Suddenly, my friends were no longer cheering. I turned to look at them. They couldn’t back out on me now. I’d gotten us a reprieve. I’d taken a stand.
Please don’t make me look like an idiot now.
Portia glanced at the Twin Cities. Vienna whispered something over her shoulder to Shelby Wordsworth. Rose bent in conversation with Tiffany Goulbourne and Astrid Chou. Everyone conferred while I stood there and waited. Finally, they all faced forward and Portia nodded confidently. I faced the board, looked Cromwell in the eye, and smiled.
“Done.”
“Reed, seriously, have you ever considered a career as a politician?” Tiffany asked as we emerged from Mitchell Hall into the crisp, cold New England air. The sky over Easton Academy was a shade of blue so bright it looked almost fake, and orange and yellow leaves chased one another across the cobblestone path in front of us. Tiffany wrapped her white coat closer to her tall body and flipped up the collar so that it grazed the smooth ebony skin of her cheeks. How could she look so perfect today, when I felt as if I had been run over repeatedly by a monster truck?
“Um, no,” I replied.
“Well, maybe you should.” Astrid nudged me with her elbow as the wind tossed her short dark hair. She wore a colorful plaid skirt over hot pink tights and purple shoes, her eye makeup colors chosen to match her lower half. “That was bloody brilliant.”
“Amazing,” Sabine agreed with sheer admiration in her eyes. “Headmaster Cromwell didn’t see that coming at all.”
“Agreed. If you pull this off, you will go down in history as the president who saved Billings,” Shelby said. Her leather-gloved fingers moved swiftly over her iPhone’s touch pad as she checked for texts. Shelby had a sophisticated air that made her seem like she was in her mid-twenties instead of her late teens. She wore a double-breasted brown tweed coat; her blond hair hung in loose waves around her face; and she held her chin slightly up, as if her photo might be snapped at any moment.
“Yeah, or the last,” Missy Thurber put in with a sniff of her wide nostrils. Her comment earned her a whack on the back of her blond head from Portia. “Ow! Was that necessary?”
“Neg the neg,” Portia ordered, shoving her hands into the pockets of her cropped fur jacket. “We need positive thinking from here on out, right, Reed?”
“Exactly,” I said with a nod. I decided right then and there that I was going to be Shelby’s version of a Billings president rather than Missy’s. From now on, I would focus all my energy on this fund-raiser and on saving Billings.
Besides, it wasn’t like I would have much else to do now that Josh had made it clear that we were over.
My heart constricted as fuzzy flashes of last night suddenly assaulted my brain. Dash McCafferty’s lips on mine. Josh’s face when he found us in that private tent. The way he’d practically spat in my face as he told me it was over. How could someone who supposedly loved me so much look at me that way? And how was my heart ever going to heal when every time I thought about Josh, it broke a little more?
“Are you all right?” Noelle asked me. “You just went all
visage blanc
.”
I blinked and tried to look normal. It wasn’t like I could confide in Noelle about what had happened. After all, she and Dash had gotten back together last night, and she had no clue that I’d gotten horizontal with him. Had no idea that this indiscretion was the cause of my breakup with Josh. All I had told her was that Josh had ended it out of nowhere. Big, big lie.
“I’m fine. Just an adrenaline crash,” I told her.
“Reed!” Amberly shouted, hustling over to me with her two ever-present lackeys at her sides. Her loose blond curls bounced around her angelic face and she wore a light pink coat with a white-and-pink plaid scarf over white thin-wale cords. As matchy-matchy as ever. “We just wanted to let you know that if you need any help with the fund-raiser—anything whatsoever—we’re here for you,” she said, clasping my arm.
“Thanks,” I said vaguely. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I turned around to search the crowd for Josh. Maybe I’d focus on saving Billings after I talked to him. I had to talk to him. Had to try to explain. Try to make things right. Try . . . something.
Most of the student body had divided into klatches that now dotted the lawn around Mitchell Hall. Gage Coolidge, Trey Prescott, and some other guys from Ketlar Hall stood about ten feet away, huddled together against the cold, since guys were too cool for outerwear, but Josh wasn’t with them. Then, from the corner of my eye, I spotted him. Alone. Head down. Skulking toward the edge of campus. Toward
the Jonathan Arthur Montgomery Building, which housed the art studios, the
Chronicle
newspaper office, the literary magazine office, practice rooms for the choir and orchestra, and several other venues for artistic pursuits. The J.A.M. Building was one of Josh’s two favorite spots on campus, the other being the art cemetery, where we used to rendezvous before he rendezvoused there with Cheyenne.
