Or was she?
I closed my eyes against a crippling stab of terror and told myself to breathe. No one else was out here. No one even knew where I was other than Josh. The kidnappers were just trying to scare me. And I was not going to let them.
When I opened my eyes again and looked around, all I saw were trees, snow, and the campus below. Paige could not have sent the text. I had to go with my gut. The girl knew nothing. She knew less than nothing.
A gust of wind knocked me sideways and I reached back, pulling my hood over my head. Huddling against the wide trunk of an old elm tree, I bent over the phone and read the message again. This made no sense. Okay, yes, I understood why the kidnapper wanted Noelle excused from school. If she wasn’t, the faculty and administration would get suspicious and start asking questions—especially at Easton, where they had been trained by experience to be severely paranoid. But why would they want me to get a note from Grandma Lange? Noelle had two parents, alive and well. Shouldn’t they be the ones to get her excused from school?
I gritted my teeth. It didn’t matter whether it made sense. It was my task, and I had to complete it. Noelle’s life was on the line.
I put my phone away, ducked my head, and started the long trudge back to campus, trying all the way not to look back over my shoulder. Trying to ignore the sinking sense that someone was, in fact, watching my every step.
“Reed! Oh my God! You have to stop them!”
Amberly Carmichael accosted me the second I speed-walked through the door to Pemberly, and as tense as I was, my heart practically vaulted up my throat and out my mouth.
“Stop who?” I said, clenching my fists to keep from bursting into flames or tears or just screaming my head off. I inhaled slowly then exhaled, trying to calm my frayed, paranoid nerves.
“Them!” Amberly threw her hand out toward the lounge. That was when I saw that she was not alone. Kiki Rosen, Astrid Chou, Vienna Clarke, and Tiffany Goubourne were all seated on the old, fading brocade couches, coats off, Coffee Carma cups on the coffee table before them. “They’re totally plotting against Noelle.”
My head went light as I stepped into the room. Join the club.
Tiffany rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling. “We’re not plotting against her. We just want our revenge,” she said with a conspiratorial smile.
The door slammed behind me and I jumped.
“Revenge on whom?” Ivy asked. She’d just come in from outside and was now hovering behind me in her white coat. She tugged her black leather gloves from her fingers and gave me a questioning look.
?
?Noelle,” Astrid replied, popping her gum.
Ivy laughed, her eyes bright. “I’m so very in.” She walked over to the nearest couch and sat down next to Tiffany.
My stomach twisted itself up like a cats’ cradle, changing formations every two seconds. I lowered myself into an empty chair, weak from the many scares of the past ten minutes. “Revenge for what?”
“For that ridiculous prank she played on us last night,” Vienna said, like it was so obvious. She flicked her thick, highlighted hair over her shoulder and crossed her skinny-jeans-clad legs at the knee. “I mean, I practically had a heart attack.”
“I think I did have a heart attack,” Amberly said, touching her fingertips to her neck. She walked up behind my chair. “See? My pulse is still elevated.”
“Then I don’t get why you won’t let us use you,” Kiki said, lifting her legs and dropping her feet, one at a time, atop the coffee table. Her heavy black boots each came down with a bang. The coffee cups jumped.
“Because! I think what you’re planning is unusually cruel and besides … it’s Noelle,” Amberly said, flouncing around my chair and sitting down on the arm.
“So you’re just afraid of Noelle,” Astrid said. “You’re a patsy, is what you’re saying.”
The other girls snickered.
“I’m not afraid of her,” Amberly pouted, sliding her long blond hair through her fingers over and over again. “It’s just that she’s been one of my best friends for, like, ever.”
Tiffany and I exchanged a look. We both knew Noelle didn’t think of Amberly as a friend so much as a lap dog.
“I don’t want to do this to her,” Amberly added.
“Do what, exactly?” I asked wearily.
Tiffany sat forward at this. “We were thinking that when she gets back, we should tell her that Amberly’s in the hospital. That the whole ordeal fried her delicate nerves and she had to be medicated.”
“Vienna’s boyfriend’s brother is interning at Easton Hospital and he said he could get us an empty room and hook up some machines to beep and stuff. Make it look real,” Astrid added.