Private 8 - Revelation (9 page)

"None of this is what I wished for," he said earnestly. "Believe me."

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My heart skipped and I looked at the floor, my eyes filling with tears. My computer had clicked over to a slow song, as if it were trying to make the perfect sound track for our conversation. "Hey," Josh said. He finally reached for my hand, taking it in his. I thought I would never breathe again. "Are you okay? "

I looked up into his eyes, wanting to say about ten million things to him, and that's when we both heard Ivy. The low tones of the slow song were letting her voice come through.

"I can't wait to get Josh to Paris over Christmas," she said, apparently talking into her phone. "Our house on the Left Bank, dinner at Marceau... He's not even going to know what hit him."

I dropped Josh's hand and took a step back as Ivy giggled happily. Josh's guilty expression told me everything.

"You're going to Paris with her?" I whispered.

"Not exactly," he whispered back. "My family's going... her family's going...."

"I have to get out of here," I said, suddenly feeling as if I was going to overheat. I grabbed my coat and started by him.

"Reed, I'm sorry you just heard that, but--"

I whirled on him, stopping him midsentence. His expression was somehow pleading and defiant all at once. Like he didn't want me to be hurt, but like he also felt I had no right to be hurt.

"Just do me one favor," I whispered to him. "Be careful when it comes to Ivy. There's a lot about her that you don't know." Then I turned and walked out of my room, leaving my ex all alone inside.

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FLOWER BOY

The next day after dinner with Diana and a failed study session in the library, I packed up my notebooks and headed back across the quad toward Pemberly. As I approached Drake House I remembered what Constance had said about Marc doing a story on Cheyenne. And if Marc knew anything about S.O., then I wanted to know too.Taking a deep breath, I whipped out my cell and dialed Marc's number. His voice mail picked up automatically.

"This is Marcellus Alberro. I'm unavailable right now, but please leave your name and number at the beep and I will get right back to you. If this is about a story, dial pound to page me. Thanks."

"Hey, Marc. It's Reed. I have a quick question for you. Call me back when you get a chance," I said. Then, as I slipped my iPhone back into my bag, I saw a familiar form rushing toward Drake's back door. I hesitated for a moment, knowing I was probably the last person on

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earth this particular guy would want to talk to, but my adrenaline rush got the better of me.

"James! Hey, James. Wait up!" I called.

The tall, gawky senior turned and looked at me, squinting in the dark. The moment he saw it was me jogging toward him, his jaw clenched. Luckily, however, he didn't sprint off into the night. "Hey," I said, pausing in front of him. "Do you... remember me?" I asked, hoping he somehow didn't. The wind tossed my hair in front of my face and I pulled it away, draping it over my right shoulder.

"The executor of the most embarrassing moment of my life? Sure. How could I forget you?" James replied, shoving his hands into the pockets of his long winter coat.

I looked at the ground, ashamed. Last year Noelle had forced me to break up with James on Kiran's behalf right in the middle of the cafeteria. The whole scene had been so awful I was surprised he hadn't pepper-sprayed me yet.

"Yeah, I'm really so sorry about that," I said quickly. "I just have one question for you and then I swear I'm out of here."

James said nothing. He simply stood there, waiting. Something about his steely-eyed gaze made me nervous. Like he was judging me. Which, of course, he had every right to do considering what I had done to him.

"I'm looking for Marc Alberro. Do you know if he's in Drake right now?"

James tipped his head back and laughed, exhaling a cloud of steam

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into the night air. "Why are you looking for Fourteen-in-Fourteen Flower Boy?"

"Wait. Fourteen-in-Fourteen Flower Boy? That's what we called Trey after he sent Cheyenne fourteen vases of fourteen roses last Valentine's Day," I said, suddenly remembering how Cheyenne's room had smelled like a rose garden for days. "How did you know that? And what does it have to do with Marc?" James just stared at me. "You didn't know? Trey didn't send her those flowers--Marc did. I figured from the video that all you Billings Girls probably called him Fourteen-in-Fourteen."

Fourteen-in-Fourteen Flower Boy was Marc Alberro? No. Freaking. Way.

"You're kidding," I said aloud.

