The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (270 page)

Well. Things had just turned right around, hadn’t they?

Slowly, I walked up to the side of the counter, where a bevy of glittering necklaces were displayed on small, hanging racks. Louise looked up as I approached and gave me a quick smile, then returned to her reading. I lifted the tiny white price tag on the first necklace. It looked like something the new Lorna might wear. A string of delicate, white beads with every tenth bead replaced by a rhinestone-encrusted flower. The price was $250.

I glanced at Louise again. She was engrossed. Carefully, casually, I slid the necklace off the display, folded it around my hand, and then stuffed my hand into one of the thick, woolen socks. My palms were sweating profusely, and for a second the necklace stuck to my skin, but I wiggled my fingers and it fell free, nestled perfectly inside the pocket of wool.

“I’ll take these,” I said, dropping the socks on the counter.

Louise pulled one ear bud from her ear and glanced at the price tag. She keyed the numbers into the register and snapped her gum.

“That’ll be ten sixty,” she said.

I dove into my bag and fumbled out my wallet. She waited patiently while I extracted a ten and a single and shakily handed over the bills.

“You need a bag?” she asked, jamming down on a button. The cash register slid open with a clang.

“No!” I practically shouted. I plucked the socks off the counter and into my handbag, shoving them as far down as they would go. Louise looked at me like I’d just escaped from a mental asylum.

“Okay. You don’t
have
to take one,” she said a bit sarcastically.

I laughed. “Sorry. Too many Red Bulls today.”

She grinned and rolled her eyes. “I hear ya,” she said, sliding my forty cents across the counter. “Have a good one!”

Then she popped her ear bud back into her ear and picked up her book. That was it. Easy peasy. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. I grabbed my change, turned around, and made for the front of the store like I was running for the carousel at the state fair when I was a little kid. Pure and utter joy coursed through my veins. Not to mention this kind of euphoric, all-powerful feeling. I’d gotten away with it. I’d actually gotten away with it.

“Hey! Wait!” Louise shouted.

I froze with my hand on the door. My heart choked off all air supply. Across the street I could see Ivy sitting in the front window at Starbucks, sipping a coffee, waiting for me. Little did she know that if she was ever going to see me again, she was going to have to bail me out at the Easton police station.

I turned around to face my accuser.

“Here!” Louise said. “You forgot your receipt!”

She held out a tiny white scrap of paper.

“My mom freaks if I forget to give them out. There’s a special discount coupon at the bottom and she thinks it’s the holy grail of repeat business,” Louise said, shaking the receipt like she was offering a bone to a dog.

My brain was taking way too long to catch up. Somehow I managed to reach out and take the receipt, but my expression was completely confused.

“Mothers, huh?” I heard myself say.

“Can’t live with them, but they do pay for the pizza,” Louise joked back. “See ya.”

She sashayed back behind the counter and I turned around and shoved open the door. A gush of cold air hit me in the face, waking me from my stupor, and just like that, I was free. I crumpled the receipt and tossed it into a garbage can as I crossed the street to meet my friend.

Discount coupon or no discount coupon, there was no way I was ever stepping foot in that store again.

I had committed a crime. I was a felon. A thief. Every time I looked down at the long, beaded necklace, dangling low on my chest, my stomach twisted. I couldn’t believe I’d actually felt proud of myself for even a moment. What had I accomplished, really? I’d managed to hide something from a girl who probably wouldn’t have noticed if a nuclear bomb had gone off under the countertop. And I’d probably gotten her in trouble. Once her mom realized a $250 necklace had gone missing on her watch, Louise was dead. That woman had no-nonsense written all over her. Would she fire Louise? Take away her iPod? Stop buying her the pizza she so clearly lived for?

I was an awful human being.

“Hey. Great necklace!” Diana Waters said to me as we slid our trays down the food line at dinner that night. Diana was one of my few friends outside the Billings circle. With her athletic, tomboy style, jewelry wasn’t something I ever would have thought she’d
notice. But of course she noticed my one stolen item. “Where’d you get it?”

“I . . . it . . . was a gift,” I lied. My heart pounded in my ears. Was that cafeteria lady with the ladle staring at me? Did she know something?

