“So, that was fun,” Sawyer said, swinging my hand slightly. “Except for the fight part.”
“Yeah. That part was not good,” I replied, looking down at my feet as we walked. The pace was slow and torturous. I was practically salivating to get back to the dorm. To find out what the hell was going on. “So . . . how do you like Easton so far?” I asked, needing to fill the silence.
“It’s okay,” he said, kicking a rock off the path and into the snow. “I’ve been to three private schools already and they’re all pretty much the same. Musty books, ancient teachers, lots of talk of tradition.”
“I can imagine,” I said, scanning Pemberly again now that we were closer. I found Ivy’s window next to mine. It was completely dark. My hopeful heart sank like a stone. Did that mean Josh was seriously hurt? What if he’d been whisked away to the hospital with Ivy at his side? The thought made my stomach turn.
“I’m glad we have a lot of classes together, though,” Sawyer said with a smile.
Again my heart gave a sickening thump. He was trying to flirt. Why had I accepted this date? What was wrong with me? I should have known that he wanted to be more than friends. Why did I never see these things coming?
“Yeah. At least you knew a few people here before you started,” I said, trying to make it like I was just one of many. “That must have made it easier.”
“Definitely,” Sawyer said.
We paused at the bottom of the steps to Pemberly. A few people coming up from behind slid around us and went inside. I saw a couple of senior girls glance back at us and knew they were gossiping either about our coupling or Sawyer’s crazy-ass brother. Would tonight’s antics be good for Graham’s image around Easton, or bad?
“Well. This is my stop,” I said.
This is my stop?
How big of a dork was I? But then, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he’d be turned off by my dorkitude.
“We should do it again sometime,” Sawyer said, releasing my hand. “But something normal. Like dinner or something.”
I swallowed the rocks in my throat. “Yeah. Um, maybe.”
Sawyer took a step closer to me. He was going in for the kiss. A huge part of me wanted to turn away, but then I thought that maybe if I let him kiss me it would change everything. Maybe I’d suddenly feel this surge of attraction and I’d want to be with him as much as he clearly wanted to be with me. It would make everything so much
easier. Sawyer and I could be together. Josh and Ivy could be together. Everyone could be happy. All I wanted was for everyone to be happy.
So I let Sawyer kiss me. A quick, flat kiss on the lips. It was like kissing my brother. Sawyer leaned back, stars in his eyes. He was blushing like mad and couldn’t stop smiling.
Crappity crap.
“See you tomorrow?” he said, lifting his brows.
“Yeah. Sure,” I replied.
Then I turned and trudged into my dorm as Sawyer practically skipped away.
Josh wasn’t at breakfast the next morning. Neither was Graham. And when I’d knocked on Ivy’s door at six a.m. I’d woken a very cranky Jillian, who had told me Ivy hadn’t come back to the dorm at all. So even though I was intimately connected to all the players, I was in the same position as every other gossiping soul in the dining hall—that of wondering what the hell was going on.
I should have been focused on that night’s initiation. Should have been making sure everything was in place and finalizing my plans. Maybe even figuring out a way to soften the blow for those who hadn’t been asked to join, because soon enough, they were going to figure it out. But instead all I could do was obsess about Josh.
And Ivy and Graham, too, of course.
“Do you think they got expelled?” Lorna asked, taking a bite of her bagel.
“The headmaster is not going to expel his own son,” Noelle replied, flicking some invisible lint from her black sweater.
“Which is good, right?” Tiffany said. She pressed her forearms against the edge of the table as she leaned forward to better see the rest of us. “For Josh, I mean. You can’t exactly expel one of them and not the other.”
“There’s no way he’s expelling Josh,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “He didn’t even start it.”
“Really? I heard he freaked when he saw Graham all over Ivy and that he threw the first punch,” London said, her mouth full of fruit.
“No way. I was standing right there. Josh got in front of Graham to keep him away from Ivy, but Graham definitely punched first,” I said.
Unless you counted the hand to the chest that Josh gave Graham, but I didn’t. It wasn’t even a shove. More of a stop sign.
“If you say so,” Noelle said blithely, taking a sip of her juice.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I blurted.
“Just that you’re not the most . . .
objective
observer when it comes to Josh Hollis, that’s all,” Noelle said.
