She closed the door quietly behind her, and I listened as her footsteps disappeared down the hall. The dorm was silent as night now. I glanced at the clock. Half an hour to vacuum, shower, get dressed, and get to breakfast. Not that breakfast appealed, but I had to make an appearance or Noelle might put me on toilet duty later. I would have to forgo something to finish in time. Probably the shower.
With a sigh, I moved to Rose’s bed. She’d been nice, so I’d do better than just flipping the covers up. I straightened the sheets and comforter and then lifted the pillows. There was something jammed between the corner of the bed and the wall. I placed my knee in the center of the mattress and took a closer look. Whatever it was was kind of crumply and green and—“Oh, my God.”
My hand flew over my mouth. It was a piece of a muffin. An old, moldy corn muffin and its wrapper that Rose had obviously stuffed there after snacking on it one night. One night in early September from the looks of it. Apparently even the crème de la crème could be slobs. I turned around, stumbled into their bathroom, and slammed my kneecaps against the linoleum as I doubled over.
Nothing like a nice, long dry heave into the bowl to get the day started just right.
By the time I arrived at the sun-drenched cafeteria, those girls who dared to risk their perfect figures were ready for seconds and it was my job to fill their orders. Although the last thing I wanted to do was look at food, I found myself piling two trays high with toast, doughnuts, fruit, and drinks.
“Eggs?” the man behind the counter offered, lifting a spoonful of yellow scrambled goo.
I winced. “No, thanks.”
I grabbed myself a bagel and added it to the growing pile, hoping I might be able to choke some of it down. Up ahead, a pair of freshman boys was chatting up a pretty freshman girl with dark, curly hair. She giggled and preened and I sneered. Oh, to be that carefree and awake. And clean.
“I heard that last year all the freshman girls who went came back with tattoos,” one of the boys said. “The virgins got
V
’s and the nonvirgins got lip prints. Right on their left cheeks,” he said, checking out the girl’s butt in her pleated mini.
“I thought no one came back from the Legacy a virgin,” she said, dipping her spoon into her yogurt then sucking on it teasingly as the line edged forward.
Instantly my ears perked up. The Legacy. Hadn’t Dash and those guys mentioned that last night? My memory of the previous evening was hazy, but I did remember them saying something about how Thomas would never miss it. How he’d be there no matter what. How did these kids know about it?
“Not that you have to worry about that, right, Gwen?” the other boy said, practically licking his lips.
“Maybe,” she said, lifting her tray and turning toward them. “Maybe not.”
She traipsed off, leaving the boys gaping behind her. “Dude, I am so gonna hit that at the Legacy. Just wait,” one of them said.
“I will,” the other said grumpily.
“Oh! That’s right! You won’t be there, will you, Mills!?” the first kid taunted. “Poor, poor frosh. Maybe your grandkids will get to go.”
With that, the kid laughed and sauntered toward his table, head thrown back all the way.
So the Legacy was an exclusive party. One that Gwen and Boy Toy #1 could go to but Boy Toy #2 could not. I would have to file this information away for later and try to process it when my brain was actually functioning again.
I took a deep breath and smelled the scent of fresh paint behind me an instant before I felt the warmth of a body. I turned around to find a bright-eyed Josh Hollis smiling down at me.
Instantly my shoulder muscles coiled with tension. I couldn’t look at Josh without thinking of Thomas and wondering whether or not Josh had heard from him.
“Ouch. You look like crudge,” Josh said.
“Crudge?”
“I make up words when no existing terms seem fit to rise to the occasion,” Josh said. “Therefore, crudge.”
“Well, I’m honored to have inspired a new word,” I lied. Not that I could blame him. My dirty-ass hair was back in a slick-from-grease ponytail and I was sure there was a nice, green undertone to my waxy skin.
“Are you okay?” Josh asked as we moved forward in line. “I was a little worried about you last night.”
The dim memory of a stone-faced Josh flitted through my mind. One more thing I had forgotten about until now. Come to think of it, though, why would
Josh
be worried about me? We barely knew each other. A hopeful thought occurred to me in a rush.
“Did Thomas ask you to look out for me or something?” I asked.
Josh blinked. “No. Thomas didn’t say anything to me before he left, actually.”
