The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (104 page)
The second he was gone, my heart started to race. Sweat prickled my underarms and down my back. She couldn’t have really blamed me. She couldn’t have. She had to have known that, even with all that had happened, she still had her whole life ahead of her. She could have gone to a million other private schools, would have still waltzed right into an Ivy League school. It wasn’t my fault. It could not have been my—
Why is that woman staring at me like that? It’s like she knows. It’s like she can see right through me and—
Okay, deep breath, Reed. Cheyenne was unstable. Obviously. Even if she did blame you for her death, that means nothing. Stable people do not kill themselves. Stable people don’t leave two contradicting suicide notes.
Stable people also don’t have paranoid panic attacks just because their boyfriends leave the table.
It was too warm in the restaurant. The candles were sucking all the air out. I had to get out of there. Now. I fumbled for my purse. Reached for my phone. I was going to go outside and call my brother. I needed to hear a comforting voice. I needed to talk to someone I could trust.
My hands were shaking. The phone slipped from my grasp and hit the floor. An elegant hand reached down and snatched it up for me.
“Lose something, glass-licker?”
Oh. My. God.
I leaned forward, around the wings of the chair, and Noelle Lange stepped into full view. I felt as if my heart were about to burst out of
my chest. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized that on some level, I had believed I would never see her again.
“Noelle!”
I jumped up. Nearly knocked the heavy chair over. She stopped it with her free hand.
“Okay. Let’s not get too excited,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not like I’m back from the dead or something.”
For some reason, the way she said those words, I knew that she knew about Cheyenne. And I didn’t even care that she was being callous about it. All that mattered was that she was here. Miraculously, perfectly, here. I threw my arms around her and hugged her tight.
“It’s so good to see you!” I said.
She hugged me back. “You too.”
I looked her over as I leaned away. She looked amazing, of course. Her long brown hair shone and she’d cut long bangs that fell perfectly over her brown eyes. She wore a low-cut black wrap dress and a simple but gorgeous diamond pendant. Her colorful strappy heels were so high, she towered over me, and her bronzed legs looked toned to soccer-finals perfection.
“Where have you been?” I demanded, noting the perfect tan.
“Here and there,” she said casually. “As of this week, I’m a free woman. My father’s genius lawyers finally broke down La Beastesse—that’s what I call the judge who was presiding over my case,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “So my probation has officially been lifted. Whatever that means.”
“What
does
that mean?” I asked.
“Basically that now I can go out of the country,” she said, lifting my water glass off the table and taking a sip. “Which is
so
overdue. I could not be any more sick of the Hamptons.”
“So you’re . . . going out of the country?” I asked, feeling inexplicably crestfallen. It wasn’t as if she was going to go back to Easton with me. Wasn’t as if I could count on her living down the hall from me again. Being there for me. Protecting me.
Noelle looked me up and down. “Actually, I’m not so sure. There have been certain developments that might entice me to stay stateside.”
I swallowed hard. “You don’t mean . . . I mean . . . you heard about Cheyenne.”
“Yes.” She pursed her lips. Placed the glass down on the table. “Shame. But you know what they say, Reed.”
I looked into her eyes. Those familiar, sparkling, mischievous eyes. I almost couldn’t believe she was there. Couldn’t believe how much I’d missed her. How much I’d missed feeling like this. Like anything could happen.
“What?” I asked. “What do they say?”
Noelle smiled knowingly. “Everything happens for a reason.”
Chapter 2: Poor Little Rich Girls
Chapter 3: The Party Must Go On
Chapter 12: The Future of Billings
Chapter 20: Perfectly Good Explanations
Chapter 38: Gwendolyn’s Secret
For the true Billings Girls,
with huge amounts of gratitude:
Lanie, Sara, Katie, Lynn, Allison, Emily, Courtney, Lila,
Lucille, Kelly, Carolyn, Sarah, Erin, Lee, Roxy, and Josh, Paul, Matt, and Baby V., too
Death.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The only two people I had ever known who had died had died young. Had died beautiful. Had died horrifying, gruesome deaths.
Had died because of me.
Wait. Stop. No.
Not because of me. I couldn’t think that way. Not without going insane. Thomas had died because Ariana was psychotic. Cheyenne had died because she was disturbed. It was not my fault. Not mine.
So why couldn’t I help thinking that if I had never come to Easton Academy, they would both still be alive? Walking around this campus right now. Laughing. Flirting. Living. Cheyenne had said as much in the e-mail she’d sent me the night she died.
Ignore the note. You did this to me. You ruined my life.
Dead. Because of me.
