Scandal (20 page)

Please just let me be right about Ivy and Tattoo Guy.
It would make all of this so much easier.

I shoved myself out of bed and knocked lightly on Ivy’s door. She answered immediately. We had only just left each other in the bathroom five minutes ago. Behind her, Jillian snored lightly in her bed. Ivy slipped out into the hall in her gray cotton nightshirt and closed the door with a quiet click.

“What’s up?” she asked, leaning sideways against the cream-colored wall. “Are you freaking about what happened up at the chapel?”

“No,” I said, my heart throbbing in my throat. “It’s not about that. There’s … there’s something I need to tell you. You’re going to hate me, but I have to tell you.”

Ivy’s face fell. She stood up straight. “What?” she asked flatly.

Suddenly I couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to put this. All the words in the English language were jammed up in my throat, held back by my painfully expanding heart.

“Reed, you’re freaking me out here,” Ivy said, backing up a step. “What is it?”

I swallowed as hard as I could. Every inch of my skin burned with dread at what I was about to do. But she deserved to know. Josh and I were in love. He’d said it himself. Nothing he did could change it. Ivy deserved better than a boyfriend who didn’t love her and a best friend who was lying to her.

“Josh and I kissed,” I blurted.

Ivy’s jaw dropped and she bent at the waist slightly, hugging her slim arms around her. “What? When?”

“Last night,” I said miserably, looking at the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it or anything. It just kind of—”

“Where? I didn’t even see him until this morning,” Ivy said, her face contorted with confusion and anger.

I bit the inside of my cheek. This was not going to go over well. “Here. In my room. He came … here.”

Ivy looked at my door, her lip curling in disgust. “Omigod,” she said, her hand fluttering up to cover her mouth. When she turned to me again, her eyes were brimming with tears. “You are such a fucking bitch!”

Her words filled the hallway. A couple of lights flicked on, their glow illuminating the cracks between the doors and the floor.

“Ivy—”

“No. No. Don’t even talk to me!” Ivy shouted, opening the door of her room. “I thought we were friends. All that crap about how much
you
trust
me
and now you’re sneaking around behind my back!? What’s the matter with you?”

Jillian came to the door, blinking herself awake. “What’s going on? Are you okay?” she asked Ivy.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ivy said, stepping inside. She looked me in the eye with abhorrence. “I just should’ve known better than to trust a Billings Girl.”

Then she slammed the door so hard one of the paintings on the hallway wall crashed to the ground. She might as well have just sliced through my gut with a kitchen knife. As I turned around, several open doors quickly closed, none of my dorm mates wanting to get caught spying. I slipped back inside my room, trembling from head to toe, and sat down on my bed.

I had thought that telling the truth was supposed to be the right thing. And Ivy had to know, didn’t she? Better she find out from me than walk in on me and Josh kissing or something. But as I heard Ivy crying to Jillian next door, I had a feeling Ivy would have preferred not to have known. And I felt worse than ever.

THE REJECT TABLE

“This is going to be a problem,” Noelle said as she lowered herself into the chair next to mine at breakfast. “Check the reject table.”

For the first time in fifteen minutes I lifted my gaze from my slowly eroding Cheerios. I’d been the first student to walk into the dining hall that morning, and hadn’t even noticed that other people were starting to arrive. Noelle, the first person to join me at our table, was looking across the aisle at Constance, Missy, London, and Shelby. The four of them had been sitting together at every meal since the previous morning, but today, there were some new faces among the crowd. Amberly’s roommate, Cassie Something-or-Other and Ivy’s roommate, Jillian, who looked like a snarling lion the second she saw me watching. Clearly she hated me for what had happened with Ivy in the middle of the night.

Honestly, I was kind of surprised Ivy wasn’t over there too. From under the brim of my baseball cap—which was hiding my unwashed hair—I scanned the rest of the room. No sign of Ivy or Josh. Where were they? Off together somewhere fighting? Or worse … making up?

“I don’t know. It makes sense,” I said, pushing my juice glass around in the circle of condensation beneath it. “Of course they’re all going to hang out together.”

“Yeah, but now they have followers,” Noelle said, spreading some butter onto her bagel while keeping an eye on the rejects. “And also, they know where we meet.”

I saw Kiki, Astrid, and Vienna enter the food line. London spotted them too and said something obviously mocking that made everyone at her table crack up laughing. Was it possible that the BLS had actually managed to come between the Twin Cities? That seemed like a crime against nature. I’d never told anyone that we couldn’t be friends with the people who didn’t make the cut. And London and Vienna were the closest friends I’d ever known. The idea that I’d been instrumental in splitting them up was beyond depressing.

Maybe this whole thing was a mistake. Maybe I should just disband the BLS and let everyone get on with their lives. Just like Noelle had said that first morning back. But when I looked at her across the table, I bristled at the very thought of telling her she’d been right all along.

“How do you figure that?” I asked, taking a tentative bite of my cereal. My stomach clenched and I put the spoon down.

“Come on, Reed,” Noelle said, rolling her eyes. “You took them all up to the chapel. They’re not stupid. One of them has to have figured out that we were cleaning that place up for a reason.”

I glanced over at the table again. I couldn’t imagine Constance or London putting two and-two together on that score, and Shelby was far too involved with her own little world to think much about why she’d spent a couple of hours doing nothing in a chapel in the woods. But Missy … Missy definitely might have figured it out.

“I bet one of them told the Billings alumni and that’s how they found us there last night,” Noelle said.

“What? Come on. They wouldn’t report us, would they? They all know Hathaway would expel us,” I said. “They can’t hate us enough to get us thrown out of school.”

“They didn’t tell Hathaway. They told Billings,” Noelle said, taking a bite of her bagel. “I can just imagine Missy calling up Paige and whining all over her.”

