The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (68 page)

“Nice drama back there. You been watching too much Telenova?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Did you want something?” I spat.

Her eyebrow arched. “Not that I owe you any explanations, but I wanted you to know that I wasn’t trying to be callous. All I want to do is help everyone decompress. And from the way you’re acting, I think you might need one night of distraction more than anyone.”

My jaw clenched of its own accord.

“I’m only thinking of you,” she added.

As always. My protector. My savior. I was beginning to think it was nothing but a line. And yet, part of me still wanted to ask her for help. All I had to do was open my mouth and ask and she’d tell me exactly where Blake went to college. But if I did that, she’d want to know why I wanted to know. She’d be part of this, and at that moment I didn’t much like her, let alone trust her. At that moment the only person I trusted was myself.

“I’d really like to be alone right now,” I said.

“Reed, come on. I just want things to go back to normal around here. Don’t you just want to feel normal again?”

“Well, maybe that’s the difference between you and me, Noelle. Because for me, as long as Josh is locked up somewhere for something he didn’t do, I don’t think anything’s ever going to feel normal.”

She stared at me for a moment, then laughed in the back of her throat, tipped her head forward, and covered her face with her hands. Embarrassed? At a loss? Was it even possible? But when she
looked up again, pushing her hair back from her face with her hands, she was perfectly composed.

“Could you be any more high-and-mighty?” she said.

“You invented the concept.”

Whoa. Had I really just said that? From the look on her face, Noelle couldn’t believe it either.

“No one talks to me like that.”

My heart was on the verge of stopping completely. I ignored it. “Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

“Fine. When you decide to stop acting like a child, I’ll be in my room.”

And then I was alone again.

There was a little part of me that thought Noelle was right. At least in one respect. Getting the hell off the Easton campus
would
be a nice change of pace. Especially since being around people at all and the Billings Girls in particular was making me extremely tense. They were just so . . . very willing to accept that the whole thing was over and to put it behind them. It made me want to scream. Or knock their heads together. Or perhaps get up and overturn the cafeteria table where we all sat for each and every meal.

I stood at the end of that table, which was, for the moment, deserted, and considered sitting somewhere else. I had left the dorm fifteen minutes early just so that I wouldn’t have to walk with them to dinner, but even in my current volatile state, I knew that not sitting at Noelle’s table would be an affront worse than wearing last year’s shoes, which was pretty much unforgivable. But I could sit all the way down here, at the opposite end from where they usually sat. I could separate myself that much.

I took my seat and pulled out my copy of
The Invisible Man
. This was me, engrossed in my studies. This was me, too busy to talk.

After a short while the cafeteria began to fill up with people. As always their conversations became hushed as they passed by me. As always I could feel the stares on the back of my neck. I simply kept my eyes trained on my book and read the same sentence for the tenth time.

My mind wandered to Thomas. Snapshots of him, lying dead. I winced. Tried to clear my mind. For the past few weeks I had tried to avoid thinking about the details of how he’d died, but every once in a while I couldn’t stop my imagination from conjuring these images. I couldn’t stop. . . .

The bat. Someone had used Josh’s baseball bat to bash Thomas’s head in. The blood, the tears, the begging, the sound of wood hitting. . . .

Suddenly I was gasping for breath.

Okay. Fine. I was fine. It was over. Done. It was going to be fine. Fine, fine, fine.

Soon I heard the approach of the girls. Noelle. Ariana. Kiran. Not Taylor, because she was God knows where doing God knows what. Gage’s voice was louder than anyone else’s. I breathed in through my nose, out through my mouth. In through my nose, out through my mouth.

The chair across from me was pulled out, which startled me. I looked up. It was only Natasha. She gave me an understanding, encouraging look and silently went about her business.

Noelle, Ariana, and Kiran settled in at their end of the table, chatting as if nothing was amiss. London and Vienna defected from the next table over and filled in the seats between us. I looked at my book. Really concentrated this time. Read the sentence for the twentieth time. I was just settling into a cautious level of relative comfort when Dash made his entrance.

