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PERLA

When the first email came in from the TFK guy, we pretty much dismissed it. I mean, we get a lot of random stuff, and most of it is just attention-seekers, you know? And then the second one came in, and even though it was also bullshit, with two emails, there was enough of something that we could at least build an episode around it. But obviously, it’s fake. I mean, come on. Leewood did it. We all know it. But whatever. It stirs up the listeners, which is why we replied to it.

—Rachel, Murder Unplugged

In a private training room at the country club’s gym, I bent forward, looped my arms around the girth of a tire, and pulled. Stepping backward, I hissed out an exhale as it slid a few feet.

“That’s it,” Joshua said.

I continued, my legs and shoulders burning from the effort. The tire was a hundred and forty pounds of deadweight. I had to imagine a body would be easier and less cumbersome.

Thankfully, I wouldn’t be moving anyone a great distance. I would need to get them from Sophie’s bed, down to the floor, then shift and arrange them into place. The girls would be groggy and barely functional, but they wouldn’t be deadweight. Not yet.

Plus, Sophie was light. Only eighty-nine pounds, per her last doctor’s exam. I would move her last, in case the other two girls took it out of me.

“Almost there ...” Joshua called out as I staggered the final feet across our makeshift finish line. “Now, drop and give me twenty push-ups. Good ones, Perla. I want your nose tapping the mat with each one.”

I dropped into position, spacing my hands apart and lining them up with my shoulders, staying off my knees.

I had increased my sessions with Joshua from twice a week to three, and my home workouts from five days a week to seven. My body was already responding. While I had always been strong and fit, I was going to be in the best shape of my life by Sophie’s party, with a new face and slimmer waist to match.

As I performed the push-ups, I thought about my next steps with Paige. Her first day was tomorrow, and it seemed like my job, at least initially, was to woo her into a sense of false security. I needed her to rave about her new job to her friends and be wowed by our lifestyle. Even better if those conversations with friends included a complaint about Sophie.

I finished the set and collapsed onto the mat, thinking up different ways to pit Paige against Sophie.