Looking away, I grabbed a big bowl of mashed potatoes and added it to my tray, which was already loaded down with marinara-sauce-covered spaghetti and garlic bread. Comfort food at its finest.

“WTF, Reed? Are you carbo-loading for some marathon I don’t know about?” Portia asked, glancing over her shoulder at me. Her tray held only a small salad, a bottle of water, and a plain piece of grilled chicken. All the better to fit into that size 00 houndstooth Chanel skirt she was sporting.

“Sorry if it’s not my goal to disappear when I turn sideways,” I replied.

Portia smirked. Clearly, she was proud of the fact that she had wrists so skinny she could practically wrap her fingers around them twice.

“See you in class, D,” I said to Diana.

She gave me a wave, still eyeing the necklace admiringly. Part of me wanted to just tear it off and give it to her, but my instructions were clear. I had to be seen wearing my stolen item on campus. So I grabbed a Sprite and fell into step with Portia, lifting my chin high to ensure the necklace was on full display as we walked into the dining hall. Already the tables were jam-packed with students, noshing, talking, laughing, and even—in the case of one of the guys’ tables—pinging
grapes off one another’s heads. Portia turned toward the tables at the center of the room where the rest of the Billings Literary Society members sat, but I paused when I saw Josh waving me down from the far side of the room.

“I’ll catch up,” I told her.

She rolled her eyes slightly. “Ah, young love.”

I rolled my eyes back. Maybe that was Portia’s problem. Maybe that was why she didn’t want to go to the Sweethearts Dance. She hadn’t had a boyfriend since I’d known her. In lighter times, I would have immediately focused on finding her one to curb her acerbic tendencies and make Valentine’s Day fun for her, but I kind of had a lot on my plate right then.

“Hey,” I said, hovering at the end of Josh’s lonely table.

He used his toe to nudge the chair across from him out from under the table. “Saved you a seat,” he said with a grin.

There was nothing I would have liked better than to sink into that chair and hang out with him for the next hour, but I’d been kind of neglecting the BLS girls lately. Besides, if anyone was going to actually notice the illegal bling around my neck, it was my girlfriends. And the more people who noticed it, the better. Somehow it had to get back to this mysterious kidnapper that I was sporting my stolen goods.

“Actually, I promised the girls I’d sit with them tonight,” I said, biting my lip. “But maybe I’ll come over and join you for dessert?”

Josh’s face fell. He glanced past me at the Billings table and I saw his jaw clench and unclench. There wasn’t much in this world Josh hated more than he hated the Billings Girls. He thought they were
shallow, obnoxious, and self-serving, and even though I knew them better than he did, I’d never been able to convince him otherwise. As a result, my friends had always been a bit of a thorn in the side of our relationship.

“Fine. Yeah. Whatever,” he said.

“Don’t be mad,” I implored. “I promise I’ll come over later.”

Josh forced a smile. “I’m cool. I’ve got some reading to catch up on anyway.”

“Thanks.”

I walked over to my usual table and sat down in the last chair, next to Portia, trying not to dwell on the fact that Josh was clearly pissed. Tiffany was sitting across from Portia, her short, dark curls pushed back from her forehead by a dark red headband. She was scrolling through pictures on her digital camera with Rose hanging over her shoulder to better see the frames.

“Hey, ladies,” I said, trying for a light tone. “What’re you looking at?”

“Shots from St. Barths,” Tiffany replied.

Rose laughed at something on the screen, her red curls shaking. “Check out this one of you and Noelle.”

She turned the camera around so I could see. There, on the screen, were me and Noelle, clad in bathing suits, our arms looped around each other as we model-posed for the camera. Noelle’s lips were pursed and my tongue touched my top lip, in what I thought at the time was a sexy pose. Now it just looked ridiculous. As my friends laughed and teased me, a bubble choked my throat.

I reached down and fiddled with my necklace.

Noelle. Where are you?

“Hey,” Ivy said, dropping down across from me. She put her tray down and her eyes instantly went to my necklace. Not surprising, considering I was now twisting it tightly around my pinky. “Wow. Reed, that’s beautiful,” she said, reaching out to finger the beads. I let it uncurl and it lengthened out again. “Did you get that at Sweet Nothings this afternoon?”

“Um, yeah,” I said, struggling to speak past the throat bubble.

