“It didn’t take much figuring out,” I heard a voice say from the tables on the other side of the beverage bar. A voice I knew well. “After all,” Lucas went on, “the suspect pool is pretty small. And when one person in that pool goes around accusing someone else, you can pretty much guarantee it’s guilt talking.”
Oh, Lord, help me now.
Lucas had a nice big metaphorical knife, and he wasn’t afraid of stabbing me in the back with it. Not after last night. Not when he knew I knew, and the whole school didn’t.
“How could you go out with her and not know what she was up to?” someone asked. A girl. With a smoky, unmistakeable voice.
I rounded the beverage bar and saw Vanessa Talbot leaning on the end of the table, her body a lazy, seductive curve.
Vanessa?
Lucas?
I
so
did not want that picture in my head.
Frozen to the spot, I watched him shake his head with fake regret. “I cared about her. And when that happens, sometimes you can be blind to the truth. I wish I’d figured it out sooner.”
“You can’t blame yourself.” Vanessa tossed her glossy hair, and as she did, she saw me standing there. “At least you’re rid of her now. We all are. She’ll be out of here by the weekend.”
Lucas nodded. His back was to me, and the kids at the table were so riveted by all his garbage that they hadn’t seen me yet, either. “It took me dumping her to finally send her over the edge and try to get revenge.”
“She really broke into your room and planted that stuff?” a blond kid asked. “Wow.”
“Such Christian behavior,” Vanessa drawled. “But then, considering the people she hangs out with, what can you expect? They’re all a bunch of hypocrites.”
They could say what they wanted about me, but nobody runs down my friends and gets away with it. I stepped forward, and everyone’s gaze swung to me.
Except Lucas’s. He glanced over his shoulder and returned his attention to his drink, as if the very sight of me bored him into a coma.
“Watch who you’re calling a hypocrite, Vanessa, or someone might find out about your hidden talents with video manipulations,” I said. “And both of us know who really sold those answer sheets. I don’t need the money. But I hear tuition at Stanford is expensive, and the think tank can’t be paying Daddy that much.”
“Go to your room, Gillian,” Vanessa mocked. “Or don’t you know what house arrest means?”
“Oh, I do. And soon Lucas will, too. If he isn’t expelled for being the guy who’s really behind this, that is. And then what will Stanford do? Or the Olympiad team?”
I spun on my heel and left the dining room.
But it didn’t help that the rising tide of noise behind me contained mostly laughter.
RStapleton
Dude. Your sheet was totally bogus.
Source10
What are you talking about?
RStapleton
Math, bonehead. I got a freaking 45! You set me up!
Source10
You must have made a mistake. Took the wrong one.
RStapleton
It was right. The answers were wrong. I want my money back.
Source10
Back off. The sheet was right. You messed up.
RStapleton
You are so going to regret this.
Source10
How? You don’t know who I am.
I
’D EXPECTED MY BRAIN
to completely implode while I stared at the English essay questions, but instead, it kicked into gear.
Thanks to Lissa’s coaching, here was something I knew. Something I had opinions about. Something I could control. I threw all my brain power into those thousand words and came out on the other side of two hours knowing I’d given it the best I had in me.
And then it was back to the room for ninety minutes until I’d be allowed down to the dining room for supper. After the fiasco at lunch, I was looking forward to it about as much as a root canal.
When Lissa came in, followed by Carly and Shani, it was a welcome relief.
“Hey, girl.” Lissa tossed her Kate Spade tote on the bed and flopped down next to it. The others grabbed desk chairs and faced the two of us on our beds. “How’d you do?”
“It went all right,” I said. “I don’t want to say any more in case I jinx it.”
“Which in Gillian-speak means she aced it,” Carly told Shani.
“She probably did,” Shani allowed.
I looked over at her. This had to be said, and it had to be now. “I want to thank you for what you did earlier. At lunch. On the stairs.”
She shrugged. “It was nothing.”
“No, it was something.” I looked down at my nails, which, I saw, needed shaping in the worst way. “I know we haven’t gotten along all that well. I want to apologize for that, and to tell you I thought you were really brave.”
