Scandal (19 page)

Noelle was the last to arrive. She let the door of the chapel slam as she walked in.

“Should we really be meeting here again?” she said loudly, her voice bouncing off the high ceiling. “Double H isn’t stupid. If we keep coming to the same place every other night, he’s going to figure it out.”

“Shhhh!” I scolded her. “We haven’t started the meeting yet.”

Noelle dropped her black Kate Spade bag on the floor and whipped off her jacket. “Sorry,” she said sarcastically. She dropped a puffy pillow on the floor between Amberly and Tiffany and sat down, crossing her legs at the ankle in the center of the circle. “So, all-fabulous BLS guru, what do we do first? Because I, for one, am starved.” She turned and rustled around in her bag, coming out with a box of gourmet chocolates, a sleeve of crackers, and a wedge of wrapped cheese. “Shall we?”

A few of the girls clapped and reached for the food. I gritted my teeth.

“I have to officially open the meeting first,” I said.

Noelle crunched into a cracker. “Why? Does it say anything in there about not speaking with your mouth full?” she asked, nodding at the book.

I rolled my eyes. “No. It doesn’t, but—”

“How about not getting caught?” Noelle asked. “Because, seriously, we’re like sitting ducks up here and I—”

“Noelle,” I said loudly.

Everyone froze. Astrid withdrew her hand, which had been reaching across the circle for the cheese, back behind her.

Noelle raised her eyebrows at me. She licked a bit of cracker from her bottom lip and waited. “Yes?” she said finally.

“This chapel is where the original Billings Literary Society met, and it is where we will meet until
I
decide it’s unsafe and initiate a vote on the matter,” I said succinctly. “Now, as for the food, I would appreciate it if you’d have some respect for the society’s rituals and put it aside until I’ve called the meeting to order.”

My heart pounded with nerves. Putting Noelle in her place was not an easy thing to do. What if she just got up and walked out? Would the others follow? Although I supposed that would be a good way to figure out whether anyone truly saw me as an authority figure around here.

Noelle took a breath and made a big show of gathering up her food and piling it up behind her.

“Better?” she asked.

My heart breathed a sigh of relief.

“Much,” I replied.

I turned and handed out the handwritten copies I’d made of the Billings Literary Society’s creed.

“We will recite this at the beginning of each meeting,” I said. “This first time, you can read from the page, but we’ll spend some of our time here tonight memorizing it so we can burn these copies. I don’t want there to be any chance that these will be found.”

A few of the girls nodded. Kiki was already reciting the creed under her breath, committing the words to memory.

“All right then. Let’s begin.”

Together, we read the creed aloud.

“We, the sisters of the Billings Literary Society, do hereby pledge our hearts and minds to the purposes of the Society.”

As our voices melded together in the night, a chill went through me. This was it. This was what I’d been working toward for the past two weeks. I’d brought the Billings Literary Society back from the forgotten annals of history.

“We promise to be loyal, steadfast, and true to all who join our circle. We vow never to reveal the secrets of our society, but to uphold its values and standards in the face of all tyranny.”

Pride prickled my skin as I looked around at each of my friends, having long since memorized the words myself. Tiffany and Rose gazed back at me with content smiles. Kiki, Astrid, and even Amberly had never looked so stoic and alert. They felt it, too, the import of what we were doing here. I could tell.

“Blood to blood, ashes to ashes, sister to sister, we make this sacred vow.”

I looked at Noelle as we finished the creed, wanting more than anything for her to feel it too—to know she understood why I was doing this, why it mattered. She smiled, reached behind her, and grabbed her crackers.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s get this party started.”

Everyone whooped and hollered and dove into their own stashes of goodies. Kiki chucked a Hostess cupcake at me and I caught it with both hands, letting out a laugh. I decided right then and there to let the seriousness go for now. We’d all worked hard to get here. It was about time we had a little fun.

THE SISTERHOOD

“Reed! This secret-society thing was the best idea ever!” Portia said, throwing her arm around me as we gathered our things at the end of the night.

I laughed and hugged her back. “I’m glad you think so.”

It turned out that Vienna had brought champagne, which had livened things up considerably. I’d managed to get them to spend fifteen minutes memorizing the creed, another five burning the pages over a candle near the window, and ten more discussing issues of the day, just like the original sisters of the BLS did almost a century ago. And then, everything had deteriorated into a full-out party.

But instead of scolding them or trying to get their attention, I’d decided to go with the “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” approach. Part of the point of being together was to have fun, and after all the work I’d done to get the BLS up and running, and all the misery of the day, I felt like I deserved a little fun.

“So, Kiki, you’re going to design a new insignia, right?” I said, folding my red throw over my arm. We had decided, via unanimous vote, that the BLS crest needed a twenty-first-century update and Kiki, aspiring graphic artist that she was, had offered to work on it.

“I’m on it like white on rice,” she said with a nod and a salute. “I’ll have some ideas by the next meeting.”

“And they’re going to be awesome!” Amberly trilled, dancing in a circle in the center of the floor. The lightweight had downed way too much bubbly for her own good.

Astrid, who had figured out the tune of the secret whistle, was standing in the aisle trying to teach it to Rose and Tiffany, while Vienna, Lorna, and Noelle lay in the center of the floor, trying to figure out what the image in the broken stained-glass window behind the pulpit had once been.

“Come on, frosh,” Ivy said, nudging Amberly with her hip. “I’ll walk you back to your dorm.”

“You will!? Oh,
cool
, Sister Ivy!” Amberly trilled, throwing her arms around Ivy’s neck.

“You barf on me, you die,” Ivy said, wrinkling her nose at me.

I glanced away the second her eyes met mine, bending to the floor to grab the book and my messenger bag.

