“Reed, I swear,” Noelle said.
I tipped my head forward and covered my face with my hands. Crap. I believed her. I so wanted to be all indignant and right, but I believed her.
“So are we okay?” Noelle asked.
“No,” I blurted. “No. We’re not.”
Her brow creased as I looked up at her again. “Why not?”
“You have to stop, Noelle,” I said, rounding my shoulders. “You have to stop treating me like I’m some moronic little peon to be mocked. I’m not Glass-Licker anymore. I’m the president of this house. And I’m supposed to be your friend. You have to stop . . . picking on me. As lame as that sounds.”
I expected her to smirk. To say something condescending about how cute I was or something. But she merely looked stricken.
“I’m not going to take it anymore,” I told her. “We’re either friends . . . equals . . . or we’re not. So which is it gonna be?”
Noelle blew out a sigh. She walked past me and sat on the edge of my bed. She looked so confused and displaced. Like she was going through an out-of-body experience. Which maybe she was. There was a good chance no one had ever called her on her behavior before.
“Noelle?” I prompted.
“We’re friends,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes huge. “Equals.”
“You’re sure about that.”
“Reed, you and I . . . we’ve been through so much together. Thomas and Ariana and all that crap around the Legacy last year and this thing with Dash . . . ”
I glanced over at Sabine, who looked at me curiously. Yeah. That was the first time she’d ever heard about any “thing with Dash.”
“Honestly? I would have annihilated anyone else who pulled what you pulled, but I forgave you without a blink. Think about that,” Noelle said firmly. “How could you ever doubt that we’re friends?”
My heart expanded so quickly I thought it might fill up my chest and crack my ribs. I had never heard Noelle sound so sincere. So vulnerable. I was starting to regret having let Sabine stay. I knew that in the light of day, Noelle was going to hate the fact that anyone other than me had seen her like this.
“So . . . why do you treat me the way you do? What’s with all the backhanded comments and put-downs?” I asked.
Noelle stood up again and hugged herself, as if she’d just gotten a chill. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’re kind of like the little sister I never had. You’re supposed to mess with your little sister, right?” she joked halfheartedly.
“True,” I said, thinking of Scott. “Or in the case of my family, torture them, steal their tooth fairy money, and blame them for everything.”
Noelle chuckled. “I really have to meet your brother sometime.”
Now that would be interesting.
She took a deep breath. “But anyway, I’ll stop if you want me to stop. Or at least I’ll try. I can’t guarantee a total personality overhaul.”
“Thanks.”
We both stood there for a moment awkwardly, not knowing what to do. I felt deflated. Exhausted. All that adrenaline and anger had been sucked right out of me so fast I was almost light-headed.
“So, should we hug or something?” Noelle suggested finally.
“Sure.”
So we did. And for the first time in a long time, I felt safe. I still had Noelle on my side. I hadn’t realized how uncertain the threat of breaking free of her had made me feel. If there was anyone at Easton I needed, it was her. The girl who had taken me under her wing. The girl who had saved my life. The girl who had convinced me to come back after I’d decided to drop out. I could never let myself forget that again.
The rest of the week passed in a whirlwind of phone calls from florists and caterers and drivers and alumni. There was some insanity when we discovered that London and Vienna had taken it upon themselves to run with the models-as-moving-art idea and had each hired twenty guys—and no girls—by luring them into working for free with the promise of the amazing contacts they could make. Luckily we managed to fix the problem in time and hire twenty girls. Somehow in there I managed to write a paper for Spanish and ace a history test. Apparently, I was a good multitasker.
The best part of the whole week was that the stalking had stopped. Maybe Ivy had gotten bored or busy or scared after her trip to the police station, but whatever the reason, the whole week passed without another incident. On Wednesday, I went to the administration office and changed my e-mail address for the second time, promising
myself that I would give this one only to teachers and family. My friends could text my phone if they wanted to—I didn’t care. All that mattered to me was never seeing Cheyenne’s name in my in-box again.
As for Dash’s e-mail, it was just going to have to go unread. And so what? He was Noelle’s boyfriend now. If she was going to try to change for me, the least I could do was quit her man cold turkey.
