Private 8 - Revelation (13 page)

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But it wasn't just that. It was also Amberly. Her transformation had me officially freaked. The girl had to be seriously disturbed if she was purposely trying to emulate a cold- blooded killer. Maybe, just maybe, Ivy wasn't the only person on campus worth looking into after all.

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SIDEKICKS

The freshman girls always gathered in the bathroom on the first floor of the class building after fourth period. They would scurry in there in a loud, giggling, gabbing clump and spend at least fifteen minutes doing God knows what before reemerging and heading off to lunch. The rest of us avoided that bathroom like it was the source of a festering boil plague. Honestly, freshman girls could be really annoying. They all dressed alike, they all sounded alike, they all looked alike. I could hardly wait for a few of them to mature, grow their own personalities, and infuse a little variety into the group.But on Monday after fourth period, I broke the upperclassman rules. I walked downstairs and straight into the freshman bathroom. Instantly all their shrieking and laughter died down. There were at least ten of them in front of the long mirror, fixing their liquid eyeliner and brushing their super-straight hair, but at my entrance, they

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had all frozen in place like members of some kind of freak, designer-clad mime show.

"I'm looking for Lara and... her friend," I said.

Just like that, the entire room emptied out. Bliss compacts were tossed into Cole Haan bags. A dozen pairs of nearly identical Stuart Weitzman booties hurried past me out the door. Only two girls remained, looking like they'd just been cornered by a rabid pit bull. Lara and Nameless. Amberly's two sidekicks. Or former sidekicks. Now that she had ascended to Billings, she was freshman-lackey free. I was hoping to use the fact that she'd kicked the 'kicks to the curb faster than last season's Jimmy Choos to my advantage.

"Hey, there," I said, dropping my bag on the counter next to the white marble sinks. "Don't look so freaked." I looked at the girl whose name I didn't know. She was kind of mousy, with dark blond hair that fell straight down her back. No bangs. No defining features. Her brown eyes were wide as she stared at me, and she was gripping the sink behind her for dear life. "What's your name:

"Kirsten?" she said timidly.

"Nice name," I said with a smile, trying to get her to relax.

Her lips curled into a small smile. "Thanks. I like yours too."

Lara, who was a bit taller and had slightly darker blond hair that also hung straight down her back, smacked Kirsten's arm with the back of her hand and said something under her breath.

"Listen, I know there are a lot of rumors going around about me, but none of them are true," I told them, crossing my arms over my

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chest. "And all I really want to know from you is if you remember the night of Cheyenne's... death."

I didn't want to use the word murder. I had a feeling Kirsten might faint if I did and crack her tiny skull open on the sink. And that, in the words of acronym-happy Portia, would be VNG. The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, then turned to me.

"Yeah...," they said in unison.

"Do you happen to remember what you did that night? And whether or not Amberly was with you?" I asked. Lara's brow knit, obviously trying to figure out why I was asking. Kirsten, however, jumped right in.

"Oh, yeah. Amberly was totally with us. Amberly's always with us," she said, waving a hand.

"Or she used to be," Lara said bitterly. She pushed away from the sinks and took a step toward me, eyeing me discerningly. "What's all this about?"

Okay, so this girl was shrewd. I knew she was on the paper with Constance, so she was probably pulling a Lois Lane here, trying to sniff out my motive and stuff like that. Live the life of an ace reporter as she imagined it.

"I'm helping a friend out with a story," I said, thinking quickly. "You know Marc Alberro, right?"

Lara relaxed. "Marc? Yeah, I know him."

"Well, he's doing an in-depth piece on where various people of interest were that night, so I told him I'd help out with the interviews,"

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I said quickly. I glanced at Kirsten and away from Lara's prying eyes. "So you guys were all together."

"Yeah. That was the night we tried out that new workout DVD, remember?" Kirsten said, turning as she yanked a lip gloss out of her bag. She looked at Lara in the mirror. "Some kind of Pilates fusion thing? Our abs hurt for days. And then, in the middle of the night, Amberly knocked over that bottle of water we left out and it woke us all up and you threw your Build-A-Bear at her? Remember?"

"Kirsten!" Lara said through her teeth. She looked at me and blushed. "I do not have a Build-A-Bear."