She snorted. “What, for getting into that weenie’s face? That’s not what I’d call it.”
“But you didn’t have to. You could have just let him say whatever and moved on.”
“Maybe. But Carly’s had a little practice being in your position, and we got her through that. And you can tell when the person’s innocent.”
“Yeah?” I huffed a laugh. “How? Anyway, there’s only two of us that think so.”
“Three,” Lissa said.
“Four,” Carly added.
“Five, if you count Jeremy,” Shani said. “I heard he and Travis had a major blowout on the basketball court this morning. A lot of shouting and bad language. Detentions all around.”
“No kidding,” I said. “I’d like to have seen that. Travis deserves to have his butt kicked for knuckling under to Lucas and spitting up all those lies.”
“Jeremy felt the same, I guess.” Shani gazed at me, one corner of her mouth quirked up. “You really don’t have a clue, do you?”
I guess I must have looked it. “Huh?”
She shook her head and grinned at the others. “Miss Ninety-eighth Percentile. What are you gonna do?”
“What?” I looked from one to the other of them. “Hello?”
Now Carly was smiling. “Jeremy,
idiota
. He’s totally crushing on you and you have no idea.”
I goggled at her. “The Jeremy who’s madly in love with Shani? That Jeremy?”
Shani hooted and actually slapped her knee. I didn’t think people did that outside of books. “He’s not madly in love with me, you goofball. He hangs with me because he doesn’t have the guts to ask you out. Misery loves company, I guess.”
I got my mouth working. “But that day on Angel Island. The two of you took off to be alone.”
“We took off, yeah. After you and Lucas went on your little hike. I had to spend the next hour listening to him moaning the blues about it and talking about you incessantly.”
I let out a breath, completely flummoxed. Jeremy Clay. Who knew?
Of course, it was completely impossible. Flattering, but impossible. “I am so done with guys,” I said. “I made a decision. No dating until after graduation.”
Carly’s eyebrows disappeared into her wispy bangs. “That’s a long time away.”
“Exactly. So far, the whole concept has been a disaster.”
“How can you say that?” Lissa wanted to know. “Lucas was a disaster. Jeremy’s a completely different guy.”
“And relatively normal, as far as I can tell,” Shani added. “No weird control issues. No pretending to be something he’s not. And to my knowledge, he’s never sent anyone flowers, especially not white ones.”
They thought it was funny, but I was serious. “I mean it, you guys. It’s nice that he likes me and everything, but I can’t think about a guy that way. Not for a long time. I am so messed up over this, you wouldn’t believe it. Besides, I’ll be out of here by the weekend, according to Vanessa Talbot.”
Now it was Lissa making the snorting noise. Nai-Nai would not approve of my rude friends, not one bit.
“If Vanessa had her way, the student body would be males only—with her the only girl after all the others got expelled. Don’t listen to what she says.”
“I think there’s something going on with her and Lucas,” I told them. “She was at his table at lunch today, looking all slinky.”
“Now, there’s a match made in heaven,” Carly said. “Ew.”
“Beauty and the beast,” Shani agreed.
“Beauty and the brain.”
“The beast and the brain.”
We cracked up, and as I looked around at them, these girls who were so loyal even when it wasn’t smart for them to be, who hung out with me and made me feel better just being with them . . . well, it was almost enough to make a girl cry.
Or pray.
Thank You, Father, for giving me friends like this. Thank You for Carly, and for giving her the heart to forgive me. I even thank You for Jeremy, who could maybe be a friend if I can figure out how that works.
Be with me now, Lord, and bring the truth to light. I know it’s all in Your hands, but I sure hope I don’t have to go home to New York in disgrace. If that’s part of Your plan, though, help me to be willing for it.
Maybe it was some kind of loophole in the rules, but nobody seemed to care if “house arrest” included having your friends in the room or going down to supper with them. I had to eat in the room, but at least it wasn’t like lunch, where I had to walk into the dining room by myself. With my friends around me, I could almost fool myself that everything was normal.
Almost.
