Page 29 of The Devil Wears Tartan

“What part feels the weirdest?” she asks.

“Hmmm.” I keep staring at the little lights, thinking back to how vulnerable Kenzie looked under the lamppost in the park, right before she grabbed my hand. “I guess I just...I don’t know what to expect anymore. I thought I was just competing for a scholarship and maybe getting one last chance to go head to head on a dumb old rivalry, but...it feels more complicated than that.”

She nods, and we spend the next couple moments in silence together, just breathing and being.

“I know it’s complicated,” she tells me, “but you know what? I also know you’re going to figure it out. You can do anything, Moira Murray.”

She rests her head on my shoulder, and I prop my chin next to her ponytail, wishing I shared her confidence.

CHAPTER 8

KENZIE

It shouldn’t be this hard to cut up a pan of brownies. I set the knife in my hands down on the counter and grab the metal spatula next to it, using the edges to try gouging the brownies out of their prison for the third time this morning.

When I’ve finished sliding the spatula all the way around the pan like a jigsaw, I flip the tray upside down and bang on the bottom. The brownies don’t budge.

I bang even harder.

I can feel the eyes of everyone in the kitchen shift to watch me, but I don’t turn around. I’ve only been at the Tartan Tea for an hour, and I can already tell I’ve lost my ‘playing it cool’ card.

I might have been able to hold onto it a little longer if Chris hadn’t bailed on coming over to watch a movie for the third time this month last night. He didn’t even text to cancel. I got a weird, slurred voicemail apology this morning in answer to all my messages asking if he was okay.

I never know if he’s okay. I don’t think he’s really been okay since his dad split up with my mom.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I hiss at the brownies.

When I spot one of the younger scholarship applicants staring at me in petrified terror out of the corner of my eye, I take a deep breath and then turn to face her, forcing a smile onto my face.

“These just do not want to come out of here,” I say, tapping on the pan. The chuckle I follow it up with only sounds slightly strangled.

“Uh-huhhhh,” she answers with a nervous laugh of her own.

Her name is Holly, and along with another seventeen-year-old named Nicole, she makes up the sum total of people besides me and Moira competing for the scholarship. The Tartan Tea organizers have all four of us on kitchen duty, along with a veteran SDOO volunteer named Margerie, who’d probably be better off without us crowding her space.

It’s a fair-sized kitchen, but it feels minuscule when it’s got both me and Moira in it.

We’ve barely spoken since we both showed up at the stroke of seven this morning. We nodded instead of saying hello. She’s asked me to pass her a spoon, and I had to double-check with her about what time a quiche went in the oven, but other than that, we’ve stayed silent.

I steal a glance at her over my shoulder, and my stomach twists.

She knows too much.

It’s all I can think, all I’ve been able to think for the past few weeks since that night at the park.

I never should have told her any of that. Now that she knows all those things about me, she has power. She has control I should have kept for myself, and I can’t take it back.

“All right, ladies, we’re about ready to go!” Margerie comes back in the room and claps her hands together, the charm bracelet wrapped around her wrist jingling. “I need two of you to help me finish setting up the coffee station. Who wants to come wi—”

Before she can finish her sentence, Holly and Nicole drop what they’re doing and bolt to line up in front of her like kindergarteners ready for a field trip.

“We will!” Holly chimes, casting a nervous glance at me over her shoulder.

I might be even worse company this morning than I thought.

“Well, that works!” Margerie’s forehead creases for a moment before she shrugs off the tense atmosphere of the room and leads the girls out into the rented church hall where the Tartan Teas always happen.

That leaves me and Moira alone in the kitchen.

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