I stifled a laugh as Lara's skin tone deepened. "So Amberly knocked over a water bottle in the middle of the night," I said. "Coming back from the bathroom, or... ?"

"Yep," Lara said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Coming back from the bathroom."

"No! She went out, remember?" Kirsten said in a scolding tone as she finished glossing her lips. "She disappeared for, like, hours and then snuck back into the room at, like, the ass crack of dawn?" she said, narrowing her eyes as she tried to recall. She lifted a desperate hand in Lara's direction. "I can't believe you don't remember this. You were so mad!"

My heart skipped a beat as I took this information in. Disappeared for hours? And Lara was trying to cover it up? Did that mean that Amberly went somewhere she shouldn't have gone? Did she have time to--

"It wasn't dawn, Kirsten, it was more like two a.m.," Lara corrected

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her friend. "I remember that because it was still totally dark out and we had to turn the light on to clean up the spill."

Two a.m. Cheyenne had still been alive at 2 a.m. She hadn't even gotten back to Billings from the headmaster's office until almost one thirty, and then we'd had our fight. And I remember some paramedic saying the estimated time of death was more like 4 a.m. Which would mean Amberly was tucked back in her bed when Cheyenne died. Unless, of course, Lara was wrong--or lying. In any case, where Amberly had gone in the middle of the night was a mystery.

"You're sure it was two a.m.," I said, looking at both of them.

"Positive," Lara said. "Kirsten likes to overexaggerate."

"She's right. I do," Kirsten said with a giggle.

"Well, thanks, girls." I shouldered my bag and tucked my hair behind my ear. "That's all I need to know." I paused before striding out the door. "Say hi to your bear for me," I threw over my shoulder.

I smiled as I walked out the door, even though I'd just proven that bitchy blond upstart innocent. These days, I had to find the fun where I could get it.

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***

Tuesday at lunch I sat with Diana, Shane, and Sonal as they quizzed one another on French vocab words they would need to know for their final. Since I wasn't taking French, I was able to tune them out and stare off into space. Which basically meant I was staring at the Billings table.

Noelle and Amberly sat across from each other at the first seats near the aisle. Noelle in her usual chair, Amberly in my old seat--which was also Ariana's old seat. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, and she wore a pressed white shirt under an aqua-colored, cable-knit sweater vest and a gray skirt, plus a light blue scarf. When I squinted, she looked exactly like Ariana. Was I the only person around here who had noticed her transformation? Was I the only one who was totally creeped out by it? "Have you guys noticed anything different about Amberly lately?" I asked my tablemates, interrupting the vocab round-robin.

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"You mean like the fact that she's gone from sniveling bitch to bossy bitch in less than a week?" Shane replied, taking a bite of her ham sandwich. "Has to be a record, even for Easton."

Diana and Shane giggled. Sonal covered her mouth with her hand to keep from spitting her chicken salad everywhere.

"Well, that and... isn't she kind of dressing differently?" I asked.

They all leaned in to see the Billings table better. After a moment Diana shrugged. "Still preppy and peppy," she said. "I swear that girl has at least one cable-knit sweater in every color in the universe."

"I thought Seattle girls were supposed to be more, like, earthy," Sonal commented, tossing her long black hair behind her shoulder as she sucked at her teeth.

"Apparently Amberly didn't get the memo," Shane replied.

"But she doesn't look like she's trying to emulate anyone else?" I prodded.

They glanced over again. "Laura Bush?" Shane suggested.

Then they all cracked up laughing and got back to their work. So much for that. Maybe it was just because I had known Ariana better than they had. Or maybe I was just trying to see something that wasn't there. And there was always the chance that I was getting a tad obsessed with this whole Cheyenne murder thing.

I was about to return to my lunch when Kiran's ex--Dreck Boy James--walked by Noelle with his tray of food. She said something to him as he passed--something I couldn't hear, but which cracked up the other girls at the table. James paused for a moment, turning beet

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red. For a second I thought he was going to say something back, and I willed him to do it. To just stand up for himself. But instead he ducked his head and kept walking.

