Scandal (22 page)

But then we were inside, enveloped in the warmth of a hundred candles and greeted by the smiles and hollers of our friends. And I knew then that everything was going to be okay.

THUMP IN THE NIGHT

“All right everyone, our first order of business is the new Billings Literary Society crest,” I said, closing the book on the floor in front of me. “Kiki? Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Kiki had slicked all her hair back from her face and outlined her eyes in dark kohl pencil, making them appear so huge she almost looked like an anime character. Which, considering her obsession with the Japanese art form, might have been the point. She reached into her black messenger bag and pulled out a large sketchbook, which she laid flat on the floor in the center of the circle. With the flick of one finger she opened it up to a center page. Everyone gasped and leaned forward, balancing on knees and fingertips to get a better look.

“Kiki! That’s so cool!” Amberly said, looking up with awe. Preppy, darling little Amberly had always regarded our resident creative punk Kiki with fear and awe, but this was different. She was impressed. We all were.

The crest was similar to the original, but sharper at the edges, the points taller, thinner, and more severe. Instead of dozens of entwined roses at the center, the crest was filled by one, extraordinarily intricate rose, the letters
BLS
were entwined in its details. So entwined that, unless you were looking for them, you might not see them. It was perfect. Headmaster Hathaway would be on the lookout for anything he could connect back to Billings, but he wouldn’t be able to parse the letters here.

“What do you think, Reed?” Kiki asked, her eyes wide, ready and willing to be critiqued.

“I love it,” I replied, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. “You did an incredible job.”

Kiki beamed, toying with the open men’s tie she wore slung around the collar of her white shirt. “I thought it came out kind of rad.”

“We can definitely use this,” I said, pulling the sketchbook toward me.

“Use it? For what?” Noelle asked. “Are we all going to sew patches on all our clothes or something?”

Everyone chuckled, but a few of them looked at me nervously.

“No. I’m not going to make you trash your couture,” I said, earning a relieved brow-wipe from Portia. Everyone laughed. “I was thinking we could use it as a subtle way to let the school know we’re out there. Like, we could post it around campus or something. What do you guys think?”

Noelle sat forward and raised a hand. “Uh, I think it’s an idiotic idea.”

My face stung like she’d just thrown a vat of boiling water at me.

Ivy scoffed and shook her head. “Do you ever think Reed’s ideas are good?”

“Yeah. When they’re actually good,” Noelle replied, glancing across her right shoulder at Ivy. Then she looked back at me, her chin tucked. “Reed, I thought the whole point of this secret-society thing was to remain a secret. Now you want to broadcast Kiki’s—admittedly cool—logo all over campus? Why? Do you want to lead Double H directly to our doors?”

“No. Of course not. But this is what secret societies do,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “If we post this in a few spots around campus, it’ll get people wondering, get them talking. Give us some cache.”

“I thought you didn’t care about cache anymore,” Noelle replied, mimicking my pose. “I thought this was all about friendship and sisterhood.”

“It is, but—”

“I think it’s a fab idea,” Vienna said. “I
love
when I know stuff other people don’t.”

“We could post it on the announcement board, but bury it a little, so people will think it was there for a while,” Lorna suggested.

“And maybe we can chalk it on the side of Hell Hall or something. Then when it rains or snows it’ll get all drippy and abstract and spooky …” Tiffany said, leaning back on her hands with a grin.

Everyone started talking at once, throwing out ideas for places to plant the logo. Noelle grew increasingly tense.

“See? They like it,” I said to Noelle.

“You guys,” Noelle said loudly. There was no response. If anything, the chatter grew louder. She shoved herself to her feet, stepping on Amberly’s pinky in the process. Amberly snatched her hand away and sucked on her flattened finger, shooting a pained look up at Noelle. “Ladies!” Noelle shouted.

They fell silent. Everyone looked at me first, then at Noelle, tipping their chins back to see her.

“Look, I’m all for having a little fun. You know that. But haven’t we been warned enough already?” she said. “Do you really want to risk getting caught? They already bulldozed our house. Who knows what else they’ll do to teach us a lesson?”

I stood up to face her. “Since when are you scared of anything?”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “I’m not scared. But I have been arrested once already, booted out of school, and left back a year … all in the process of saving
your
ass, so maybe my perspective is just a
tad
different than yours.”

“Saving my ass?” I blurted, stepping forward. Kiki whipped her sketchbook with the precious crest in it out from under my feet. “We already went over this, Noelle. You were arrested because you assaulted my boyfriend!”

“Yeah, which no one would have ever known about if I hadn’t been forced to go up to the roof and save you from that freak show Ariana!” Noelle countered, earning a few gasps from around the circle. “What were you thinking going up to the roof anyway? Were you high?”

“I was
trying
to make a phone call,” I replied, my voice growing louder. “When you find out that your four best friends are total sadistic psychos who tied the love of your life to a pole and left him for dead, you kind of want to talk it out with someone!”

“Wait. I thought Josh was the love of your life,” Ivy piped up.

My face burned with humiliation as I looked down at her. “He … he is. He just … I mean, Thomas was my
first
love. I—”

She lifted a hand as if to wave me off. “Just wanted to be clear.”

“Oh, so now I’m a sadistic psycho?” Noelle blurted, ignoring the interjection. She took a step toward me, getting right in my face. “Who do you think you—”

A sudden bang stopped her mid rant. My heart vaulted into my throat. On the floor, my friends reached out and grabbed one another, terrified.

“What was that?” I whispered, crouching to their level. Noelle did the same, looking wildly around the room.

“It came from outside,” she hissed. “Someone’s out there.”

Quickly, Tiffany, Rose, and Astrid snuffed out several of the candles. Suddenly every inch of my skin throbbed with fear.

