Chapter 30: The Burn Book Rules
Regina crossed the cafeteria with the unhurried confidence of someone who understood that pace was its own kind of statement. She didn't rush. She didn't need to. The room did what it always did when Regina George moved through it — attention reorganized itself in her direction without being asked.
She left Cady at the table with Gretchen and Karen and headed toward the junior section.
Karen watched her go, then turned to Cady.
"So," she said, in the warm, conversational tone she used when she was actually gathering information, "you and Mike — you're pretty close, right? You said he was your first friend here."
"He was," Cady said. She was watching Regina's trajectory across the cafeteria with the focused peripheral attention of someone tracking something while appearing not to.
"That's really sweet," Karen said. She paused, in the specific way Karen paused when she was about to say something that required setup. "Can I ask you something?"
Cady looked at her. Karen's face had its characteristic quality — open, genuinely warm, the kind of face that made you feel like whatever you said would be received without judgment. It was, Cady was aware, an extremely effective quality to have.
"Do you like him?" Karen asked. "Like — like him like him?"
Cady opened her mouth.
Closed it.
She looked at Karen's expression — the warmth, the slight tilt of the head, the complete absence of anything that looked like a trap — and ran a fast internal calculation that came out approximately even.
Janis said Karen tells her things sometimes. Karen also told Regina about me.
But Karen also warned me, through Janis, that Regina was paying attention.
Which means Karen is—
"I think he's a really good person," Cady said carefully. "I haven't known him very long."
Karen nodded slowly, like this was a satisfying answer. Then her expression shifted — not dramatically, just a degree toward something that looked like genuine sympathy.
"I'm going to tell you something," Karen said, "because I think you deserve to know." She lowered her voice slightly. "Regina invited you to sit with us for a specific reason. There are rules — we call them the Plastics' rules — and rule number one is that you don't go after someone another member has claimed."
Cady went still.
"Regina's claimed Mike?" she said.
"She hasn't yet. But she's heading over there right now, and once she does—" Karen spread her hands slightly. "The rule applies retroactively. That's how she usually does it."
Cady looked across the cafeteria at Regina's retreating figure. Then she looked at Gretchen, who was sitting very carefully and maintaining a perfect posture and had the specific quality of someone who was not going to contribute to this conversation and had made that decision some time ago.
Then she looked back at Karen.
"Who wrote the rules?" she asked.
Karen looked at her.
"Regina wrote them," she said. "She said it was to prevent conflict within the group." A slight pause. "Mostly they prevent conflict for Regina."
"What else is in them?"
Karen considered this. "A lot. What you wear, where you sit, how you spend your weekends if Regina has something going on." She picked up her milk carton. "Wednesday is pink day. Tomorrow's Tuesday, which means Wednesday's coming up, so—"
"Karen," Gretchen said, very quietly, from the other end of the table.
Karen looked at her.
Gretchen's expression was entirely composed. She didn't say anything else. She didn't need to.
Karen looked back at Cady with the expression of someone who had just reached the boundary of what they were going to say and had decided to stop there.
"Just — be aware," Karen said. "That's all I'm saying."
Cady sat with what she'd been handed.
She looked at Gretchen — polished, contained, the specific quality of someone who had learned to maintain elegance as a full-time occupation and found it exhausting but couldn't stop. Two years of rules drafted by someone else. Two years of moving her schedule around Regina's calendar. The careful posture of a person who had given something up gradually and wasn't sure exactly when it had happened.
Oppression breeds resistance, something in Cady's mind offered. A phrase she'd encountered in a history text somewhere.
She looked at Gretchen and filed the observation.
Regina had covered the cafeteria in the time it took for this exchange to happen, and her approach to the junior section had the specific effect it always had.
The girls at Mike's table saw her coming.
The first one stood up. This was the thing about Regina's presence — it didn't demand anything explicitly, it just created a pressure differential, and people moved to equalize it. Second girl stood. Third. The table cleared with the efficiency of a tide going out, until only Mike and Lina remained.
Lina had decided, somewhere in the previous thirty seconds, that she was not moving.
