“Wait, why were you guys so surprised at the size of this house if Cheyenne’s stepmother is a movie star?” I asked.
“Reed, you have got so much to learn,” Kiran said. She threw her arms wide and some of the champagne sloshed out of the bottle. “This is not indie-movie-queen money. This is
old
money.”
“What does Cheyenne’s father do, exactly?” Ariana asked.
“No one’s ever cared enough to find out for sure,” Noelle said. “He’s some kind of international business mogul.”
“Well, I hope Rinnan’s not too attached to him, because I wouldn’t mind being wife number three,” Kiran said with a cackle.
I balked. “Come on. Wouldn’t Cheyenne’s dad be kind of old for you?”
“Sweetie, I don’t care if he’s old or young, ugly or pretty. As long as he’s financing the couture, he’s fine by me,” Kiran trilled.
“Hear, hear!” Noelle and Ariana both cheered before taking mouthfuls of champagne.
“Anyway, Reed, you are now wearing the exact outfit Ms. Rinnan Hearst wore when she lost at the Oscars for the third time,” Ariana said with a smile.
Whoa. This dress had been down the red carpet at the Academy Awards? Even I could appreciate the fabulousness of that. Noelle finally let me go and I stepped in front of the mirror. The tension inside of me melted away. I really did look like a movie star.
“Okay, everyone! Get together!” Kiran said, grabbing the camera phone from Ariana.
Ariana and Noelle crowded in around me, striking ridiculous model-style posses. Hands on hips, butts jutted out, lips puckered. I mimicked them, laughing at myself as they draped their arms over me, pressed their cheeks to mine. It was all very silly and fun. An impromptu fashion show. It was the type of thing I always knew girls did on their own time, but I had never actually experienced. Of course, where I lived the clothes came from Forever 21, not the House of Chanel.
“Okay, people! Wardrobe change!” Kiran announced.
Noelle grabbed my hand and pulled me into the closet to select another dress. For the first time in days, I wasn’t thinking about Thomas or Blake or Josh or anything else. For the first time in days, I was just having fun.
Josh ignored me for the rest of the night. I didn’t approach him, either. Whenever we were in a room together, I felt like there was a bungee cord between us trying to pull me over to him, but I resisted. I was angry. I was hurt. And there was no way I was apologizing first.
We took separate limos home, but they both pulled up at the same time. When I stepped out into the cold, Josh was standing a few yards away, staring at me. Noelle came out and huddled into me from behind, putting her chin on my shoulder. Josh’s face went blank before he turned around and walked off alone.
There was a huge hole where my heart used to be.
“Screw him,” Noelle said, slipping her arm through mine. “We had a good night. You can fix it in the morning.”
“You’re right,” I said, shaking my hair back.
Dash came over and gave Noelle a quick good-night kiss before heading off in the direction of the guys’ dorms. Then Kiran tripped
over the curb into us and Ariana helped us get her standing up straight.
“Have you gotten your membership card from the Future Betty Ford’s Inmate Club yet?” Noelle asked.
“Huh?” Kiran was confused.
Noelle rolled her eyes. “Forget it.”
Together the four of us started up the cobblestone walk that would take us around my old dorm, Bradwell, and into the quad. Overhead the stars still twinkled and winked. Normally after a night like this the Billings Girls and the boys of Ketlar would have been rolling in as the sun came up, but the dean had stipulated an early night as part of his deal with Cheyenne and her dad. It was barely even one in the morning.
“Hey! Let’s look at the pictures!” Kiran announced suddenly. She lifted her bag and attempted to open the clasp five times before it finally came free.
“Here. Let me,” Noelle said.
She grabbed the bag and fished out the phone, which Kiran promptly snatched back. “You don’t know how to work it.”
“Fine,” Noelle said, impatient. She looked at me and shook her head, and I laughed. Up ahead, the rest of the girls were crowding through the front door of Billings.
“Here! Look!” Kiran said.
All four of us huddled around her as we walked, the better to see the tiny screen. Kiran jabbed the arrow button with her thumb repeatedly, scrolling through the shots. There was one of me and
Noelle hugging. One of Ariana and Kiran lounging on the bed. One of Noelle, Ariana, and me with our heads cut off, clearly taken by a less-than-sober Kiran.
