Invitation Only

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  “No. You were plen­ty ex­plic­it, thanks. Star mag­azine ex­plic­it,” I told her. “The prob­lem is that if they are hid­ing any­thing, they're hid­ing it very well. This is Noelle we're deal­ing with here, re­mem­ber? You re­al­ly think she's go­ing to leave in­crim­inat­ing ev­idence out on her bul­letin board?”

  Natasha un­clenched a bit at this. Not even she could ar­gue with that log­ic.

  “Just ... be pa­tient,” I said, won­der­ing how long, ex­act­ly, it would take a per­son with ze­ro com­put­er ex­pe­ri­ence to crack some­one else's pass­word. I picked up my copy of Be­owulf, which we were read­ing for En­glish class--at least, ev­ery­one else was, while I had yet to have time to crack it--and leaned back on my den­im hus­band. “I'm do­ing ev­ery­thing I can.”

  I set­tled in and opened to page one.

  “Well, do it faster,” Natasha said.

  Then she flicked off the light be­fore I could get past the first word.

  145

  THE PASS­WORD IS

  Af­ter two full morn­ings of typ­ing in ev­ery­thing I knew about Ar­iana in­to her pass­word screen and get­ting nowhere, I was at a com­plete loss. I need­ed help. I need­ed some­place to start. I need­ed to pick some­one else's brain and get some ideas.

  But how was I sup­posed to do that with­out any­one know­ing why I was do­ing it?

  This was the ques­tion bounc­ing around in my brain as I walked in­to the li­brary one rainy af­ter­noon. I had a plan, but I had very lit­tle con­fi­dence that it would work. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it was all I had. I knew that the ju­nior class had a huge his­to­ry ex­am com­ing up and half of Billings and Ket­lar would be there study­ing. I made a bee­line for the very back of the stacks, where I knew the girls from my dorm nor­mal­ly set up camp.

  Bin­go. At one ta­ble I had found Ki­ran, Tay­lor, Rose, Lon­don, Vi­en­na, Josh, and Gage. They were all bent over their books, some tak­ing notes, oth­ers whis­per­ing to each oth­er in low tones. There was a sin­gle emp­ty chair at the end of the ta­ble.

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  I took a deep breath. Here went noth­ing.

  I walked over and sat down with a frus­trat­ed huff, plac­ing my books on the ta­ble. Ev­ery­one looked up, hap­py for a dis­trac­tion.

  “What's the mat­ter, Reed?” Tay­lor asked.

  “Noth­ing. It's just this cur­rent events pa­per for mod­ern civ,” I said. “I have to write eight pages on that whole hack­ing scan­dal.”

  Ki­ran and Tay­lor ex­changed a look. They weren't buy­ing it. There was no way they were buy­ing it. And why would they? It was a com­plete fab­ri­ca­tion.

  “You mean that thing at that high school in New York?” Josh said.

  “I heard about that!” Lon­don put in, ex­cit­ed. “Some­one hacked in­to all the stu­dents' com­put­ers and post­ed a list of all the il­lic­it Web sites they were look­ing at. So scan­dalous.”

  “Those poor bas­tards had all their porn delet­ed,” Gage said. “That's not scan­dal. It's a cry­ing shame.”

  “Well, there are about a mil­lion ar­ti­cles on it and it's ridicu­lous try­ing to sift through it all,” I said, lift­ing out a Xe­rox­ed page. “Plus it's scary. Did you guys know that nine­ty per­cent of high school stu­dents use some­thing ob­vi­ous for their pass­word? Like a boyfriend's name or a birth­day?”

  Ev­ery­one just stared at me. Was I the worst ac­tress ev­er, or what?

  “I would nev­er use some­thing that lame,” Gage said.

  “Yeah. You just spell curse words back­ward,” Josh said with a laugh.

  “Dude!” Gage com­plained, whack­ing him with the back of his hand.

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  “I would nev­er use any­thing that ob­vi­ous,” Rose said, turn­ing the page in her his­to­ry book. “I just use ran­dom char­ac­ters.”

  So not what I want­ed to hear. If Ar­iana was us­ing ran­dom char­ac­ters, I was screwed.

  “How do you re­mem­ber them?” Vi­en­na asked.

  “I just force my­self,” Rose said. “I re­peat it over and over un­til it's in there. Four, dash, dol­lar sign, eight, /, star. Four, dash, dol­lar sign, eight,/, star.”

  “Nice one! Now we all know your pass­word!” Gage said.

  Rose turned beet red. “Well, that's not my pass­word now.”

  'Yes, it is! Yes, it is!“ Lon­don trilled, bounc­ing up and down in her chair, her long ear­rings slap­ping her in the face. ”We know your pass­word! We know your pass­word!"