“Crummy day,” Constance Talbot said, hugging her tweed coat closer to herself as the wind whipped her red hair back from her face. The cold September sky above was gray, muddled, threatening rain as we crossed the quad at the center of the Easton Academy campus, together with our Billings housemates. Saturday it had been seventy-five degrees. Now, two days later, it was fifty-five. Had to love that temperamental New England weather. Constance cuddled her chubby, freckled cheeks into her collar and stared at the cobblestone path to the dining hall. At times like this I could easily imagine what she had looked like as a child. Precious. Vulnerable. Innocent.
“I’m glad my coat arrived on Saturday,” Sabine DuLac said. Her new coat, befitting her unique style, was white and light blue brocade with old-fashioned cut-glass buttons. It contrasted beautifully with her dark hair and light brown skin. “It was cold in Boston,” she added.
Right. Sabine had visited her sister in Boston over the weekend. I had completely forgotten to ask her how it had gone—how her sister was. Some friend I was. I’d have to remember to ask her later.
“It was freezing here, too. And we ended up spending a lot of time outside the dorm,” Constance said.
“Because it was too depressing?” I asked.
We had, after all, only found Cheyenne’s body on Saturday morning. Just two days ago. I could understand why everyone might be avoiding Billings House. Like Sabine, I had left campus and spent the weekend in New York with my boyfriend, Josh Hollis. I hadn’t wanted to come back, but I’d had no choice. Billings was my home. These
girls, most of whom were now gathered around me for warmth as we walked to breakfast, were like my family. For better or worse.
“Well, that, and the cops were all over the place,” Tiffany Goulbourne said as she checked some setting on her tiny digital camera. “Going through Cheyenne’s stuff, taking pictures of her room . . .”
“Why?” I asked. I had arrived home from the city late the night before and had yet to hear any of this.
“To confirm it was a suicide,” Tiffany said, looking ill. Her long white coat blew open and billowed out behind her, but she didn’t even seem to notice. She was one of those girls who was able to look perfect whether it was ten thousand degrees and humid or windy and pelting sleet. Tall and ebony-skinned with short-cropped black hair and big brown eyes, she had the cheekbones of a supermodel but preferred to spend her time behind the camera rather than in front of it, a quirk that almost none of the Billings Girls could understand. “Guess after last year they’re being cautious. Want to make sure there’s no question.”
“They even asked us about you, Reed,” Astrid Chou said in her cool British accent, her short black hair blowing straight up in the back. “About your row with Cheyenne.”
“What?” I blurted, my heart pounding. “They don’t think I—”
“No! No,” Astrid said, first adamantly, then comfortingly. She put her hand on my arm and looked at me with her steady dark eyes. Astrid was a new transfer this year, but I had met her last December at Cheyenne’s Christmas party in Litchfield. For a while I had thought she and Cheyenne were BFFs, but it had turned out that Astrid was more of a kindred spirit than I had thought. Like me, she hadn’t
condoned Cheyenne’s crazy hazing tactics or her arbitrary ostracizing of some of the other new Billings Girls. I had a feeling she could turn out to be a great friend. Plus, her quirky style and honest, blunt sense of humor were both welcome anomalies in Billings.
“We told them it was just a normal fight between girls,” Tiffany clarified. “Nothing weird. Happens all the time. Of course they don’t think that you had anything to do with anything.”
“They just had to ask,” Sabine added. “It’s their job.”
Even in the face of all this logic, I had to stop. My heart was pounding in my very eyes. It was a suicide. A suicide. I had proof. I had her second suicide note on my computer—not that I was eager to share that with my friends or the police. And okay, according to that second note, which Cheyenne had e-mailed only to me, it had been my fault. But I hadn’t actually
killed
her. This was insane.
As my closer friends paused around me, waiting for me to recover from my aneurysm, a few of the other Billings Girls rushed ahead to get out of the cold.
“Reed, no one thinks you had anything to do with this,” Constance said. “Don’t worry.”
I swallowed hard. “But they actually thought she might have been . . .” I couldn’t even say the word. Not again. Not again.
Tiffany swallowed and pressed her full lips together. “I guess they thought maybe.”
I couldn’t move. Murdered? They had thought Cheyenne might have been murdered? But why? What would make them think someone would want her dead? Besides me, of course. And our
argument. But that hadn’t been my fault. She had tried to steal my boyfriend.
The distinctly metallic rev of a power saw cut through the air. Everyone on the quad paused. A flock of birds took flight from a nearby oak, squawking like mad and scattering bright orange leaves all over the grass. Suddenly my heart was in my throat. I wondered how long it would be before I felt safe on campus again.
“What the hell was that?” Tiffany asked. She lifted her camera to capture a shot of the fleeing birds, never missing an opportunity to create art.