God, that seemed like ages ago. When Cheyenne was alive, when I had caught her trysting with my boyfriend, when I had almost lost him over her. A lot had happened this year. So much had changed. And it was only the first of November.
“Reed? Where are you going?” Noelle asked me as I turned away from my friends. “We have a lot to do if we’re going to make this fund-raiser happen.”
I paused. “I know. I just have something I have to take care of.”
One step away and a dark blue sweater blocked my path. I looked up. Hovering over me was an unreasonably tall guy with brown eyes and a preppy haircut that screamed Young Wall Street.
Weston Bright. West for short. Ketlar Hall. Senior. Lacrosse captain.
My brain recited these things, though why it knew them or cared, I had no idea.
“Reed, what you did in there . . . that was amazing,” West said, speaking the first words he’d ever spoken to me. He pushed his hand into the pocket of his gray slacks. His smile was genuine, affable. “How’d you do that? I think if I tried to stand up to Cromwell, I’d keel over drooling.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, glancing at Josh’s disappearing form. I really didn’t know. Considering everything I’d been through in the past twenty-four hours, I should have been curled up in a ball somewhere, babbling incoherently.
“Maybe we can get together sometime and you can float some theories,” West suggested. “I wouldn’t mind a few tips before my college interviews.”
I blinked at him. He was asking me out. This unusually tall person and his preppy hair were asking me out. The near corpse of my relationship with Josh was, I hoped, still revivable, and this guy was asking me out. How did he even know Josh and I had broken up? I had only told the Billings Girls. Was Josh spreading the word? Was he so psyched about his newfound freedom that he was shouting it from rooftops everywhere?
“Um, maybe. Can we talk about this later?”
“Sure. What’s your number? I’ll text you,” West said. He typed in my phone number and gave me a smile before sauntering off.
“Wow, Reed,” London said, sidling over to give me a hip-nudge. She looked West’s departing form up and down like he was a piece of meat and tossed her thick, artificially streaked hair over her shoulder. “Way to bounce back.”
“Are you kidding me?” I hissed at her. “I just broke up with Josh. I’m not just going to start dating.”
“Who said anything about dating?” London replied. “Just hook up with the guy. West is an excellent kisser,” she said, smiling at him over my shoulder.
I glanced back there as well.
“Ew,” I said, realizing that London knew from experience. “I have to go.”
There was only one guy I was interested in right now. The one fleeing the scene—my scene—as fast as his Dsquared sneakers would carry him.
As I approached the art studio, I couldn’t ever remember feeling so nervous in my life. Not when I’d first arrived at Easton. Not when I had been questioned by the police about Thomas Pearson’s murder last year. Not when I thought I was about to be expelled. Maybe on the Billings rooftop last winter when Ariana had been hell-bent on throwing me over the side. But that had been more terror than nervousness. A trembling, knee-weakening, life-flashing-before-my-eyes kind of terror.
This was almost worse. Because there was hope behind these nerves. Hope even though I knew I was about to get crushed. But I couldn’t seem to squelch it, even to protect myself.
I pressed my damp palms into my jeans, then grasped the cold door handle and pulled. Perched on a wooden stool, Josh sat with his back curled like a
C
. So lonely and sad. He didn’t look up from his easel. On the canvas was a charcoal profile that looked a lot like mine.
He hadn’t opened any paints yet. The brushes sat dry and untouched. When he finally turned and saw me there, anger flashed through his blue eyes.
“You can’t be here,” he said.
“Why not? Maybe I’ve developed an interest in painting.” I tried for levity. Bad idea.
Josh stood up, nearly knocking his seat over. “No. I mean, you can’t
really
be here. You can’t actually think we’re going to talk about this. That you’re going to find some way to explain it that will make me forgive you.”
All the oxygen left the room.
Tell me how you really feel.
“Josh, please—”
“No! Reed, no. God!” He brought his hand to his head and winced. “I can’t get the picture of you and Dash out of my mind. Do you have any idea what this is like for me?”