  “Oh, yeah? Re­peat it back to me,” Rose said flat­ly.

  Lon­don cleared her throat and looked at the ceil­ing. “Four, dash, dol­lop of. . . A. .. J ...” Ev­ery­one laughed and Lon­don lost steam, slump­ing. “Crap.”

  “It's okay,” Vi­en­na said, pat­ting her back. “It's not like Rose has any­thing good on her com­put­er.”

  Rose shot Vi­en­na a bite me look and got back to study­ing.

  “Per­son­al­ly, I al­ways use song ti­tles,” Ki­ran said, lift­ing a shoul­der. “I think a lot of peo­ple do that. Like book ti­tles or movie ti­tles or po­ems .. . CDs--”

  Ti­tles. That sound­ed like some­thing Ar­iana might do. I made a sur­rep­ti­tious note in the mar­gin of the Xe­rox­ed ar­ti­cle.

  "You know, Reed, I read some­where that some huge per­cent­age of peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly write down their pass­word and keep it

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  some­where close to their com­put­er,“ Tay­lor said. ”They jot it down on a spe­cial day in the cal­en­dar or some­thing. You know, just in case they ev­er for­get it."

  “Re­al­ly?” I said, in­trigued.

  “Yeah. I bet I could find the ar­ti­cle if you want me to,” Tay­lor said. “I save ev­ery­thing.”

  Like I didn't know that al­ready. Of course, she had no way of know­ing how much time I had al­ready spent un­der her bed.

  “Don't wor­ry about the pa­per too much,” Ki­ran said, re­turn­ing to her own work. “Mr. Kline has a very lax grad­ing sys­tem.”

  “There's a the­ory go­ing around that he on­ly reads the first page of ev­ery­thing any­way,” Josh said.

  “That's good news,” I said, feign­ing re­lief.

  Ev­ery­one re­turned to their books and I re­al­ized that the con­ver­sa­tion was closed. There was no way to open it again with­out look­ing com­plete­ly ob­vi­ous. But at least they had giv­en me a few places to start. Now all I had to do was put these new the­ories to the test.

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  TRANS­PAREN­CIES

  I should have been study­ing for my French quiz. I should have been tak­ing notes for my his­to­ry test. I should have been read­ing Be­owulf. I should have been ask­ing Ki­ran if I could raid her clos­et for an out­fit to wear out to din­ner with Whit. I should have been do­ing any one of these things. In­stead I was at Natasha's desk with the Eas­ton Acade­my web­site open on her com­put­er, bent over a note­book, brain­storm­ing po­ten­tial pass­words for Ar­iana's com­put­er.

  Tak­ing a cue from Ki­ran, I had start­ed scour­ing old is­sues of the Eas­ton lit­er­ary mag­azine, the Quill, on­line. If Ar­iana's pass­word was in fact a ti­tle, then I fig­ured it might be the ti­tle of one of her very own po­ems. Un­for­tu­nate­ly she had pub­lished at least three and some­times as many as sev­en po­ems in each and ev­ery is­sue of the Quill, go­ing back to her fresh­man year. My list of po­em ti­tles al­ready filled an en­tire page.

  I sighed and closed the win­dow con­tain­ing last year's fi­nal Quill is­sue and dou­ble clicked on the lat­est one--pub­lished on­ly last month. I knew that Ar­iana had at least five po­ems tucked

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  in­side its pages. I opened the ta­ble-​of-​con­tents page and jot­ted down the ti­tles:

  “Trans­paren­cy”

  “End­less Fall”


  “The Oth­er”

  “Scare­crow”

  “The Dark Age”

  Ar­iana was a very light­heart­ed, care­free girl.

  Sud­den­ly the door to my room opened, send­ing my heart in­to un­healthy spasms. It on­ly got worse when Ar­iana walked in, fol­lowed close­ly by Noelle and Tay­lor. I slapped my note­book closed and reached for the lap­top's screen, but re­al­ized it would look far too sus­pi­cious. Be­sides, they were al­ready be­hind me. Noelle placed a pa­per bag on the floor near the wall. I had a feel­ing I didn't want to know what was in it.

  “Us­ing Natasha's com­put­er, huh?” Noelle said, lean­ing both hands on the back of the chair so that I tipped slight­ly back­ward. “Hope you asked or she might turn you in to the Gestapo.”

  “Look­ing at the Quill, are we?” Ar­iana said, hov­er­ing be­hind me. “Get­ting ideas?” she asked, her eyes danc­ing.

  My heart com­plete­ly stopped. For a sec­ond my life flashed be­fore my eyes. She knew what I was do­ing. She was ac­tu­al­ly psy­chic.