“You suck!” Noelle said, smacking Kiran’s arm. “That should have been a great shot.”
“Hey! I’m a model, not a photographer,” Kiran replied.
Ariana and I laughed.
There was Ariana in her blue gown, a shot of Noelle’s tiara, Kiran and me on the bed. Ariana, Noelle, me, Kiran, Noelle, Ariana, me, and—
A naked torso. A guy’s torso. Stretched and bound. A guy with a black bag over his head, tied to some kind of pole. A blindfolded, half-naked—
Thomas.
Everyone stopped moving. The world stopped moving.
“What—?” My vision blackened from the outside in, blocking out everything until all I could see was that image. I knew Thomas’s body. Would know it anywhere. It was him. It was
him.
The image shook in Kiran’s hands. Her skin was actually gray. “Omigod. Omigod.”
She hit a bunch of buttons, but nothing worked. Nothing cleared the horrifying image that was burning itself into every corner of my mind.
“What
is
that!?” I shouted, backing away. The pain in my stomach was so intense I doubled over. Ariana stared straight ahead as if in shock. Kiran blubbered. Noelle, cool as ice, slowly
reached over and took the phone out of Kiran’s hand. She clicked a few buttons.
“It’s nothing,” she said firmly. “It’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Kiran blurted. Her whole body trembled. Even her eyes seemed to shake in their sockets. She gripped her own arms and backed away from Noelle and Ariana like she was afraid they might pounce. “I’m so, so sorry. I thought I deleted it. I thought—”
“Who the hell told you to take pictures?” Noelle demanded.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We just thought . . . a goof. It was a goof. I thought—”
“Shut up,” Ariana said through her teeth. I could see her jaw working. The anger she was smothering was boiling just below the surface.
Kiran was desperate. “But I thought I deleted it—”
“Shut up, Kiran.”
“Ariana, please! It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time! I just—”
“Shut the hell up!” Ariana roared.
Tears blurred my vision. This wasn’t happening. This could not be happening.
Thomas. Thomas. Thomas.
He was half naked. His arms were lashed behind him. His head was covered. He couldn’t see. There was no way he could see. Thomas was murdered. Thomas was
murdered
. And they had a picture of him. Like he was being tortured. Like
they
had—
“What did you do?” I heard myself say. My head was shaking. I couldn’t focus. Tears streamed down my face. “What the hell did you do?”
Noelle took a step toward me. Nothing about her had changed. While Kiran deteriorated into a blathering mess and Ariana turned steely, Noelle was perfectly in control. She still held the phone, the screen now blank.
“Reed, calm down. It’s not what you think.”
“What do I
think
?” I practically screamed.
Maybe Josh was right. Maybe she was pure evil.
Ariana and Noelle looked around at the deserted campus as my voice echoed against the ancient walls. Kiran cried quietly into her velvet gloves.
“Okay . . . okay,” Noelle said, holding a hand out. “We’re going to explain. We’re going to tell you exactly what happened, but you have to calm down.”
“We don’t have to explain a thing to her,” Ariana snapped. Her fingers were curled into fists at her sides. She looked smaller somehow, but powerful. Like she’d pulled herself into her protective shell, primed for a fight.
Noelle ignored her. “Just calm down and listen to me, Reed.”
Trembling from my very core, I somehow managed to reach into my coat pocket and pull out my cell phone. Noelle’s expression changed for the first time. She looked at my phone as if it were a bomb. Something shifted inside of me and I found a tiny little bit of control. Something to grasp on to through all the bedlam roiling inside.
“You have five minutes,” I said through my teeth. “Five minutes to convince me not to call the police.”
Ariana glared at me. She wanted to punch me. I could tell from the malice in her eyes. Miss Manners herself, salivating to throw a right hook.
“Fine,” she said. “But not here. We go inside.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. You ki—”
My throat closed up over the words and tears spilled out of my eyes.
“We didn’t, Reed. I swear to you,” Noelle said. “Please. You said you’d give us five minutes. Just please. Please, let’s go inside.”
She was begging me. Noelle Lange was standing there begging me. Her brown eyes were desperate, pleading. She was scared. She was scared and she needed me to believe her. I had never thought I’d see the day.
