Soon the crowd around the tree began to disperse and I could tell there were only a couple dozen gifts left. Tentatively, I approached, wanting to check to see if Josh’s present was still there. I walked around the tree slowly, carefully, stepping over crushed balls of wrapping paper and discarded packaging. I didn’t see the small red box anywhere. Neither did I see anything intended for me.
Even though I had been prepared for the worst, I still felt a pang. Ostracized again. Left out of a huge tradition. Whoever had found my name in their mailbox had simply decided not to bother.
“Reed! Reed!”
I looked up to find Constance skipping toward me, her face flushed with excitement. She was waving a white envelope in front of her excitedly, like it contained all the answers to all the questions on all the finals we would ever take. She stopped short in front of me, nearly slipping on some fallen tissue paper, and held the envelope out with both hands.
“From your secret Santa,” she said with a huge smile.
My name was written across the front of the envelope. I recognized Noelle’s elegant handwriting instantly.
“What is it?” I said, half scared, half elated.
“Just open it,” Constance whispered giddily.
I tore into the envelope and extracted a square white card. An invitation. To Noelle and Amberly’s pre-Kiran’s-birthday party the following night. My heart expanded so fast I thought I was going to burst.
“She just gave it to me and said to find you,” Constance explained, coming over to my side so she could read the invite over my shoulder. “You did it, Reed. You’re so back in!”
My fingers trembled as I looked at the card in disbelief. “Wait, did she always have my name, or did she trade with someone after she heard my speech?”
“Who cares?” Constance blurted happily. “You’re coming to the party. We’re all going to Kiran’s together. Who cares how it happened?”
The girl had a point. I looked up, scanning the room for Noelle, and found her chatting with some of the Billings Girls over near their table. She glanced over at me as if she knew I was looking, and I held the card up and smiled. In return, she granted me a quick nod of acknowledgment, then refocused on her conversation.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“I’m so happy for you!” Constance cried, grabbing me up in a hug.
“Me too,” I replied with a smile.
Now if I could just find Josh, just hear what he had to say . . . maybe all my Christmas wishes would come true.
Shane had received a huge, glossy, hardcover book on the history of Hollywood as her gift, which turned out to be lucky for all of us because it gave us something to block the wind with on the way back to Pemberly. It whipped around us like a cyclone, knocking us one way and then the other as we staggered toward the dorm.
“What is this, Kansas?” Diana joked, holding her hat down with both hands.
“Yeah. Arctic Kansas,” Sonal added, cracking the others up.
I smiled and clutched the invitation from Noelle inside my coat pocket. I couldn’t wait to get upstairs and look it over again. Make sure it wasn’t written in disappearing ink or something. Make sure it was real.
A few yards from the back door of our dorm, we all noticed a tall, burly police officer standing just outside, bundled up in a long coat, scarf, and gloves, his silver shield glinting on his hat. My heart skipped a nervous beat. Our steps slowed.
“Ladies,” the officer said with a nod. His voice was low and rumbling, his dark skin lined with age. “Kindly have your IDs ready to show to the officer inside.”
I glanced at Diana and saw that my own fear was reflected in her eyes. What had happened now?
“Ooookay,” Shane said, whipping out her key card.
She opened the door and let us all go in ahead of her. Just inside the lobby was another officer sitting at a small wooden table that used to stand under the far window. With his shaggy brown hair and squinty eyes darting everywhere, he reminded me of a nervous mouse. A laptop was open on the table in front of him, and he looked at us briefly as we approached, before his eyes darted away again.
“IDs, please,” he said, holding out a skinny hand.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
He sighed, clearly irritated, and flicked his fingers. Didn’t look any of us in the eye. “IDs?”
As we were fishing our wallets out of our pockets, the front door directly across from us opened and in walked Ivy Slade. I felt all the blood rush out of my head at the sight of her, and the flutter of fear I had felt outside returned with a vengeance. What was she doing back here? Why had they let her go?
Ivy spotted me as she strode by, her eyes narrowed in anger. She said something under her breath but kept right on moving to the elevator. I could hardly breathe. She was back. The stalking, murdering bitch was back. They’d only held her for three hours. And when I got upstairs, she would be right next door. Why had I
even bothered going to Detective Hauer? Was this all some kind of massive joke to him?
