I clapped my hands and everyone joined in, smiles all around. Then Lorna raised her hand.
“Yes, Lorna?” I asked.
“Just one question, Reed,” she said. “Why did we just scrub down a condemned building in the middle of nowhere?”
“You’ll know soon enough,” I said, grinning from ear to ear and trying like hell not to make eye contact with Ivy.
For the first time in a while, I felt cheered by their groans. I was in charge and I liked it.
“Come on,” I said. “I think we all deserve some serious sleep.”
As we turned toward the door, it swung open with a bang. Every one of us froze.
Oh effing hell. I half expected Mr. Hathaway or my old buddy Detective Hauer to come storming through the door. If they were going to snag us, couldn’t they have at least caught on
before
we killed ourselves working? But instead, Constance appeared. Her hat was askew, her face was red, and she clutched the doorknob, gasping for air.
“Did I miss it? Is it over? Oh my God, Reed! I’m so sorry!”
I rushed forward. Had Constance been lost in the woods all this time? Was she cold and wet and dehydrated? But when I got to her, Constance’s skin was warm. Her eyes were bright and her feet were not soaked through.
“Are you okay?” I asked uncertainly.
“Yeah. Just, I basically sprinted up the hill trying to get here.” Her eyes trailed over the crowd, all of whom were slowly pushing their arms into coat sleeves and yanking on their hats, their hair in various states of disarray, their clothes streaked with grime. Constance frowned. “Oh man. I really did miss it.”
“Constance,” I hissed, sensing that there was no tragedy to be related here. I pulled her away from the door. “Where have you been?
“I’m so sorry, Reed,” Constance said. “It’s just, Whit called and he’s all freaking out about this chem assignment he has due tomorrow and if I don’t talk him down he basically goes on a chocolate binge, which could send him into insulin shock and then he could end up in the hospital.” She paused for breath. “Or dead!”
I felt sick to my stomach. She had missed the third task, after miserably failing the first, to talk to her boyfriend?
“Constance, you know there are only three tasks, right? This was the third,” I said slowly.
“I know, but Reed! It was a matter of life and death!” Constance said. She looked around the chapel and her nose wrinkled. “What were you guys doing up here anyway? This place is horrible.”
I wanted to wring her neck. Clearly she was not taking this seriously. At all. And on top of that, she was disparaging our chapel, the space we had all just worked so hard to clean. Without her help, I might add.
“Whittaker needs to learn to take care of himself,” I told her. “You have to have your own priorities.”
“I do!” Constance said, hugging herself. “It’s just he’s the first one. I mean, I love him. He’s my first priority.” Then she seemed to realize how serious I was and her face went slack. “I mean, no offense, Reed. Billings matters too of course! I really am sorry I didn’t get here. Is there something I can do? Like a make-up test or something?”
A make-up test? Did this look like eighth-grade algebra to her?
“Are you guys coming or what?” Noelle asked, hovering at the door. Everyone else had already filed out.
“Yeah. We’re coming,” I said. I brushed by Constance, unable to look at her pleading eyes anymore, and headed out.
“Reed? Are you mad?” she asked, coming up behind me.
“No,” I said, pulling my coat on as the cold hit me square in the chest. “I’m not mad.”
Just disappointed. Because I knew now who one of the three cuts would have to be. And it was going to be devastating for both of us.
We trekked down the hill together, everyone laughing and whispering in the cold night air, going over Shelby’s breakdown and Astrid’s badass response. Tiffany, Portia, and Rose were quiet and subdued compared to the others, and I knew they were probably pissed off and disappointed that Shelby was out. I felt for them, losing their friend, but Shelby and I had never been close, and her leaving made the task ahead that much easier for me. Part of me was glad she’d gone on her own terms. It was better for her self-esteem and for my guilt.
As we reached the tree line we broke up into pairs, as planned, spreading out in the dark so that we’d all come onto campus at different spots, rather than in one huge clump. Ivy and I walked toward the east side of campus, Noelle and Missy behind us, Constance and Lorna behind them, ready to split again when we reached Parker.
“Hang on,” Noelle said, right when Ivy and I were about to split off. “I’m going with our fearless leader. Ivy, you take Missy.”
