“Like I said. Not a word,” Amberly repeated. Like it was so important to us that she trusted us. Please. My life was flashing before my eyes over here.
“
No one
believes a word of it, right, girls? It’s crazy talk,” Tiffany said, looking around the table. Everyone murmured their agreement.
“I don’t understand. How did this whole thing get started?” Noelle asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
Everyone at the Billings tables looked around at everyone else.
Again, no one wanted to answer. Finally Missy stepped closer to us and lowered her voice.
“There’s a rumor going around that the police questioned someone from school last night,” she said. “That they’re going to reinvestigate Cheyenne’s death.”
What? How could anyone know that?
“Now everyone’s saying that you got Reed to off Cheyenne so that there would be a vacancy in Billings,” Missy added.
Noelle scoffed. “Total fiction. Honestly. Who comes up with this crap?”
“Exactly,” Portia added as all our friends nodded and murmured their agreement.
“Everyone’s just jealous of you guys. That’s why they want to tear you down,” Vienna said sagely.
“It’s always lonely at the top,” Shelby agreed.
“Too true,” Noelle said. She looked around the room, taking in the silence and the stares. “Well, this is unacceptable.”
She stepped out into the center of the aisle and shook her head incredulously.
“So, you all think Reed and I pulled off a murderous coup at Billings, huh? Do you even hear how ridiculous that sounds?” she announced in a loud voice. “Who would kill someone for a spot in a dorm? Even if it is Billings? Are you guys that hard up for scandal that you’re going to believe something like that? I thought that only smart people were admitted to Easton.”
There was laughter all around. Her announcement had the desired effect. People went back to their food, and I even caught a few of them rolling their eyes like it really
was
ridiculous. Rumor squelched, just like that. Damn, this girl had power. I wondered if everyone would have believed me if I had said the same thing, but now I’d never get the chance to find out.
“See? I
told
you,” Amberly said to her cohorts before ushering them away.
“You do have to admit, the timing was a tad suspect,” Missy said casually. “Cheyenne dies and you show up the following week. And after everything that happened last year, people around here think you guys are capable of pretty much anything. You can’t really blame them for being suspicious.”
“You’re going to want to stop talking now,” Noelle snapped. Missy did, and took her seat at the next table. She tried and failed to hide a smile behind a cough. The girl was loving every minute of this.
“So who was this mysterious person? Who did the police bring in for questioning?” Sabine wondered aloud, her expression concerned as I slowly unbuttoned my coat.
“Please. It probably didn’t even happen,” I said, forcing a laugh. “Someone probably made the whole thing up from start to finish.”
I glanced up at Noelle as I said this, figuring she’d chuckle and agree with me, but instead her eyes were flat as she stared back at me. My heart all but stopped. She knew. She knew it had been me. She knew I was lying. How did she
do
that?
“Yeah. Probably,” Noelle said calmly.
I glanced around at the rest of my friends, feeling suddenly nervous and snagged, but I could tell that Noelle was the one person at the Billings tables who saw through me. The only one who understood that I knew more than I was letting on. And sooner or later, she was going to want to know the truth.
How much could one person handle before totally losing it? This was a question, among many others, that started to plague me after the scene in the dining hall. Not only had I just broken up with my boyfriend, but now he was quite possibly smooching some girl who was a liar with a criminal record and who just generally gave me the creeps. I was hiding the fact that the cause of our breakup was me hooking up with my best friend’s boyfriend—though I still didn’t know if he was her boyfriend at the time. Meanwhile, someone was planting a dead girl’s stuff in my room for sport, and said dead girl might or might not have been murdered. Oh, yeah, and soon the ultra-exclusive dorm of which I was president might be closed down—a travesty for which I would be blamed for all eternity.
Yeah. That wasn’t too much to deal with. And I also had classes and calls home to my parents and a rivalry between Sabine and Noelle and my friends forcing me to date random boys.
Public school was starting to look not so bad.
