“Absolument!”
Sabine exclaimed. “I have always wanted to visit New York!”
“It’s perfect,” Tiffany chimed in.
“And we should definitely do it before Thanksgiving,” I added as I took my seat across from Noelle. “Before everyone starts jetting off on their holiday vacations.”
“Reed, you are so brill,” Portia said with a smile.
“But that’s less than three weeks,” Missy, or Miss Negative, put in from behind me. All I wanted to do was turn around and yank on her braid, but it was way too kindergarten.
“We can pull it off,” Noelle told her. “My mom and I organized my dad’s fiftieth in less than a week. We
always
forget his birthday until the last minute,” she added, rolling her eyes. “And he’s such a baby if he doesn’t get his party.”
I smirked. I had never met Noelle’s parents, but I imagined her father as a Daddy Warbucks type, all bluster and bravado. So somehow, thinking of him getting pouty over a party amused me.
“Reed Brennan,” a silky male voice said at my side.
I looked up into the stunning blue eyes of Hunter Braden, the number one most sought after guy on the Easton campus. Every single girl at my table minus Noelle blushed at the very sight of him. His tousled blond hair, chiseled cheekbones, and rumpled-prep style had been splashed over all of New York’s favorite rags at the end of last year when he’d briefly dated a certain hotel magnate’s daughter and disappeared with her for several days to some remote island I had never heard of. Ever since, all the gossip on campus had been about whom he’d date next.
“Hunter,” I replied as coolly as possible, even though I could feel my face overheating. Even my broken heart was not immune to his gorgeousness and charm. He was wearing a wrinkled Ralph Lauren oxford in light blue, with a yellow and navy striped tie casually loosened around his neck—and pulling the look off like nobody’s business. Two books were hooked in his fingers at his side. No one had
ever seen Hunter with anything so prosaic as a book bag.
“I want to take you out,” he said with an almost irresistible smile. “This weekend.”
Someone behind me literally gasped. Noelle’s eyes widened across the table. I was so stunned I couldn’t even speak. Then Vienna kicked my shin so hard I saw stars. Damn pointed-toe boots.
“Um.”
Ow.
“That’s really nice, but . . . can I let you know later?”
I feared the pain Vienna might inflict upon me if I gave him an outright no. Besides, it never hurts to play hard-to-get, right?
Hunter appeared confused. Most likely no one had ever done anything but blurt an emphatic yes to one of his offers. “Excuse me?” he said.
“Well, it’s just . . .”
I just broke up with the love of my life.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to start dating. Especially not someone like Hunter Braden. Somehow I knew the experience of going out with him would be overwhelming even if I wasn’t on the rebound.
“I have so much to do right now with the fund-raiser and everything. . . . I just have to . . . check my schedule,” I rambled. “Thanks for asking, though.”
I could feel the poisonous looks of every one of my friends boring into my skin from all angles. How dare I put off Hunter Braden? Hunter, however, simply smiled.
“You check that schedule of yours.” He took a couple steps backward and spread his arms out at his sides as if to give me a good look at what I’d be missing if I said no. “You know where to find me.”
He turned on his heel and strode off toward the Ketlar tables, the eyes of every non-geriatric female in the room trained on him. Vienna pulled back and kicked me again, right in the same spot.
“Vienna! Ow!” I said through my teeth, rubbing my leg. “Do I have to start wearing my shin guards to breakfast?”
“What the hell was that?” London demanded, tossing her fork down with a clatter.
“What? Guys, I told you. I am not ready to go out with anyone right now,” I said.
“Hunter Braden is not ‘anyone,’” Portia hissed, leaning across the table. “Hunter Braden is . . .” She turned her palms up and searched the skylights in the high ceiling as if God might provide a word worthy enough to describe him. “He’s Hunter
Braden
.”
“Exactly,” Vienna said. “Besides, Reed, the best way to get over a breakup is to A, get back on the horse and B, make it a super-hot horse so that C, the last horse gets very, very jealous.”
“And there is no horse hotter than Hunter,” Tiffany put in from a few seats down.
Wow. Even levelheaded Tiff was behind this. Did no one understand what it was like to lose the love of your life?