“Oh. So you really have no idea where he is?” I asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
I moved ahead, my heart pounding woefully.
“Typical Thomas,” Josh said under his breath.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . you’d think he’d at least let
you
know where he’s going,” he said with major emphasis on the
you.
So he did know what Thomas and I had done. Or he suspected. Or maybe not. Maybe he just knew I meant a lot to Thomas. At least, I thought I did.
How was it that our relationship was even more confusing without him here than it was when he was around?
“But I should have known,” Josh continued. “He’s never been one for thinking of other people.”
I swallowed hard. This morning had already been too much for me to handle. I didn’t need to add “picking apart my missing boyfriend” to the list. “Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
“Right. Sorry,” he told me with an apologetic smile. “I’m sure he’ll call you. Eventually.”
Feeling warm and conspicuous, I glanced around for a new topic.
“So what’s all that?” I asked, gesturing at his tray. It was piled even higher than my own two. “Bulking up for winter?”
“Nah. Some of the guys were still hungry, so . . .” He shrugged.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Get what?” he asked, lifting a chocolate-chip muffin onto the tray.
“Why are you always doing stuff for them?” I said. “It’s not like you have to.”
Like some people.
“I have four younger brothers and sisters and only one older brother, who was allergic to helping out,” he replied, shoving his
hand into the back pocket of his baggy, paint-stained jeans as he pushed his tray forward on the slide rail with the other. “I think doing stuff for people is hardwired into my brain.”
I picked up a bowl for cereal. “Ah.”
“Why do
you
do it?” he asked.
“Uh, they make me,” I said automatically.
Josh eyed me dubiously. “Huh?”
I blinked. He didn’t know? He didn’t know I was an indentured servant of Billings House? I thought this was public knowledge, this systematic hazing. At least the stuff I’d done before I had moved in had been noticed by others. Dash, in particular, had made it clear that he enjoyed my suffering. How could Josh not know?
“Wait. What’re they making you do?” he asked.
Red alert. Flashing lights. Yellow caution tape. If he didn’t know, maybe he wasn’t
supposed
to know.
Fuck.
“Oh, nothing,” I said with a shrug, my heartbeat pounding in my temples.
“Reed—”
“
Josh
,” I replied.
Suddenly, understanding lit his eyes. “You can’t tell me.” He smirked, trying to make light. “Or you could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me.”
I lifted both trays awkwardly from the slide rails and balanced them on my palms. “Don’t worry about it,” I told him.
“Well, if it’s bad you could always spit in their coffee,” he said.
I looked down at the steaming mugs on one of the trays. Damn that would be nice. “Uh, no,” I said.
“Well, just . . . be careful,” he said. “I mean, don’t let them make you do anything, you know—”
Crazy? Dangerous? Stupid? Done, done, and done.
“I won’t.” I paused as one of the coffee mugs teetered.
“Here. Let me help you,” Josh offered, reaching for the heavier of the trays.
“Thanks, but I—”
I glanced up at our table and instantly everything inside of me dropped. Walt Whittaker, big as a mountain on a clear day, sat at the end of the table. Flashes hit me like machine-gun fire to the skull.
My hands on his chest. Warm brown eyes. A handkerchief. Thick arms. Rough lips. Tongue, tongue, tongue. And—ow. A twinge in my chest.
Holy crap. Had I let that person feel me up?
“Hey! Watch it!” Josh said.
He grabbed the tray seconds before it went over. One of the doughnuts slid off the tray and plopped, icing side down, onto the floor.
“I gotta go,” I told him. Then I dropped the second tray on the nearest table and was out of there for my second dry heave of the day.
I arrived for morning services seconds before the doors closed. All over the chapel, people were engaged in intense, hushed, conversation, and I heard Thomas’s name more than once. Dozens of eyes followed my progress up the aisle and the whispering intensified in my wake. Apparently, Thomas’s disappearance had become the topic of the moment, and since he wasn’t here to gawk at, it seemed I had been nominated for the job. The girlfriend. The one left behind. She who must be watched.
Suddenly I was glad that I’d had to heave and miss breakfast. If I’d stayed in the cafeteria, I might have been mobbed. At least here, no one could approach me. For the moment, I could regroup.