And in the end, that was what got me to follow them. Into Billings House. Into our home. Into a place I’d soon wish I’d never set foot inside at all.
They killed Thomas. They
killed
Thomas.
I sat on the edge of Noelle’s messy bed with that one thought repeating itself over and over and over again.
They killed Thomas. Killed him. Dead. He was dead because of my . . . my friends.
It was the only explanation. Why else would they have that picture? Why else would they all have freaked so badly at the sight of it? As I sat there, it all started to make sense. No wonder Noelle had brightened each time a new suspect had been brought into custody. Each time the blame was thrown on someone else, she was that much safer. And Kiran. She’d been all meek and edgy after Thomas’s body had been found, but had returned to über-bitch form after Josh and then Blake had been arrested. Even Ariana had been in a weirdly good mood lately.
Why? Because they thought they’d gotten away with it. They thought they’d gotten away with murder.
I was going to be sick. Just tonight I had ditched Josh for these people. I had thought they were my friends. But they were murderers. Murderers.
Over in the corner Noelle and Ariana whispered, casting furtive glances in my direction every so often. Kiran sat on Noelle’s desk chair, staring at a spot some three feet in front of her on the floor. Which one of them had actually done it? Which one of them had landed the blow that finally killed him?
And what the hell was I still doing here?
“That’s it. I’m gone.” I stood. I had thrown my coat off to keep myself from suffocating, but now I grabbed it from the bed and made for the door. Difficult to do without turning my back to them, but I did it. I wasn’t taking my eyes off of them for a second.
“Reed! No,” Noelle said.
I stopped. My hand was on the doorknob. All I had to do was turn it and run. ”You said you would let us explain.” Noelle took a couple of steps toward me. “Just sit down for five minutes.”
My grip on the doorknob tightened. My fingers hurt. My palm hurt. Every single inch of me hurt.
“Why should I? We all know what happened,” I spat.
“No. You don’t,” she said. “Let us at least tell the story and then if you still don’t believe us, you can go tell whomever you want. We won’t try to stop you.”
I stared at her. At Ariana and her cool eyes. At Kiran, who was now looking at me, pleading silently.
I don’t know if I really wanted to believe them, or if I just wanted
to know—finally know once and for all—what had happened to Thomas that night. But whatever it was, something inside of me made me walk back to the bed. Made me sit down. Made me listen.
Noelle stood in front of me. She took a deep breath. “Okay. This is what really happened. Do you remember the night before Thomas disappeared? How we were all up in the woods?”
“Yes.” Of course I remembered. I would remember every detail of those few days for the rest of my life.
“Do you remember how he treated you?” Ariana asked. “All those horrible things he said in front of everyone?”
My heart twisted and a wet sob welled up in my throat. I nodded.
“Well, we were all really pissed off after that little performance of his,” Noelle said, starting to pace. “So we decided to teach him a lesson. You know, mess with his head a little bit. Show him that’s no way to treat a Billings Girl.”
“But I wasn’t a Billings Girl then,” I said.
“You were. You just didn’t know it yet,” Ariana told me.
“Exactly,” Noelle agreed. “So that night, the first night of parents’ weekend, we sneaked over to Ketlar to grab him.”
“Grab him?” I asked. “How?”
“We knew it wouldn’t be a problem, considering how wasted he was, and we were right,” Noelle said. “He was so trashed he practically fell into our arms.”
She almost laughed then. As if this part of the story was somehow funny. I gripped her silk comforter in my sweaty palms.
“Then what?” I said through my teeth.
“Well, Josh conveniently was not there, but his car keys were,” Noelle said. “He’d used it earlier that day and we’d all seen it parked over by the circle.”
“So it was close,” Ariana said.
“So we took it,” Kiran put in.
Suddenly the realization hit me. How Josh’s car seats and mirrors had been all out of place on the day of the funeral and he couldn’t figure out why. How Taylor hadn’t wanted to take Josh’s car back to Easton. She’d seemed almost afraid of it. How broken up she’d been that day and every day after that and how I’d never understood why. Constance had theorized that Taylor had been secretly in love with Thomas, but that wasn’t it at all. Taylor had killed Thomas. She’d been there when it all happened. Of course she had lost it when the body was found—she was wondering when the police were going to figure out who’d done it.