This was a brave decision. It was also, as she was now discovering, a decision that had costs she hadn't fully priced in advance. Regina stopped at the table and looked at Lina with the bright, pleasant expression of someone who was going to win this and wanted to be gracious about it.
"Mike and I have some catching up to do," Regina said, with the warm directness of someone doing you a favor by being clear. "You're welcome to stay if you want."
The implication being: but you're going to wish you hadn't.
Lina's cheeks had gone pink. She was holding her ground on principle and it was costing her something, and the whole cafeteria was watching, and the math of the situation was becoming increasingly clear.
Mike looked at her.
"Lina," he said, quietly. "I'll see you in class."
It wasn't go away. It was I'm giving you the exit. The specific difference mattered, and Lina was smart enough to take it.
She picked up her tray, squared her shoulders, looked at Regina with the concentrated expression of someone storing a grievance for future reference, and left.
"Interesting girl," Regina said, watching her go. She sat down across from Mike with the composed ease of someone who had never doubted the outcome. "She's got some fight in her."
"She does," Mike agreed.
Regina tilted her head. "Is that an endorsement?"
"It's an observation."
She smiled — a different smile than the ones she distributed generally. More specific. The smile of someone who had gotten somewhere and was acknowledging it.
She reached across the table and set a carton of milk in front of him — a gesture that was simultaneously completely mundane and completely calculated, her fingers brushing the back of his hand as she let go.
The cafeteria registered this with the collective awareness of a room that had been watching.
"You've been hard to get to," Regina said, sitting back, perfectly composed. "I don't usually have to work this hard."
"I haven't been avoiding you," Mike said.
"No," she said. "You've just been consistently busy. Which is almost the same thing, except it's less rude." She looked at him with the directness of someone who had decided to stop performing indifference. "I'm curious about you, Mike Quinn. You show up, you take apart our entire social hierarchy in two weeks without appearing to try, and you look at everyone the same way — like you're paying attention but you're not impressed. Most people either try to fit in or try to stand out. You don't seem to be doing either."
Mike looked at her.
"What am I doing?" he said.
"I don't know yet," Regina said. "That's why I'm curious."
It was, Mike noted, the most honest thing she'd said to him. Possibly the most honest thing he'd heard her say to anyone.
He picked up the milk carton.
"Thank you for this," he said.
She smiled.
Across the cafeteria, at the senior section, Cady had been watching.
She'd watched the table clear. Watched Lina make her stand and take the exit. Watched Regina sit down and the hand-on-hand gesture that had produced a sound from the surrounding tables.
She was aware of her own reaction — the specific feeling of watching someone do something well that you wished they weren't doing, directed at a person you had no claim on and no particular right to feel anything about.
She was also aware that this was extremely inconvenient information about her own feelings.
She put it away.
Janis, she noted, had closed her sketchbook and was watching her watch the exchange across the cafeteria.
"I'm fine," Cady said, before Janis could ask.
"I know," Janis said.
"It's nothing."
"I know," Janis said again, in exactly the same tone, which communicated that she knew it was not nothing and was choosing to respect Cady's current position on the topic.
Damian passed Cady the chips without being asked.
She took some.
Karen caught up with Cady on the way out of the cafeteria.
"Tomorrow's Tuesday," she said, falling into step beside her. "Which means Wednesday — pink day. Regina's going to check."
Cady looked at her.
"Do you own anything pink?" Karen asked.
"I can find something," Cady said.
Karen nodded. Then, at slightly lower volume: "For what it's worth — what I said earlier. About the rules." She kept her eyes forward. "I meant it as a heads-up. Not as an instruction."
Cady looked at Karen's profile.
"I know," she said.
Karen's expression did something brief and complicated.
"Okay," she said. "See you tomorrow."
She peeled off toward the senior hallway.
Cady kept walking.
She pulled out her phone and sent a text to Janis: We need to talk. After school.
Janis's response came back in under thirty seconds: Already knew. My place.
A second message: Also: pink is a good color on you.
A third, from Damian, who had apparently been included: Confirmed. We'll find something.
Cady put her phone away and went to class.
(End of Chapter 30)
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