Noelle smiled happily to herself as she sipped her water, and suddenly all those feelings from that awful day last year came flooding back. The terrified look on Kiran's face when Noelle had told her they knew who she was dating. How Noelle had basically blackmailed her into breaking up with James. How atrocious and nauseated I had felt when I had been the one forced to do it. As much as I had grown to love Noelle, I wished that just once she could get a taste of how she made other people feel. Just once I wished someone would blackmail her or make her feel less than worthy.

At that moment I so wished I hadn't destroyed that Billings disc. It would have been such perfect blackmail material. If I still had it, I could use it to get her to listen to me. Get her to finally hear my side. Maybe even get myself back into Billings. Damn my temper. Why did I have to go and crack the thing in half without thinking ahead to--

And then, just like that, an intense wave of heat overcame me. Just like that, epiphany. I could have made a copy of the disc. I hadn't, of course, but I could have. All I had to do was make Noelle believe that I still had the information and the upper hand was mine. For the first time since she had booted me from Billings, I felt an exhilarating thrill of possibility. For the first time I could taste my comeback.

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I knew I would have to put my Noelle plan into action ASAP, before I lost my nerve. The only problem was, the girl never went anywhere alone. If I had any shot of getting her to listen to me, she was going to have to be solo, because when other people were around she wouldn't be able to give me an inch. That would be perceived as a weakness, and she couldn't have that.

So that night I called Sabine and asked her to keep an eye on Noelle for me. If the girl did happen to leave Billings on her own for any reason, Sabine was to call me. Much to my surprise, Sabine didn't even ask me why I needed this info. She probably just assumed I was going to try to beg my way back into Billings. Right end game, wrong method.

The call came in the next morning. Early. My heart was in my throat as I fumbled to answer my phone, unaccustomed to sudden blasts of music at such an ungodly hour.

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"Hello?" I said, breathless, trying to shake the sleep from my head.

"Noelle and Amberly just left for Coffee Carma. They're meeting up with their party planner to visualize decorations for the pre-Kiran thing before Coffee Carma gets crowded," Sabine whispered to me. "I know she's not alone, but it's close. It might be your only chance."

"Thanks, Sabine," I said, tossing the covers aside.

"Good luck," she replied just before I turned off the phone.

I dressed quickly, throwing on a black turtleneck sweater and pulling my hair back into a ponytail. In the bathroom I threw some cold water on my face and looked at my reflection. I looked tired and pasty, but I was just going to have to make the best of it. I grabbed my Chloe bag and my books and raced from the dorm.

The campus was cold, gray, and mostly deserted, the once pristine snow now decimated by a thousand muddy footprints. I passed by Mr. Cross on his morning stroll and slipped into Mitchell Hall. My heart bounced around in my chest as I approached the conservatory and I took a deep breath, endeavoring to compose myself. Noelle could not see me looking anxious or tentative. I had to appear in control. Confident.

"I'm thinking color. Lots of garish, over-the-top color," Noelle was saying as I entered the room. Her voice echoed in the high-ceilinged space as Amberly and the party planner followed her along the window wall. She wore a black knit dress, black tights, and black boots, while Amberly wore a very similar outfit, but in white. With the blue scarf, of course. "I'm sick of white twinkle lights. Enough

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already. Let's get hot pink and red and purple. Let's make it a sultry, glam Christmas thing."

"Brilliant," the party planner said, making a note on her clipboard. She was a tall, lithe woman with shorn red hair and tiny square glasses. Her kelly-green wide-leg pants were beyond trendy, and they made her waist look like it had the same circumference as a soda can. "Simply brilliant."

"Everyone's just going to die," Amberly gushed.

Noelle shot her a brief look of scorn, and I knew exactly what she was thinking--so gauche. Hadn't someone already died? So apparently, Amberly wasn't totally perfect in Noelle's eyes. The thought awoke a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest.

At the Coffee Carma counter someone fired up the foam maker and the noise caught the threesome's attention. They all turned and spotted me hovering. "Oh, look," Noelle said, looking down her nose at me. "It's my stalker."

The party planner's eyes widened in alarm. Her trembling hand went right to the oversize beaded necklace at her throat. Clearly Easton's reputation as the murder capital of the private school world had gotten around. And I guess I did look a little wild-eyed, considering what I was about to do.