“Uh, since when do you tell me what to do?” Ivy asked.
“Does everything have to be an argument with you?” Noelle said, rolling her eyes. Then she paused and adopted a pious expression, placing her hands together at chin level. “Please, Miss Slade. May I please, please, please talk to Reed alone for a minute?”
The other girls laughed and looked away. Ivy turned red with fury and looked at me. “Reed?”
“It’s fine. I’ll catch up with you back at the dorm,” I said.
“Fine. Let’s go, Missy.” She trudged off at lightning speed, and Missy almost slipped in the snow as she caught up.
I looked at Noelle, pretty much dying of curiosity over what she might have to say. “Well. That was obnoxious,” I said.
She rolled her eyes again and turned down the hill toward campus, her footsteps crunching in the snow. “She’ll get over it.”
I sighed and jogged to catch up. No matter who held what positions of power, Noelle would always be Noelle.
“So, you’re really getting the hang of this, Glass-Licker,” she said, looking straight ahead as we walked. I bristled at the reemergence of the old nickname.
“The hang of what?” I said.
“Being the alpha girl.” She ducked her head slightly, her hair falling across her face like a curtain. “I have to say I never thought I’d see the day Portia and Vienna got down on their knees and scrubbed a floor.”
“They didn’t go through Billings initiation like the rest of us?” I said.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she looked at me. “Let’s just say the whole chore thing was slightly less intense before you came along.”
“Oh.”
Once again I got that acidic feeling in my gut. The feeling that I had been unworthy of Billings in the first place. That she was trying to remind me I’d never belonged.
“But seriously. Good job with all of this,” Noelle said, our steps quickening as we reached the steepest part of the hill. “I wasn’t sure you’d pull it off, but you did.”
I inflated with pride so fast I thought I might go weightless. It was amazing, the effect she had on me. Putting me down one minute, puffing me up the next.
“Thanks.” I grinned, feeling taller, lighter, happier. “I guess I did.”
“You’re gonna wanna stop right there.”
Noelle and I froze. The male voice had come out of nowhere and scared every last gasp of breath right out of me. From behind the line of trees along Parker’s north side, two security guards approached us, grins across their wind-dried faces.
“Come with us,” the chubby one said, flicking his fingers. “The headmaster will see you now.”
The skinnier one cackled and got behind us, as if we were going to try to make a break for it. Noelle’s eyes met mine in the glow of one of the old-fashioned campus lights and the fury in them was enough to make me consider a sprint to the trees.
All Noelle had wanted to do was keep her head down and her nose clean, and graduate.
So much for that.
I expected to be dragged straight to Hell Hall, but instead, the security guards took us to the main chapel. Once again it was freezing inside, the space heaters having been dormant since that morning’s services. Only the lights along the sides of the room had been illuminated, but I could see Headmaster Hathaway as clear as day, standing at the end of the aisle in the same suit and tie he’d been wearing on campus that afternoon. He wore a grim expression as we arrived at the front of the room. London, Vienna, Amberly, and Portia were already there, their expressions tense.
“Take a seat,” Headmaster Hathaway said, gesturing at the pew across the aisle from our friends.
My butt hadn’t even hit the hardwood when the door slammed again. We all turned around to find Lorna, Ivy, Missy, and Constance being ushered in by two more guards.
“Isn’t this interesting?” Headmaster Hathaway said, eyeing them
as they stepped tentatively toward us. “Tell me. Will anyone else be joining us?”
He looked at me briefly, but I wasn’t about to say anything. At the back of the room, a direct-connect phone bleeped. There was an intelligible crackle of words. One of the guards replied to whatever had been said, then cleared his throat.
“The rest of the campus is quiet, sir.”
I tried not to smile. That meant that Rose, Tiffany, Astrid, and Kiki had gotten back to their dorms without getting caught. I should award them extra BLS points for that feat.
“All right then. We’ll have to deal with the people we have here,” he said, looking down at Noelle and me as the latecomers slipped into the pew behind ours. “So. A literary society?” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and drawing himself up to full height.
Again, no one said a word.