“I appreciate the concern, you guys, as disturbing as the horse metaphor is,” I said, spearing a strawberry with my fork. “But I’d rather focus on saving Billings. You do realize that if we don’t figure out how to raise five million dollars in the next month, life as we know it is history. We’re talking no more Billings, no more Friday night movies and mojitos, no more Fat Phoebe parties, no more Billings
alumni—funded outings . . . nothing. We’ll be living in, like, Pemberly or something.”
My friends all exchanged serious glances and I knew that I had, at least for the moment, gotten their attention. For the rest of the period, we discussed ideas for the fund-raiser and I forced myself not to look over at the Ketlar table. Not to look at Josh
or
at Hunter Braden. I can’t say I wasn’t intrigued by Hunter’s proposal. He was practically a celebrity. But he wasn’t Josh. I didn’t want anyone who wasn’t Josh. I was still clinging to the hope that Josh might wake up one morning and forgive me. Might realize that I was beyond drunk that night and that technically I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions. Just like I hadn’t held him responsible for his actions with Cheyenne, because he had been drugged. Yes, I had fantasized about being with Dash before it had happened, but Josh didn’t know that. Therefore, he could not hold it against me. He could, however, hold a date with Hunter Braden against me.
As we moved on to the chapel for morning services, I grabbed Rose and pulled her aside just outside the cafeteria doors. We hung back until all our housemates had strolled on, caught up in their own conversations.
“Everything okay, Reed?” she asked, ducking her head slightly so that her red curls fell forward over her cheeks. Rose was one of the more discreet girls in Billings and I knew she was intimately aware of how everything worked. At the moment she was the only person I felt comfortable asking what I had to ask. What I had been wanting to ask all through breakfast.
“Just a random question,” I said under my breath. “You know all that stuff we used for the inner-circle ritual—the lantern and the . . . the marbles and everything?”
“Yeah?” Rose looked surprised.
“Where do we keep all that stuff?” I asked. “Is it in the basement somewhere, or . . .”
Rose blinked. “Actually, I think Cheyenne had all that stuff in her room. Crap, I never even thought of that. It must have gotten boxed up and sent home with her parents.”
Not all of it.
I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat. Cheyenne had the black marbles? Cheyenne? Then how the hell had they gotten into my desk drawer over the weekend? Cheyenne’s parents had carted away her things weeks ago. Unless someone had lifted them before then. Had someone been planning to do this all along? And if so, who?
“I guess we’ll have to replace all of that before the end of the year,” Rose mused with a shrug, not knowing that the info she had imparted was causing me to have major heart palpitations. “Great. Where are we supposed to find a lantern like that?”
“Not a clue,” I replied.
Although maybe it would just appear in my room somewhere.
After an intense soccer practice and a hot shower I was feeling almost normal. Definitely lighter. Somewhat positive, even. I could do this. I could live without Josh. Sure, the dread I had felt all day at the possibility of bumping into him around every turn had taken its toll, but the exercise and scrub-down had rejuvenated me. For the first time all day, I felt able to breathe.
As I slipped into my navy blue Easton Academy sweats and brushed my damp hair, I realized something was off. It was too quiet. Way too quiet. Normally at this time of night, London and Vienna were blasting that annoying club music they loved, Constance was in the hall blabbing to Whit on her cell, and Missy and Lorna were running in and out of their room to Portia’s or the Twin Cities’, slamming doors every five seconds. But right now there was nothing. Total silence.
Considering everything that had been going on lately, my pulse raced with trepidation. Anything out of the ordinary had the potential
for disaster. I put my brush down on my dresser and opened the door quietly, peeking my head out. Nothing. No one. Where were they?
“Sabine? Noelle?” I called out. “Constance?”
No response. Okay. There was a logical explanation for this. Maybe they had all gone over to Coffee Carma in Mitchell Hall. Or everyone was downstairs studying. Yes. That was it. All I had to do was go downstairs and there they’d be. I crept out of my room and tiptoed down the stairs, realizing how silly I would have looked to anyone who spotted me, but there was no one there to see. Nothing but the dead silence.
I hit the floor of the lobby, saw something move out of the corner of my eye, and froze.
“Surprise!”
My heart hit my throat, but two seconds later relief washed over me. The entire population of Billings was gathered in the parlor, champagne glasses raised. Silver bowls of strawberries and trays of chocolates were laid out on every table. Fifteen faces grinned at me as I joined them.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Reed Brennan, it’s time to play Find Your Rebound!” Vienna announced, shoving a filled champagne flute into my hand.
