Scandal (12 page)

“Hey, Reed,” Sawyer said, shouldering his messenger bag as he stopped at the end of our table.

“Hey,” I replied.

From the corner of my eye I saw Constance and Tiffany exchange an intrigued look. My heart fluttered nervously. Great. Now I was going to have to endure a grilling about Sawyer and me. Couldn’t a girl talk to a guy anymore without it being a crush thing?

“I was just going—” I said.

“I have to ask you something,” he said at the exact same time.

I laughed and Sawyer blushed and looked at his feet. “You first,” he said, his blond bangs falling over his face.

“No. You came to me,” I said, turning in my seat to face him better. “You first.”

“It’s okay. You,” he said.

I laughed. “Dude, just talk,” I said, taking a bite of my bacon. “What’s up?”

He pushed his hands into the pockets of his dark blue pants and puffed out his cheeks like a chipmunk. “I know it’s kind of late notice, but … would you want to maybe go to the dance with me on Saturday?”

Tiffany sat up straight. Constance tensed beside me. Everyone at the table was watching us. Some, like Kiki and Shelby, were pretending they weren’t by hiding behind their
Rolling Stone
magazine or scrolling along on their iPhone, but they
so
were.

“Um …”

I glanced past him at Josh and Ivy. They were holding hands across the table, leaning forward, talking in low tones as Trey and Gage fired up some game on their PSPs. Were those two ever
not
touching each other?

Time to move on, Reed. Get over it. Get a life.

Sawyer was nice. And a good listener. A good friend. Not to mention unbearably cute. And the guy had saved my life when I’d been about to drown in the Caribbean Sea. Besides, this wasn’t necessarily a
date
, date, right? We could be going as just friends. Except one look at Sawyer’s face told me that wasn’t how he was looking at this. Somewhere along the line he had started to think of me as more than friend.

Could I think of him that way? I wasn’t entirely sure.

Over at his table, Josh was now taunting Ivy with some eggs Benedict. She was squealing and shoving a warning finger in his face and pushing him away. Disgustingly adorable.

I turned around more fully, putting them out of my line of vision. Out of sight, out of mind.

“Sure,” I said finally, looking Sawyer in the eye. “I’d love to go to the dance with you.”

“Great!” Sawyer brightened considerably. “Cool. So … what did you want to ask me?”

My already sagging spirits drooped lower. I couldn’t exactly grill him about his brother’s obsession with my ex without looking like I was obsessed with my ex too. Didn’t seem like the right note to hit seconds after making our first date.

“I was going to ask you, too,” I said, blurting the first thing that came to mind. “To the dance.”

Sawyer’s smile widened. “Really? That’s so … yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling somehow as if I’d just made a serious error in judgment.

Damn this stupid dining hall throwing everyone together all at once. There were too many distractions and too much sensory overload to make a sound decision.

“Great. Okay.” He pressed his hands together, smiling adorably. “So I’ll just come to Pemberly then on Saturday night. Around seven?”

“Perfect,” I said, swallowing against a dry throat.

As Sawyer walked away, I kept my back to my friends, wanting to postpone the inevitable twenty questions as long as possible. Do you like him? How did you guys meet? Are you totally over Josh, then? What’re you going to wear?

I could practically feel their anticipation bubbling up behind me and dreaded every second of it, because I had no idea how to answer. Did I like him? I had no idea. How did we meet? Couldn’t remember. Was I totally over Josh? No. What was I going to wear? Probably something borrowed from one of them.

Not exactly the stuff romance novels were made of. But I took a breath, turned around, and submitted to the shrieks and squeals. This week was all about sisterhood, right? Let them have their fun.

THE THIRD TEST

“Ew! Omigod! I just stepped on a dead thing!”

