Page 64 of The Divide that Binds Us

“Strangely like being in Elite, but with different colors.I was a little nervous,” Evangeline laughs, but the anxiety settles in the pit of her stomach again, just like it did that day.

Rachel rises gracefully and twirls on one foot.She looks down at her feet and then at Evangeline.“I feel bad about Natasha.If I hadn’t told Rebecca about the gem, she would’ve never assigned it to anyone, and we’d all be okay.”

And she’d still be here with us.

As much as Evangeline doesn’t want to agree, Rachel is right.It’s unfortunate, but sadly not surprising.Ultima wants to eradicate Elite and have the resources to do so, but they don’t have the aggression to achieve it.More prospects for Elite will be recruited to replace the hole the former members leave behind, and the cycle repeats.

“It’s not your fault, though.”Evangeline touches Rachel’s arm.

“I heard about the run-in Alice had, too.Was it a trap?”

“Seems that way.”

Rachel shifts her weight, still pondering when Evangeline’s arcade ringtone blares in her gym bag by the bleachers.She rushes to check, wondering who it is but her heart sinks when she realizes it’s Billie calling.

“Hey.”

Billie’s voice is static.“Oi.Can you come to my room?We have a mission.”

“I’m in the middle of practice right now.”Evangeline puts Billie on speaker so she can browse through the E-Force app and finds a mission in her queue with a star next to it indicating another teammate is joining.She touches the mission for the dropdown of details to emerge, but nothing happens.Evangeline keeps pressing the screen with no luck.

“I can hear you touching your screen, it doesn’t work,” Billie says.

Evangeline groans.“Okay, I’ll see you in five.”

She hangs up and tosses the phone back in her bag and adjusts a stray strand of her scarlet hair.

“It’s okay.We can pick it back up later,” Rachel says.She tightens her ponytail of microbraids she got done recently.

As much as Evangeline wants to confide in her dance partner on everything else going on, she decides not to while they’re still in the gym.No one else is here, but the large space creates an echo that Evangeline would rather not risk it.

Billie is tidying upthe room and playing music from her phone when Evangeline arrives.

“Hey—omg, are you actually cleaning?”Evangeline asks.

Billie whirls around in her green oversized hoodie and eagerly nods.She pauses the song and plops on Alice’s bed, ruining the neat covers and pillows she just fixed.Evangeline further ruins the bed by tossing herself next to her.Billie lies on her back, hair sprawled out with the lower half of her body hanging off the edge.She holds the phone over her face and pulls up her text messages.

Evangeline shakes her head with a soft smile.“Where’s Alice?Have you seen her around since that ...outburst?”

Billie keeps looking at her phone, her eyes shifty.“She’s distant.Trapped in her thoughts but spends most of her days in Master Azul’s office.”

“Right,” Evangeline bites her lip.She recalls the wailing cries from the lobby when she walked down the hall to see what was going on.Seeing Alice lying on the floor in a puddle of her despair shook Evangeline.

It was like she cracked.

Billie sits up and shows Evangeline her phone to read the massive text paragraph from Rebecca.Scanning through it, Evangeline’s heart gallops at an incomprehensible rate.She rereads it to make sure the request is really there on the screen.The more she stares at it the more it feels like someone is ripping off each strand of her arm hair.

“She set us up to have dinner with the King?!”Evangeline nearly shrieks.“Is Rebecca out of her mind?”

“I know, I was surprised too!This’ll be fun!”Billie laughs.“But this mentions none of the stuff Alice told us already, so are we like, pretending we don’t know anything and just feeling him out?”

Panic swirls up Evangeline’s throat and it tastes bitter.“This dinner istonight!What’re we gonna say?We can’t NOT act like we don’t know when we clearly do!”

Billie stares at her blankly.“Whatdo we not know?”

“Billie!!”Evangeline sputters.

She winks with a wide smile.“Relax, we’re just doing some ass kissing and having free food.Omigosh, this is totally an innocent way to do some casual snooping on Mildred, too!”

---