“Reed? Is everything okay?” Ivy asked.

I stood up, bit my lip quickly, then turned to face her. “Yeah! Why?” I said, far too brightly.

“You just seem … different,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“I think I’m just tired,” I replied, moving toward the door. “I’ve been really busy with all the planning and stuff. I think I just need some rest.”

Rest I should have been getting last night when I was smooching your boyfriend in the wee hours of the morning.

My throat constricted and I looked away. My eyes fell on a woven leather band Ivy wore on one wrist. Dangling from it was a small silver medallion with a red and yellow design on it. Instantly I thought of Tattoo Guy and his red and yellow neck tattoo and I felt a rush of possibility. Maybe he and Ivy
did
have something going. Maybe they
were
flirting that morning. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t be so entirely crushed about what had happened between me and Josh. Maybe she was ready to move on, too, and just hadn’t said it yet.

Suddenly I felt a whole lot lighter.

“Well, don’t worry,” she said, holding on to Amberly with one hand and putting her other arm around me for a squeeze. “Look around. You did it. The BLS is back. You should relax and just enjoy it.”

I shrugged away from her, lifting my bag over my head as an excuse. “Yeah. You’re right. No more stress allowed.”

We all walked out through the front door together, talking and laughing. Tiffany and I tried to shush the other girls, but our efforts were met with a round of laughter. Once we got outside I was really going to have to try to convince them to shut the heck up before we got back to campus, or this thing was going to be over before it got started. I held the door open for the group, then turned around and found all of my friends standing in a clump, being stared down by a wall of women.

My feet slipped in the snow and Ivy grabbed me to keep me from going down. My friends went mute. A second glance told me it wasn’t so much of a wall as it was a group of three people, two of whom I recognized. Suzel and Paige Ryan—the girl whose mother had tried to murder me over the course of a few weeks in St. Barths. The third woman was older, perhaps in her midfifties, with jet-black curls and lines around her light blue eyes. They were all wearing black coats and black hats, Paige’s a fedora, Suzel’s a wide-brim, the third woman’s laced with fur.

“Paige! Suzel! Demetria!” Noelle said, stepping forward in the crowd. “What are you all doing here?”

“Noelle,” Suzel said coolly, looking Noelle up and down with a flick of her gaze. “I hardly expected to find
you
here.”

Noelle glanced behind her at the rest of us. I realized all at once that she had, as usual, automatically assumed the role of point person. I stepped up next to her, even though closing the distance between myself and Paige Ryan made my skin crawl.

“How did you find us?” I asked, glancing sideways at Noelle, who was probably gloating over being right. Well, almost right. We’d been snagged at our meeting place, just not by Headmaster Hathaway.

“We came here tonight to give you girls fair warning,” the third woman, Demetria, said, ignoring my question. “The Billings alumni committee is willing to ignore this little project of yours, whatever it is,” she said, looking at the chapel with distaste. “As long as you cease and desist now.”

“What do we care whether you ignore it or not?” I asked, giving her a dubious look.

“Reed,” Noelle warned through her teeth.

“I told you,” Suzel said to Demetria.

“Oh, you care,” Paige spoke up. The wind tossed a few of her auburn curls in front of her face and she shoved them away with her gloved hand. “If you don’t give up, we’ll be forced to report you, or worse.”

“Don’t even talk to me,” I spat, looking her up and down with ire. “As far as I’m concerned, you
and
your crazy family can kiss my ass.”

A couple of my friends laughed. Demetria’s lips pursed sourly. I stepped toward her, lifting my chin.

“I don’t know who you are, but I’m here to tell you that your day is done,” I said firmly. “All of you. This is our time, and we may no longer have a house to keep us together, but we have each other. As for the Billings alumni committee, I think it’s about time you ladies got over your glory days and moved on.”

Demetria made an offended noise in the back of her throat, but I didn’t care. She might have been a Billings alumna, but clearly she was not aware of the book. Clearly she, like Suzel, had never even heard of the Billings Literary Society. Which meant she was nothing to me. I turned my back on her and the others and trudged off through the snow, my friends forming a snaking line behind me.

“Nice work, Reed!” Ivy said, catching up with me. “That was awesome!”

“It so was not,” Noelle countered, walking on my other side. “You can’t just tell those women off, Reed. We need them.”

“For what?” I said, stopping in my tracks. The rest of the girls gathered around me. I was starting to feel like a magnet with a parade of metal shards following my every move. “In case you haven’t noticed, Billings House no longer exists.”

“Maybe not, but the alumni pay for everything. Parties, trips, supplies. They’re the ones who kept you in designer labels all last semester, in case you’ve forgotten,” Noelle said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I haven’t forgotten,” I replied. “But that’s not what Billings is about anymore, Noelle.” I lifted my hands toward the group of girls behind me. “It’s about us. The sisterhood. I no longer need any of the stuff those women can give me. All I need is my friends.”

With that I turned my back on a stunned Noelle and flounced down the hill, every single one of my sisters at my back.

Hypocrite. Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

THE TRUTH

Hypocrite. Hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite.

I heard the word in my mind over and over again with every move I made.

Climbing the stairs in Pemberly with Ivy, Noelle and Lorna:
HYP-o-crite! HYP-o-crite!

Brushing my teeth up and down:
Hyp-o-CRITE! Hyp-o-CRITE!

Cranking my window open to let the cold chase out the heat:
Hypocritehypcocritehypocrite!

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had stood there in the woods and preached to Noelle about how all I needed was my friends, my sisters, but I was lying to one of them. Lying about the worst thing imaginable. I couldn’t do it anymore. If I was going to be a true leader of the Billings Literary Society, if I was going to call myself a real friend, I had to be honest. Whatever the fallout, I would just have to deal with it.