Ducking my head, I slid into a small space at the end of one of the sophomore pews, next to my least favorite person at Easton, Missy Thurber. Having spent the rest of the breakfast period sitting in the infirmary sipping apple juice, I was feeling just slightly more like myself. Then Missy started sniffing elaborately through her
tunnel-like nostrils, sampling the air. She leaned toward me, sniffed again, and groaned.
“Ugh! Where did you sleep last night?” she asked, pinching her nose. “In the landscaper’s shed?”
I flushed scarlet as she got up, stepped over my former roommate, Constance Talbot, and forced her to slide over next to me.
“Hey,” Constance whispered uncertainly. I hadn’t seen much of her since I had deserted her for Billings two days earlier. Her curly red hair was twisted into two long braids. She already looked young for her age with her freckles and roundish face. Now she looked twelve. “How’s everything?” she asked.
“Fine.”
Except my boyfriend is AWOL, I drunkenly sucked face with a stranger, I have a hangover the size of Yugoslavia, and I’m about to starve to death.
“Everyone’s talking about Thomas. Have you heard from him?” she asked. She looked both concerned for me and hopeful that she might be granted an inside scoop.
“No,” I said. “How are
you
?” I asked, mostly to change the topic.
“Well, I have a single,” she said with a sad smile. Constance was a social being, not the type of person who would thrive in a single, and we both knew it. I wanted to say something to make her feel better about my total desertion, but I could think of nothing. It wasn’t like I was coming back. No matter how many chores the Billings Girls made me do, living in the most exclusive dorm on
campus was still a huge improvement over living in Bradwell. All the girls who lived in Billings had perfect lives—they were popular, successful, straight-A students who went on to great things. That was going to be me now. If they didn’t work me to death first.
“Are you okay?” Constance asked, studying me closely.
“Yeah. Fine. Just a little tired.”
At the microphone, Dean Marcus cleared his throat, saving me from further questioning.
“Good morning, students,” he said, gripping both sides of the podium with his craggly fingers. “This morning I am going to dispense with the pleasantries, as we have a bit of serious business at hand. No doubt you all know by now that one of our own, Thomas Pearson, has gone missing from campus.”
My empty stomach turned and contracted. Murmurs rose to the rafters of the chapel as this most juicy rumor was finally authority-figure confirmed.
“Figures they’d wait till after all the parents are gone to actually bring this little tidbit up,” someone said behind me.
“Silence, please!” Dean Marcus called out, raising one hand.
And silence instantly fell.
“This is a not a matter we are taking lightly,” he continued. “As no one has come forward with any information as to Mr. Pearson’s whereabouts, I have asked the chief of Easton Township police, Chief Sheridan, to speak to you. Please give the chief your undivided attention.”
He turned to a gray-haired gentleman in a stiff blue suit who was seated behind him. “Chief Sheridan?”
Pews creaked all over the chapel as everyone strained for a good look at the chief. He towered over Dean Marcus as he approached the microphone, his shoulders as square as his jaw. When he swallowed I could see his large Adam’s apple bob, even from rows back.
“Thank you, Dean Marcus,” the chief said, his voice grave. He looked out at all of us with steely blue eyes and I could see the displeasure he was feeling as he addressed us. I wondered if he resented the school for being nestled within his jurisdiction, if Thomas’s disappearance was a headache with which he’d rather not cope. Or if it was on some level exciting for him. My guess was that not much happened around this sleepy, upscale town. Maybe he was eager to solve an actual case.
“I’m sorry to have to come here under such grave circumstances,” the chief began. “Now, this is a big school. I’m sure that some of you know Thomas Pearson, while some of you do not.”
I felt a warm hand cover mine. I looked down to find Constance’s fingers gripping my own in a comforting way. My first instinct was to slide my hand away, but I didn’t. She was trying to be a good friend. I needed all the friendliness I could get these days.
“But this week we will be interviewing
all
of you,” the chief said.
Another wave of whispers met this announcement. The vibe in the room was almost excited. What was wrong with these people? Didn’t they realize the implications of this? The police thought something bad had happened to Thomas. They thought one of us might have something to do with it. How did that translate into excitement?