“You guys are not going to believe this bullshit,” he said, yanking a chair out from another table and slamming it down at the end of ours. His cheeks were blotched with cold and anger and his blond hair was mussed. He did not sit down. “They’re keeping Josh locked up on charges of withholding evidence.”

A cold sweat slipped over my body. Withholding evidence. Hadn’t I done the same thing when I hadn’t shown them Thomas’s final note? Were they coming for me next?

“They don’t have enough to charge him with murder, so they’re claiming he didn’t divulge important information,” Dash continued, throwing his arms out. “They’re making this up as they go along.”

Everyone looked at everyone else, but no one spoke.

“I’ll bite,” Natasha said finally. “What important information?”

“They say he should have reported his bat missing,” Dash spat. “Can you believe that crap?”

“Are you kidding me?” Gage asked. “I lost a pen that day—should I report
that
?”

“Dash, how did you find out about this?” Noelle asked.

“My dad. He’s working with Josh’s lawyer and his parents. They
got in from Germany yesterday morning. Freaking out, of course.” He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Isn’t this, like, unconstitutional or something?” he asked, looking at Natasha.

“I . . . no. Not exactly,” she said. “I mean, as far as I know, as long as they charge him with something—”

“But what if that something is completely transparent?” Dash blurted, like Natasha was the bad guy. “What the hell kind of system is this? We have to
do
something.”

At that moment I recognized in Dash everything I had been feeling myself. I was just opening my mouth to agree with him when—

“What do you want them to do? Let him go so he can come back here and kill somebody else?” Ariana asked.

Silence fell. The cold sheen of sweat froze into a skin of ice.

“Reed—”

I don’t even know who said my name. I had already shoved my chair back from the table and left.

After spending the rest of dinner in the infirmary, I went directly to
the library. I had three hours before I had to be back at my dorm. Three hours to figure
out what to do next.

I stepped into the hushed warmth of the Easton library. The brown-and-gray
marble floor gleamed, and the gold-glass lights cast a dim glow over the airy lobby.
Instantly, the scent of musty books enveloped me, soothing my frazzled nerves. The
elderly librarian at the checkout desk, with his suede-capped sleeves and thick glasses,
didn’t look up from his work. I breathed a bit easier.

Slipping by the desk, I tugged my scarf from the collar of my coat and
headed for the European history section. I heard a few whispers and hesitated. Who could
possibly have gotten here before me? Whoever it was sat on the other side of the stacks.
I resolved to stare straight ahead and stride right past them. Which I did, but I
couldn’t help looking out of the corner of my eye.

No one I knew. Three freshmen. Poring over the student
newspaper, the
Easton Academy Chronicle
. The headline read
STUDENTS BACK TO WORK AFTER THANKSGIVING BREAK
. A real gripper. Part
of the dean’s let’s-play-happy mandate. Disgusted, I kept right on walking,
but then it hit me.

The student newspaper. Back home in Croton, the final issue of the high
school paper always listed all of the graduating seniors and their future
plans—which colleges they were attending, whether they were going right to work or
to a trade school. Would the
Easton Academy Chronicle
do the
same? I laughed over the fact that I could doubt it for even a second. Of course they
would. They would want to show off the percentage of Ivy League spots they’d won.
If I could just get my hands on the last paper from Blake’s graduation
year . . .

I turned around and strode back to the front desk. The librarian languidly
turned a yellowing page in his book.

“Excuse me?”

He sighed and continued to read. I tensed up.

“Excuse me. I just have a quick question.”

He lifted one craggy finger and the clock behind him tick, tick, ticked. I
held my breath.

“I’m sorry, I—”

He lifted his head. Trained his perfectly clear and alert eyes on me.

“Yes, Miss? I’ve finished my page now,” he said calmly.
“What, might I ask, is so urgent?”

Okay, Reed. Chill. This man deals with obnoxious,
overprivileged kids all day long. He has every right to finish his page before he helps
you. Of course, if he knew that someone’s life was at stake
here . . .

But never mind.

“I was just wondering if you keep old copies of the student
newspaper?” I asked.