By the time Saturday morning rolled around and we were all piling our luggage and makeup cases and garment bags outside the front door of Billings for our chauffeurs to take to the cars, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself and about the house. I gathered everyone into the foyer, climbed to the third step of the staircase, and shouted for everyone’s attention. They fell silent instantly. Fifteen pairs of interested eyes looked up at me, riveted. This was power.
“I just wanted to thank everyone for all your hard work these past couple of weeks,” I announced, gripping the banister. I lifted my blue folder, which contained the guest list and all the spreadsheets breaking down received donations and pledged donations. “And although my father always says, ‘Never count a chicken before it’s hatched,’ I think it’s safe to say that with all the money we’ve already made, and all the money we stand to make at Tassos’s silent auction tonight, we will more than reach our goal.”
Everyone cheered and hugged and congratulated one another. I watched it all from my perch, feeling like I’d really done it. I’d saved our home. This was all because of me.
As I watched my friends giddily trail out the door to head for our
waiting limousines, I even had a stray thought of Cheyenne and how proud she would be. I felt warmed by the idea.
“Reed! Reed!” Rose jogged back inside with a vase full of white roses. “These were just delivered for you!”
Vienna, London, Rose, and Noelle all gathered around while I read the card.
“They’re from Marc,” I said happily. “He says good luck and he’ll see me tonight.”
“I think we underestimated Scholarship Boy,” London said, earning a pointed glare from Noelle. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that my friends kept forgetting that I was on scholarship?
“White roses. A smart choice,” Vienna mused. “Red would be too pushy, pink would be too babyish, but white . . . white is . . .”
“Elegant. Refined,” Noelle said, taking the vase from my hands and placing it in the center of the mantel. “The kid’s good.”
I smiled, glad they were coming around. Even if I didn’t intend to seriously date the guy, it was nice to know my friends had some depth.
“We should get out of here. We have to beat the traffic,” I said, hustling the stragglers out.
Everyone rushed ahead into the cold as I paused to close the door behind us. The two chauffeurs were just gathering up the last of our things and I was about to thank them when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Ivy . Speed-walking away from Billings toward Pemberly. My heart stopped at the sight of her. What had she been
doing over here? And why was she in such a rush? She was moving so quickly and was so oblivious to her surroundings that she practically mowed over Amberly Carmichael and her group of followers, who had paused for a chat on one of the paths.
“See you tonight, Reed! We can’t wait!” Amberly called out to me, waving a mittened hand.
I took a deep breath and told myself to forget about Ivy. Right now I had to get through tonight and declare a Billings victory. Then I could deal with her.
“See you there!” I shouted back.
I jogged across the quad to catch up with my friends, past Bradwell to the circle, where the limos idled near the curb. Everyone randomly piled into the cars, intent on getting out of the cold. As I settled in and looked around, I found that I had ended up with most of the seniors. Noelle, Tiffany, London, Vienna, Rose, Portia, and Shelby. Tiffany reached into a vat of ice built into the door and extracted a bottle of champagne.
“Let’s get this celebration started!” she announced, popping it open.
Everyone cheered as foam washed over the side of the bottle onto the floor. We squealed and pulled our feet back, out of the line of fire. As the car pulled away from the curb, Rose passed around champagne flutes and Tiffany clumsily poured.
“I would like to propose a toast!” Noelle announced, lifting her glass once everyone had been served. “To Reed!”
“To Reed!” everyone chorused, lifting their glasses.
“No, ladies. I wasn’t finished,” Noelle admonished with a sly look.
Champagne sloshed everywhere as the limo hit the speed bump near the bottom of the hill, and we all laughed.
“This girl has saved Billings, she’s landed herself an
adorable
boy and has half a dozen more pursuing her, and she looks simply fabulous,” Noelle continued.
I blushed and my friends cracked up laughing.
“What I’m trying to say is, you clearly chose wisely when you chose our president,” Noelle said, looking me in the eye. Everyone murmured their agreement. My heart was about to burst. “To Reed.”
