As I coat my eyes with the liquid charcoal from the MAC mascara, my mother's voice flashes back in my mind.

"Not too much," she would've advised, "You don't want it to be too flakey."

My fourteen-year-old self would've rolled her eyes and ignored my mother's advice, as most fourteen-year-olds do. If my mother was here, she'd be ecstatic at the idea of me finally expressing an interest in makeup and clothes and taking care of my appearances instead of reading 'musty old chemistry' books and 'tinkering with amateur lab equipment'. My mother and I never had the best relationship- she's always wishing I was like other normal girly girls, interested in tea parties and Barbie Dolls. Back then, we constantly fought about signing up for science clubs instead of beauty pageants and buying things from the boys' department instead of the girls. I once despised her so much that I drew a Sharpie line across the threshold of my room and forbade her from ever entering past the line. She actually obeyed. She'd deliver my laundry by plopping the basket outside the door. She'd ask me to do the dishes by yelling through the closed door. I'd never properly talk to her unless I really had to and if I did, it'd be short, irate sentences from my annoyed, angst-ridden fourteen self.

Guilt well up in my chest. God, I just wish I could tell her I didn't mean it. But now she's dead. All because of Orson Calloway and his stupid mistakes.

My eyes suddenly water and I choke, tears streaming uncontrollably down my cheeks. My hands begin to quiver, shaking like I'm going through a drug withdrawal. Hadley rushes over immediately to put her hands around me, leaving her lipstick unattended on the vanity table as she clutches me tight in her arms. She murmurs 'it's okay', getting used to my random breakdowns, and I begin rubbing my eyes furiously, trying to stop myself from breaking down even more. You weak motherfucker, I scream inside my head. It's been two years since they died. I need to be stronger than this. Atticus needs me to be stronger than this. They need me to be stronger than this.

I swallow down the hot salty water rolling down my skin, swearing when my eyes flicker over to my reflection. Black runny eyeliner and mascara stain my cheeks, ruining my contour, foundation, and highlight. "Fuck," I swore, voice swelling with the thickness of crying. "My makeup is all ruined- I need to fucking start all over again."

"I'll do it for you," Hadley quietly offers, ever so sweetly, "Just relax, okay?"

"No, it's fine. I can just-"

"I'll do it for you." There's not much arguing with the certainty in her tone. Hadley is constantly mothering over me, especially after the ordeals she's heard I've been through. It's sweet that she cares but after a while, it gets annoying. I want to protest that I'm not fragile and I could do things myself, especially something as simple as putting on makeup but I shut up, letting her wipe the smudged liner off with the makeover remover and begin to apply.

Right after I've served the spiked water to Luciana Santiago, Hadley and I manage to slip out of the restaurant undetected, expertly disappearing like we've never been there and wiping all traces of our existence from that restaurant by Hadley hacking into the restaurant's security system and deleting videos where the cameras captured us. Now we're changing into clothes and molding our faces to be more appropriate for our next task. When Hadley finishes fixing my makeup, she returns to her own and I leave my chair to check on my phone, which is charging by Hadley's bedside, and switch onto Instagram. Through a fake account, I tap past to see if any of the Elites have updated their stories.

Bingo. Luciana has just updated her story four minutes ago. I tap on hers to load it up, then it pops up on my screen. It's a video of Phineas Yeong and Orson Calloway laughing with everybody as they seem to be in a car with flashing neon lights- probably an Uber X from what I've gathered by the insides of the car- cool, gunmetal grey leather seats of a flashy sports car gunning them through the streets of New York's traffic. "Hanif, what's up?" I hear Luciana ask behind the camera.

"We're gonna PARTY, BABY!" Hanif Rahim yells explicitly into the camera, grinning as he clinks champagne glasses with Orson, who smirks in amusement at his best friend's antics. Carmen and Parker's laughs tinkle in the background of the car's revving noises. "Le Noir, here we come!"

There's Clue No 1.

"They're going to Le Noir," I say. Le Noir is one of the few nightclubs along Madison Avenue the private school kids of Manhattan frequented for their extremely liberal carding policies when it comes to letting underage kids drink and do whatever they want. Le Noir is famous for looking away for a suitable price, which of course they could afford.

Yanking the cord off my phone, I rummage around the room for a clutch, grabbing a small silver clutch that's only big enough to fit my phone, a portable charger, a packet of cigs, and a wad of hundred dollars in cash. I adjust my high-waisted slit skirt, loosen up the ribbons of my long-sleeved lace-up black crop top to show off more cleavage, and spritz on some Dior's Hypnotic Poison for good measure. It shows enough boobs, torso, and leg enough for people to notice me, especially in the company of Orson Calloway and his friends. It's nothing like I'll wear on a daily basis and I think even my mother might find it a little bit too revealing but it's what needed to be done. I'm almost sort of proud of my little artwork.

