She's Got a Way by Maggie McGinnis Page B

now was because of Laura’s deciding vote.
    â€œDid they deserve it?” His voice was quiet, but the question was honest.
    â€œIt depends how you interpret the school policies, but I guarantee you, if it had been just Sam and Eve who’d snuck out, Priscilla would have pushed even harder to expel them. The fact that they did their crime with Madison and Waverly probably saved them, as ironic as that seems.”
    Gabi saw a look pass over Luke’s face—a mixture of emotions she couldn’t quite identify—before he set his jaw and nodded slowly.
    â€œWhat if it’d been the other two who’d snuck out?”
    â€œThen I can almost guarantee you and I would have never met. The incident would have been quietly swept under the rug.”
    â€œShocking.”
    â€œThey’re good kids, Luke. All four of them are. But they’re so locked into their patterns that you’d never know it. You’d certainly never know it, based on what you’ve seen the past few days.” She fisted her hands in her lap. “I’ve spent the entire year trying to figure out how to get through to them, but wow. Turtles have nothing on the shells these girls wear.”
    â€œAnd I imagine Sam’s and Eve’s are the toughest of all?”
    â€œOf course they are. They’ve both been shoved around their entire lives, house to house, family to family, hell to bigger hell. I interviewed fifty girls for these two scholarships, Luke. I would have taken them all, just to get them out of the lives they were trying to survive. It broke my heart.”
    He was silent for a long, long moment, just staring out at the lake. Then he turned to her. “I have to ask, then. Why would you stick the four of them together in a suite? Madison’s as bitchy as they come, and Waverly will do whatever Madison tells her. Why’d you sic them on two innocents?”
    Gabi looked down at her lap. “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times, believe me.” Then she sighed. “Honestly? Beyond my bigger, lofty, impossible goals, I thought, given time, they’d figure out that they’re not nearly as different as they think. All four of them have essentially been abandoned by their parents—just in different ways. I thought that somehow, some way, maybe that would bind them.”
    â€œBut no?”
    â€œGod, no. I mean, there have been moments … weeks, even, when things were pretty okay. But then Madison will step up her game, or Sam will preempt her by stepping up hers, and Eve and Waverly end up caught in the middle choosing sides, and then…”
    â€œChaos.”
    â€œYup.”
    He was thoughtful for another long moment, and then he shifted in his chair, turning to look straight at her.
    â€œHey, Gabi?” His voice was soft, almost tender, as he touched her shoulder. It was just the briefest touch, but it sent swirling, zappy zings straight to her toes. “Would you kill me if I said it sounds like maybe … maybe you’ve actually all ended up exactly where you need to be?”

 
    Chapter 8
    Hours later, Gabi lay awake on her cot, desperate for sleep, but unable to close her eyes as she replayed her conversation with Luke. It was almost dawn, and the girls were asleep, the usual scratches and snuffles filtering in from outside the tent as the coons and skunks made their rounds. Funny how after only a few days, the girls were learning to sleep through it.
    She didn’t dare move, since one squeak of her cot could wake them all up, and really, sleeping was the only cooperative thing they’d managed since they’d arrived.
    In her more delusional moments in the week before they’d left Briarwood, she’d tried to convince herself that maybe, like Luke had hinted, this summer could be an opportunity to finally draw the four teens together … to find some common ground that could bind them for the upcoming