart. And a jock. Always a jock.”

“How big is the group—and what do they
do
, exactly?”

“There’re about forty members,” Alexis said. “They’re supposed to help each other out—have each other’s backs. You exchange stuff about classes, about guys. And then when you leave school, they help you out, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. They set you up somehow. With contacts, stuff like that, I guess.”

“Is Blair Usher the leader?”

Alexis flinched at the sound of the name.

“I think so. I mean, she was the one who always ran the meetings. But sometimes—I don’t know . . . It felt like she was checking in with another person.”

“You said something about circles. You mean, you’d put six chairs or something in a circle?”

“
What
?” Alexis said, her confusion tinged with irritation. She was getting riled up just talking about the Sixes, and her patience seemed as fragile as an eggshell. “No, not actual circles. Circles of
membership
. To get to the inner circle, you have to work your way through these six freaking circles.”

“Is that where the name of the group comes from?”

“Yes—and the fact that there were six girls who started it.”

“Are the circles like tests, then?” Phoebe said.

“Yes,” Alexis said. She began to twist and writhe her neck, as if she were struggling to free it from her body. “The first circle is ‘Proclaim.’ You have to leave the number six someplace—like on a building—to declare your allegiance. That one’s easy, like a sorority prank.”

“And then?” Phoebe asked.

“The next is ‘Reveal.’ You have to tell something totally private about yourself—a secret that you’ve never shared with anyone.” Alexis held Phoebe’s eyes for a moment, looking stricken. “Something not good.”

“So it’s a way for you to show your loyalty. Does each circle become harder?”

“Yes,” she said, spitting out the word. “And—and when I found out about the third one, I didn’t want to do it. But you don’t have a choice. They make you think there’s no going back.”

“So what was it, the third circle?”

“ ‘Dominate.’ You fuck somebody up who is a jerk—another student. Somebody who hogs all the talking time in class or is a total showoff or is just a slut. You’re supposed to send a nasty e-mail blast about them or delete their term paper from their laptop or steal their cell phone. Blair kept saying they
deserve
it.”

“The school didn’t realize this sort of thing was going on?”

“I don’t know. Some stuff, like the term papers, probably just looks like mistakes. I swear I didn’t want to do it. But when you start to protest, they make these little threats. Kind of funny at first with a wink, wink, but then you remember—” Her voice had become almost hoarse. “
They
know your deepest secret now
.”

“So they forced you to do the next one, too—the fourth circle?”

“I—I almost did,” she said. Her lower lip began to tremble. “But then I changed my mind. I couldn’t. You have to sleep with a guy. Some total loser, and then completely dump him and do an unsigned post about him. It’s called the ‘Bewitch’ circle. It’s supposed to teach you how to use power and put guys in their place. But the kid they picked for me, he—I heard he had tried to kill himself in high school, and I just couldn’t do it. What if that had made him try
again
?”

Alexis started to cry a little, tears slowly streaming down her rough, reddened cheeks.

Was that what the painted doors had been about? Phoebe wondered. She was remembering what Hutch said about the dorky boys.

“Did they paint a check mark on these boys’ doors, do you know?”

Alexis widened her eyes, clearly surprised that Phoebe knew about this.

“Yes,” she said. “Though I don’t think those guys ever realized
why
the check was there. They just ended up humiliated and ashamed later and didn’t understand it was part of some master
plot
.”

“So this is when you broke away for good.”

“Blair said I
couldn’t
leave, that I’d be sorry if I did. But I told her I didn’t care, that if she did anything, I’d let the administration know about the Sixes. And then she said that there’d be payback, that I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”

Alexis began to sob, her chest heaving. Phoebe found herself swept back, as if caught in a flash flood, to her awful year in boarding school. At night she had sobbed into her pillow, hoping Glenda wouldn’t hear. Now she bit down hard on her lower lip, forcing herself back to the present.

“And
was
there payback, Alexis?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” Alexis said. “You know what those bitches did? The summer before junior year I’d made this—this stupid sex tape with a boy I’d met. That was the secret I shared. They made me show it to them. And once I left the Sixes for good, Blair sent it to this new boy, Chris, I was dating at Lyle. I loved him, and the minute he saw it, he broke up with me. And then they said that if I talked to anyone in the administration, they would send it to my parents and the whole school. If the Sixes find out I’m going to the University of Maryland, they’ll send it to everyone
there
.”

“All to keep you from telling?”

“Not just that—for
revenge
,” Alexis exclaimed. “In a way Blair
wants
girls to betray her. That way she can have a vendetta against them. One of her greatest pleasures is getting back at someone.”

“Did she—”

“Look, I have to go back inside,” Alexis said. “I don’t know how I’m even going to work now. I’m all freaked out.” Using her fingers, she tried to wipe away the mascara smudge marks that her tears had caused.

