I was back on my knees in a second. I flinched, expecting another blow, but just then I heard footsteps and shouting. Someone's hands lifted me from underneath my arms and hauled me to my feet.

"You okay?" a voice asked. I squinted to try and make out who it was. It was definitely a teacher, but I couldn't tell who. I tried to nod, but pain shot through my head and neck.

"All of you to the office now," another voice said.

Struggling to see and breathe, I let the teachers lead me down the hall.

Vice Princ.i.p.al Monroe looked from Sylvia to Beth to me. His pale eyebrows were practically safety-pinned together, and his long, skinny fingers kept drumming out an anxious beat on his desk.

I held the ice pack that the nurse had given me over my left eye and tried to focus on Mr. Monroe with my one good eye. It wasn't easy.

"Who's going to tell me what happened?" Mr. Monroe asked, still drumming his fingers.

The whole room stayed quiet except for his tapping.

"All right, look," Mr. Monroe said, pushing his rolling chair away from his desk. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Sylvia, I suggest you start talking. We can take away your crown for this."

Sylvia looked like she'd just sat on something sharp.

"Aggie here started everything," Beth interjected. "Plus, she hit me in the back, and now my left kidney hurts."

"That's a lie," I said through my swollen mouth. "Just like this election is a lie. Those two stuffed the ballot boxes."

"That's not true!" Beth shouted, standing up and facing me.

Mr. Monroe got to his feet. "Okay," he said, holding up his hands. "Beth, sit down." After a second, both Beth and Mr. Monroe were back in their seats.

I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing aches all over my body.

"Look," Mr. Monroe said after a moment, "there are obviously differing versions of what happened here. But I'm going to go by what I see, which is that Aggie has been a.s.saulted. I need to report this to the police immediately." He reached for the phone. "Aggie, you might want to talk to your parents about pressing charges."

Before he could finish dialing, I reached out my hand and grabbed the ancient phone cord. "Wait."

Mr. Monroe paused. "Yes?"

I looked over at Beth and Sylvia. Part of me wanted to drag this all through the mud and sue their a.s.ses and make them sorry for the day they ever crossed me. But a bigger part of me just wanted it to be over with. Once and for all. The end of Sylvia and me forever. It might mean Sylvia would get to keep her crown, but at this point one more controversy-for her, for me, for the school-might be one too many. It was time to call the match.

"Don't call the cops," I said. "I don't want to press charges."

Mr. Monroe set down the phone slowly. "You're sure?"

"Yes. But you need to tell those two to leave me alone permanently."

"Then tell Aggie here to stop spreading rumors about things she doesn't know about," Beth shot back.

Mr. Monroe frowned at her. "Aggie's request is hardly unreasonable. You should be grateful she's not getting the authorities involved."

Sylvia still didn't say a word.

"All right," said Mr. Monroe after a moment. "Here's the bottom line. Sylvia and Beth, if you two so much as approach Aggie, I'll have you expelled. Aggie, I want you to do your best to avoid these two as well. Do I make myself clear?" The three of us nodded.

"And Miss Ness," Mr. Monroe said, leveling his gaze at Sylvia, "I don't want to put this school through anything else, but I will if you provoke something like this again. Marissa Mendez is as capable of wearing the prom crown as you are. Understood?" Sylvia nodded.

"Good. Now get to cla.s.s, all of you."

I stood and waited, politely I might add, for Sylvia and her belly to go ahead of me. Just as I was readying to follow her and Beth, Mr. Monroe called me back.

"Aggie," he said, "stay a sec." He motioned for me to sit again. "What you just said about the ballot boxes. What did you mean?"

I was surprised that Mr. Monroe was actually listening. "I saw Sylvia with a box of blank ballots. Then on election day I saw her again with ballots that had been filled out. I think she was swapping them for forged ones."

Mr. Monroe's eyes widened. "Is this true?"

I nodded. "It is."

For a moment neither of us said anything. Then Mr. Monroe looked at me, his eyes sad. "I'm very sorry your mom has resigned over all this, Aggie. It's been a tough road."

