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238

“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. No

t 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!”

239

“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 stealthy. 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.'”

240

“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?


Tags: Kate Brian Private Young Adult