Page 16 of Invitation Only

  “What is it?” I asked.

  'You'll need it for to­mor­row night,“ he replied. ”Just put it away. Quick," he said, cast­ing Mrs. Lat­timer a furtive look.

  Heart pound­ing, I tucked the neck­lace in­to my bag, then smoothed the loose hair be­hind my ears and straight­ened my skirt. I shot Mrs. Lat­timer a quick, sheep­ish glance through the win­dow and she re­spond­ed with a tart, know­ing look.

  “Good evening, Miss Bren­nan,” she said, hold­ing her col­lar up tight­ly with one fist. “It's time to say good night.”

  Whit­tak­er looked at me apolo­get­ical­ly and then got out of the car. I shoved the lot­tery tick­ets in my pock­et and gath­ered up my ros­es as he came around and opened the door for me. My knees quaked as I placed one high heel on the side­walk. Whit­tak­er saw the hes­ita­tion and ba­si­cal­ly pulled me to my feet.

  “Good night, Reed,” Whit­tak­er said as Mrs. Lat­timer backed up the slight­est bit.

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  “Good night, Whit,” I replied. “Hap­py birth­day.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  And then, much to my shock and, I'm sure, the shock of Mrs. Lat­timer, he leaned in and gave me one last kiss. Closed mouthed, lin­ger­ing, gen­tle.

  “Ahem,” Mrs. Lat­timer said. She didn't even clear her throat. Mere­ly stat­ed the word.

  Whit­tak­er pulled away, smiled all gooey, and got back in his car. I turned and smiled awk­ward­ly at Mrs. Lat­timer.

  “A suc­cess­ful night, then?” she said.

  “You could say that,” I told her, try­ing to quench the guilt. I hadn't had the chance to tell Whit how I re­al­ly felt. Now he was go­ing back to his dorm think­ing he'd scored a sec­ond date. And even worse? Part of me was re­lieved. I re­al­ly want­ed to go to that damn par­ty. I had to.

  And, I mean, was it re­al­ly so bad? Whit­tak­er re­al­ly want­ed to go with me. He hadn't asked any­one else. What was wrong with ac­cept­ing a good friend's in­vi­ta­tion?

  Ugh. I loathed my­self.

  “Come along,” Mrs. Lat­timer said. “It's very late.”

  I took a deep breath in an at­tempt to calm my nerves. Nerves from the kiss, from get­ting caught, from know­ing that I was go­ing to the Lega­cy and ev­ery­thing that meant to me, to Whit, to Thomas. I breathed in and looked up at the sky, but my gaze nev­er got there. It stopped with a jolt at a win­dow in the top floor of Brad­well. A win­dow through which Mis­sy, Lor­na, and Con­stance were star­ing.

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  My al­ready spas­tic heart now sank clear down through my ab­domen and in­to my toes. Con­stance. She had seen it all. It was writ­ten all over her face. The car, the flow­ers, the kiss. Her heart was break­ing as she sat there and stared. And I was the one who had bro­ken it.

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  FIRST IM­PRES­SIONS

  I made the beds quick­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and raced out of Billings, hop­ing to catch Con­stance the mo­ment she emerged from Brad­well. Once out on the quad I re­al­ized I hadn't been fast enough. Con­stance was al­ready halfway to the cafe­te­ria, flanked on one side by Ki­ki and Di­ana, on the oth­er by Lor­na and Mis­sy. Like sud­den­ly they were her best friends. Last week they couldn't have cared less about Con­stance, so I knew they were just align­ing them­selves with her be­cause it meant stand­ing up to me.

  But I wasn't afraid of them. Com­pared to the peo­ple I had to deal with on a dai­ly ba­sis in my own home, these girls were ted­dy bears.

  “Con­stance!” I shout­ed. There was a slight trip in her step. Lor­na turned her head to look, then whis­pered some­thing in Con­stance's ear. They all upped their pace. “Con­stance! Come on! Wait up!”