“It’s so pretty. Why didn’t you show it to me at Starbucks?” Ivy asked, lifting the strap of her book bag over her head and turning to hang it on the back of her chair.

“Yeah and why did you just tell that Diana person it was a gift?” Portia asked, arching one eyebrow.

I swallowed hard as my heart clenched. Rose, Tiffany, Portia, and Ivy all stared at me, clearly intrigued. They knew. Of course they knew. My friends were intimately aware of the shortcomings of my bank account. We all knew I couldn’t have afforded such a thing. Maybe I should just admit it. Tell them I’d gone over to the dark side—that I’d shoplifted. They all knew that Kiran had done it a few times. It wasn’t
so
scandalous. But the fact that I was poor would probably make the act seem pathetic rather than daring. And the very idea of seeming pathetic to them made my stomach coil.

Which meant it was time to start spewing more lies.

“I . . . yeah . . . I didn’t want to tell her where I got it,” I said, trying as hard as I could to sound casual. I reached for my Sprite and took a
sip. “You know. ’Cause then she would go buy one and then someone else would want one . . . . ”

“God, don’t you hate that?” Portia said, spearing a cucumber with her fork. “When you get something you like and then suddenly
everyone
has one?”

“Yeah. Totally,” I said, my heart unclenching slightly.

“I think I saw those. Up on the counter, right?” Ivy said, narrowing her eyes. “They were, like, three hundred dollars.”

“Whoa. That’s some major coin for fake jewels,” Tiffany said.

“Since when does scholarship girl have cash like that lying around?” Portia asked.

“I . . . I just . . . had some Christmas money, still,” I said. The beads suddenly felt sharp around my neck, and my skin started to itch. I pushed my chair back from the table. “I gotta go. I’ll . . . be right back.”

I turned around and fled the room, my vision blurred by hot tears of mortification. I could feel everyone in the dining hall staring at me, talking about me, whispering and laughing. This wasn’t a new sensation for me, of course, but there was no getting used to it. No matter how many times I was the subject of gossip or the butt of jokes, it never got any easier. Out in the marble-floored foyer, I shoved my way into the bathroom and leaned over the first porcelain sink, heaving for breath.

I couldn’t stand lying in general. Lying about the fact that I’d stolen something was even worse. My skin burned and I pressed my palms against the counter, leaning farther over the sink.

“It’s for Noelle,” I whispered to myself. “Just chill the freak out before someone starts suspecting something.”

Taking a deep breath, I turned on the cold water and splashed my face a few times. When I looked up at my reflection, dark mascara ran down my cheeks. I grabbed a paper towel and dabbed off the mess. The delicate skin under my eyes screamed in protest against the harsh paper, and when I looked at myself again, the area was red and raw. I took a few more deep breaths for good measure and waited for my skin to cool off.

It’s going to be fine,
I thought.
It’s all going to be fine.

The problem was, I didn’t believe it. But I had to at least pretend that I did. I rolled my shoulders back, turned, and yanked open the door. In the foyer I nearly ran right into Sawyer Hathaway.

“Whoa! Hey!” he said, grabbing on to my shoulders in an attempt to steady us both. “Oh,” he said, his face falling when he saw it was me.

“Sorry,” I said, ducking my head and trying to get around him.

“Wait. Reed.”

I stopped and turned to face him, but found myself unable to look him in the eye.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said. He had his hands in the pockets of his wool coat, as if he’d just come in from the outside. He gestured with them as he spoke, opening the sides to reveal the striped lining.

“Do what?” I asked.

“That thing, you know, where I don’t talk to you because of . . . you know . . . what happened with . . . us. Not that we were even an ‘us’ . . . ,”
he said. Then he bit off an embarrassed laugh. “Whatever. I don’t want to be that guy.”

I looked up at him then, hope tickling my insides. His blond hair was pushed back from his face, and his blue eyes somehow looked bluer, darker, than usual.

“Why be a cliche?” I joked.

He cracked a smile. “Exactly.”

I smiled back. Then we both looked at the floor.

“I’m not saying it doesn’t suck,” he told me. “Seeing you with Upton and now Josh. I mean, I’ve heard you’ve got a history with that guy, but after what he did to Jen—”

“He didn’t do anything to Jen,” I said defensively. “They just broke up. And it was, like, two years ago.”