“Yes, we do. They’re on the front shelf in the history
section, bound by year.” He returned to his book, and I hightailed it to the far
wall of the library, my heart pounding like a jackhammer.

There they were, right at eye level: dozens of brown, leather-bound
volumes with gold lettering.
EASTON ACADEMY CHRONICLE,
1964–1965. I
ran my hand along the books until I found the year I was looking for and yanked the tome
down. In the back was that year’s graduation issue, and right inside the front
page was the list.

My eyes ran down the alphabetical names, looking for the P’s, but
even in my haste, I couldn’t help noticing the ridiculously elite list of schools.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Sarah Lawrence, Stanford, the Sorbonne. Back home the
list pretty much went Penn State, Penn State, Pitt, Penn State, vocational
school. . . . I felt an incongruent flutter of pride that I was part of
this place, then remembered instantly all the total misery and insanity this place had
brought down on me. I found the P’s.

“Blake Pearson . . . Columbia University.”

Excitement rushed through me. I’d done it. All on my own. Who
needed Noelle and her questionable methods? I could handle this
myself.

I slammed the book shut and headed for the computer lab near the stacks.
All I needed was Blake’s e-mail address at Columbia and I was in business.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: A request

Dear Blake,

I don’t know if you know who I am. Your brother, Thomas, and I were dating just before he died. I know it must be difficult for you to hear about what happened—it is for me—so I won’t dwell on it. I’ll just say I’m sorry.

As you probably know, Thomas’s good friend Josh Hollis has been arrested for his murder. I know that Josh didn’t do it, and I think you do too. Josh told me that you were here at Easton that night and that maybe you could give him an alibi. I guess I’m writing this e-mail to ask you to call the police and let them know.
I can’t stand that Josh is in jail for something he didn’t do, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want Thomas’s friend to suffer either.

Please call them. Or call me. Or if you do call them, let me know. I’m sorry if this sounds pushy or whatever, but I didn’t know what else to do. You have my e-mail. My cell phone number is (914) 555-9113. You can call me or text me there. I hope to hear from you soon. And again, I’m so sorry for your loss.

Sincerely,

Reed Brennan

“Oh my God, I cannot wait to get to Bali,” Kiran grumbled, as another gust of wind sprayed us with freezing rain. It was the day after my dramatic dinner walkout, and I was trying to act semi-normal to keep Noelle and the others from constantly telling me to get over it and move on. Part of that meant walking from the cafeteria back to the dorm with them after tonight’s meal, but I made sure that Kiran and Noelle were between myself and Ariana. Because every time I thought about that last comment Ariana had made about Josh, I wanted to strangle her. And the last thing any of us needed right now was more violence.

It had been spritzing on and off all day, and now that the sun had gone down, the rain felt ten times colder. It was like being blasted in the face with frozen buckshot—or what I imagine that might feel like.

“I’m warm,” Kiran said, closing her eyes momentarily. “I’m warm and I’m on the beach, sipping a margarita and watching my skin darken. . . .”

“Nothing like Christmas on the equator,” Noelle said with a sigh. “Did I tell you I convinced my parents to get me my own villa?”

“I think the Lange family is responsible for half the gross national income of St. Bart’s each year,” Kiran joked.

I pulled out my cell phone and checked the screen for the four hundredth time today. No calls. No text messages. I’d e-mailed Blake from the library almost twenty-four hours ago with my number and e-mail address, and nothing. Was it possible he hadn’t gotten the e-mail yet, or was he just plain ignoring me?

“It’s worth it if I don’t have to pretend I don’t see the ’rents sneaking in their sloppy sides and thinking they’re getting away with it,” Noelle said.

“Sloppy sides?” I said, trying to focus on something else.

“Yeah. Their side dishes. They both put their significant others up at hotels on the island every year,” Noelle told me, looking right into my eyes with no shame whatsoever. For the first time all year, she was wearing a hat. It was gray wool and pulled low over her forehead and ears. With her cashmere scarf up over her nose, all that was visible were her eyes and perfect lashes. “Wallace and Claire really give new meaning to the phrase ‘Ho, ho, ho.’”