"Yeah. You could say that." My head began to pound with renewed force. I stood up to go, then felt dizzy and sore. "Um, do you have some aspirin?" I asked.

Mr. Monroe stood, too, and came around the side of his desk to help me stand. "Go home, Aggie," he said gently. "I think you've had enough for one day. I'll clear it with the attendance office. Go home and get some rest."

I felt relief press itself to my heart like a cool washcloth. Maybe if I could find Jess I could b.u.m a ride home off her.

"Thank you."

I turned to walk out of his office, thinking how fabulous it would be to just go home and lie on my bed to take a nap. But just as I was going to my locker to collect my books, Sylvia approached me again. She was waddling slightly and moving slower than I remembered. I stopped and waited for her to get within speaking distance, my head throbbing the entire time.

"I have some things to say to you," she said, pointing at me. She was wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt with LINKIN PARK scrawled across it, and her forearms were bare. Her skin looked as smooth and soft as a puppy's belly. I turned away, thinking it made her look . . . vulnerable.

"What do you want?" I asked, taking the ice pack away from my left eye.

When Sylvia came into focus, I realized how much pregnancy agreed with her. Her cheekbones seemed higher, her neck a little longer, her lips a little fuller.

Sylvia looked around.

"Checking for Beth?" I asked sarcastically.

Sylvia's face darkened. "Look," she said. "I didn't want Beth to kick your a.s.s. I didn't know she was going to do that."

"Bulls.h.i.t," I said. "First of all, I saw you smile when she hit me. You were standing right there, and you never stopped her, not once."

Sylvia looked bored. "I can't help what she does. It's one of the things I like about her."

"I'm sure it's right up there with her lying. You must have loved finding out about how she was from Walker, not New York, and how her dad is a janitor, not a Wall Street big shot. Or, I'm sorry, didn't she tell you? I'm sure she meant to. She just didn't get around to it."

"You can badmouth her all you want, Aggie, but at least Beth's not a backstabber. She knows how to keep a secret, unlike you. You swore you wouldn't tell anyone about Ryan being my kid's dad, and now the whole school knows. What the h.e.l.l is your problem?"

"I was just trying to help my mom. It didn't really work. But now that makes us even. I tell your secret, and you stand by while Beth beats me up. Fair's fair, right?"

Sylvia straightened. "The thing is, Aggie, everything between me and Ryan was just fine until you got involved. I mean, I'd kept my mouth shut about him being the baby's father, and he was really happy about that. He said he really appreciated it. When I realized he was most likely going to be prom king, I asked him if he'd like it if I was prom queen. And you know what? He said he would. He said if I could get up there on stage, he'd be cool with it. And I did it, Aggie. I made sure he was king, and I was his queen.

"But then that article ran in the St. Davis Letter, and Ryan read it and thought I'd blabbed to the press about him being the dad. And now he wants nothing to do with me. Nothing. I can't even get him to text me. All because of the article. Which wasn't even my fault. It was your fault. You told that reporter my secret, after I trusted you. You f.u.c.ked everything up."

Sylvia's upper lip had beads of sweat on it. I wondered if I was sweating too. I was certainly boiling with anger.

"I'm not proud of telling Rod Barris about you and Ryan," I admitted. "But how can you stand there and believe everything was going to be okay between you and Ryan, when it so clearly wasn't? Look at how he's treated you! He's never once owned up to his part of the pregnancy. Why did you think that was going to change just because you were the prom queen? You never should have rigged the prom election, Sylvia, but you certainly shouldn't have rigged it because of a guy like him."

"Don't judge me," Sylvia sneered. "You of all people have no right. I saved you freshman year when you had no friends and no one else to turn to. And what do I get in return? A big knife in the back is what."

I blinked. "You did save me," I said. "My problem was, I forgot how to be myself around you. I wore all that makeup and black s.h.i.t, but for all the wrong reasons. Not because it was an expression of myself or because I loved it, but because I thought it could keep me safe from a.s.sholes at school, and because it seemed like the right thing to do. You told me it was the right thing and I believed you."

Sylvia squinted. "Now you're blaming me for your decisions? What else you want to put on me, Ag? Got some mommy issues you want to toss my way?"

