Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [113]
The kids didn’t say anything openly—some of them were afraid to, truth to tell—but there was a lot of grumbling when Breakthrough people weren’t there.
The Breakthrough people got wind of it, of course, and another e-mail went out reminding everyone that the dance was still on, and that “the goal of Breakthrough was to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, so relax and enjoy your evening.” As if one of the Oakhurst dances was going to make up for being shadowed by a goon when you just wanted to take a walk and be alone for a while. As if the soda and otherwise-forbidden snacks would make up for knowing the Breakthrough geeks were monitoring every single keystroke when you chatted.
Combine the sort of strict regime that the kids brought up like Addie weren’t used to and strongly resented with the tension of wondering when the next “incident” would happen, and you had a tightly wound bunch of kids who were just looking for an outlet for all that nervous energy. It didn’t take much in the way of a hint here, a suggestion there, to get the “prank” rolling.
By the night of the dance, everything was primed to explode.
* * *
“The best thing is,” Addie observed, as she twined Spirit’s hair into a loose French braid, “even if nothing happens, the prank will still go off, and Rider’s people will have a hundred ‘suspects’ to watch. None of whom will be us.”
“You don’t really think that’s likely, do you?” Spirit asked, staring into the mirror so she could look into Addie’s reflected eyes.
“No,” Addie admitted, and rubbed the back of her neck. “I can feel it. It’s like a thunderstorm on the horizon.”
This wasn’t a formal dance, like New Year’s, but Muirin had insisted they all wear something besides Oakhurst clothing, so Spirit had her new red sweater and a pair of black pants Muirin had whipped up out of some velour from the theater supplies, and Addie had a similar gray outfit she said was cashmere. Those outfits would have gotten really warm after a while at a normal dance, but none of them figured they would be in the gym long enough for it to matter.
As for dates, in the end, Spirit had asked Loch and Addie had asked Burke; Muirin went through with going with Dylan, “Because it would look weird if I backed out after I already asked him.” Not that who you asked made any difference in the end, because they were all herded out to the gym in a group under the watchful eye of the Breakthrough guards. Even the real couples were looking resentful. It was pretty hard to get romantic when you had an expressionless Security Goon carefully not-staring at you.
No one had really known how to decorate for a “Sadie Hawkins Day Dance,” so they’d done a sort of pre-Valentine’s Day generic pink background of balloons and Mylar streamers with a disco ball in the middle. The usual soda-and-snacks tables were set up, but with a difference. Some of the Breakthrough geeks had made their own additions—a light show and a real DJ.
Much as Spirit hated to admit it … both were good. The light show was spectacular, and the DJ really knew his stuff.
Plus, he was playing music that was definitely not available in the Oakhurst official music libraries. Everyone started to relax when they realized there weren’t any members of the Goon Squad in the gym and the music was going to be fantastic.
It’s a good thing that this is all going to fall apart before the evening is over, or I’d be worried, because this kind of treatment is pretty tempting, Spirit thought. Loch got her a drink, then drifted away to the “spot” he was going to cover for a while. Dylan hauled Muirin out onto the dance floor right away, but he didn’t even make it through two songs before Ovcharenko materialized out of the shadows and cut in. The DJ immediately faded into a ballad, which more or less forced Muirin into a slow dance with him. Loch moved out of his corner and onto the edge of the dance floor and made a little finger motion, since Dylan appeared to be too intimidated by Ovcharenko to cut