  They didn't pause or even slow down. Luck­ily I could have caught them all even if I had a sprained an­kle and a res­pi­ra­tor. I jogged around and got in front of them. The look of pure hurt Con­stance cast my way was enough to take the breath out of me. They used that mo­ment to move around me and keep walk­ing.

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  “Con­stance!” I placed my hand on her shoul­der. She whirled around, red hair fly­ing.

  “What?” she snapped. Her face was all blotchy and moist, her eyes psy­chot­ical­ly bright green and rimmed with red.

  “I. . . I'm sor­ry, all right?” I said.

  Con­stance nar­rowed her eyes and shift­ed her weight from one foot to the oth­er. “For what?” she asked, lift­ing her chin.

  “For last night,” I said. “I know you saw us and I swear I didn't want any of that to hap­pen. You have to be­lieve me.”

  “Right. You didn't want to go on an off-​cam­pus date with one of the hottest guys at Eas­ton,” Con­stance said. “You didn't want to get flow­ers. You didn't want to get kissed.”

  'Yeah. Sure looked that way to us," Mis­sy said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

  I ig­nored her. She didn't mat­ter.

  “Con­stance, I'm telling you. I have no in­ter­est in Whit­tak­er,” I said.

  “Oh, why? Is he not good enough for you?” Con­stance said, clear­ly of­fend­ed. “Now that you're in Billings the guy that I've had a crush on my en­tire life is be­neath you?”

  “No! I didn't say that,” I told her. But what could I say? There was no way to ex­plain away what she had seen. And I had al­ready re­solved to keep see­ing him, at least un­til tonight. Un­til the Lega­cy. What ex­act­ly was I try­ing to do here?

  “Lis­ten, I just ... I want­ed to say I was sor­ry,” I told her fi­nal­ly. “That's all.”

  “Well, I'm sor­ry too,” Con­stance said. She had tears in her voice but wouldn't let them out. “Sor­ry I ev­er thought I could trust you. Sor­ry I ev­er thought we could be friends.”

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  Mis­sy and Lor­na both smirked and whis­pered to each oth­er. Di­ana looked ill and Ki­ki just stared off to­ward the caf, lis­ten­ing to her iPod.

  'You know, when I first met you I thought I had lucked out. I had this cool room­mate, to­tal­ly un­af­fect­ed, to­tal­ly nice,“ Con­stance said. ”But that was all just an act, wasn't it? All you want­ed from day one was to get in­to Billings and leave me be­hind. And now you're just as shal­low and back­stab­bing as the rest of them."

  Even Mis­sy looked shocked at that. No one spoke bad­ly of the Billings Girls. At least not any­one as low on the Eas­ton food chain as Con­stance.

  “Just goes to show you that first im­pres­sions mean noth­ing,” Con­stance fin­ished. “Come on, you guys.”

  She turned around and walked off, on some lev­el en­joy­ing the pow­er she now wield­ed over the small group. Tem­porar­ily, of course. Un­til pity­ing her was no longer en­ter­tain­ing or fruit­ful. As I watched them go I re­al­ized the full im­pli­ca­tions of what I had done. Con­stance had been the on­ly per­son who had liked me from day one, who had been there for me from day one, and who had ex­pect­ed noth­ing in re­turn.

  She'd had the po­ten­tial, at least, to be a true friend. But I had killed that po­ten­tial. Now, the Billings Girls were all I had left. If I was go­ing to have any friends at Eas­ton, any life at all, it was go­ing to be them. They were it. They were all.

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  CON­FES­SION

  I walked in­to Billings House with a de­ter­mi­na­tion I hadn't felt since that day in sixth grade when I had re­solved to fi­nal­ly tell off my moth­er. Of course, that had all died away when I'd stormed in­to the house and found her passed out in a pud­dle of drool. This time, how­ev­er, I wasn't go­ing to let any­thing stop me. Not Natasha, not the im­ages from that night with Whit that were burned on my brain. Noth­ing. I had a job to do and I was go­ing to do it, what­ev­er the con­se­quences.