"Yeah, he was in love with her and wanted to make this grand gesture. I guess it really pissed her off. She humiliated him in front of his entire dorm. I mean, I wasn't in Wesley Hall last year, but I saw the video." James stuck his hands in his pockets and looked embarrassed. "This may sound awful, but at the time it made me feel a little better about what happened to me."

"There was a video?" I asked, still unable to wrap my brain around the idea that Marc had been in love with Cheyenne. I knew he had done a story on her, but how was this possible? How could a guy like Marc even afford all those roses? It just didn't add up.

"Yeah, some guy in Wesley took it with his HDcam. I still have it on my notebook," James said.

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"Yeah?" I felt my cheeks redden, but I knew what I had to do. "Do you think... I mean, would you mind..."

He smiled. "It's okay if you want to see it."

I nodded and followed him back into the dorm. I couldn't believe he was being so solicitous, but I didn't mention it. I didn't want him to change his mind. And there was no way I was going to believe this without visual proof. James ushered me into the common room off the lobby of Drake House. I hadn't even realized how frozen I was until I entered the saunalike space and felt myself thawing from the inside out. There were a couple of guys in the corner studying, and they shot us curious glances as James whipped out his laptop from his backpack, setting it up on one of the coffee tables.

"Have a seat," he said, gesturing at the plaid couch behind us.

Okay. He was being way too polite considering our history.

"Can I ask you something?" I said as he sat next to me, but at a respectful distance.

"Just did," he joked, reaching for the touch pad on the notebook.

"Seriously, though. Why are you being so nice to me? After what I did-"

"You didn't do that. That was Noelle. I know she made you do it," he said pragmatically.

My skin burned. "Yeah, but I could have said no."

James snorted a laugh and pushed his glasses up on his nose. "No, you couldn't have," he said. "You were new. A sophomore.

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From the middle of nowhere. There's no way you could have said no to her." I checked his expression for any trace of sarcasm or bitterness, but there was none. To him, this was just an accepted fact. Girls under Noelle's thumb didn't have the use of their own free will. Did everyone at this school know that?

"Here it is," James said as a window popped up in the center of the screen.

I leaned in and he hit play and there they were. Marc Alberro, his dark hair slightly longer than it was today, standing in the center of another common room, while Cheyenne read him the riot act. Her hair was longer than shoulder length, as it had been last year, and she seemed shorter than I remembered her. Smaller somehow. She was midsentence when the videographer had started to capture the scene.

"--think this was going to impress me? Fourteen-in-Fourteen?" she shouted shrilly, tossing half a dozen pink and red roses at Marc's feet. She crushed them under the toe of her Louboutin boot. "I've received better presents for Arbor Day."

Marc looked so pale he could have fainted on the spot. Around the room, guys chuckled and nudged one another. At least two dozen of them sat around on the floor, on chairs and on couches, watching Marc's misery unfold. They must have been holding some kind of party, because there were plastic cups and soda bottles everywhere, along with bags of snack food.

"Enough is enough already," Cheyenne said. "I am not interested in you. So you can stop texting me, you can stop leaving little presents

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for me to find all over the place. I already have a boyfriend. I don't need a stalker, too."

Marc opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a loud squeak. "Sorry for the interruption," Cheyenne said with a nasty smile, glancing around the room. "You can all get back to your pathetic video game tournament now."

Then she turned and walked out of the room. The videographer zoomed in on Marc's devastated, humiliated face for a split second--the laughter bubbling up in the background- -before the feed went black. For a long moment I couldn't even move. My brain was ever so slowly processing everything I had just seen and heard. Stalker? Leaving little presents for her to find? That sounded eerily familiar.

"Guess you Billings Girls are really into the public breakups, huh?" James said wryly, reaching over to close the laptop.

I sat back on the itchy couch, stunned. Sweet, innocent Marc Alberro? Was it possible? And could he really be a cold-blooded killer?

"Yeah," I said finally. "I guess so."

