Scandal (6 page)

“Well? What do you say? Is it a deal?”

I held my breath. We could talk about membership numbers later. Right now, all I wanted to do was get started. “Deal.”

She put the book down on her bed and we shook on it, both of us grinning.

“Just one question,” she said, turning to grab the gray sweater up off the floor. “Why me?”

I thought about saying I wanted to help her find that elusive group of Easton friends she’d been looking for, but she would have tossed me out on my butt for pitying her. Besides, that wasn’t the only reason. I lifted my shoulders. “I trust you.”

“Yeah?” she asked as she yanked the sweater over her head.

“Is that such a shock? You helped me figure out who was stalking me,” I reminded her. “You basically took a bullet for me. How could I not trust you?”

Ivy laughed. “I take a bullet for you and all I get is a dusty book?”

“You get a whole secret society. With a secret whistle and everything,” I said.

And the love of my life,
I thought to myself as Ivy tore through the pages.
But who’s counting?

GHOSTS

Later that night, I sat at a wooden study carrel all the way at the back of the first-floor stacks. The library was so silent that my fingers tapping on my laptop’s keyboard sounded like rapid-fire gunshots. Every now and then I’d hear the distant sound of a book being dragged from a shelf, or the slow flap of a page being turned, but otherwise, nothing. Apparently, on the second night back after break, people weren’t all that motivated yet.

Bam!

I jumped back in my chair and nearly tumbled to the floor. Ivy slipped into the chair at the study carrel next to mine and pointed to the book, which she’d just dropped on the desk.

My hands on my chest, I gasped for breath. “God, Ivy! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

The gray-haired librarian padded over to the end of our aisle to give us a stern look. I shot her an apologetic grimace as Ivy dropped her bag on the floor, then opened the book. “I know where the chapel is,” she said.

The librarian shuffled away again and Ivy turned to the page that outlined the procedures for society meetings. There was a gorgeous sketch of a clapboard chapel, surrounded by trees. She pointed at it and leaned in closer to my side.

“If we’re going to do this right, we’re going to do it there,” she said. “The old Billings School chapel. It was supposed to be demolished a couple of years ago, but then some historical organization came in and stopped it. There was a big story about it in the paper my sophomore year—how they were going to renovate it—but I don’t think they ever did.”

She angled my computer toward her, saved my history paper, and opened my browser.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Showing it to you,” she said, moving her finger over the touch pad.

She brought up the Easton Academy website, all blue and gold and austere, with a photo of our own chapel anchoring the front page. Under the history section, she clicked the tab titled
The Billings School for Girls.
I scooted forward, scanning the contents.

“Here.” Ivy clicked on a link. “Campus map.”

A line drawing of the old Billings campus popped up. There had only been a few buildings: living quarters for students and teachers; the McKinley Building, which housed classrooms, offices, and a small library; the Prescott Building, which was basically the gymnasium and dining room; and the chapel.

“This is that apartment building down the hill from the Easton entry gate,” Ivy said, pointing at McKinley, the largest of the structures.

“Yeah. And isn’t the Prescott Building the Easton YMCA now?” I said.

“Yep. And
that
is the old chapel …” Ivy said, pointing. “It’s on our side of Hamilton Parkway, just up the hill from campus.”

“By the clearing,” I said with a shiver of recognition. The clearing was the spot where the Billings/Ketlar parties used to be held. Where Thomas and I had fought the night before he disappeared.

“Yeah, it’s a short walk back from there,” Ivy said. “We used to hang out there every once in a while until they had it condemned. After that, only the ‘real’ rebels used it,” she said sarcastically. I smirked. There weren’t any real rebels at Easton, just poseurs who thought they were rebels. She slapped my laptop closed and grabbed her bag. “Let’s go check it out.”

“What? Now? It’s pitch-black out
and
it’s snowing,” I protested, even as I rose from my chair.

“I swiped flashlights from the supply closet and you have snow boots on. Come on!”

Ivy’s excitement was infectious, and I grabbed my stuff and shoved it all into my bag. Pulling my hat down over my hair, I placed the book carefully inside my bag next to my computer and followed her out.

The snow fluttered down from the sky lazily, like millions of tiny, weightless feathers, tickling our noses as we hurried across campus. Our feet left long tracks in the snow behind us as we ignored the shoveled pathways. My heart hollowed out when we passed the huge patch of dirt where Billings used to be, the front walkway now leading to nowhere. I averted my eyes and quickened my pace. I was going to fix this. Right here, right now, I was taking my first steps toward bringing Billings back.

When we reached the very edge of campus, Ivy and I paused and looked over our shoulders. There were only a few souls out on the grounds, all of them indistinguishable in the darkness, and none of them interested in us. They were too busy huddling into their scarves and coats, rushing back to the warmth of their dorms. We still had an hour before we were technically supposed to be inside our houses, but it seemed like most people had already hunkered down for the night. Ivy and I looked at one another in anticipation, took a breath, and ran. Our feet crunched through the untouched snow on this side of campus. It was slow going, even as we tried to hurry, and soon my lungs started to burn. With every step I waited for the shout—the voice telling us to stop, come back, that we weren’t allowed past the tree line. But, mercifully, it never came.

As we ducked into the woods at the top of the hill we slowed to catch our breath. The snow wasn’t as deep under the trees, the leaves carrying the brunt of the burden, and we flicked the flashlights on, following the familiar path toward the clearing. My heart pounded with nerves, excitement, and sadness as we came to the clearing.

“Reed? Come on,” Ivy said, urging me forward.

I hadn’t even realized I’d paused.

“Yeah. Coming.”