“Oh no she didn’t,” Portia joked, eliciting laughter from everyone else at the table.
My already overwrought mind had started to formulate a seriously scathing response when there was a hiss of heightened noise across the dining hall. I looked up to find Ivy walking toward us. I jumped out of my seat, nearly knocking my chair over in the process, and elbowed Vienna in the head.
“Ow!”
“Sorry!” I blurted, tripping over myself on my way to meet Ivy in the aisle. Her long red coat was open over an ankle-length black skirt and gray top and her face was makeup free. She hugged me as soon as I got to her.
“Hey!” I said. “Are you all right? Where have you been?”
“I called my mom and she came and picked me up,” Ivy explained. “I just kind of wanted to sleep in my own bed last night.” She looked around the dining hall, the lights making her pale skin appear almost tissue thin. “Where’s Josh?”
My heart sank like a stone. “I was hoping you knew. No one’s seen him.”
“What? Seriously?” Ivy said, her brow wrinkling. “Did you talk to Trey?”
“Yeah. Josh never came home last night either,” I said. I was starting to wish I hadn’t scarfed down all those Apple Jacks. My stomach was starting to revolt.
“So where the hell is he?” Ivy asked, whipping her cell phone out of her pocket. “I’ve been texting him all morning and he hasn’t replied.”
I swallowed my pride before saying the next thing that came to mind. “Have you tried his parents? Maybe he did the same thing you did.”
She shook her head. “Called them on my way here. They said Double H called them about the fight and was going to keep them posted on the disciplinary action. That’s all they know so far. They
were kind of freaked, actually. According to his mom, Josh has never punched anyone in his life.”
Which begged the question once again—why all the tension between Josh and Graham?
“What the hell did Hathaway do? Lock him in a dungeon somewhere?” I asked, starting to feel desperate.
Ivy bit her lip. “I don’t know. God, I’m such an idiot. If I hadn’t said yes to Graham, this never would have happened.”
“So why did you?” I asked.
“Well, his father was standing right there,” she said defensively, raising a palm. “I couldn’t shoot him down in front of his dad.”
Someone dropped a glass and I looked around, remembering where we were. Almost every pair of eyes in the room was trained on Ivy and me. For the first time I noticed that Sawyer wasn’t at his usual table either. My skin tingled with trepidation and uncertainty. What was up with the Hathaways? I’d thought Sawyer’s dad was going to be a kinder, gentler headmaster, but he was turning out to be a huge enigma.
“I have an idea,” I said, linking my arm through Ivy’s and turning her around.
“Where’re we going?” she asked.
“Double H is all about this open-door policy, right?” I said as we headed for the door. “I think now’s the perfect time to take him up on it.”
I grabbed my stuff and Ivy and I walked through the cafeteria, ignoring our audience. Ivy shoved open the door and I tugged my coat on as we speed-walked directly to Hell Hall. It was pretty quiet inside,
what with the entire student body and most of the faculty back at the dining hall. As we jogged up the stairs to the headmaster’s office, the only sounds were of someone tapping on a distant keyboard, and the whirring of a copy machine.
The door to the headmaster’s outer office was, in fact, open, but there was nobody behind his assistant’s desk. My old friend and informant, Miss Lewis, had left her post at this desk at the end of my sophomore year. I wasn’t sure who was supposed to be manning it now, but whoever it was, he or she was on a break.
Ivy and I hesitated in the center of the thick rug. We could both hear Mr. Hathaway’s muffled voice coming from the other side of the heavy wooden door on the far side of the room. Even though I felt a skitter of nerves, I walked purposefully over to the door and lifted my hand to knock.
That was when I heard him say, clear as day, “. . . no coincidence that it was all Billings Girls.”
I froze. Ivy and I looked at one another, wide-eyed. Hathaway must have been pacing the room as he talked, because those few words were loud and precise, but his voice was already much further away and indistinguishable.
I held my breath and waited. If he was talking about us, I had to hear more.
“What are you doing? Knock!” Ivy whispered.
I shook my head. His voice was growing closer again.
“. . . know that. Of course. Well then perhaps we should make some calls. Some of the alumni would be interested to know, I’m sure. . . .”
My eyes narrowed. Know what? Was he still talking about us? Who was he going to call.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Ivy whispered.
She shoved me out of the way and lifted her fist to knock.
