I took a deep breath and tried to lock on to one coherent thought, tried to figure out what I had to do next, what I might need to know in order to do what I had to do next. There was one obvious question to be asked.
“Why would they do this?” I asked, gripping the soft cushion at my sides. “Why would they blackmail you to get me to sneak around their rooms? They had to know I would be screwed if I got kicked out. They had to know I would do it. I mean, you should have seen some of the embarrassing crap I found. Weren’t they worried about that at all?”
“Maybe you should ask them,” Leanne said flatly.
“She’s right. You’ll have an easier time believing it if it comes directly from them,” Natasha said.
I nodded, still semicatatonic from the shock. Hear it from them. Right. They did have a lot of explaining to do.
“Would you mind leaving us alone now?” Leanne asked,
holding Natasha’s hand in her lap. “We don’t get to see each other much anymore.”
She said this with a hint of blame. As if it was my fault. But I suppose, in a way, it was.
“Yeah. Sorry,” I said, rising shakily on my three-and-a-half-inch heels. I paused in front of the curtain and looked over my shoulder at Natasha. “And don’t worry. Your secret’s safe.”
Natasha smiled. The first genuine smile she had ever graced me with. “Thanks, Reed.”
I lifted the curtain and ducked out.
Why? Why would they do this? Why, why, why?
I paused for a moment outside the alcove to catch my breath, the boning in the bodice of my gown cutting into my raw, hot skin. My brain searched for an answer, but could find none. What would the Billings Girls possibly have to gain from making me snoop through
their
rooms? Had they wanted me to find all their sick, secret stashes? Had they wanted me to find the proof of what they had done to Leanne? And if so, I was back to question one:
Why?
It was all just some big, twisted game. It had to be. And Natasha and Leanne and I were the pawns. Playing with us amused them. Seeing how far we might go gave them a happy little thrill. It was the only explanation. Earlier that day when I had gone in and confessed and handed back the disk, they had known what I had done. They had known all along. They had engineered the whole thing.
They must have been laughing at me behind my back for days.
Look what Reed’s doing. Look how stupid she is. Look how much power we have over her.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to tear someone’s hair out.
I stood up straight, took a deep breath, and homed in on the dance floor. This was not going to be pretty.
Clinging to my livid adrenaline rush, I stormed through the crowd, taking an elbow here, a hip knock there, and found Noelle, Ariana, Taylor, and Kiran just where I had left them, in the center of the dance floor. I stepped in front of Noelle, seething for breath. She stopped dancing.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Reed, relax,” she drawled, resting her wrists on my shoulders. “It’s a party! That’s what you’re supposed to do. Or don’t they have parties in Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania?”
I grabbed her wrists, flung one away, and grasped the other with my fingers. Tightly. Instantly I felt Ariana, Kiran, and Taylor gather around me. I was surrounded, caged in, but I didn’t care.
“We
need
to talk,” I said again, this time through my teeth.
Noelle’s eyes widened. “Reed, you’re making a scene.”
“I can make a much bigger, much louder one,” I told her. “But I really don’t think you want all these people to hear the things I have to say.”
Noelle stared at me for a long moment, gauging whether or not I was bluffing. I was. Totally. If I started ranting and raving, then I would not only expose Leanne and Natasha’s secrets, but I would expose myself as a total naïve weakling. Not something I was quite ready to do.
I narrowed my eyes. The longer we stood there, the more I realized I was winning. I could see her start to cave. Maybe two
could
play at this game.
“Fine,” she said, ripping her hand from my grasp. “No need to get violent.” She looked over my shoulder at the others. “Ladies. Let’s find ourselves a room.”
“Well, Reed, we’re all here,” Noelle said, lowering herself onto a large velvet chair in one of the alcoves. She kicked off her shoes and drew her feet up under her full skirt, as if she were settling in for a cup of tea and a long, pleasant chat. The others gathered around her on footstools and chaises.
It was all perfectly calm and civilized. A tableau of beautiful, poised, privileged women. Meanwhile, my insides were boiling.
“I know what you did,” I said, standing in front of them. “I know you blackmailed Natasha into blackmailing me.”
Noelle stared at me. “So what do you want, a medal?”