“It’s hard not to notice that this literary society is almost entirely made up of students who used to reside in the now defunct Billings House,” he said, glancing back at the four security guards who now hovered behind us. “Is it not?”
“Yes, sir,” the chubby guard answered. “I mean . . . no, sir? Is that a double negative?”
The smirk fell from Hathaway’s face. “Tell me, Reed, what kind of literary society meets off campus, in the middle of a Friday night, in the dead of winter?” He quickly checked his watch. “Excuse me. It’s now Saturday morning. Hmm?”
I gazed up at him, my lips pressed firmly together. This was one of
the suggestions the book contained on how to deal with authority figures when caught in an unexplainable situation. Say nothing, admit nothing. He leaned one hand into the back of the pew, right next to my face, and glared down at me. His tie swung forward, almost hitting me in the nose.
“You’re going to want to help me out, here,” he said, so close I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. “Where were you all tonight? What were you doing out there?”
My underarms prickled under the intensity of his gaze. I felt hot from the tips of my toes to the tips of my ears. It was possible, that if my friends hadn’t been there, that if I hadn’t propped myself up as their leader, that if Noelle hadn’t been sitting right next to me, as still and strong as stone, I might have caved. But under the circumstances, there was no way I could do that.
He turned his head and looked at Noelle. With his cheek in my face, I could see the beginnings of a five o’clock shadow. Either he wasn’t very manly or he’d shaved twice today.
“Noelle? Anything you’d like to say?” he asked, standing up straight again, smoothing his tie and stepping in front of her. “If I’m going to call all of your parents in the middle of the night to report this infraction, they’re going to want to know what you were doing out there.”
Behind me, Constance let out a short whimper. Noelle shifted in her seat, lifting one arm up to rest on the pew behind her and turning her knees toward me.
“Honestly, Spencer, we couldn’t sleep,” she said, lifting her hand to fluff her hair.
Mr. Hathaway’s right eye twitched at the use of his first name, but he said nothing. Their families were, after all, friends. She’d been calling him “Spencer” her entire life.
“You really should think about shutting down that Coffee Carma,” Noelle continued. “The caffeine is just awful for our still developing bodies.”
Amberly squirmed behind us but, to her credit, said nothing about the potential closing of her father’s business on campus.
“I appreciate your suggestion,” Mr. Hathaway said sternly. “But it still doesn’t explain what you girls were doing off campus in the middle of the night.”
“We went for a walk,” Noelle said. “I’ve heard exercise is one of the best ways to kill a caffeine buzz. And it definitely worked. I know I’m feeling very sleepy right about now.”
She yawned and stretched her arms over her head, smacking the back of my head in the process.
“Me too,” I piped in, loving Noelle in that moment. “What about you ladies?” I asked, looking around.
“Oh, definitely,” Vienna said, faking a yawn.
Portia stretched her arms out at her sides while everyone else murmured their agreement, throwing in a few sighs and yawns and tired moans for good measure. Finally, I took a huge risk and stood up.
“If you don’t mind, Headmaster Hathaway, we’d like to go back to our rooms now,” I said. “I know
my
dad would hate to hear that we were kept out later than we needed to be so we could be grilled in an ice-cold chapel.”
Mr. Hathaway eyed me with disappointment and disdain, but he backed away.
“Fine. These men will escort you back to your dorms.”
My friends quickly roused themselves and we started down the aisle in a tense, quiet clump.
“Oh, girls?” Headmaster Hathaway said.
My eyes met Noelle’s as we all turned around.
“Don’t think for a minute that this is over,” he said, stepping toward us. He gave us that grin—the one that was supposed to say that he was a down guy. The BFF of headmasters. Although right then, it clearly meant the exact opposite. “If I find out that you ladies are trying to re-form Billings House in some way . . . if I hear even a whisper about you asking for room transfers so you can be together or talking to the alumni or forming any sort of Billings club, I
will
be calling your parents, and I
will
be requiring their presence in my office as I conduct a disciplinary review for each and every one of you. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded. Even me. Sudden, overwhelming fear had taken control of all bodily functions.
“Good,” he said. “From here on out, I’ve got my eyes on you.”