I shoved her off. “Her parents will call the police. The second they see you, they’ll call the police.”

“Hmm,” Bitsy said, tapping her lip. “No, don’t think so, luv. Her parents are out with my mum, trying to keep up the charade that they’re still dear friends, even without my father to round out the foursome. So Camilla’s on her own, poor dear.”

Anna Maria burped. She’d gotten the flask out again, and schnapps dribbled down her chin. “Little Debs, get a rock,” she said.

“What are we, a band of marauders?” Bitsy asked. “I said no rocks.”

“Then what?” Anna Maria demanded.

Bitsy smiled. She looked at all of us, her gaze lingering longest on me. “I know where they keep their spare key.”

Anna Maria hooted. “Yeah, baby! Let’s get us some ho-bag ass!”

“Aren’t we … aren’t we going to wait for Sukie and Pammy?” Laurie asked. She alone seemed the slightest bit reluctant.

“Sukie’s not coming,” Bitsy said. “Pammy had to take her home.”

“Why?” Laurie said.

“Sukie wasn’t having much fun, let’s leave it at that. But she’ll be right as rain before you know it. Won’t she, Jane?”

I swallowed. “What are you going to do? To Camilla.”

“Nothing,” Mary Bryan insisted.

Keisha looked grim.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Bitsy said. “What do you think, Anna Maria? What was that you told me about those boys at football camp? Somewhere in Florida, I think. Got into the papers and everything.”

“I didn’t tell you. You told me,” Anna Maria said. Her words came out messy. “But yeah, how they held down some freshman and stuck a stick up his ass.”

“Sick bastards,” Bitsy said.

“Said they did it to toughen him up. And you were like, ‘Poor little tyke, bet he was scared out of his mind.’”

“So true. What did he do to deserve it?”

“But Camilla, on the other hand …” Anna Maria said.

“Skank,” Debbie said.

“Whore,” Elizabeth contributed.

“Tight ass,” Amy tossed out.

“Sometimes a girl like that needs a prod on the bum, yeah?” Bitsy said.

“Bitsy, stop it,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re being gross.”

Bitsy rolled her eyes. “Good god, Mary Bryan, you’re as bad as Jane. You don’t think we’re serious, do you?”

She led her henchmen up the drive, leaving me, Keisha, Mary Bryan, and Laurie behind. Anna Maria took a detour into the manicured yard, where she broke off a thick stick from an azalea bush.

“Anna Maria!” Debbie cried, as in, You bad thing! Sniggering, they ran to catch up.

Bitsy turned around. “Laurie? Aren’t you coming?”

Laurie glanced at Keisha, who frowned. But when Keisha headed toward the house, Laurie followed. Mary Bryan, too, until I grabbed her arm.

“No,” I said. “This is crazy.”

“She’s just fooling around,” Mary Bryan said. “You know how she is.”

“Yeah. Exactly.” My muscles were shaky, because I knew how quickly things could change. “What happened to you, me, and Keisha being, like, a force for the good?”

“I didn’t see you doing anything to stop her,” she pointed out.

“Well, you sure didn’t either!”

The others were halfway up the driveway. Anna Maria and Debbie were leading an inane chant of “Kill the skank. Kill the skank,” which Elizabeth and Amy gleefully took up. Bitsy laughed, but didn’t join in.

A knot in the center of me heated up. I felt sick and I felt scared, but I felt angry, too. I started for the house.

“Don’t,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re going to mess everything up.”

I shook her off.

“We have to stay together!” Mary Bryan said. “All four of us, we have to stay together or it won’t work. Don’t you get that?”

“What won’t work?” I demanded. “This? Bitsy’s little games of torture?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Us. The fix. Everything.” She stepped closer. “People won’t like you anymore.”

I looked at her, and I finally got it. Mary Bryan was just as scared as I was, only for different reasons. She thought I was going to opt out. She thought I was going to stand up to Bitsy as a parting shot, and then walk away from their bullshit, leaving them crippled without their magic fourth. I would have laughed if everything hadn’t been so completely shitty.

“I think what you mean is that people won’t like you anymore,” I said. “And you know what, Mary Bryan? I don’t fucking give a damn.”

“You will,” she said.

“Whatever,” I said. “At least I never had sex on a picnic table.” I left her staring after me as I sprinted up the drive.

A white Range Rover was parked inside one half of the two-car garage. Adjacent to the garage was a stone pathway that led to the back of the house, and around the bend I could hear Anna Maria and the others. They were no longer making any effort to be quiet.

I hurried to the back door. “Move,” I said, elbowing Amy in the gut.

“Hey, watch it!” she cried. Then she saw it was me and giggled. “Oh, sorry. Make way for Jane! Clear a path!”

I broke through to see Bitsy gazing at a second-story window, where a light shone from behind the curtains.

“Come now, Camilla,” Bitsy cajoled. “Don’t play hard to get. We just want to spend some quality time with you. Right, girls?”

“The skank loves dick!” the girls caroled. “The stick is dick!”

The curtains moved. Camilla’s pale face appeared, then disappeared.

“She’s going to call the police,” I said, willing my voice to be steady.

Bitsy turned. “Why, look. If it isn’t little Jane.”

“Or if she doesn’t, I will.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?”

I blushed. Debbie and Anna Maria sniggered, and my hands balled into fists.

“Just leave her alone,” I said. “Maybe she’s not, like, Miss Congeniality, but she never did anything to you.”

“So not the point,” Bitsy said. She jerked her head at a small ceramic poodle to the right of the back door. “Laurie, get the key. It’s under there.”

“Laurie, don’t,” I said.

Laurie, who had taken one step toward the poodle, stopped in her tracks.

“Laurie,” Bitsy said.

“I’ll do it,” Anna Maria said. “Jesus.” She strode across the entranceway and kicked over the poodle, which shattered when it hit the stones. Underneath lay the key. “Nice hiding spot,” she said as she bent to retrieve it. She chortled, her stupid azalea stick still clutched in her other hand. “Real sneaky, ho-bag.”

For a flashing moment I felt absolute panic, because god help me, I wanted to join in. The skank loves dick, the stick is dick …

But I fought against it, because I was not going to be that person. Yes, I was a Bitch. But I didn’t have to be a bitch.

I pushed past Bitsy and Laurie and up to Camilla’s door, where Anna Maria was inserting the key in the lock.

“Give it to me,” I said, grasping her wrist.

Debbie edged closer, as did Trish and Amy.

“Jane,” warned Mary Bryan, who’d joined the rest of the group.

I thought I caught movement at the second-story window. Why hadn’t Camilla called the police? Or if she had, where were they?

“Give it to me or I’ll scream. I mean it. I’ll scream so loud the neighbors will come running.”

“What neighbors?” Bitsy asked. “I’m her neighbor.”

“You’re not the only one,” I said.

She strolled toward me, trying to feign indifference despite the tightness in her jaw. I could feel the force of her hate.

“Anna Maria, unlock the door,” she ordered.

Anna Maria twisted the key.

I screamed.

As Bitsy’s thugs scattered, as Mary Bryan hissed, “For shit’s sake!” and pulled Bitsy out of the back-porch light, I felt something claw my arm. Camilla. She yanked me inside and slammed the door.

“What did you do that for?” she demanded.

I pulled free and pressed my face against a side window. Keisha waited for Mary Bryan and Bitsy by the garage. Then all three fled down the driveway, high heels clattering. Bitsy’s laugh floated through the night air.