Page 11 of The Executioners Three
My record?Freddie almost asked—but then it hit her. Of course.It’s a small town, people talk.“You mean the arrests?”
“Hear, hear!” Laina drumrolled the table.
“A stroke of genius,” Luis declared.
And even Cat thawed enough to say, “You knocked out two-thirds of their football team.”
“About that.” Freddie pushed her glasses up her nose. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding—oof.” Freddie’s shin erupted with pain, and when she glanced Divya’s way, the laser-beam stare was at maximum power.
“A misunderstanding?” Laina’s drumrolling paused.
Another kick. A harder glare, and Freddie was left with no choice but to say, “Erm, yes. You see… it wasn’t my idea alone, but Divya’s too.”
“Heyyyy.” Luis grinned Divya’s way, and Cat finally thawed completely—even offering Divya an approving once-over.
Laina just nodded like she’d known this all along. Divya blushed prettily.
“Should we wait for Kyle?” Cat tugged her purse over and unbuckled the clasp.
“Naw.” Luis waved her on. “Kyle can catch up.”
So Cat withdrew a worn, blue-bound book. In faded script on the spine, it readOfficial Log.
And in perfect synchrony, everyone dipped in low across the table. Even Freddie and Divya. There was a reverence in the way Cat held the book—and in the way she, Luis, and Laina gazed at its canvas cover.
“This,” Cat said dramatically, “is a log of every prank ever pulled by the Berm High seniors.”
Freddie and Divya both gasped in unison. Everyone in Berm knew about the prank war with Fortin Prep—because of course they did. There was no missing the spray-painted lawns or disrupted football games or dyed marching band uniforms orinsert any other obvious prank herethat happened each fall.
Yet for all that locals saw the effects of the prank war, no one ever knew who was behind them. It was like the secretest of secret societies.
“It all started when the bell went missing from the Allard Fortin mausoleum in 1975.” Cat creaked back the cover on the log. “The Fortin students blamed us—even though we obviously didn’t do it, since the bell was found years later.”
Freddie nodded emphatically at this. She might not have known aboutthe school prank war origins, but shedidknow heaps about the missing bell. After all, it had been her mom who’d first worked to get a replica made for the mausoleum. And then it had beenhermom who’d found the original bell hiding in plain sight in the schoolhouse years later.
“Fortin Prep retaliated against Berm,” Cat continued, “by putting underwear on the school’s flagpoles.” She tapped the logbook, where sure enough the first line read,October 27, 1975: Fortin Prep stole BHS flags and put up lingerie.
“We of course had to respond.” This came from Laina, whose voice was suitably grave for discussions of such weight. “So we stole their mascot. A woodchuck named Bubba. Then they painted our football field, so we covered theirs in cat litter.”
“It has gone back and forth like that ever since.” Cat flipped pages. “And this journal contains twenty-four years’ worth of those pranks. Now we”—she stopped two-thirds of the way in—“are right here.” She tapped at the bottom of the page, where it now read,October 13, 1999: Freddie Gellar got half of Fortin Prep arrested.
“Oh,” Freddie exhaled, heart pattering ever so slightly. Her act of terrified conscience had landed her in the Official Log. She felt Very Exalted Indeed. In fact, for the first time since Wednesday night, she felt like she might have done agoodthing.
“And when we graduate,” Luis inserted, “we’ll pass this log on to a few chosen juniors, just as the class of ’98 passed it on to us. So you see? This book right here is sacred, and now you have to swear to never tell a soul about it.”
Again, Freddie and Divya reacted in unison, each nodding. Each offering a rapturous “We swear.”
Yet before Freddie could ask if the Prank Squad was sure they wanted to include a lowlife likeherin their ranks, a figure moved into Freddie’s periphery.
Kyle, she assumed, and instantly her body flooded with heady flames.
Until she realized no one was smiling. In fact, Cat was suddenly closing the Official Log, Laina’s teeth were baring, and Luis was puffing his shoulders to twice their size. Divya blinked Freddie’s way, so Freddie blinked her neighbor’s way.
To find that he was not, in fact, Kyle Friedman. This boy was a headtaller than Kyle. Lankier too, and where Kyle’s hair was a dark chocolate shade, this boy’s was a dishwater blond combed into side-swept perfection. He also lacked Kyle’s tan, his skin instead a perfect match for Tom Cruise’s inInterview with the Vampire.
And the biggest difference of all: this guy wore a Fortin Prep uniform. A navy blazer with the school’s initials, a scarlet tie, and fitted khakis—all of it impeccably tailored and ironed.
He looked like he’d stepped right out of the TV. Not in a hot way, like Kyle, but in theI am a stereotypical bullyway.