I shook my head. "I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming me. And I know I shouldn't have put all that pressure on you to figure things out for us at every turn. It wasn't cool. I wasn't cool. I tried to be, but I wasn't."

Sylvia scoffed. "So you thought you'd fix all that by outing Ryan and trying to tell everyone how I fixed the prom election?"

"It's the truth. It's what you did."

"Yeah, well, it wouldn't have mattered if I'd stuffed those ballot boxes or not. Your mom and Mrs. Wagner tried to take away my crown from the very beginning."

I clenched my fists. "How can you be mad at my mom for something you started? She lost her job over it, you know."

"Your mom burned the ballots!" Sylvia cried. "She deserved what she got."

"She didn't burn those ballots," I said. "But even if she had, they were fakes. You and Beth forged them."

Sylvia stamped her foot in the empty hallway. "I was just doing what I needed to do! Why can't you get that through your head?"

"Stealing an election? You needed to do that?"

"My reasons for everything were to keep my family together."

"Really? Is that what you're going tell your kid? Is that the explanation you'll give when you're asked why you lied to the whole school and let everyone believe you'd been elected prom queen fair and square?"

Sylvia had enough of me. "Screw you," she said, and started walking away.

"He won't care, you know."

Sylvia stopped. "What?"

"Ryan Rollings. It won't make a difference to him whether you're the prom queen or the mayor or the next president. He doesn't care about you, Sylvia. Not really. And you being queen won't make him care about the baby, either. I wish it would. But it won't. And you can trust me because I'm speaking from experience. It's not going to happen."

For a second, I thought Sylvia might go for my throat, like a wild cougar ripping apart a jackrabbit, but I didn't care. I forged ahead. "You deserve better than Ryan Rollings, Sylvia," I said. "I hope you wake up one day and realize it. But if you don't, then too bad for you and your kid."

"You're a loser who doesn't know anything," Sylvia said, walking away. "I hate you."

Tears stung my eyes. "See you at the dance," I called after her.

Chapter Thirty-six.

TUESDAY, APRIL 28 / 10:30 A.M.

My mom's car was in the driveway when I got home. Looking at it, I suddenly wasn't sure if, after my mom dressed in her suit and did her hair this morning, she'd ever left the house.

I walked inside and set my bag down. Everything was quiet. "h.e.l.lo?" I called, as loudly as I could with my swollen face.

I heard the study door open and listened to my mom pad down the hallway. I imagined she was surprised to hear my voice. When she saw me, she bent over a little, like the sight of my face sent pain shooting down her spine. "Aggie?" she asked, as if she wasn't sure it was actually me. "Are you all right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay."

My mom cupped my chin in her hand. I held on to the kitchen counter while she turned my face gently to the left and right. "My G.o.d, who did this to you?"

"Beth Daniels," I said. "And Sylvia Ness."

My mom let go of my chin and just looked at me. "When?"

"At school."

"Did you report it? Are they expelled?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No. We all agreed the best thing was to let it drop."

"What? After what those girls did to you? Absolutely not."

She moved toward the phone. "I might not be princ.i.p.al anymore, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if I let someone beat up my daughter and get away with it."

"Mom," I said, blocking her path. "Mom, it's okay. I wanted this. I wanted us to have it out."

"You wanted them to hurt you?"

"Well, maybe not kick my a.s.s. But then again, I don't know. I mean, they did the worst they could, and it's not so bad. Right? Maybe I just needed to prove to myself that I shouldn't be scared of them."

My mom tilted her head. "You were scared?"

"Well, yeah. Sylvia's a pretty tough person, you know?"

My mom nodded. "I do. I worried a lot about you hanging out with her. I can't say I'm sad that your friendship seems to be coming to an end."

I looked at my fingernails. "Losing her was hard, Mom. But I don't want you to think everything I've done that's disappointed you is her fault."

My mom inhaled slowly. "I don't think Sylvia is to blame for all your actions, no. I know she was there for you when Tiffany Holland and her friends turned on you freshman year. It's just that, when you were with her, it's like suddenly you were this different person."