“Find my what?” I asked.
“We couldn’t think of a good name for it,” Noelle said, rising gracefully from her chair at the crux of the seating U. “Basically, we are going to help you find a man to distract you in your time of need.”
She lifted a hand toward the wall behind me and I turned to find that the old group shots of Billings sisters had been cleared away,
replaced by three huge corkboards. On each corkboard were several glossy eight-by-ten photos of various Easton guys, and below each photo was an index card displaying the subject’s vitals: name, age, class rank, hometown, net worth. The really important stuff.
“Someone absolutely perfect,” Sabine added with a grin, standing next to me.
“What are you guys talking about?” I asked warily. “You’re not all going to start theorizing about horses again, are you?”
Everyone laughed. Spirits were high, considering we were under such strict probation. In fact, the last thing we should have been doing right then was drinking champagne out in the open like this. If Mrs. Naylor, our housemother, found us, we were screwed.
“Naylor’s out for the night,” Noelle told me, noticing my wary glance over my shoulder. “Just sit and relax and have some chocolate.”
She steered me around the end of the couch where Constance, Kiki, and Astrid were sitting, and deposited me in the chair she had vacated. Rose lifted a tray of chocolates and offered it to me. I took one and bit into it. Sweet caramel oozed into my mouth. This I could get used to.
“Now, here’s how this is going to work,” Vienna explained, walking over to the board of boys as Sabine squeezed back onto the couch. “Each one of us has selected an Easton bachelor for you to evaluate. Our goal for the evening is to rank these guys in order of desirability for you—”
“And then you can go forth and conquer!” London finished, lifting her glass to the whoops of the crowd.
I squirmed in the cushy chair. “You guys, I already told you. I’m not ready to . . . conquer anyone.”
All I could think about when I looked at those photos was how many of those guys were Josh’s friends—his housemates. And how he was out there on campus right now—out there somewhere hating me. The very thought sent a sliver of glass through my heart. How was I even supposed to
look
at another guy?
“Reed, come on, this is exactly the distraction you need,” Sabine said earnestly, placing her glass down and scooting forward on the love seat. She grabbed my hands and champagne sloshed over the side of my flute. “You’re going to save Billings for us. Let us do this for you.”
I looked into her big green eyes and realized that she sincerely thought this would work. In fact, everyone there was eyeing me with hope. Aside from Missy, of course, who was inspecting her fingernails. All they wanted to do was cheer me up. What harm could there be in humoring them? So I would let them rank these guys according to desirability. It wasn’t as if I had to put said list to use.
“Okay, fine,” I said finally.
“Yay!” Constance cheered, as a few people clapped in glee.
“Portia? Would you like to present your pick first?” Vienna asked, stepping aside.
Portia rose and walked over to the board, stopping in front of a photo of a smiling guy with long black hair and a big, Cheshire cat grin. Dominic Infante. He had lived next door to Thomas and Josh last year. I had the distinct recollection of seeing him in boxers one night when I walked by his room. Not a half-bad body.
“We all know who Dominic Infante is,” Portia began, clasping her hands one atop the other, as if she were a professor presenting a lecture. “But few know, because of his innate modesty, that he is a direct descendant of the princes of Italy. . . .”
“Ohhh,” my friends intoned as they sipped their champagne and nibbled on their strawberries.
As she continued her speech, my eyes roamed the board, curious who my other dorm mates had chosen. I spotted Hunter Braden smirking out at me. And Trey Prescott. (Josh’s roommate? Seriously?) And Jason Darlington, a cute guy who was in most of my classes. Most of the elite guys of Easton were represented, and I couldn’t help but feel flattered that my housemates thought me worthy of the crème de la crème. Things certainly had changed since my Glass-Licker days.
Then my eyes fell on another familiar face at the far end of the board. Marcellus “Marc-For-Short” Alberro. I blinked, surprised. Marc was cute, no doubt, but not the kind of guy I would have expected a Billings Girl to select. He was too fidgety, too garrulous, too . . . well, short. I squinted at the card beneath his sheepishly smiling face and recognized the loopy handwriting instantly. Constance. Of course. Why was I not surprised? When it came to priorities, Constance was not your average Billings Girl.