But thinking of Bee reminded me that I hadn’t seen her in a while. I’d driven her to pageant rehearsal, but I hadn’t seen her in at least fifteen minutes. That was weird. Like me, she’d decided to stick with the baton twirling, and Sara always made us go last. She had a pretty rigorous schedule for talent practice: singers first, then musicians, then the “athletic talents,” like dance or, yes, baton twirling. Jill Wyatt was playing the accordion right now, and she was the last of the musicians to go (although calling what Jill did “music” was charitable). We’d be up soon, but Bee was nowhere in sight.

I made my way off the stage, nearly bumping into Amanda as I did. “Sorry,” I said, and she shrugged it off.

“Someone needs to sneak something into her Slim-Fast before the pageant,” Amanda muttered, nodding toward Sara, and I snorted.

“Agreed.”

Like me, Amanda was dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, but tottering around on the heels she’d wear on the night of the pageant, and she nearly stumbled now as she went to cross one foot over the other.

I caught her elbow, steadying her, and she flashed me a quick grin. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Amanda and I were pretty much the same height in our heels, so she looked me in the eyes as she said, “It’s intensely weird that you’re doing this thing, you know. Me and Abi can’t figure it out.”

“Bee wanted to,” I told her as one of the girls from Lee High hustled past us to practice her walk onstage. “And as Bee go, so goeth my nation.”

That made Amanda smile, and she jerked her head toward the wings. “I hear you. I’m only here because Abi insisted.”

I was smiling as I glanced over to where Amanda had gestured, only to feel my smile freeze when I saw who Abi was talking to.

Spencer. The frat guy who would, according to David’s vision, one day ruin her life. But we’d stopped her from hooking up with him. Ryan had even wiped her memory so that she didn’t remember meeting him. So what the heck was he doing here?

“Who’s that guy?” I asked Amanda, and she gave an extravagant eye roll. “Oh my God, the love of my sister’s life, apparently. Everything is all Spencer all the time with Abi.”

My stomach churning, I watched as Abi leaned closer, letting one hand rest on Spencer’s chest. He was grinning down at her, tucking her hair behind her ear, and while he didn’t look quite as gross as he had the night of the party—not having roughly a twelve-pack of beer in your system will do that to a guy, I guess—I still was not a fan.

Neither was Amanda, if the way she looked at them was anything to go by.