  “Ideas? For what?” I choked out.

  Ar­iana smiled slow­ly. 'Well, your writ­ing, of course. I know you're a big read­er. I al­ways won­dered if you might be a writ­er as well."

  “Oh! Right!” I said, all the blood in my body rush­ing to my face. Of course she didn't know what I was do­ing. How could she

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  pos­si­bly? “I am a writ­er. I'm ac­tu­al­ly think­ing about join­ing. You know, the Quill.”

  If it hadn't been for self-​preser­va­tion pur­pos­es, I might have been alarmed that I was get­ting so good at ly­ing.

  “That's great. We'd love to have you,” Ar­iana said with a small smile. She looked at Noelle, who was, for some rea­son, grin­ning as well. “What do you write?”

  Now I reached over and clicked the lap­top closed, most­ly to stall for time. I hadn't writ­ten any­thing cre­ative­ly since first grade, when I'd writ­ten a short sto­ry ti­tled “An­imal Crack­ers” that had been uni­ver­sal­ly panned by all the six-​year-​olds in my class.

  “Uh . . . es­says, most­ly,” I said. “But late­ly I haven't re­al­ly had much time.”

  Thanks to you guys, my tone im­plied. You and your chore list are so the rea­son my muse has gone miss­ing.

  “And you're about to have even less,” Noelle said hap­pi­ly.

  Ev­ery­thing in­side of me slumped. “Why?”

  “It's the win­dows,” Tay­lor said, her ex­pres­sion bor­der­ing on apolo­get­ic. “They're a dis­grace.”

  The win­dows? Didn't Eas­ton em­ploy a main­te­nance staff for this kind of thing? “What win­dows?” I asked, even though I al­ready knew the an­swer.

  “All of them,” Noelle said, tak­ing my note­book out of my hands. I snatched at it, but she tossed it on my bed. She reached in­to the pa­per bag and pro­duced a bot­tle of Windex and a stack of fresh rags. “And you can start with mine.”

  152

  WEAK STOM­ACH

  “It's go­ing to rain,” Ar­iana said, turn­ing her blue eyes to­ward the roil­ing sky the fol­low­ing evening. “We should hur­ry.”

  I wrapped my scarf around my neck and scur­ried down the li­brary stairs af­ter her. The last hour had been spent lis­ten­ing to Ar­iana and her fel­low Quill ed­itors dis­cuss the mer­its and flaws of var­ious sub­mis­sions for the lat­est is­sue. Since, in my mo­ment of pan­ic, I had ex­pressed an in­ter­est, Ar­iana had in­vit­ed me to come along and see what it was like. Now, hav­ing lis­tened to these pre­ten­tious peo­ple tear­ing apart one an­oth­er's work, I could sum it up in three words:

  Not for me.

  Still, I was touched that she had asked me. It meant that she thought I was wor­thy of shar­ing one of her fa­vorite things. If on­ly she knew that when­ev­er I had start­ed scrib­bling in my note­book dur­ing the meet­ing I hadn't been tak­ing notes on the po­ems but jot­ting down new ideas for her pass­word.

  That morn­ing, while I was sup­posed to be scrub­bing floors, I

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  had searched Ar­iana's room for a cal­en­dar or a date book, hop­ing to put Tay­lor's the­ory to the test, but had found noth­ing. If Ar­iana had a plan­ner, she kept it with her at all times. Af­ter that fail­ure, I had spent half an hour rapid­ly typ­ing in ev­ery po­ten­tial key­word I could come up with, flinch­ing at ev­ery creak of the floor and ev­ery chirp of a bird out­side the win­dow. None of them had worked. Now I was on a mis­sion. I had spent too much of my time on this al­ready. I had to crack that pass­word, if on­ly to be able to tell my­self that I had suc­ceed­ed.

  So I had spent most of my class­es brain­storm­ing more and more po­ten­tial pass­words and writ­ing them down in my trusty note­book. At this rate I was go­ing to flunk out of school, but at least I would know whether or not the Billings Girls had got­ten Leanne Shore thrown out. Yeah. It would all be worth it.

  Ha.

  “So, what did you think? ”Ar­iana asked me as we speed-​walked along the cob­bled paths. “Did you en­joy it?”

  “It was in­ter­est­ing,” I said in a non­com­mit­tal tone. “I don't know if I feel com­fort­able tear­ing apart peo­ple's po­ems, though.”

  “Why?” Ar­iana asked.

  “Well, those are their most per­son­al thoughts and feel­ings. It has to take a lot to put that out there,” I said. “And you guys just sat there throw­ing out words like pa­thet­ic and pedes­tri­an and cliche. That one girl was on the staff and you said she had no orig­inal thought. Right in front of her.”

