The Rules Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.”
    “Well, we’ll think of something. For each of you. Now let’s put on our
game
faces,” Beth said, chuckling at her pun. She smiled brightly. “Do I look good? No lip gloss on my teeth?”
    Before either girl could answer her, the door crashed open, nearly smashing her in the face. “Hey!” Beth yelled as she stumbled backward and collided with Thea, who bumped into Robin.
Not
the grand entrance Beth had planned.
    None other than Larson himself shoved past her on his way out.
Pushing
her. He didn’t even seem to notice. She registered the slight and knew Robin and Thea had, too. She swallowed her heart along with her pride.
    “Lar, you startled me,” she said in a high, friendly tone, but he kept going.
    “Dude, where you going? Party’s inside,” said a weed-laden voice.
    Cage Preston swaggered up behind her as tall as a mountain, gorilla-huge, his arms so muscular he couldn’t lower them to his sides anymore. There were raised veins like long, hard worms underneath his skin. When he went down the football field, people yelled, “Hulk
smash
!” He deserved the gaudy MVP ring he wore on the pinky of his left hand—
MVP
spelled out in glittering rhinestones, with a red enamel
C
just below the
V
, for
Callabrese.
    For a second Beth thought Larson was going to ignore Cage, too. Then he moved his shoulders and put his hands in the pockets of his Callabrese High letter jacket. “Gotta smoke,” he said, then stomped off into the darkness.
    “You can smoke at the party,” Cage called after him. More to himself, he added, “We always smoke at the parties.”
    “Jerk,” Thea muttered.
    Beth’s cheeks went hot. Larson was permitted any level of jerkiness, but a nobody like Thea could not get away with commenting on it.
    “Let’s go in,” Beth said, leading her two lambs to the slaughter.
    Even Beth had to catch her breath as they entered the warehouse. August had outdone himself—correction, outdone himself and
her
—with a huge cavern of a room that was rippling with holographic projections of hellish flames reaching to the thirty-foot ceiling. It was amazing. Animatronic bats squeaked and dive-bombed from way high up in the rafters on filament wires. There was a hanging skeleton whose jaw dropped open with an ear-splitting shriek.
    Prismatic tumbles of scarlet- and pumpkin-colored light spilled across the floor, where leering devil faces grinned and stabbed with pitchforks. Along the walls, glow-in-the-dark coffins held shrouded figures clutching nosegays of dead, dried roses. The figures writhed and shifted very subtly. It was like the set of a Hollywood Halloween movie.
    Beth started picking out the faces of the usual suspects: Praveen, Heather, Morgan; Cage and Larson were outside. She didn’t see Jacob Stein. “Prince” George Frisen was missing, too. And yummy Kyle Thomas.
    A large white banner with dripping bloody letters proclaimed, WELCOME TO HELL! August was standing beneath it in a fedora, khaki trench coat, green silk shirt, and tuxedo pants. The mike of a headset curled in front of his mouth. The fedora hid his hideous bleached hair, and not for the first time, Beth considered that if he just had some pigment to his skin, let his hair grow out to its mousy brown, dyed his eyebrows, and got some permanent lash extensions, he would actually look good. He had great bone structure.
    He was holding an old-fashioned stopwatch and a clipboard. Combined with the mike, he had standard Pact scavenger hunt equipment.
    “Wow, this is cool,” Robin said.
    “It’s scary,” Thea whined, and Beth wanted to slap some sense into her.
    “Hey, Beth, ’scuse,” Cage said, scooting around the three girls to get inside. “August, my man!”
    Cage ambled up to August and clapped him on the shoulder. Two large glowing purple skulls rested on a black coffin-shaped table beside him. One skull was marked HELLNOTES and the other one LIFELINES .
    “Greetings, greetings, you know the routine,” August