Shelby screeched and barreled into me at the center of the chapel, holding on to me for dear life. I’d requested all the potentials wear “manual labor attire.” For Shelby, this meant Paper Denim jeans, a cashmere “sweatshirt,” tan kitten heels, and pearls. There were dots of sweat across her otherwise perfect brow and her hair was coming loose from its bun. All very odd since I hadn’t seen her do a shred of work since we’d gotten there two hours earlier. Each potential—well, everyone except Constance, who, for some reason, had yet to arrive—had been given a chore. Shelby’s task had been to clear the cobwebs from the wall sconces and candelabras—all of which were still filthy.

“What is it? Omigod, what is it? Do I have rabies?”

Her fingernails dug into my skin through her work gloves
and
the thick fabric of my Penn State sweatshirt. Half the girls scurried away from the wall where Shelby had been “working,” which in her world amounted to waving a feather duster in the vicinity of a wooden sconce. Astrid, however, heaved a sigh and tromped right over, scanning her flashlight along the seam where the wall met the floor.

“It’s just a mouse,” she said.

“Ewwwwww!” everyone cried.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” Astrid dumped some old salt packets out of a brown paper bag and used it as a glove to pick the dead mouse up by its tail.

“Ewwwwwww!” The moans came as she lifted the thing toward the garbage pail. She dumped it in with a thud, then tossed the bag as well and smacked her hands together.

“Done. Let’s move on, shall we?” she said, flicking her black bangs off her forehead with a glittery purple fingernail. “We’re really making some progress here.”

Astrid had been working her tail off sweeping the floors. I’d always known the girl was cool, but it was nice to know she wasn’t afraid of a little dirt. Or a dead rodent.

“No. No way. That’s it. I’m outta here,” Shelby said, finally releasing me and raising her hands. She peeled off her yellow vinyl gloves and gingerly tossed them on the pew Lorna and Missy were dusting and polishing.

“Shelby, you can’t go,” Portia said. She had a streak of dirt across her cheek and a broom in her hand. For the first time since I’d known her, all the gold necklaces she wore were tucked inside her collar and her T-shirt was rumpled. Her makeup, however, was still perfectly intact. “If you leave …”

She looked at me, a question in her eyes. I turned to Shelby.

“If you don’t complete the three tasks, you can’t be considered for membership,” I said. Although, she’d already been at the bottom of the list anyway, what with her poor showing on loyalty night (she’d lost her five pins almost as fast as Missy had lost hers), and with tonight’s nonperformance. Not that she needed to know that.

My words hung thick and dark in the air. No one moved. Everyone held their tongues and waited to see what Shelby would do. She lifted her chin and stared me down.

“That’s just fine,” she said, reaching back to release her thick, golden brown hair from its band. It tumbled over her shoulders quite dramatically. “I’m a Wordsworth, in case you haven’t heard. And we don’t
do
dead things.”

Then she turned on her heel, grabbed her coat off the old rack near the door, and stormed out into the night. Portia dropped her broom and went after her, shouting her name. We all heard the words “don’t need Billings” and “already got into Cornell” carried in on the wind. Then Portia returned, alone, and lifted her hands in abject defeat.

We were down to fourteen. Well, thirteen if you considered the fact that Constance had never even shown.

“Come on, everyone,” I said. “Let’s get back to work.”

“Well. That was interesting,” Ivy said, shuffling toward me with her dustpan and brush. She filled it up with cigarette butts and dumped it into the garbage. Girl was wearing a white V-neck sweater and black jeans, neither of which looked the worse for wear, even though she’d been working all night.

“I’m not surprised,” I whispered in response. “I’ve never seen Shelby with a fleck of lint on her person, let alone dust. And I figured some of the seniors would be out.”

“Yeah, but I thought Noelle would be the first to go,” she said, looking up toward the sky.

Noelle was right where she’d been since she’d arrived, up at the top of a rickety old ladder, working the grime off the stained-glass windows, alone. Part of me had to agree with Ivy. Who would have thought that Noelle would allow me, Glass-Licker, to put her through chore night at the old chapel? Especially when she hadn’t wanted anything to do with the BLS to begin with? But then there was the other part of me. The part that knew that she was doing it just to prove to me that I couldn’t faze her.