Monday morning I decided that the best thing to do would be to focus on the stuff that I could actually control. Stuff like the fundraiser. So after lunch I went directly to the Crom’s office. His assistant, Ms. Lewis, was on the phone when I walked in, looking harried. I waited quietly in front of her desk, thinking of our bizarrely intimate encounters last year, back when she used to be Ms. Lewis-Hanneman. Before her husband had found out she was having an affair with Thomas Pearson’s brother Blake. I had been the one person she had confessed everything to. The only person she had managed to trust. It was so strange to think of it now.
Finally she hung up the phone and sighed. She pushed her hornrimmed glasses up on her nose and smoothed her blond hair back toward her bun, then pulled her chair closer to her desk. “What can I do for you, Miss Brennan?”
“I was hoping to see the headmaster,” I said.
She glanced at her phone. One red light was blinking. “He’s on his line right now. I can leave him a message.”
“I have a few minutes. I can wait,” I told her.
“Super,” she replied sarcastically. The phone rang again and she quickly answered it. As soon as she hung up, she typed a few words into her computer and yanked a file out of a drawer. She seemed irritated and busy, but while I was there, I did have some business with her as well.
“Ms. Lewis?” I said tentatively.
“Yes?”
She didn’t look up as she flipped through some papers in the file.
“I was wondering if you could do me a small favor,” I said.
“In all my spare time?” she said.
I laughed quickly for her benefit. “If you get a minute, I mean. I need a list of all the Easton alumni under the age of sixty-five along with their addresses and e-mails.”
Ms. Lewis stopped what she was doing and looked up at me like I’d just asked her to put an end to world hunger.
“Come on,” I wheedled. “For old times’ sake?”
Her glossy lips twisted into a semblance of a smile. “Fine.” She grabbed a pen and started to make a note on a Post-it, but there was no ink left. “Nothing is easy today,” she said, flinging the pen down and yanking open another drawer. A lockbox slammed forward as she did so. It was labeled—in old, chipped paint—
DORM KEYS
. Suddenly a lump rose from my chest area into my throat.
“You have keys to all the dorms?” I asked, my blood running cold.
Ms. Lewis quickly slammed the drawer. “Yes. I have to have them so I can make copies when you oh-so-responsible students lose them. Like your friend Kiki did last week.”
She gestured at a gray machine atop a filing cabinet behind her. A maker of keys.
“And that’s where you keep them? In an unlocked drawer in your desk?”
She clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “The lockbox is locked,” she said impatiently. “Hence the term
lockbox
.”
As she quickly made a note to put together the list I’d asked for,
my mind started to roam free. Keys to all the dorms. Right here where anyone could get to them. It wouldn’t be that hard, if someone was determined. Dash and I had, after all, broken into this very office last year to use Ms. Lewis’s computer. Whoever was messing with me could have easily broken in and stolen the Billings key. Could even have made a copy if they figured out how to work that machine.
Anyone could have the key to Billings. Anyone.
“He’s off the phone,” Ms. Lewis announced, getting up.
I cleared my throat and attempted to, at the same time, clear my brain. I had to focus now. Cromwell. The passes. I could deal with this new discovery later. Ms. Lewis straightened her skirt and strode over to the double door that connected her office to the headmaster’s.
“Reed Brennan to see you, Headmaster,” she said as she opened the door.
“What can I do for you, Miss Brennan?” Cromwell asked, not even bothering to look up from the newspaper laid out on his sizable desk.
Ms. Lewis left the two of us alone and I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. His office was blazing hot, as always, thanks to a roaring fire in the ancient fireplace on the far side of the room. The windows were all shut tight, and there was little if any air to be had. How could the man possibly work like this? Had he only recently escaped from hell?
“I’m here to request off-campus passes for this weekend for myself and four fellow students,” I told him, hoping that maintaining a formal tone would somehow impress him. I tugged at the collar of my sweater in an attempt to get some air to my skin. It
didn’t work. “We want to go to New York to finalize plans for our fund-raiser.”
“Miss Lange has already applied for, and secured, four passes for this trip,” he said, languidly turning the page.
I hesitated. Noelle had already been here? When? And why would she apply for only four when we had already discussed the fact that we needed five?