“Wait. Missy knows Paige?” I asked.

Noelle looked at me like I’d just taken out a razor and shaved half my hair off. “They’re cousins. Like second or third or once removed or something, but still.”

“What?” I blurted. “I never knew that.”

“Oh, come on. Someone must’ve mentioned it at some point.”

This was insane. Missy was the biggest show-off at Easton, and Paige was, like, Billings royalty. My mind reeled, but it almost felt good. It was nice to be focusing on something other than how horrible I was.

Across the room, a skinny freshman dropped his tray and the entire room applauded at the clatter.

“I wouldn’t put it past Missy,” I said finally. “She’s hated me since before I was ever in Billings.”

“Yeah, and her family would
not
be pleased about the BLS,” Noelle said, sipping her coffee.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Amberly, Lorna, and Rose had joined the other BLS sisters on the food line, which was starting to swell as the people who got up at a normal hour trickled in.

Noelle glanced at me, swallowed, and touched her napkin to her lips. “Nothing. They’re just … all about propriety. They wouldn’t like the idea that we’ve turned the revered Billings House into a group of girls hiding out in the woods.”

I watched her carefully, feeling as if there was something more. Something else about Missy that she wasn’t saying.

“Anyway, now that we’ve been outed, we definitely need to find a new meeting space, and I have a couple of ideas,” Noelle said. As she started going on about the Art Cemetery and a little-known private study area of the library, I felt this eerie sense of déјá vu. It felt exactly like the time I’d been trying to plan a party in the city for a Billings fund-raiser and Noelle had swooped in to change the venue at the last minute. She was trying to take charge again. Trying to elbow me out. And I wasn’t going to let it happen.

Even if I did, on some level, agree with her.

“No,” I said, cutting her off midsentence.

“No?” she replied, flummoxed.

“The chapel is where the original BLS met, and that’s where we’re going to stay,” I told her.

Noelle looked at me for a moment, incredulous, then dropped her bagel and smacked her hands together, as if she was wiping her hands of me.

“Fine. If that’s the way you want it, then fine,” she said.

“So, what? Are you going to quit now?” I asked.

Noelle sighed and looked at me, her wrists resting on the edge of the table. “No, my dear fearless leader. I will follow you into the pits of hell if that’s what you want me to do,” she said with a facetious smile. “Just like all your other little minions.”

I wasn’t sure, exactly, what her sarcasm was supposed to be getting at, but I decided to just take her words at face value.

“Good,” I said, taking a bite of my toast. “That’s what I like to hear.”

As the other BLS sisters started to settle in around us, I kept one eye on the reject table and one eye on the door, waiting for Josh or Ivy to arrive. What did it mean that the first enemy I’d made at Easton—Missy Thurber—was related to the woman who had tried to murder me—Clarissa Ryan? Or was it just a coincidence?

Only one thing was certain: If Missy was working against me and the BLS, I was going to find out.

RECORD PACE

Ever since returning from St. Barths, I’d been trying not to think about it. Trying not to relive that night. But somehow my conversation with Noelle at breakfast had sparked the memories and now I couldn’t keep them at bay. As I sat in Spanish class, waiting for Mr. Shreeber to arrive, I kept seeing Mrs. Ryan’s dressing room. The perfume bottle on her nightstand. The sweatshirt hanging in her closet—the one she’d worn when she pushed me off her boat on the night after Christmas. Mrs. Ryan returning to the room with that tray full of food. How her smile had turned wild and sinister as soon as she realized I knew.

When she’d attacked me, I’d been too weak to really fight back. Too dehydrated and starved and spent. I’d thought I was truly going to die. That the fifth time she tried to kill me was going to be the charm.

But then Sawyer had rushed into the room and saved me. Without even the merest thought for himself, he’d saved my life. For a second time.

“Reed.”

I turned around, startled, to find Sawyer standing there in the flesh. One hand clutched the strap of his navy blue backpack. The other, the one with the woven bracelets around the wrist, pressed into my desk.

“Hey, Sawyer!” I said with a smile, even as my nerves sizzled at the memory of our kiss and his expectations of relationship. “What’s up?”

“I heard about you and Josh,” he said. “Is it true?”

I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him blankly, my mouth yawning open like a cave.

“I heard you guys hooked up on Sunday night,” Sawyer said, keeping his voice low. “Is it true?” he repeated.

“Sawyer—”

“It is.” He looked down at his feet and his face grew mottled with red. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No. You’re not,” I said, feeling that now familiar guilt rise up in my chest. “I am. I’m the idiot.”

The chairs around us were starting to fill up. I caught a few curious glances and sighed. I’d been at the center of more than a few scenes in the last couple of days and I didn’t like it.

“Who told you? Ivy?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Graham.”

I blinked, surprised. “How did
Graham
know?”

“Does it matter?” He paused and placed his hand in his pocket, then seemed to gather his courage before he looked up at me. “I thought that you … I mean, I thought that we …”

I gulped back my guilt and misery as Mr. Shreeber walked into the room. “I’m sorry, Sawyer. But … we’re friends. I think that’s all we’re going to be.”

Sawyer’s mouth flattened in to a grim line.

“We
are
friends, right?” I asked tentatively.

“Good morning, class! Let’s take our seats,” Mr. Shreeber called out, clapping his hands together once. “We have a lot to cover today!”

With that, Sawyer turned around and walked to his desk in the back of the room. For the rest of the class period, he didn’t look away from the board once, and when the bell rang, he was out of there faster than you can say “heartbreaker.”

I stood up from my chair shakily, feeling dejected and suddenly exhausted. I was losing friends at a record pace, even for me. All thanks to the BLS and Josh. As I made my way out of the room to the continued curious glances of my classmates, all I could do was hope that both would prove to be worth it.