The only reason Delilah was class president was because she’d thrown a weekend-long poster-making party on her parents’ private island in the Outer Banks over Labor Day, right before the election. The entire class was invited. Lily had spent the first week of school slathering aloe on her sunburn, glaring at the hundreds of VOTE DUFREY posters that lined the halls, and listening to eighty-seven renditions of “how Delilah hooked up with the hot college guy from the minigolf place and Ryan caught the whole thing on video.” Everyone agreed that Delilah was the biggest badass ever and she’d looked super cute in her purple lace bikini.

The rest of the world had to play by one set of rules, but Delilah Dufrey got to make up her own as she went along. It made Lily want to vomit.

By some miracle, Delilah only beat Maria in the election by three votes, so Maria was named class activity director. She got stuck running the student council bake sales. Delilah’s only job, apparently, was to sit at the front of the council room and yawn her way through the agenda at meetings.

But that wasn’t the end of Delilah’s crimes. Maria should’ve been captain of the soccer team, too. She was a better player than Delilah, but unlike Delilah, she didn’t hook up with the coach.

That was the most important difference between Maria and Delilah: Maria always followed the rules.

It was one of Lily’s favorite things about her. It was Lily’s least favorite thing, too.

If Maria hadn’t thought she was following some unwritten code, she’d have turned Delilah in last year when she saw her kissing Coach Tartar in the equipment closet. She’d have taken a picture and sent it anonymously to the dean. Or she’d have pulled Delilah aside during a practice and quietly blackmailed her into dropping out of the election. She at least would’ve done something when she spotted Delilah snorting up pills in the locker room.

Instead she’d let her every chance to get rid of the witch go by without a word. No one except Maria and Lily—and probably Brandon, since Maria still told him everything—knew the whole truth.

And why? Maria still believed in nice girls finishing first. Someday, she seemed to think, someone was bound to tally up everything she’d done and give her a medal for being a good person. It made Lily want to scream until her lungs ached—because it meant they were still at Delilah’s mercy.