My fingers curled at my sides. “I want to know why,” I said. “Why would you do that to me? What could you possibly have to gain?”
Noelle took a deep breath and sighed, looking off to her left like she was just that bored.
“It’s not what
we
have to gain, so much as what
you
have to gain,” Ariana said, reposing languidly on her chaise. Everyone watched me expectantly, as if waiting for me to thank them.
“What does that mean?” I asked. “I don’t understand what that means.”
“It means that we were testing you, and you passed!” Kiran announced grandly. She pulled her ever-present flask out of her purse and held it up. “Care to celebrate?”
I closed my eyes against a new wave of frustration. I was even more confused now than I’d been when I walked in here.
“Testing me? How? For what?” I asked.
Kiran took a long drink and touched her fingertips to her lips. Noelle shook her head, fed up. Ariana simply stared.
“To see if we could trust you,” Taylor said quietly, looking at the floor. Her feet were turned in at the toes, giving the impression of a child waiting for her mother at the bus stop. “We did it to see if we could trust you.”
To see if they could trust me. To see if they could
trust me
?
“And I passed? How is that possible?” I said. “I
did
go through your rooms. I found all kinds of crazy, personal crap. I totally violated your privacy. How did I pass?”
Noelle laughed. “You didn’t violate anything. We planted all that stuff for you to find.”
“What?”
Okay. Now I had to sit. I dropped onto the nearest velvet bench and slumped. The past few weeks of my life passed before me in the blink of an eye. Had any of it been real? “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“You really think I’m a closet binger?” Kiran said, snorting. “Please. I eat what I want, when I want. It’s called good genes.”
“Yeah. That was all my idea,” Taylor said with obvious pride.
“But Taylor’s all-work-and-no-play diary was mine,” Kiran pointed out. “That was genius, you have to admit.”
“It
was
good,” Taylor said. “But I had finger cramps for days.”
“The pictures of Dash were real, however. Unretouched,” Noelle said with a satisfied smile. “I’m a lucky girl, aren’t I?”
I tasted bile in the back of my throat. Not only had they set me up, they had gone to elaborate lengths to do so. This must have taken days to plan and execute. All along they had been plotting and scheming behind my back. I had thought they were my friends, but they had been messing with me from day one. Was anything any of them had ever said to me true?
“I’ll never forget your face that first morning after Natasha showed you the slide show,” Kiran said mirthfully. “On my birthday? Every time we handed you another gift you looked more and more green.”
“That was such perfect timing,” Ariana said. “You really laid on the guilt,” she added with obvious pride.
“Honestly, I’m kind of surprised you didn’t figure it out,” Noelle told me. “We almost tripped up so many times.”
“Like, oh my God, that morning I found you in our room? I was so not supposed to be there,” Taylor said. “I totally forgot you would be sneaking around, but when I saw you I could tell you’d already been under my bed. And then I threw in that thing about my paper and you were
so
sweet. ‘
Everyone here says you’re the smartest person ever to go here,
’” she said, mimicking my words. Words I had thought would help her. “That was so nice of you, Reed!”
“And then all that crap about passwords?” Kiran said. “We totally fed you the info on how to find Ariana’s key.”
“But my planner must have driven you crazy,” Ariana said. “Sorry about that.”
Never in my life had I felt humiliation so intense. They had known the entire time. They had been
leading me on.
That night when Ariana had handed me her bag, she had done it on
purpose.
I hadn’t been clever or conniving or stealth. I had been duped.
“Anyway, the real test was whether or not you would turn us in if you found something incriminating,” Noelle said. “If we threatened to take away your entire world—i.e., your enrollment at Easton—and you still remained loyal to us, you would pass.”
“And you did,” Ariana said simply. “Now we know we can trust you with anything. Everything.”
A chill skittered over my skin and I wrapped my arms around myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening. All that fear, all that sneaking, all that guilt. It was all for nothing.
“What would you have done if I’d gone directly to the dean with that disk?” I asked, staring at the floor. “It’s kind of a dangerous game you were playing, isn’t it? You could have gotten thrown out of school. All of you.”