"How do I look?" I ask Hadley.

A wicked smile settles upon her lips, "Fuckable."

Like me, Hadley has ditched her wig and fake colored contacts for how she really looks, revealing her sleek black hair and slanted cat-like almond brown eyes. She looks extremely good without her glasses, all dolled-up in black eyeliner and shadow with leather biker high-waisted shorts and an off-the-shoulder red crop top, not all black like I've decided. You think she's someone who's a model in a music video, the type of girls rappers sing about fucking, not the bookish girl who once hacked into the school security system in middle school and then told the principal how to better secure it.

"What about me?" Hadley inquireS.

"Perfect," I say, opening my Uber app. "Now let's go."

-

Getting out of the apartment was easy enough as Hadley's mother, Veronica Nguyen, was hardly ever home. She had taken off for Italy to visit a twenty-eight-year-old sculptor whose work she was acquiring, explaining to Hadley earlier morning before she left for the airport that remaining in New York was "too much". Besides, she was sure that Hadley and I could fend for ourselves for a month, what with two live-ins and a day staff of four to assist us.

Maternal instinct has never been my aunt's strong suit, even before the recent divorce between her and her high-flying entertainment agent of an ex-husband. You see after my parents passed away, I'd move to California to stay with my dad's sister and her family.

Spending the last three years in Los Angeles with Hadley and her family had allowed me plenty of time to plan the perfect revenge from afar. My uncle hardly paid any mind to his family, condemning his children into a distant, overgrowing hatred they harbor towards their father and his wife, my aunt Veronica, into a life of a bored housewife, throwing parties to add meaning to her life. She spent hours in her room and began relying on cocktails of prescription medication to get through her days.

Los Angeles was intensely isolating. The parental figures I thought I could look towards were stale, lifeless people, and I felt completely alien and out-of-bounds living in a mansion in Beverly Hills. As a New York native, I'd never thought Hell would look like suburbia with fourteen-dollar Erewhon green juices and stale bagels.

What kept me getting through the last three years was the thirst for revenge, the seed of anger growing through me toxic weeds from broken floorboards. Coming back to New York was always part of the plan...but I had to pick the right time. Every moment spent away had been calculated and meticulously put together to bring me back. 

The Nguyens' divorce was due to Hadley's father philandering adultery across the entire Western coast. The man was pretty much fucking half of Hollywood but it was a well-kept secret my uncle had been harboring for a good ten years, hidden under a web of well-spun lies and jeweled bribes Mr. Nguyen paid off his guilt to his wives and mistresses. Regardless, I knew it was a secret I needed to expose to prompt Veronica to move back to Manhattan, her hometown.

So naturally, after catching her husband frenching his secretary when she was supposed at a hair appointment six months ago, Mr. Nguyen has gotten the Muholland mansion, the art collection, and the predictably nubile mistress. Veronica has gotten the New York brownstone, the summer place on Block Island, and Hadley and me.

Being back in New York after three years away has been so surreal. I still take my moment to soak in everything while I sit in our Uber, a sleek little Mercedes, as our driver, a stout, plump man whose eyes are primarily fixed onto my cleavage, cruise through Manhattan's traffic. I glance at Hadley, trying to read her expression but they look like mirrors, glossy and empty. Anxiety is wavering off her like a radar, wondering if we'll actually be able to pull off this part of my plan.

Phase One is completed, which is to slip Luciana Santiago the drug. The drug will react when she imbibes alcohol and takes about ten to thirty minutes to fully activate. Those ten to thirty minutes will be the most crucial to the plan because I must find a way to get her immobile body away from her friends unnoticed and bring her back to Hadley's, safe and sound. When she wakes up, she'll think I'm the savior who must've helped her when she was too drunk to do anything.

And thus, those will be the first steps I'll be making my grand entrance into their lives.

After the Uber pulls up by the curb, Hadley and I arrive at a queue of people clambering around the entrance of Le Noir, trying to get in. We could hear the bass pumping from here, a trap remix of an A$ap Rocky song vibrating thickly through the cement sidewalks. The number of people congregating outside of Le Noir seems to overwhelm the streets, packed with all sorts of crowds from clueless tourists sampling Manhattan's nightlife to the hard rollers of Wall Street brokers, from the rich desperate housewives on the Upper Eastside going out for a 'girl's night' to Chinese businessmen willing to compete with each other in who will splurge the most. All sorts of people, all with cash weighing down their people, displaying such extravagance with the jewelry pulsing on their necks and the dresses adorning their slim bodies, baffling me.