We slid over fallen leaves, ducked branches here and there, and finally came to the end of the pathway. Rising up in front of us was an old white clapboard church, the steeple collapsing in on itself, the steps that led to the double doors crumbling. Two fluorescent orange signs nailed to the doors had DANGER! CONDEMNED! stamped across them, but the two-by-fours nailed across the door had been pried free. One of the doors hung slightly ajar, creaking in the wind.

“Okay. This is spooky,” I said, shivering so violently I had to hug myself to stop it.

“Spooky, but beautiful,” Ivy replied, running the beam of the flashlight over the dirty white planks of wood. “Shall we?”

I swallowed my fear. This was for Billings. “Sure.”

We picked our way carefully up the crumbling steps and pushed open the door. It cried out in protest, and the noise rousted some birds—or perhaps bats—from their hiding places, sending them flapping into the night sky. Inside, the chapel was bone-numbingly cold—even colder, it seemed, than the air outside. We stood in the corner of the long, rectangular room and shone our flashlights across the small space. There were several dusty pews with a wide aisle down the center facing an old altar, and half a dozen wall sconces held melted candles, their wax frozen in drips over their bases. The wood floor was littered with garbage. Cigarette butts, beer bottles, old joints, crumpled fast-food bags. The place was a sty.

“I don’t really think my friends are going to like hanging out here,” I said wryly, taking a few tentative steps into the room.

“My friends would
love
it,” she said with a glint in her eye. “Of course, they would probably tag the crap out of it.”

I chuckled as my footsteps on the chapel’s aisle caused a cacophony of creaks and wails. Actually, I was surprised there had been no outright vandalism inside the chapel. Garbage aplenty, yeah, but no spray paint or anything.

“We have to use it,” Ivy said. “It has the history.” She edged her way along the right side of the room, down the side aisle, and peered through an open archway riddled with cobwebs. Apparently finding nothing of interest there, she kept walking toward the pulpit at the front of the chapel. “We could clean it up. Make it more livable. With all new candles lit and the wood polished up, it could be amazing.”

I took a breath. The stained-glass windows were beautiful and mostly intact, only a few of them cracked here and there. With candles glowing, and maybe some pillows and cozy blankets, the ambience could be just right.

An idea suddenly hit me like a kick to the gut. The third task. I’d been wondering what sort of chore we could devise to fit the requirements of beautifying or improving some aspect of the school. This was perfect. We could clean up the old Billings chapel—the space our sisters used to gather in—and make it suitable for ourselves. It was like someone had just wrapped up a huge gift and dropped it in my lap.

I smiled up at the high ceiling.
Thanks, Elizabeth Williams.

Ivy grinned, her face partially shadowed in the shifting light. “You’re loving me now, aren’t you?”

I rolled my eyes and turned for the door. “Come on. Let’s get back to Pemberly. We have a lot of work to do.”

I took one look back at the chapel as I stepped out, and a chill went through me. I paused, my heart in my throat, feeling like someone was watching me. Then I took a breath and shook it off. It was just the darkness, the coldness, the desertedness. Soon this place would be inhabited again, by laughter and conversation and light. Soon this place would belong to Billings again.

TAPS

“I don’t understand. Why are you inviting Noelle?” Ivy asked.

She sat back against the side of my bed, holding an old-fashioned quill pen between her fingers. Laid out on the wood floor between us were several cream-colored cards and envelopes, which she had purchased at the Paperie—an exclusive stationer in Easton—the previous afternoon. It was 6 a.m. on Wednesday and we’d been working on the invites since four, trying to get them done before breakfast, chapel, and classes got in the way. My back was killing me from bending over the cards, but time was running out, so I just had to suck it up if we were going to mail these out this morning.

“She’s a Billings Girl. I can’t just not invite her to join the Billings Literary Society,” I said, holding the edges of one of the stationery cards between my palms as I inspected my handwriting. Altogether we were filling out fifteen invitations. One for each Billings Girl and one for Ivy. I hadn’t even mentioned the idea of inviting more people, not wanting to risk too many of my friends being cut if it really came down to that.

“But she already turned you down,” Ivy replied, tossing her long dark hair back from her face. She leaned forward and carefully addressed an envelope. “Do you really want to get rejected twice?”

“Look, I know you don’t like her,” I began, “but I—”

“It’s not because I don’t like her,” Ivy said, fixing me with a stare. “I mean, okay, I think she’s the devil incarnate—”

I snorted a laugh. She didn’t join me. Damn. She was serious.

“It’s just, there are only eleven open spots,” Ivy continued. “Ten if we don’t count yours. There are already too many girls to begin with. The fewer you tap, the fewer will be disappointed.”

I swallowed against my suddenly sandpapery throat. Here it was. The conversation I’d been dreading. I placed the card aside and folded my hands together.

“Yeah, about that only-eleven-members thing—”

“Don’t even try it,” Ivy said, pointing at me with the pen. “We said we were going to follow every point down to the letter.”

I gritted my teeth and tilted my head. “I know, but—”

“There are no buts, Reed!” Ivy said, scrambling to her feet. “You promised we were going to honor the book, the original sisters. You can’t go back on that now.”

“But Ivy, there are only fifteen of us,” I said, tilting my head back to look up at her. “What’s the big deal if we let in four more? The whole reason I wanted to do this was to keep Billings together, not throw people out.”

“I don’t understand,” Ivy said, pursing her lips as she crossed her arms over her slim chest. “If this is just about keeping Billings together, why am I even here?”

I shrugged and looked down at the heavy note cards spread before me. “Is it wrong to want to hang out with all of my friends together?” I said, looking up at her again. “Including you?”

Ivy rolled her eyes and let her hands droop at her sides. “God. Sometimes I forget how mushy you are.”

“What?” I blurted, half offended, half laughing.