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ENEMIES EVERYWHERE

Ivy was at the first sink when I walked into the bathroom that night, still reeling over the discovery about Marc. She was wearing white flannel pajamas and cozy-looking quilted slippers. I was wearing my Penn State sweatshirt and a pair of Easton Academy mesh shorts."Got a midnight football game?" she asked with a sneer, reaching for a small pot of some kind of cream.

"Got a midnight facial reconstruction?" I shot back. "Because you could definitely use some softening around the chin and nose."

Ivy's jaw dropped a tad, but she recovered quickly, returning her attention to her beauty ritual with slightly more vigor. I placed my see through plastic bag of toiletries on the back of the sink and cursed the founders of Billings for giving us private bathrooms. I was so not used to meeting enemies right before bed.

Trying to ignore Ivy, I brushed my teeth vigorously and spat.

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Ivy smirked and focused on her reflection, dotting her cream under her eyes and rubbing it in. This was the type of thing that had always fascinated me back in Billings. Did seventeen-year-olds really need under-eye cream? I had asked Kiran once and she had told me it was all about preventive measures. Seemed like a waste of money to me. But then, these people had more money than God.

"What? Fascinated with moisturizer?" Ivy asked, glancing at my reflection in the mirror. She held out the pot of cream to me. "You can have some if you want. Might get rid of some of those insomnia circles you've got going on there," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You do have a lot to lie awake worrying about these days, huh?" she added with mock sympathy.

My face burned and I grabbed my things. "You are such a bitch."

"Oh, please. All that time you spent with Noelle Lange, but I'm a bitch?" Ivy said with a scoff, twisting the lime green cap back on the canister. "I can't even hold a candle to her. But one of these days--trust me--that girl is going to get what's coming to her."

My breath caught in my throat as I remembered what she'd said to me on the street that night in New York--how she'd singled out Noelle as the only person left in the Billings ivory tower worth taking down. Hauer had blown me off when I'd told him about it, but now here she was, doing it again--and threatening Noelle even more directly. My fingers clenched and I turned my fiercest glare on Ivy.

"Stay away from Noelle," I warned, speaking through my teeth. 96

Ivy glanced at me and for the first time looked genuinely interested. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if you hurt her, or anyone else in Billings, I will personally see to it that you go down," I said, getting right in her face.

Ivy's jaw dropped again, her eyes wide, and she laughed. "You're kidding, right? Moi? I'm not the one you should be worried about. I'm not the coldhearted bitch who will step on anyone to get her way. I'm not one who's so addicted to power she'd actually kill someone to take over a dorm."

"I didn't kill Cheyenne," I said firmly.

Ivy laughed again. "Well, duh. I wasn't talking about you."

"Then who were you--"

A cold wave of realization came over me. Ivy was blaming Cheyenne's death on Noelle. She thought Noelle had done it. Or at least she was trying to deflect her own culpability onto Noelle.

"That girl you all worship is capable of a lot of things you could never even imagine, Reed," Ivy said, zipping up her black tote. "Just wait until the truth comes out. Then you'll know. Then you'll finally see her for what she really is."

With that, she swept out of the bathroom, letting the door swing closed behind her.

So this was how she was going to get back at Noelle. How she was going to make the ivory tower fall. She was going to get Noelle to take the blame for her crime, while trying to drive me crazy by "haunting" me in the process. Was she punishing me for "worshipping" Noelle?

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At least she hadn't succeeded in framing Noelle yet, since the majority of the campus had assigned the guilt to me. I wasn't going to let her get away with it.

I turned and strode back to my room, more determined than ever to prove that Ivy was the real killer. But how? What else could I do? The Internet had long since been exhausted. Of course, I had hours ahead of me to come up with a new plan of attack: After that little encounter it was obviously going to be another sleepless night.

But the moment I walked into my room, I froze. Something was different. Someone had been there. I could sense it. I quickly scanned the room, looking for anything out of place. Then I saw it. The picture of me and Cheyenne from Vienna's birthday party last year--the one Cheyenne's mother had given me to remember Cheyenne by--was tacked to the wall above my bed. My heart started to pound erratically and sweat slicked my palms. How did it get there? Why was it there? Slowly, I placed my toiletry bag down atop my dresser and tiptoed over to the photo, as if it might suddenly attack if I made too much noise.