A Twist of Hate by Crystal Hubbard Page B

their conversations when she almost walked into the laundry room during Emma’s ironing.
                  “You did right to stop it,” Emma had said in heavily accented English. “No good was gonna come of Ronnie sneakin’ ‘round with that Littlefield boy. I see him around here with Miss Chrissie. He’s nothin’ but no good! What was Ronnie thinking? Thank the Lord he didn’t get her with a baby.”
                  Chrissie learned of Karen and Maleah on a night when Michael left her in the car with his cell phone for too long while he chatted up the pretty African-American window girl at Mr. Wizard’s Frozen Custard Stand. His text logs, detailed play-by-plays of his secret affairs, had been fascinating reading. Chrissie had collected her aces and had patiently waited for the perfect moment to play them.
                    Michael frantically searched his mind for who could have ratted him out. He’d always been careful to keep his secret life secret. As much as he enjoyed bragging of his conquests, he’d only done so to a handful of people, none who would have repeated anything to Chrissie.
                  Had Brian told her? Possibly. More than possibly. Brian had never liked him. Brian had laughed in his face when he told him and Camden that he’d been grinding groins with Veronica. But Brian had never known about Karen and Maleah.
                  Could Bitsy have told her, stupid Bitsy who had run into him and Karen at the library, and who’d believed him—so he thought—when he said he was only tutoring Karen? Bitsy knew about Karen and possibly even Maleah, having seen him twice chatting with Maleah at the frozen yogurt shop. Bitsy couldn’t have known about Veronica.
                  Bitsy knows I’m her connection to Cam, he thought. She’d never rat me out to Chrissie. So who’d done it? Who was the snitch?
                  The most likely candidate came to mind, and his entire body seemed to relax and tense at the same time.
                  Siobhan Curran.
                  Bitsy couldn’t keep her mouth shut about anything, so she must have told Siobhan about Karen and Maleah the day Bitsy met Siobhan at Twin Lakes. Michael himself had told Siobhan about Veronica.
                  Veronica had been so easy. He’d hidden a few pieces of his mother’s good silver in the trunk of his car, then told Veronica that he’d have her mother labeled a thief and fired—and he’d broadcast it all over Prescott. That threat of humiliation terrified Veronica, and Michael happily exploited her fears. She had done everything he told her to, as often and whenever he wanted. The only reason he finally let her go was because she began acting crazy at school: keeping to herself, letting her grades slip—once she exploded in tears when he entered her classroom.
                  Siobhan Curran had been entirely different. He couldn’t charm her, as he’d so easily charmed Karen and Maleah, and he couldn’t blackmail her. He’d tried to force her, knowing that as the new girl at Prescott, no one would believe her if she accused him of anything. But she was strong, too strong. And slippery! He’d gotten his hands on her only to take a punch in the face that temporarily blinded one of his eyes. He’d never hated anyone as much as he hated Siobhan Curran, and clearly she hated him right back. Why else had she worked so hard to turn Chrissie against him?
                  “That bitch has her hooks in you, too,” Michael muttered angrily, looming over Chrissie. “I don’t know what she told you, but you can’t believe a word of it! When she first moved here, I thought I was being nice by offering to show her around town, since she was new. She invited me to her house, and the next thing I knew, she was all over me! I didn’t give her what she wanted so she made up all