The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate Page A

one of my strongest suits. It had to be: As Palmetto Princess, I’d be the official voice behind the mic at every pep rally and award ceremony for the next year.
    As I watched Kate empathetically brush my hair in the mirror, I realized she would know I wasn’t nervous about the speech. She knew that I’d perfected my coronation speech as far back as this time last year, when Marc Wise and Sadie Hoagland took the crown. It was all memorized, from the pride-of-Charleston theme behind our campaign, right down to whom to thank and in what order. It wasn’t the speech that was wigging me out—it was the nightmare I’d had about this carriage ride.
    “Oh,” Kate said, interrupting my thoughts. “Your mom swung by and brought this over.” She unsheathed a bright orange-matte tube of lipstick that my mom had been trying to get me to wear since she first put full makeup on me for the fourth-grade piano recital. It was the kind of color Mom could usually only get her corpses to agree to wear. I shuddered.
    “That’s what I thought,” Kate said, whipping out a much less terrifying shade of shimmery pink. She showed me the name on the bottom of the tube. “See that?” she pointed. It was called Princess.
    But when she dotted the lipstick around my mouth and held out the tissue for me to blot, all I could think about was the lipstick I’d put on J.B.
    I went utterly cold.
    The lipstick. The bound wrists. The pill bottle.
    “The carriage!” the Bambies exclaimed from the corner. All of them dashed to the window. “The carriage is here! It’s outside!”
    “Tell me you went with the vanilla-flavored massage oil I suggested,” Amy Jane said, coming up behind me to add a few more sprays of Aqua Net to my updo.
    But there was no massage oil in the montage I was trying to stop from running through my mind. There were just J.B.’s blue lips in the carriage and the icy chill I’d felt when he’d closed his eyes in my dream.
    There’s been a change of plans, he’d said.
    I needed to get out to the real carriage to prove to myself it had only been a nightmare—or at least that part of it had only been a nightmare. I needed to get on top of Mike and take a break from my J.B. paranoia. But when I stood up, just when I needed to show strength, I teetered in my sling-back heels, then collapsed on the vanity chair.
    “Jesus, Nat, you’re white as a ghost. More rouge!” Amy Jane called over for reinforcements. “What is it, honey? Talk to us.”
    “I forgot to lose it,” I mumbled, thinking about the pills still tucked inside the inner pocket of my backpack. “Mike told me to lose it and I didn’t.”
    “What’s she talking about?” Jenny whispered to Amy Jane. “I don’t get it.”
    “Oh my God,” Amy Jane said. “Were you and Mike going to play ‘revirginized’ in the carriage? You guys are kinky.”
    Before I could say anything to cover up my slip about the pills, my two ladies-in-waiting had helped me to my feet. Minutes later, they were guiding me out the door towards the carriage. I noticed Kate hung back.
    “Listen, don’t freak out,” Jenny said, looking me in the eye. “You and Mike are the real deal. You don’t need to break any school records out there. Just be yourself,” she said.
    Amy Jane slipped something into my hand. It was the same size and shape as the pill bottle, but when I looked down—
    “I knew you’d forget the massage oil,” she laughed. “I always carry extra.”
    I started walking slowly toward the carriage. It wasn’t nearly as glitzy as the carriage in my dream, which was nothing less than an enormous relief. It was the same old wooden painted carriage that they’d been using for as long as there’d been Palmetto Princesses. The driver looked normal enough, too, faded jeans and a black blazer. But when he opened the door and held out a hand to help me up, his forehead was creased with worry lines.
    “I’m sorry, miss, but I was told to let you know.” He fidgeted