What I couldn’t believe was that Constance hadn’t shown up. Hadn’t even called me to let me know. I’d tried her cell twice since we’d been there, but she hadn’t picked up. The more time went by, the more concerned I grew. Could she be out there in the woods somewhere, lost? Each time I thought about it, I gave an involuntary shudder. Everyone was supposed to come in pairs. Constance was supposed to meet up with Lorna and they were to come together. But Lorna had waited and called and waited and called, and she hadn’t wanted to get a black mark because of Constance’s lateness, so she’d hooked up with Missy and Noelle and come with them.

Which was all well and good, but where the hell was Constance?

I glanced at the door. Nothing. I couldn’t just stand around while everyone else was working, so I got back to the job of scraping gum from the floor, all the while keeping one eye on the entrance and one ear on the wind.

About an hour after Shelby made her dramatic exit, the chapel was looking habitable again. The pews had been dusted and polished to a shine. The floor was swept and scraped clean. The windows, though some were still broken, gleamed like crystal. Rose had finished polishing the pulpit and had offered to take on Shelby’s job, so the sconces and candelabras were cobweb-free. The smells of rotting food and stale smoke had been replaced by the scents of evergreen and soapy water. I felt the ghosts of Billings Girls past smiling down on us with pride, and as I looked around at the tired but satisfied faces of the girls around me, I knew they could feel it too.

Aside from Shelby, most everyone had done their jobs, although I’d noticed that Lorna was putting in most of the work on the pews while Missy gabbed and moved a rag around halfheartedly. And London had spent half the night in the corner texting when she thought no one was looking. But as a group, we pretty much kicked ass.

“Can we get the hell out of here? My back is killing me,” Noelle said, arching her back and shoving out her chest at the same time.

“Sure,” I said with a smile. “But let’s just take a second to pat ourselves on the back. Job well done, ladies.”

I clapped my hands and everyone joined in, smiles all around. Then Lorna raised her hand.

“Yes, Lorna?” I asked.

“Just one question, Reed,” she said. “Why did we just scrub down a condemned building in the middle of nowhere?”

“You’ll know soon enough,” I said, grinning from ear to ear and trying like hell not to make eye contact with Ivy.

For the first time in a while, I felt cheered by their groans. I was in charge and I liked it.

“Come on,” I said. “I think we all deserve some serious sleep.”

As we turned toward the door, it swung open with a bang. Every one of us froze.

Oh effing hell. I half expected Mr. Hathaway or my old buddy Detective Hauer to come storming through the door. If they were going to snag us, couldn’t they have at least caught on
before
we killed ourselves working? But instead, Constance appeared. Her hat was askew, her face was red, and she clutched the doorknob, gasping for air.

“Did I miss it? Is it over? Oh my God, Reed! I’m so sorry!”

I rushed forward. Had Constance been lost in the woods all this time? Was she cold and wet and dehydrated? But when I got to her, Constance’s skin was warm. Her eyes were bright and her feet were not soaked through.

“Are you okay?” I asked uncertainly.

“Yeah. Just, I basically sprinted up the hill trying to get here.” Her eyes trailed over the crowd, all of whom were slowly pushing their arms into coat sleeves and yanking on their hats, their hair in various states of disarray, their clothes streaked with grime. Constance frowned. “Oh man. I really did miss it.”

“Constance,” I hissed, sensing that there was no tragedy to be related here. I pulled her away from the door. “Where have you been?

“I’m so sorry, Reed,” Constance said. “It’s just, Whit called and he’s all freaking out about this chem assignment he has due tomorrow and if I don’t talk him down he basically goes on a chocolate binge, which could send him into insulin shock and then he could end up in the hospital.” She paused for breath. “Or dead!”