She was trying to keep Sabine out. Of course she was. How could she have gone behind my back and—
“Was there anything else?” Cromwell asked, still reading.
Okay, focus. Sabine and Noelle were not the issue right now.
“Yes, sir, I’d like one more pass,” I said firmly.
Headmaster Cromwell took a deep breath. He looked at his glowing computer screen and hit a few buttons. “Miss Lange has secured passes for you, Miss Simmons, Miss Clarke, and herself. Why, might I ask, are the four of you not enough? Are you in need of someone to carry your bags?”
He looked at me for the first time, a wry smile on his tight lips.
“No, sir,” I said patiently. “But we’d like to bring Sabine DuLac with us.”
“And why should I let Miss DuLac accompany you?” he asked.
“Because she—”
Okay. “She wants to see New York” wasn’t going to fly here. There had to be a plausible reason for Sabine to be in on this trip. Cromwell raised his eyebrows at my hesitation and I noticed the huge globe on its pedestal behind his desk. Epiphany.
“Because Sabine will bring in a lot of international donations,” I improvised. “Her family has friends and acquaintances all over the globe. She would be a true asset to the planning committee.”
I clasped my sweaty hands together behind my back and prayed my lie would do the trick. Money talked. And international money was still money.
“Fine,” Cromwell said finally. “Five passes it is. You can come and pick them up on Friday afternoon.”
Yes!
“Thank you, sir. You won’t regret this,” I said.
“I do hope this project of yours is a success,” he said with so little sincerity he was practically transparent.
“And we very much appreciate your support,” I replied sarcastically.
Then I turned and walked out of his ovenlike office before my tone had a chance to sink in, and he had a chance to change his mind.
It was unbelievable, the lengths Noelle would go to in order to get what she wanted. I knew she didn’t like Sabine, but did she hate her so much she couldn’t deal with her for one lousy weekend? That seemed so petty. And so beneath Noelle. Couldn’t she let me have just one little thing? Couldn’t she keep herself from trying to control every aspect of life in Billings?
Well, Noelle clearly didn’t realize who she was dealing with. I loved the girl, but she had to get used to the fact that she wasn’t the only person living in Billings. Things couldn’t always be the way
she
wanted them to be. She had been gone all spring and part of the fall. Did she really think that in all that time, nothing would have changed?
There was already someone at Easton working against me with all this Cheyenne crap—which made my knees jellify every time I thought about it. I didn’t need my best friend working against me too.
I shoved through the front door of Hell Hall and jogged down the
steps, feeling triumphant and clear for the first time as the cold air hit my face. I was going to have a talk with Noelle. She couldn’t go behind my back and change things up on me. I was president of Billings. She was just going to have to get used to it.
I was so focused as I strode across the rapidly darkening campus, I barely noticed Marc sitting on one of the benches in the quad until I was right on top of him.
“Reed, hi,” he said, looking up from his French book.
“Marc! Hey,” I said, pausing.
The wind tossed my hair in front of my face and I tossed it back with smile. I hadn’t seen Marc since I had made the decision to bump him up from number fifteen to number three on the F.Y.R. list. Now I felt as if he’d been placed in my path at the perfect moment. Not only was I high on adrenaline, but I was in definite need of a distraction.
“I’m just studying for a French test,” he said. Pointing out the obvious again.
“That’s good,” I replied.
“What’re you up to?” he asked, standing. He was a couple of inches shorter than me, but still beyond cute with his dark hair and light eyes. He wore a gray wool coat with toggle buttons over a burgundy sweater and jeans. Unlike the Ketlar boys, he was not too cool to realize it was freezing out and that he could do something about it. “Have you thought more about the interview? Because I’d really love to get your thoughts on—”
“Actually, yeah. Let’s do that. Let’s set up a time to do the interview,” I replied, adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder and
tucking my hands underneath my arms to ward off the cold. “How’s Wednesday afternoon? Soccer’s over, so I’m free.”
Marc whipped out a BlackBerry to check his schedule, all businesslike. His brows knit as he checked it over. “Wednesday should work. Do you want to—”