Mr. Vega turned and gave her a long, discerning stare. He tilted his nostrils up and sniffed the air. “Was someone smoking?” The transformation of Mr. Vega’s stony face into a fiery scowl now reminded Emma of Mr. Smythe, another one of her foster dads. He was like Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde: sweet one moment and volatile the next. The only way Emma could tell he was going to freak out was when he started feverishly licking his lips.

Madeline shook her head. “Of course not!”

“It’s from outside,” Charlotte said at the same time. “A bunch of kids walked by, and they were all smoking.”

A neutral look settled over Mr. Vega’s face again, but his eyes still burned. “Well, if you girls need anything, I’ll be in my office.” Then he eyed the episode of Jersey Shore on TV. “You shouldn’t watch that trash, Madeline.”

Madeline clicked the remote. A chase scene of a male lion taking down a frantic zebra filled the screen. After he left, Charlotte walked over and touched Madeline’s arm.

A tinny bleep issued from Madeline’s iPhone, which sat facedown on the coffee table. Everyone started. She grabbed it and studied the screen. “Surprise, surprise. Another text from Lili and Gabby. They’ve been begging to come to Mount Lemmon with us all day.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Charlotte said.

Sutton’s phone, which Mrs. Mercer had let Emma have back in case of an emergency, rang, too. Emma pulled it from her bag. HELLO, SWEETS! Gabby wrote. YOU TOTALLY WANT TO BE US, DON’T YOU? THAT MAKES THREE OF US—WE LOVE US, TOO! MWAH!

Charlotte groaned as she read her BlackBerry. “If they were any more full of themselves, they’d have to have ego liposuction.”

Their phones lit up once more. GUESS THE l IN LYING GAME STANDS FOR loser!

“That’s not cool.” Laurel jabbed at her phone to delete the message. “If they keep this up no one will ever vote for them again.”

“I don’t know how they got voted in at all,” Charlotte mused, fiddling with a ceramic donkey statue on the coffee table. “I took a look at the ballots online—Isabel Girard and Kaitlin Pierce were also on it, and guys are much more into them than Gabby and Lili.”

“I vote we stop hanging out with them.” Madeline reached for a handful of popcorn.

“I second that,” Emma said quickly, remembering Gabby’s eerie gun-trigger gesture at lunch the other day.

I third that, I thought.

The phones beeped once more, and everyone diverted their attention to their screens. TWO PRETTY COURT GIRLS DESERVE A SMOKIN’ PARTY! STEP IT UP, BITCHES!

“You know what I think we should do?” Madeline leaned back on the couch and curled her knees to her chest. “We should knock those princesses down to size. Hit ’em where it hurts.”

“A prank?” Laurel’s eyebrows shot up.