Noelle laughed again and this time was joined by the others. “Please, Reed. They’d need a lot more than that to kick
us
out of school. Danger? No. There was never any danger.”
“Except for you,” Kiran said, pointing at me. “For
you
there was danger. If those pictures had gotten out, you would have been on a bus back to Croton before you could say ‘See ya.’”
“They really are quite incriminating,” Noelle added matter-of-factly.
I pressed my hands into the bench at my sides and leaned forward, fighting back some serious nausea as they laughed. This was funny to them. It was all very amusing, toying with people’s feelings. With their lives. With their futures.
“Oh, Reed, come on,” Ariana said, standing. She glided over and sat down next to me, wrapping one arm around my shoulders and touching my wrist with her other hand. Her fingers were ice cold. “It’s all good now. It’s going to be okay. Don’t you realize what all of this means?”
It means you’re all nuts. It means you’re all evil. It means I’ve aligned myself with the devil’s minions.
“It means you’re one of us now,” Ariana said quietly. “Really and truly.”
“It means you don’t have to play Cinderella anymore,” Taylor said.
“Which kind of sucks, because I hate making my own bed,” Kiran added, taking another swig.
“It means you’re in,” Noelle stated simply. “For real this time. From here on out. No more secrets.”
Something about these three words sent a thrill of excitement through my heart. Even in all my mind-twisting, stomach-clenching desperation, I was still psyched at the idea of actually being accepted by these nutcases. What was
wrong
with me?
I had been seduced. It was official. There was no turning back
now. I finally looked up and met Noelle’s dark eyes from across the room.
“No more secrets?” I said.
“None.”
I took a deep breath and looked at Ariana. She gazed back with that enigmatic smile. Part of me was still angry. And I knew that part of me always would be. But I had chosen this. When I had first been welcomed into Billings, I had known what these girls were capable of, at least to some extent, and I had still chosen them because I knew what they could do for me. I knew the kind of future I could have with them. And in the here and now, they made me feel special. Important. Like I had true friends. In the end, that was what this whole game had been about. They might have had a sick way of going about it, but they’d just wanted to make sure that I was a true friend.
It was all about loyalty, just as Whittaker had said. Loyalty was paramount.
Lesson officially learned.
“So, are we okay?” Ariana asked finally.
“Yeah. Can we get back to the party already?” Noelle added, pushing herself up. “I’m very over this conversation.”
“Yeah,” I said, and almost couldn’t believe I’d said it. “We’re okay.”
I was exhausted, crashing from my adrenaline rush, but somehow I managed to lift myself up off the bench. Taylor gave me a quick hug and slipped out ahead of us. Kiran kissed both my
cheeks and winked, then followed. Ariana simply lifted the curtain and ducked out. I was about to go after her, when I realized that the most important question of the night had yet to be answered. I stopped and turned to face Noelle.
“So, those files I found on Ariana’s computer—the crib sheets and the IMs,” I said. “Those were planted too?”
Noelle smiled slowly. “Everything for a reason, remember, Reed? Everything for a reason.”
Hours later we emerged onto Park Avenue together, holding hands, laughing, trying to hold Kiran up as she fumbled and stumbled. The entire night had been a blur of drinks and dancing, of stories and sightings. I had avoided the alcoves for the rest of the night, sticking to the safety of the ballroom with the rest of the girls. Noelle and Dash had disappeared for an hour and came back looking disheveled and groggy and satisfied. Kiran had made off with a group of people from Kent and had returned to us in a different gown, which cracked everyone up. A personal joke I didn’t quite get, but that I didn’t ask about. I had a feeling that I didn’t want to know.
Thanks to the white-gift tradition, Kiran had on a white fur stole over that new gown, Taylor was toting a gorgeous Chanel bag, Ariana had a pair of Dior shoes dangling from her fingers, and Noelle was wearing a crystal tiara that I knew would join the pile of junk under her bed the moment we got home. I had traded a seriously ugly designer belt with a girl from Barton to get the beautiful Tiffany white-gold-and-sapphire ring I now wore
around the ring finger of my right hand. Other than Whittaker’s diamonds, this was my first real jewelry ever. I couldn’t help holding up my hand to admire it every five seconds.