I heard a familiar voice just as the cop at the table snatched my ID from my numb fingers to check it against his computer file. Detective Hauer had walked through the door and was conversing with another officer.
“Detective,” I said, my voice cracking.
He looked up and his expression grew instantly weary. Like he so didn’t want to deal with me. Well, life was tough. I so didn’t want to deal with living next door to a psychopath.
“What are you doing?” I said through my teeth as I approached him. “How could you let her go?”
Detective Hauer squeezed his brow between his thumb and forefinger for a moment before responding.
“I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again. She’s not our girl,” he replied.
“But what about the photos? And the box?” I blurted.
“They didn’t hold a candle to the depositions we’ve been taking all afternoon and evening,” Detective Hauer replied, pulling me toward the cozy seating area off to the side of the lobby. “We found dozens of people to corroborate her alibi, Reed. She and this Coolidge kid stayed at the Driscoll Hotel that night. We have bellboys, maids, managers,” he said, lifting his hand to tick them off on his fingers. “Room service receipts signed by her. There’s a security tape that’s being reviewed as we speak. Ivy Slade had nothing to do with Cheyenne Martin’s death.”
I was so stunned my face stung from the shock of it. I had been so certain. The girl had the best motive ever. Plus her behavior . . . the threats, the icy looks, the attitude, that freaky photo in her room. It all added up.
“Well . . . what about the picture I gave you?” I asked. “I still say she’s stalking me and maybe Noelle, too.”
“Her fingerprints weren’t found on the print you supplied,” Hauer told me in a soothing way. “And she swears she didn’t deface her own photo. However, we did find traces of white wool fibers on both prints.”
My heart seized. “What does that mean?”
“It means that the same person probably tampered with both pictures and wore white wool gloves while doing it,” Hauer told me. “It appears as if you and Ms. Slade have the same stalker. This person is really getting around.”
At that I leaned back on the rear of the couch behind me. There was no way I could wrap my brain around this. My stalker was also stalking Ivy? How was that even possible? Who on this campus had a vendetta against the two of us? We were enemies. We hated each other. Why would anyone lump us together?
Ivy was a victim too. That might have been the hardest fact of all to swallow. From murderous stalker to hunted victim in less than two minutes. At least this exonerated Rose. If Ivy was innocent, so was she.
“That’s why we’ve stationed officers at each door and inside your building,” Detective Hauer explained gently. “Until we catch this
person and ensure that both you and Ivy are safe, the only people allowed through to the elevators and stairs will be the registered residents of Pemberly.”
“I don’t believe this,” I said, sweating inside my wool coat. “I really don’t believe this.”
“I’m sorry,” Detective Hauer said, pushing his hands into his coat pockets. “But don’t worry. We’re not going to let anything happen to you or to Ivy. We’re going to figure out who’s doing all this. I swear.”
“Thanks,” I said wanly.
“Reed? Are you coming?” Diana asked, hovering in the lobby with the others. She held up my ID, which I’d left with the check-in officer.
“Yeah. I guess,” I replied. I pushed myself away from the couch, feeling weak, and looked up at Detective Hauer. “Thanks.”
“Good night, Reed,” he replied, trying for a bolstering smile.
I turned to my dorm mates, my shoulders rounded, and we all crowded into an elevator. They grilled me, of course, on what was going on, and I explained to them briefly, shocking the crap out of all of them. But I guess it couldn’t be a secret anymore. Someone was after me. And apparently they were after Ivy, too. These girls deserved to know why Pemberly had been put on red alert.
“Sorry, guys,” I said, as the elevator stopped on my floor and I stepped out. “This whole police presence thing is all my fault.”
“Don’t worry about it. Gives me something new to blog about,” Shane said, waving a hand.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Diana added.
Then the doors slid closed and they were gone.
I turned and trudged down the hallway to my room. All along the way, dorm room doors were open and the girls inside were whispering in hushed tones, trying to figure out what was going on. I didn’t have the energy to stop and tell any of them what I knew. My brain was completely fried. Everything I had thought was true had turned out to be false. And Ivy being stalked as well? That was a curve I had not remotely considered.