“But wait,” Phoebe said, nearly pleading. There was still so much she needed to know. She fished in her purse for a clean tissue and handed it to Alexis. “What about the last two circles? Do you know what they are?”

“No. And I don’t want to know either.” She hitched the drooping strap of her handbag higher on her shoulder. She was getting ready to fly.

“Just one more question,” Phoebe pleaded. “What about Lily—was she in the Sixes?”

“Yes. She joined in the spring. I tried to say something to her because I’d started to see what monsters they were. But her boyfriend had just dumped her, and she seemed so bummed. She was looking for something, something to belong to.”

“Do you think she could have tried to leave this fall?”

“I don’t know,” Alexis said numbly.

“Can you tell me the names of some of the members? That would help a lot.”

Alexis shook her head back and forth vehemently.

“No, I can’t. They’ll know it came from me. And they’ll punish me again.”

“Please—”

“I said
no
. I just can’t.”

Before Phoebe could say another word, Alexis had turned and begun to race along the outside of the mall, headed toward an entrance.

Watching her go, Phoebe finally exhaled. She felt drained from the conversation. She was so distracted it took her a while to find her car, but finally she spotted it. She unlocked the door and nearly threw herself inside. As she leaned against the seat, she realized that despite how the cool temperature was, her back felt damp with sweat.

It was past lunchtime, but Phoebe had no desire to eat. Once she had maneuvered her way back onto I-83, she dug her phone from her purse and called Glenda. According to her assistant, Glenda was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed. Phoebe asked her to deliver the message that she had information worth sharing and could be reached on her cell phone.

Phoebe drove as if on autopilot, her mind running back and forth over what she’d learned from Alexis. After the rats in her freezer, she’d had no doubt that the Sixes existed and that they were nasty as hell, and her conversation with Alexis had backed that up. But she needed to find out what the last two circles involved before deciding if they could actually be behind Lily’s death. That would tell her just how far the girls were willing to go to get their way—or to enact the kind of vendettas that Blair seemed to relish.

Thirty minutes later, after pulling off the highway to fill her gas tank, Phoebe checked her e-mail. Glenda had written, saying that she was anxious to hear Phoebe’s news, but she was jam-packed for the rest of the day and evening. Therefore she’d arranged for Stockton to meet Phoebe in his office at 6:30 and receive the update.

Damn, Phoebe thought. It made sense for Glenda to delegate the meeting to Stockton—that way he could jump-start any investigation that needed to be done—but she’d promised Alexis that only she and Glenda would know about their meeting. Besides, Phoebe just didn’t
like
Stockton, and she hated having to turn over what she’d learned to him.

Phoebe scanned down her other unopened e-mails. With a start she saw that there was one from her agent, Miranda, with “Priority” in the subject line. Ever since last spring anything urgent-looking from her agent had flooded her with dread. As it turned out, Miranda had seen Tobias’s mention of her in the
Post
and wanted to be sure Phoebe was aware of it. “You need to get out of this guy’s line of sight,” she wrote. “He’s a real bastard.”

Duh, Phoebe thought. She briefly considered calling Miranda and filling her in, but she knew her agent would ask if Phoebe had an idea for her next book yet. And that was one discussion she wanted to avoid.

She kept scrolling and found that there was also the promised e-mail from Glenda’s assistant about Wesley Hines. Though the college had no cell phone number or e-mail address for Wesley, it did have a current home address, and to Phoebe’s surprise, it was in Doring. That was a town just a few miles from Lyle. As she stared at the address, she wondered if Hines had grown up in Doring, gone to Lyle because it was close, and resettled temporarily with his parents as tons of kids seemed to be doing these days.

I need to talk to him, she thought.
As soon as possible
. Hutch had assumed Hines had fallen into the Winamac drunk, but that might not be the case. If there was a serial killer in the area, as Stockton believed, Hines might have been a victim—one who miraculously survived. She wondered suddenly if the Sixes could have been involved in the incident. Was Hines the kind of dorky boy they targeted?

She glanced at her watch. She’d been making decent time on the road, and that meant she’d definitely be back in Lyle before six—which left just enough time for her to swing by Hines’s home before her meeting with Stockton. If Hines had a nine-to-five job, she might catch him as he was arriving home from work. She punched his address into the GPS and fired up the car.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and she pulled into Doring a few minutes earlier than expected. She’d assumed that Wesley Hines was still bunking down at his parents’ place, so she was surprised when the GPS led her to a subdivision of attached gray town houses—row after endless row of them, and with new ones under construction at the end. These were the kind of units you lived in when you downsized after retirement or landed yourself a decent job after college. Hines was likely living here alone.

As she drove down the road that wound through the town-house “village,” scanning the numbers on each house, Phoebe realized that Hines’s place—2118—was going to be near the end of the row, and she grabbed an available parking place there.