  “I know. It's not easy,” Ar­iana said, shak­ing her head. She

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  hugged her note­books to her chest and curled her slim shoul­ders in against the wind, her chin tucked down so it was al­most hid­den be­hind the books. “But if you're go­ing to put some­thing on a page and ask peo­ple to read it, you have to be able to han­dle the crit­icism.”

  “I guess,” I said as we reached the front door to Billings. “It just seemed mean.”

  Ar­iana stopped and stared at the door. The sky chose that mo­ment to open up. A fat rain­drop plopped right in the mid­dle of my fore­head.

  “Look, Reed, if you can't han­dle it then maybe you shouldn't come back,” Ar­iana said rather harsh­ly. She placed her hand on the door han­dle and gripped hard enough for her knuck­les to turn white.

  “I nev­er said I couldn't han­dle it,” I told her. “I just--”

  “No. You don't have the stom­ach for it,” she said, look­ing me in the eye. “And that's fine, but just don't pre­tend to be some­thing you're not. It's a waste of your time. And mine.”

  Whoa. Okay. Where had that come from?

  Ar­iana whipped open the door to Billings and strode in­side. For a long mo­ment I stood there, feel­ing as if I'd just been slapped. Who the hell did she think she was, talk­ing to me that way? She didn't know me well enough to know what I was or was not ca­pa­ble of.

  Anger seared my skin as I walked in­to Billings af­ter her. I couldn't just let this one go with­out say­ing any­thing. First the im­pli­ca­tion that I had some­thing to do with Thomas's dis­ap­pear­ance and

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  now this? What, ex­act­ly, was Ar­iana's prob­lem with me? As I en­tered the foy­er, I ex­pect­ed her to be on her way up­stairs, but the place was de­sert­ed. Then I no­ticed that all the lights in the com­mon room off the en­try­way had been dimmed. I slow­ly pulled off my scarf and shook it out as I went over to in­spect the sit­ua­tion. The half-​dozen couch­es and chairs had been pulled to­geth­er to face the big-​screen TV, and there were all my dorm mates, gath­ered to­geth­er with snacks and drinks, watch­ing the lat­est Or­lan­do Bloom movie.

  It was a very cozy scene and, af­ter all the stress of the past few days, looked like the per­fect an­ti­dote to my two tons of stress.

  “Hi, Reed,” Tay­lor whis?
?pered from her spot on the first couch. Ki­ran glanced over her shoul­der and flut­tered a wave. Rose looked up and smiled.

  “Hey,” I replied, al­ready scop­ing out a spot.

  Across the room near the fire­place, Ar­iana was just set­tling in on an over­stuffed pil­low at Noelle's feet. Noelle pulled a throw off the back of her chair and passed it to Ar­iana, nev­er tak­ing her eyes from the screen. She lift­ed an hors d'oeu­vre--some kind of crack­er, cheese, and black gunk com­bi­na­tion--from a plat­ter on the ta­ble next to her and placed the en­tire thing in her mouth.

  “What's all this?” I asked.

  “Movie night,” Rose whis­pered. “We do it once a month.”

  “Sweet,” I said.

  “Not for you, glass-​lick­er,” Noelle said in full voice. “You need to get back to the win­dows.”

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  I blinked. “But I fin­ished the win­dows.”

  'Yeah. And they have more streaks than my mom's last dye job," Cheyenne said.

  “Go to it,” Noelle said. “Maybe you'll be able to catch the last five min­utes. But I doubt it.”

  Ev­ery­one laughed. All fif­teen of them. Fif­teen times the hu­mil­ia­tion. Ar­iana looked at me with those eerie eyes and smirked.

  “Would you bring my bag up­stairs for me, Reed?” she asked, hold­ing out her mes­sen­ger bag. “Thanks,” she added sweet­ly.

  Then I saw Natasha was watch­ing me, too, with a mean­ing­ful stare. I gave her a nod, feel­ing very CSI. There couldn't have been a more per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to get back to my project. Back to that com­put­er. And lit­tle did Ar­iana know she had just hand­ed me the one thing I might need to fi­nal­ly break her pass­word wide open. Her bag. Which un­doubt­ed­ly had her plan­ner in­side.

  Ar­iana thought I had no stom­ach? Just watch me.

  157

  SUC­CESS

  An hour lat­er my eyes were dry, my neck was tight, and a headache throbbed at the back of my skull. I checked my watch ev­ery two-​and-​a-​half min­utes, won­der­ing ex­act­ly how long it was go­ing to take Or­lan­do to find love. Did I have fif­teen min­utes or an­oth­er hour?