Both of us ignore the line and march right up to the bouncer, a man with a neck as thick as tree trunks and a body the size of a truck. During the Uber ride, Hadley manages to hack into Le Noir's security system on her phone in order to find out who had a guest list so we can sneak into the club without paying cover, bouncers checking IDs, and lining up.

Hadley is an expert at hacking. She's been so she was thirteen and I've never seen her fail from breaking into something. I think that's because she likes it- she likes the challenge of breaching something forbidden, the satisfaction of stealing privacy, and going through people's most vulnerable thoughts. I think she likes trying to understand people through how they operate online. In a way, she's sort of terrifying with the way she can just hack you with a swipe of a finger, a few taps of a button, and know all of your darkest secrets. Without her, I wouldn't be able to come this far.

"There's a guest list under a guy name 'Fraiser', another one under Alison Louise and another...with, of course, Orson Calloway."

"We'll say 'Fraiser'," I tell her and she nods. "Did it say what names are on the list?"

"Here," she pass me her phone and I read the contents of her screen, a list of names under 'Fraiser list in Le Noir's computer. My eyes scan down the mass of names, trying to pick a favorite of mine and use to get through security.

"How do you feel about going as Natalie and Cassandra?" I ask Hadley, who in correspondence, smirks.

"Not too bad, Natalie," she winks at me and I laugh, shaking my head and wrapping my arm around her shoulder, bringing her into a tight, quick squeeze.

We stride out towards the bouncer, flitting through the lines gracefully with confidence, pretending like we were meant to be here. That's the thing with a disguise- you need to have the confidence or nobody will buy it. You need to create an illusion so strong that even you believe it. It works the same logic as popularity.

Popularity is a weird thing. You can't really define it and it's not cool to talk about it, but you know it when you see it. Like a lazy eye, or porn.

Popularity is a game of illusion and the ones who got it are the ones who are the best at fooling everyone. 

"We're under a guest list," I inform the bouncer proudly, ignoring the glares of disdain and contempt thrown by the people in line while a voice nags at the back of my head. What if this doesn't work? What do you do? Plan B? Break in from the backdoor? Immediately, my mind begins formulating backup plans while the bouncer arches an eyebrow, studying me like I'm up to no good. Oh, if only.

"Which guest-list?"

"Fraiser," Hadley steps in, just as confidently.

He taps on his iPad, still unamused. "Names?"

"Natalie," I introduce my alias for the night, "And-"

"Cassandra," Hadley finishes, brandishing a deep burgundy MAC lipstick out from her clutch and expertly swiping it across her lips without the need of a mirror.

"Alright," he sighs, stepping away from the blockade he created with his body and unhooking the velvet rope. "Welcome to Le Noir. Kristy will take you to your table by the VIP."

'Kristy' happens to be one of the girls working the entrance, dressed in matching black bandage dresses. They're the ushers for Le Noir, I suppose. Kristy is reasonably pretty in the way all girls are, with noticeable breasts pushed out from her dress and her makeup heavy and dark. "Hold out your wrists," she orders and we obey, confused slightly until she reaches out and stamps on our wrists with the insignia that says Le Noir and at the bottom, VIP. She smiles at us in a way how retailers smile at customers, then says: "Now follow me."

We enter into the electric blue tunnel- the club's entrance glows neon cyan, blinding them in the sudden flare of LED lights. The rush of AC and cigarette smoke infiltrate our nostrils and though we are nowhere near the main room, the EDM bass is on the verge of bursting my eardrums.

Around what I supposed is the lobby of the club, a couple of chaise lounges are stationed in the middle of the all-black space. A crew of people is loitering around that area, laughing as they take group pictures and selfies with each other. There is an elevator, where several stragglers are waiting for it to arrive.

Kristy marches right up to the elevator and we fall in behind her. I hum slightly to the song that's playing upstairs, which has switched its music into something a little more chill: a remix of Don't Tell Em by Jeremih.

The elevator directly sends us into the club, opening its door and revealing the all-black interior bathed in dark neon colours of blue and purple, flashing and transitioning from one color to another as Le Noir's color palette seems to never deviate from purple, black and blue. At the front, there's an elevated podium where the DJ's booth sits and plenty of little erected stages scattered over the room for dancers. The bar is situated near the elevator, deep in the back, and there are plush blue couches with obsidian black tables spread in a circular motion around the dance floor of people grinding and bumping to the beat. 