“Actually, yeah. I do,” I snapped without thinking. The picture of Cheyenne straddling him on the love seat in the Art Cemetery came screeching back in full Technicolor, as did the gut-wrenching horror of how it had felt to watch it all unfold. “But I took you back, remember?”
Josh’s face screwed up in disgust. “You took me back because it wasn’t me there with her. Because she drugged me. Because I didn’t know what I was doing.”
He had me there. I was drunk last night, but I had known what I was doing. Had flirted with the idea of doing it for months. How could something that had seemed so right and harmless less than eighteen hours ago now be such an obvious mistake? Why hadn’t I realized that
if I let Dash pull me onto that mattress, if I let him touch me the way he had, that I would be here now—my heart in pieces, Josh’s heart in pieces, wishing there was any way in hell I could take it all back?
What could I say?
“Josh, I love you,” I attempted. “I—”
“Don’t,” he spat. “Of all things, do not say that.”
The venom in his voice stopped me cold. That was all it took. All it took for me to realize that this was a lost cause. That Josh was lost to me. Forever.
All I wanted was for him to hug me. To tell me that everything was going to be okay. To be my rock. He had always been that for me. Whenever I screwed up or everything around me seemed to be falling apart, Josh had made it better. But he couldn’t make this better, because this time my screwup had hurt
him
. I had deprived myself of my one true comfort in life, and the realization gouged my heart out.
“Please, just go,” he said, his shoulders slumping. “Just leave me alone.”
“Fine.” My voice, my eyes, my throat, were filled with tears as I took a step back. Away from him. “Fine, I’ll go.”
And I started to. I did. But then, out of nowhere, a terrifying thought occurred to me. A thought that somehow, in all the emotional wreckage, had never even been a glimmer until now. And it stopped me in my tracks. Cold dread overcame me.
Josh was so angry. So hurt. What if he . . .
I couldn’t say it. But I had to. I had to beg for mercy. One last favor. For old time’s sake?
A lump the size of an orange blocked my windpipe, trying to tell me this was a bad idea. But my fear of what might happen if I didn’t speak overcame my conscience. “Josh, I have to ask you one thing,” I said, my voice thick.
“What?” He glanced at me.
“You’re not . . . I mean . . . you’re not going to tell Noelle, are you? About me and Dash?” I asked.
Josh looked at me for a moment, then shook his head and laughed. He laughed so bitterly, I’m not even sure the noise he made could be categorized as a laugh. My heart felt sick. I knew what he thought of me right then and I hated myself. But now that he’d left me, I needed Noelle more than ever.
“No,” he said finally, looking at me like I was the crusty scum that formed on the outer rims of his paint jars. “No, I won’t tell your precious Noelle. If that’s what you really care about here, then don’t worry. Your slutty little secret is safe with me.”
Tears spilled down my face. Coming from Josh—from someone who was normally so kind and levelheaded and understanding—the words couldn’t have stung more. But at least I knew he would keep my secret. He was the most decent, honest guy I knew. However awful his wording was, the promise was just as strong.
“Josh—”
“Good luck saving Billings,” he said with a sneer.
His silent message?
I hope you fail.
Then he turned his back on me, and I knew it was for good this time.
I had to get out of there. Now. I turned and ran for the door, holding one hand over my mouth to keep the sobs in check. As I stumbled into the hallway, I nearly took out Ivy Slade in her white-and-black plaid cape. Perfect. She was so the person I wanted to see right now.
Her blue eyes like ice, Ivy shot me a derisive look, then peered past me through the glass pane in the classroom door. Her thin, dark eyebrows arched and she crossed her slim arms over her chest. Her dangling silver earrings swung, catching on strands of her sleek, black hair.
“Trouble in paradise?” she asked. “Just think, if you hadn’t crashed my party last night, none of this would have happened.”
Her party. As if the Legacy belonged to her. It was an ages-old tradition, and she had tried to claim it as her own, changing the rules and ostracizing all the Easton Academy legacies. Maybe I had crashed it, but I’d only done it because I was trying to help my fellow Easton students get what was rightfully theirs. And, okay, I was also trying to have a little fun. That, of course, had not happened. At least not after the first couple hours of drinking and dancing. After that, it had all gone to hell.