“To Reed!”
It was one of the best moments of my life.
I loved that I was sipping champagne in a salon on Park Avenue with a sign on the door that read C
LOSED FOR
P
RIVATE
E
VENT
. I loved that people kept stopping on the street and peeking in, trying to get a glimpse of what fabulousness might be occurring inside. I loved the way it felt to be on the inside looking out, instead of the outside looking in.
It was one of those moments when I realized absolutely and unequivocally how lucky I was. How the hell did I, Reed Brennan from Croton, Pennsylvania, end up here, talking to a U.S. senator about which eye shadow she should go with while Frederica Falk lined the lips of a famous morning news anchor, and twin fashion heiresses swapped nightmare customs stories with my friends over in the corner?
Unreal.
“So. This is going well,” Noelle said, sidling up to me as the senator politely took her leave. But not before pressing a check into my hand.
I unfolded the check and my eyes widened at the number. I held it up for Noelle to see. “I’ll say.”
She smiled. “That’s nothing. Check out the wad that Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber over there handed to Tiffany so they could have a closed set during their shoot with Tassos.”
She turned around, her back to the crowd, and pulled out a rolled-up stack of bills that was so thick it could have been used as a paperweight.
I laughed and swigged my champagne. “I hate to be vulgar, but Cromwell is going to shit.”
“Can I be there when it happens?” Noelle asked, tucking the money away again.
“Absolutely.”
We both smiled, enjoying the warmth of the moment. This was going to work out. The fund-raiser, our friendship, everything. It was all going to work out.
“There! Perfection!” Frederica announced as she finished with the anchorwoman. All afternoon this had been her signal that she was done with a client, and the entire room fell silent at the sound of her pinched, heavily accented voice. Frederica was a diminutive German woman with platinum blond hair and tiny horn-rimmed glasses, who—even though she couldn’t have been taller than five feet—had a commanding presence. When she spoke, people listened.
“And now, for the organizer of our event,” Frederica said. She marched over to me, all bones and black turtleneck and slicked-back hair, and grabbed my shoulders. “I must do you!”
“What? Me? No,” I protested. “This event is for our donors—”
“Nonsense! None of them would be here if not for you!” she said, forcibly turning me toward her chair. “And I must work on this flawless face,” she added, tapping my cheeks with her cold hands from behind as we looked in the mirror. “You cannot say no.”
“She’s right, Reed,” Noelle said, taking my champagne glass from me. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime type of thing to have Frederica work her magic.”
My friends and their guests and all the alumni in the salon were either eyeing me enviously for being singled out, or encouraging me to seize the opportunity.
“Sit,” Fredericka ordered, forcibly pushing me into the chair. She was stronger than her scrawny body let on. “We do this now.”
“All right, then,” I said, looking in the mirror at the waiting clientele, the women getting their blowouts and the others in black smocks, still waiting their turns. “If no one else minds.”
No one said a word. Apparently, in a room full of luminaries and debutantes and zillionaires, I was the one person allowed to cut the line.
“I’ll go refill your champagne,” Noelle said, squeezing my shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.
I smiled and settled back in the chair. All day Noelle had been by my side and not once had she hit me with a derisive comment or a sneer or even a slightly condescending look. And now she was running off to get me champagne like it was no big deal. Like she didn’t covet the position I was in. Like she didn’t mind doing things for me at all.
Maybe we really were best friends.
I had been inside a few Manhattan dwellings in the past two years. The first two—Thomas Pearson’s apartment and the Legacy locale from last October—I didn’t remember much about. I had been dizzy with grief and confusion when I’d visited the Pearson home, and it wasn’t as if his parents had given everyone the grand tour during their son’s wake. All I recalled was that it seemed large and cold and overly furnished. The Legacy penthouse was even more of a blur, considering how drunk I’d gotten and how dark it had been. I remembered thinking it was huge, and that the view of Central Park was amazing. The third, Josh Hollis’s downtown brownstone, was nice. Cozy. Tricked out with all the modern amenities, but with a feeling like a real family home. And I didn’t want to think about it any further than that.