Apparently we’re not there yet.

I watch him walk away and stare at the spot even after he’s gone. I force myself to turn away. To focus on the real problem: the vandal. My mind is full of thoughts—none of them make sense, just a jumble of words and names and places and motives—as I walk into the AGD classroom and take my seat. Jenna is, of course, already there.

As Mrs. K readies something on her computer, I grab my supplies and get ready for the free sketch period. My mind is so full of other things that I can’t think of anything to sketch. I hold my pencil above the paper, waiting for inspiration to strike.

When it doesn’t, I fall back on something that my very first art teacher in fifth grade taught me.

When all else fails, draw the world.

Meaning you should take inspiration from the world around you when you have none of your own.

I start at the bottom of the page, sketching the surface of the table I share with Jenna. Slick white melamine, with a soft glare and a few scuff marks from overeager artists who couldn’t contain their work to the page.

I sketch Jenna’s hands, small and delicate as she creates yet another one of her recurring shape drawings into her new sketchbook. Could she really have set me up? Honestly, she doesn’t seem like she has enough imagination to come up with the idea in the first place. She has decent technique, but her artistic voice is lacking.

Then again, maybe that explains the copycat art. She couldn’t come up with her own epic art, so she ripped off mine.

Maybe.

I expand my sketch to include the other tables in the room. From the back row, I have a clear view of them all. There are eight tables in all, enough to seat sixteen students.

As I rough sketch the tables and begin to pencil in the students seated at each one, I notice something. Several of the seats are empty.

On the first day of class, every seat was occupied—hence the fact that I got the last available next to Jenna. Now, there are several open spaces.

I pull up my memory of that first day and picture who was seated where.

Mira had been in the seat directly in front of me.

Jaq was in the table two rows up and one over.

Mark, Devan, and Hannah are also missing. Mark is out sick—we all saw him spew chunks in trig yesterday—and Devan spent all last week gloating about jetting off to Seattle to see his favorite band in concert this weekend. But Hannah had surprisingly dropped the class on Tuesday.

It’s the girls, I realize. Most of the empty seats are where girls sat on the first day of class. And now they’re gone.

Of the seven girls Mrs. K called in to tell us about the design scholarship, three of them are either out of the class permanently or have been removed for disciplinary reasons.

“No,” I gasp.

Jenna looks over at me. “What?”

“What?” I jerk back, realizing that I hadn’t meant to say anything out loud. “Oh, nothing. Just, um…” I wag my pencil. “Broke my lead.”

She shrugs and goes back to her shapes—today they’re stars. Star after star after star. No imagination.

I stare at the sketch filling my page. The empty seats where girls once sat. Where scholarship contenders once sat.

Could that really be why? Could the copycat incident not be about me at all, but about getting rid of the scholarship competition?

It seems ridiculously farfetched. Who would go to these lengths just to improve their chances to win a stupid prize? Farfetched, maybe, but it still makes more sense than someone targeting me specifically for whatever nonsense reason.

Okay, okay. I calm my thoughts. I have to think through this, work through the possibilities. Like a detective in a murder mystery, I have to consider the…suspects.

There are four girls left in the class.

Me. I obviously didn’t do it. Besides the fact that, well, I know I didn’t, I would have taken myself out of the running by pulling the copycat—or, in that case, repeat—Incident.

There’s Jenna. She’s weird, which is saying a lot at an art school, but she had a near meltdown last Thursday when her sketchbook turned up missing. I can’t be certain that’s part of the whole conspiracy—oh God, am I actually considering this possibility?—but she said it included a lot of the sketches she was going to submit for the competition. So I’ll mark that down as a yes for victim.

There’s Liza. Her computer got some kind of terrible virus and her entire portfolio was destroyed. Definite victim.

There’s Aimeigh. She… I struggle to think of anything bad that’s happened to her. Any design-related sabotage or trouble. Nothing. Of all the girls in Mrs. K’s class, only Aimeigh has been untouched by the bad luck curse.

Only Aimeigh is poised to present her best work and be academically eligible to enter the competition.

Is that…? Is that possible?

“Sketchbooks away,” Mrs. K says, calling the room to order.

My suspicions will have to wait until after class.

When the bell rings, I take off. I’m across the hall and hiding behind the door to the empty ceramic arts classroom before Aimeigh can catch me.

I wait impatiently as the AGD room empties. Aimeigh walks out in a group of guys, looking around like she’s searching for me. I can’t face her, not until I at least bounce my crazy theory off someone else. I duck deeper behind the door.

They walk on, and I hope she’s given up on me.

Still, I wait. Jenna is always last. Always has something to talk with Mrs. K about.

Normally I mock her brown-nosery, but today it works to my advantage. Everyone is long gone, the hall all but empty by the time she emerges.

“Jenna, wait,” I whisper-shout, jumping out from behind the door.

She smacks a hand to her chest, like I just startled the hell out of her. Which I probably did.

“Sloane,” she says, her voice tight. “Yes?”

“Sorry,” I say, mostly meaning it. “Look, last week when you warned me about trusting Aimeigh. Why did you say that?”

She frowns. Studies me like she’s evaluating a test subject.

Jenna seems way more in tune with a science magnet program than an art school. I wonder how she ended up here, on this path.

Then again, people might wonder how I ended up here. With parents who are corporate types and a brother who is a certified math genius—seriously, he has a certificate—I might seem like an unlikely candidate. But considering I have a rebellious streak a mile wide…maybe it’s not so unlikely.

So I suppose stranger things have happened than a science geek ending up in an art school.

“Why are you asking?” Jenna replies.

I roll my eyes. “I don’t have time for this, Jenna.”

“All right,” she says. “I warned you about Aimeigh because she has burned people before.”

“Like who?” I move closer, like I’m physically approaching an answer. “In what circumstances?”

“Lots of people. She stole Vivian’s American history assignment freshman year.” Jenna ticks off the offenses on her fingers. “Planted a stolen test on Edgar Ross in algebra last year. Gave Megan the wrong study guide when she was TA in intro to art history. Flushed an entire group project—”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” I say, stopping her because it seems like she’s never going to end. “God, why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Jenna shrugs. “I tried to warn you.”

In the vaguest way possible.

“How did she get away with all of those things?” I ask.

How could I have been so wrong about her? I thought Aimeigh was my friend. I trusted her, I confided in her, and she was playing me. It doesn’t say much for my people-reading skills.

But Tru trusted her, too. Tru believed in her. I’m not the only one who was blinded by her game.

“She never gets caught,” Jenna says. “Everyone knows she did it, but there’s never any proof.”

Until now. Aimeigh picked the wrong girl to take on this time. Never pick a fight with a New Yorker. We know how to fight back.