“Excuse me, ladies. Can I help you?”
We whirled around. An elderly woman with extremely short, gunmetal gray hair stood in the doorway, wearing a purple suit and clutching a folder. My heart was in my throat.
“Yes. We’re here to talk to the headmaster,” Ivy said.
The woman gave us a rueful smile as she crossed to her desk. “I’m afraid the headmaster is on the phone and asked not to be disturbed.”
Ivy walked toward the desk. “But I thought he had an open door policy.”
The woman sat primly and folded her hands in front of her, looking up at Ivy. “I’m sure you can appreciate that said policy cannot possibly be enacted at every moment of every day, miss. Now, if you like, I can set an appointment for you.”
She pulled out her keyboard and hit a few buttons. “How does fourth period tomorrow strike you?”
Ivy looked like she knew exactly whom she wanted to strike.
“Forget it,” I said, grabbing Ivy’s arm. “We’ll just come back later,” I said.
“All right, then! Have a productive day, girls!” the woman called after us.
Ivy cursed under her breath as we tromped back down the stairs.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “If Josh and Graham aren’t in the chapel, we’ll just corner Double H afterward and ask him what’s going on.”
“Fine,” Ivy said. “Open door policy my ass.”
Out on the quad everyone was headed toward the chapel. I tried to keep up with Ivy’s frenzied speed-walking pace, but I my thoughts were all over the place and I had to slow down. Had to get a grip. Who was Headmaster Hathaway talking to and why was he talking about the Billings Girls? Which alumni was he going to talk to and about what? At the very center of the quad, a cold wind blew my hair forward over my face and I turned into it so it would send my thick mane back over my shoulders. Just then, Headmaster Hathaway walked out of Hell Hall and paused on the top step to tug his leather gloves over his hands. He was yards away, but he looked right into my eyes. And the chill that shuddered through me had nothing to do with the wind.
The Billings Literary Society might have been thorough in certain respects, but there was one important bit of information the original sisters had neglected to jot down:
Initiation was a bitch.
Technically, I was supposed to blindfold everyone and bring them up to the chapel in a line, each girl holding the shoulder of the girl in front of her—all of them dressed in head-to-toe white.
Yeah. Like Headmaster Hathaway and his goons weren’t going to find that at all suspect. Figuring that the sisters of the BLS would understand my making some minor adjustments in order to keep our secret society a secret, I arranged for each of them to come to the door of chapel at a separate time, just as I’d done for our very first meeting. I was there when the first girl, Lorna, arrived, and I quickly blindfolded her at that point and tucked her away in the far corner of the chapel so that she wouldn’t be able to
see who else had made the cut until the big reveal moment.
One by one they emerged from the woods. Kiki, Astrid, Ivy, Vienna, Tiffany, Rose, Portia, and Amberly. As I blindfolded Amberly, she was quaking from either nerves or the cold and I tasted bile in the back of my throat. I couldn’t believe that Amberly freaking Carmichael had gotten in to the BLS and not Constance. It was the first time I seriously, and on a deep, physical level, wished I had broken the rules. I stashed her in the deepest, darkest, coldest corner of the chapel and felt a teeny bit better when I heard her whimper.
Noelle was the last to arrive.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing with that?” she said, leaning away from me as I approached with the blindfold.
I rolled my eyes. “Just shut up and trust me.”
She rolled her eyes right back. “Fine. But don’t mess up the hair.”
I tied it extra tight, reveling in the involuntary squeak she let out as the blindfold tugged her tresses. As I took her hand and led her carefully up the crumbling steps, I glanced back at the trees to make sure no one had followed her. The woods were silent except for the rustling of the branches in the wind.
We were safe. At least for now.
Inside, I led Noelle down the broom-cleaned aisle and stood her right at the base of it, in the center of the open area before the pulpit. Then I quickly moved around the room, lighting each of the brand-new candles I had placed in the sconces and candelabras that afternoon. If Headmaster Hathaway was really keeping an eye on us, he’d
fallen down on the job today. I’d been back and forth to the chapel three times getting everything set up and hadn’t been bothered by a single guard or faculty member. Maybe Double H was just preoccupied with the fight between Graham and Josh and had forgotten all about the Billings Girls for the moment. I’d have to thank the guys for that later—if I ever saw them again.