I took a deep breath and opened the door to my room. Ivy Slade was sitting in my desk chair, facing the door, her legs crossed at the knee and her arms crossed in front of her.
“Oh, good. You’re here,” she said, getting up and brushing right by me to slam the door and sequester us in. “You and I are long overdue for a chat.”
“So!” Ivy said, striding into the center of my room before turning to face me. She tilted her head to the side. “I hear you think I killed Cheyenne.”
“They told you I was the one who turned you in?” I asked, stunned.
“No. Of course not. But the Easton PD isn’t exactly a crack outfit,” she said sarcastically. “I overheard at least five different people mention your name. So, what? Please tell me what you think would ever motivate me to kill the best friend I ever had.”
I turned away from her and unbuttoned my coat with trembling fingers, stalling for time. What was I supposed to say to the girl?
The truth. It was clearly time for the truth.
I slipped my coat off, shivering in my flimsy dress, and faced her. We were a mere two feet away from each other, thanks to the tight quarters.
“You’re the one who told me how much you hated Billings,” I explained. “It was so obvious that you blamed Noelle and Ariana and Cheyenne for your grandmother’s death. I figured you finally got your revenge. Plus you’re always talking about how Noelle is going to get what’s coming to her and how you’re going to bring us all down. You threaten my friends every chance you get!”
Ivy laughed and shook her head, as if I were just so naïve. “That’s just talk, Reed.”
“Yeah right,” I snapped back. “You have done a few sketchy things since I’ve known you, Ivy. Ostracizing Easton from the Legacy, trying to take down our fund-raiser. Come on. How was I supposed to know those threats were empty?”
She actually appeared to be pondering this. Seeing my point. She reached over to my dresser and toyed with one of the branches on the mini Christmas tree Sabine had given me, avoiding my gaze.
“And what the hell do you mean, the best friend you ever had? You hated Cheyenne,” I added.
Ivy snorted a laugh and tipped her head forward for a moment to look at the floor. “Maybe at the end, but that doesn’t mean I completely forgot about ten years of friendship. Haven’t you ever had a love-hate relationship?”
My mind immediately flashed on Noelle, but I said nothing.
“So that’s what you based this whole thing on?” she asked, lifting her pointy shoulders. “A couple of stupid pranks I pulled and some story I told you at the fund-raiser?”
My heart quivered nervously. Here it was. The moment of truth.
“No. That wasn’t all,” I said. I leaned back against my desk chair and braced myself. “I kind of snuck into your room and found the jewelry box and the broken necklace and the photo of you guys with all the faces X’d out but yours.”
“You went through my stuff!?” Ivy shouted. She turned and put her hands on top of her head as if she were trying to keep her brain from exploding. “Oh my God. Forget Cheyenne. I might just have to kill
you
!”
“Ivy, you’ve gotta understand,” I said, sounding desperate, and hating that I sounded desperate. I could not believe that I had been put in the position of begging for forgiveness from this girl. It was like the whole world had been turned upside down. But she was right. I had totally violated her privacy. And for no good reason, it turned out. “I thought
you
had been in
my
room half a dozen times before. I thought you were stalking me. I had to do what I had to do.”
“What? Stalking you?” she asked, breathless. Then she stared at the wall as if she were slowly remembering and processing something. “Omigod, that’s why they were asking me all those questions about you and your room and your e-mail.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “They kept showing me this picture of you and Cheyenne with your faces crossed out like the one they found in my room. I was so confused.”
“That picture showed up on my desk last week, so when you had one just like it in your room, I thought . . . I thought you were trying to send a message or something.”
Ivy glared at me, her black eyes sharp. “I don’t know who messed
with my photo or yours,” she said. “But it wasn’t me.”
“I get that now,” I said, as much as I hated to admit it. I took a deep breath. “Look, I saw the box hidden in your room and I figured you must have gone back to Cheyenne’s room to retrieve it. I figured that the broken necklace inside and the box itself could be used as evidence against you, so you stole it back.”