As soon as we walked through the big double doors, the tension rose up and smacked us in the face. Rory Stapleton, flushed and shaking, stood next to the popular kids’ table. Callum McCloud was eating like his life depended on it. Vanessa lounged against the end of a neighboring table where Lucas sat, watching Rory as though he were auditioning for
American Idol
. And DeLayne Geary and Brett Loyola were watching him, too, as they slowly edged their way toward the door, leaving their food abandoned next to Callum, where they’d been sitting.
“Who are you?” Rory demanded of the room in general, circling, his hands flung out ready to grab. “Come on, Source10, be a man and show yourself. Take some responsibility!”
“Rory, give it a rest,” Brett called. “Source10 is that Chang chick. Everybody knows that.”
“No, it isn’t, you dope. She’s on lockdown with no fricking phone or computer and I got an IM from the guy this morning!”
The students looked at one another, and Rory saw it.
“She could have used the computer lab,” someone said.
“Didn’t you hear me say
lockdown
?” Rory’s face was getting redder. I wondered if anybody knew First Aid. “I want to know who Source10 is. I want him to face me. And I want my grand back—I’m not paying for his lousy product.”
Lissa looked at me. So did Carly. Both of them telegraphed “What are you going to do?” with their eyes.
I had nothing to lose. Not one single thing.
“Source10 is Lucas Hayes,” I said clearly, taking three steps into the center of the dining room and projecting all the way into the kitchen. Thank you, freshman theater. “I didn’t plant those exam sheets in his backpack. I
found
them in there.”
Lucas turned with a huge smirk on his face. “And what were you doing in my room in the first place, Gillian? Missing me?”
“No,” I said steadily. “You wouldn’t give me back my property, so I went to get it myself.” I held up my arm so he could see the bracelet.
“Thief,” he said. “Burglar. What are you doing here, anyway? Curzon put you under house arrest because you’re the guilty one.”
I glanced at Rory, who was staring at Lucas, all the color drained out of his face. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be talking to Curzon,” I said pleasantly. “If there’s anything left once Rory gets done with you.”
“Is it true?” Rory said to me. “It’s him?”
I nodded. “Think about all the computer classes he’s taken. Hacking into the server is a piece of cake for him.”
“Or for you,” Lucas said. “Nice smoke screen for your own hidden talents, Gillian.”
“I can hack my brothers’ laptops,” I told him. “Not a secure server. That would be
your
talent.”
“I want my money back, too.” DeLayne Geary had almost reached the door, but she turned back, her eyes snapping with rage. “What’d you do with it?”
Lucas turned his palms up. “Why don’t you ask Gillian?”
“Because I’m asking you.”
“Then you won’t get an answer, because I don’t have one.”
Lissa began circling to the left. I don’t think anyone but me noticed—Carly and Shani were too busy getting ready to body-check anyone who tried to come after me, and everyone else was riveted on the drama.
“What about the PayPal account?” somebody shouted from the back. “Grab him and force him to open it up.”
“What PayPal account?” Lucas sounded exasperated. “What is the matter with you g—”
Splat.
A ripe Bosc pear from one of the fruit bowls on each table clocked him on the side of the head.
“Hey!” he howled, and grabbed a plum. He whipped it in the direction the pear had come from—narrowly missing Vanessa Talbot as she sashayed toward Callum McCloud, right through the empty space in the middle where Lucas and Rory and I were facing off.
“Watch it!” Callum grabbed a granola bar and overhanded it at him, but Lucas smacked it out of the air and with a fast redirect, sent it into Rory’s chest. Who said geeks were bad at sports? His reflexes were as fast as any I’d ever seen.
Another plum whistled past my ear and splatted on Lucas’s shoulder, making a round reddish-purple stain on his white shirt. Okay, this was going to get ugly. I grabbed Shani’s and Carly’s wrists and backed up until I could feel the edge of a table against my legs, then got it between me and him.
Which put his aim off just enough so that the full carton of milk he’d aimed at my head went sailing over my right shoulder instead, cartwheeling off some poor freshman and showering her in two-percent.
As if someone had flipped a switch of boiling tension, the dining room erupted in shrieks and yells as kids grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and took sides. The Science Club abandoned their leader and ran for their lives, their hands over their heads as bits of tomato and mozzarella on focaccia rained all over them.