Another bang. Closer this time. Amberly shrieked in fear, curling into Tiffany’s side and clutching the arm of her sweater.

“Omigod. Omigodomigodomigod,” Vienna said, rocking forward and back at an alarming pace. “What
is
that?”

“It’s probably just the Billings alumni again,” I whispered, not knowing what to believe. “I’ll go outside. I’ll go talk to them.”

“Reed, no!” Ivy hissed, grabbing for my ankle as I started to rise. “Don’t go out there.”

“Why not?” I asked, somehow speaking past the tremendous lump of black fear lodged in my throat.

“What if it’s not them?” Rose squeaked. “What if it’s … something else?”

And then, a stiff wind whistled through the broken windows and doused the rest of the candles.

“Omigod! Reed!” Amberly whimpered.

I felt her fingers scrabble for mine in the dark. I couldn’t see a thing. Not one inch in front of my face.

Another bang. Everyone screamed this time, even me. Then came the unmistakable sound of scuffling footsteps.

“Who’s there?” I shouted.

Someone was crying. Someone else mewling like a cat. Then someone struggled to their feet in the dark.

“Ow!” Ivy shouted.

“What the—?”

Another scream, but this time it was far away. Outside maybe?

“What the hell was that?” Kiki asked, sounding like a five-year-old version of herself.

The loudest bang yet. Someone hugged me from the side, breathing heavily in my ear.

“Reed? Are you there?” Lorna whispered.

“WTH is going on?” Portia said.

“I’m here,” I said. I held my breath for a long, long time. Everything was silent. Silent. Silent.

“Who has a candle?” I said finally.

“I do.”

Tiffany crawled forward, finding first my knee, then my hand, with her fingers. She pressed the candle into my hand. I reached around to the back pocket of my jeans and fumbled out a pack of matches. I took Lorna’s hand off my sleeve and handed her the candle.

“Take this and don’t move.”

In the pitch black, with my hands shaking, it took ten tries to light the match. When I finally did, Lorna’s face loomed before me in the light, her bottom lip trembling as she held the candle toward me. I lit the wick, shook out the match, and took the candle away.

“Is everyone all right?” I asked. I slowly rose to my feet, my knees trembling in protest, as I held the candle and slowly turned in a circle. Ivy, who was curled up in a ball on the floor, slowly lifted her head. Tears streaked down her face.

“What the hell just happened?” she asked.

Astrid crawled out from behind the pulpit. Rose and Vienna only now released their grip on each other. Tentatively, everyone stood around me, taking deep breaths, checking over their shoulders.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was just someone playing a prank? Could it have been Missy and those girls?”

“No. Missy?” Lorna said. “I don’t think she’d—”

“Um, Reed?” Tiffany said loudly, her voice strained.

“What?” My heart thumped in fear.

Tiffany looked around at all of us. At Ivy and Rose, Portia and Lorna, Kiki and Astrid, Vienna and Amberly and me. Her eyes were wide with fear as she stepped forward.

“Where’s Noelle?”

VANISHED

“Noelle!”

“Noelle! Are you out there!”

“Noelle! This is not funny! If you’re hiding somewhere …”

“Everyone spread out,” I said, my heart beating wildly in terror. “Maybe she tried to hide and fell or something.”

Amberly hugged herself tightly. “Spread out? But what if whoever was out there is still—”

“Amberly! Just go!” I shouted.

I turned and headed for the alcove at the side of the building. Ivy came with.

“Reed, maybe it’s okay,” Ivy said, stepping carefully down the few steps to the main floor. “Maybe she just ran.”

“What do you mean, ran?” I blurted, shoving aside an old dusty curtain. All that was behind it was a pile of tattered old bibles and mouse-chewed wicker baskets.

“She was just talking about not wanting to get caught,” Ivy pointed out. “Maybe she figured it was the headmaster out there and she just bailed.”

My heart sank at the very idea. “No,” I said. “Not Noelle. She wouldn’t just leave us here.” Not the girl who had saved my life on the roof of Billings. The girl who’d whisked me off to St. Barths after Sabine turned on me, even though she was still mad that I’d hooked up with her sort-of boyfriend. The one who had lied directly to Headmaster Hathaway’s face—to her father’s friend’s face—just to get us all out of trouble.

“Are you sure about that?” Ivy asked, raising her perfect black brows.

I was about to respond when Vienna and Portia returned from the hallway on the far side of the chapel.

“Anything?” I asked, my voice echoing throughout the room.

“Nothing,” Portia replied.

“Astrid?” I asked as Astrid and Kiki emerged from the pastor’s office.

“Door’s still locked back there. Nothing’s been moved,” Astrid replied.

Slowly everyone returned from their search, their faces blank and scared.

“Why don’t you just call her?” Ivy suggested. “Maybe she’s walking back to campus right now.”

I felt a jolt of hope and ran over to my bag, extracting my phone from the inside pocket and speed-dialing Noelle. It rang once. Then twice. Then, a ring tone started to play softly somewhere inside the room. I stopped breathing.

“Where is that coming from?”

Everyone started to look around, bending at the waist, checking under pews, holding their candles aloft. The floor creaked underfoot as we crept around, searching.

“Oh my God,” Portia said suddenly.

“What?” I blurted.

She stood up from behind one of the pews. Hooked around her thumb was one of the thick straps of Noelle’s black Chanel purse.

“Her stuff is strewn all over back here,” Portia said.

I glanced at the spot where Noelle had been sitting, a good fifty feet from where her bag had been spilled. The white bakery box sat on its side, as if it had been tipped over in some kind of struggle. Slowly, I lowered my iPhone from my ear. Portia reached inside the bag and silenced Noelle’s phone.