"The VIP is over there," Kristy yells over the deafening music, grabbing me out of my trance and making me focus on the task at hand. She gestures over to the section where it's closed off with glass fences surrounding the elevated podium and a bouncer guarding it with a black velvet rope. I spot Parker Holtz's blonde halo of head shifting in a blur of gold within the dark fringes of the VIP section, clutching a glass of champagne. Target spotted. "I'll take you-"

"Oh no, it's okay. We want to just hang around here for a while before we go," I lie easily through my teeth and Kristy nods in understanding before waltzing back to outside the club to attend to other clients.

Together, Hadley and I make a detour over to the VIP section, skirting around the glass fence, trying to blend in with the commoner crowd while keeping a watchful eye on Orson and his friends lounging by the VIP section, relaxing by the love seats and banana chairs, sipping on Dom Perignon to start the night off before they hit the vodka and things get wilder.

It's no surprise Orson and his friends manage to rack up spaces for VIPs, even though it costs about five thousand dollars and above for a table in a high-end place like Le Noir. With Hadley hacking into Orson's bank statements, which are in no account a modest sum at all, he regularly blows around the ten thousand dollar mark on a night out.

As I pretend to look as if I'm engaging Hadley in a conversation, leaning to whisper in her ear, my eyes are searching for Luciana Santiago. I find her draped on Phineas Yeong's lap like a fancy accessory, laughing at something he whispers in her ear, a hand inching further up her lap, disappearing deeper under the hem of her uncomfortably tight Zac Posen bandage dress that seems to be cutting off her blood circulation.

You might wonder why Luciana Santiago when I'm technically aiming for Orson? You see, Luciana Santiago might be sinfully beautiful with her doe-eyes and model-like legs but she's not the brightest crayon in the box. I remember that she has been my chemistry partner in sixth grade and she'd ask me why there were letters in Maths when it's supposed to be about numbers. Needless to say, she'll probably be the easiest for me to gain her trust and the weakest out of their wolf pack.

I watch her as Phineas tip the glass into Luciana's lips, where she takes it eagerly and downs the champagne. I smile. Good.

An expression of discomfort settles on her face when the alcohol hits her, soaking into her bloodstream, activating the drug I've sedated her with. Luciana puts a hand on her mouth and clutches her stomach, looking green like she's experiencing nausea.

"I can't believe it's working," whispers Hadley.

"Don't jinx it," I hiss.

Luciana clambers off of Phineas's lap, steadying herself on her six-inch heels as she gags and her face twists in repulsion like she's holding back vomit. I lip-read Phineas's mouth moving, shaping out 'Are you okay?' Luciana nods against her better judgment and tells him that she's going to the bathroom, stumbling out from the closed-off VIP section onto the floor.

I waste no time tailing her. I merge into the crowd as I weave through people's gyrating bodies, swaying to the dance beat while gaining speed on Luciana's figure as she dashes to the bathroom.

When I enter the bathroom, casually, of course, Luciana Santiago has hurled herself onto a sink, clutching the sides with white knuckles, hunched over the white ceramic sink as if she's about to throw up from one too many when she's only had a few sips of champagne. I glance down at the floor, checking if there's anybody inside the toilet stalls, and mentally fist-pumped. I thank my lucky stars that nobody's in the bathroom except for us. Perfect.

I arrange my face into an expression of innocent concern and prepare myself to say my first words to Luciana Santiago; the very first words that will bring me into their world and destroy it from the inside.

"Hey," I pose sweetly, like the perfect bystander, "Are you okay?"

"I'm..." Luciana Santiago winces and rubs her forehead with her fingers like she has a headache. "I'm just feeling a little sick. Must be something I ate, maybe."

"Hmm, maybe," I reply smoothly, trying to make my breath even. Luciana tilts her head up to stare at her reflection, examining her pretty face scrunched up and shakes her head, dismissing it as nothing and murmuring something under her breath that I quite can't catch.

Just as about as she pivots to take a step away from the sink, Luciana Santiago's feet wobble in her strappy heels and she trips, ultimately collapsing onto the ground as the drug has rendered her unconscious, like a marionette cut from her strings.

I stretch out my fingers as I look upon her limp form and smirk, finally savoring the sweet taste of my first official victory where Luciana Santiago is at my mercy.

"Got you." 

-

when you think about it, amory is actually pretty fucked in the head. but i love it.