  I caught a few dis­turbed looks from ran­dom Billings res­idents as I took the front stairs two at a time, but no one stopped me or even said hel­lo, and soon I was once again stand­ing in front of Noelle's door. I rapped loud­ly.


  “Come in!”

  “Hey. I have to talk to you about some--”

  Okay. that might stop me. Noelle stood in the cen­ter of the room in a gor­geous black ball gown, help­ing Ar­iana step in­to an even more gor­geous aqua-​col­ored frock. Ar­iana wore noth­ing but

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  a thong and a strap­less bra and her stom­ach was flat­ter than a pa­per plate. Nei­ther one of them flushed, flinched, or paused as I en­tered the room.

  “Hi, Reed,” Ar­iana said with a small smile.

  She let Noelle pull the dress up from the floor, and then slipped her arms through the skin­ny straps. Noelle zipped her up and there they stood, Noelle the vampy queen, Ar­iana the fairy princess. I had nev­er seen dress­es like these out­side of the Os­cars.

  “Is ... is that what you're wear­ing tonight?” I asked. Strewn on Noelle's bed were half a dozen mas­quer­ade masks in var­ious col­ors, dec­orat­ed with se­quins, feath­ers, and beads.

  'We're still de­cid­ing,“ Noelle said, turn­ing to face her full- length mir­ror and swish­ing the full skirt back and forth. Mean­ing they had more such gowns stashed some­where in this room? Why hadn't I found those in all my search­es? 'You said you had some­thing to tell us? ” she asked, her eyes meet­ing mine in the re­flec­tion.

  Right. Fo­cus time. Bite-​the-​bul­let time. Per­haps duck-​and- cov­er time.

  “There's some­thing I need to con­fess,” I said, my heart flut­ter­ing. “And you're not go­ing to like it.”

  Noelle and Ar­iana ex­changed a glance. Ar­iana sat grace­ful­ly on the edge of the bed, tuck­ing her skirt be­neath her and cross­ing her legs at the an­kle.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Where to start?” I said, look­ing at the ceil­ing and wip­ing my sweaty palms on my jeans.

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  “The be­gin­ning al­ways seems a good place,” Ar­iana said.

  I laughed ner­vous­ly. “Right. Okay, well. Re­mem­ber that night out in the woods? At the end of par­ents' week­end? The night I met Whit?”

  I swal­lowed hard.

  “Yes,” Noelle said, hold­ing a di­amond chan­de­lier ear­ring up to her ear.

  “Well, that night, Natasha ap­par­ent­ly took some pic­tures of me. And Whit. Do­ing things,” I said.

  That got their at­ten­tion. Noelle fi­nal­ly turned away from the mir­ror and looked di­rect­ly at me. I ex­pect­ed her to be shocked and ap­palled, but she sim­ply smirked.

  “What kind of things?” she said.

  Oh, God. She was go­ing to make me say it. Couldn't she see my skin was burn­ing off over here? “Kiss­ing, drink­ing. You know.”

  “Okay,” Ar­iana said blankly.

  “Well, she showed me the pic­tures and threat­ened to send them to the dean and have me kicked out of school un­less . . . un­less...”

  They were go­ing to kill me. They were go­ing to tear my hair out and gouge my eyes and, worse, have me thrown out of Eas­ton faster than you could say “nice try.”

  “Un­less ...,” Ar­iana prompt­ed, wav­ing a hand blithe­ly in front of her.

  “Un­less I spied on you guys,” I blurt­ed fi­nal­ly, clos­ing my eyes. "Well, not spied ex­act­ly, but snooped. Through your stuff. While I was sup­posed to be clean­ing. She thinks that you guys

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  got Leanne Shore kicked out of school and she want­ed me to find proof."

  I wait­ed for the ex­plo­sion, but none came. When I was fi­nal­ly able to fo­cus again, Ar­iana was still star­ing at me. Noelle was still smirk­ing. Where was the shock? The in­dig­na­tion? They should have been fu­ri­ous at me. Or at the very least sur­prised and an­gry at Natasha for try­ing to use me. But they just stood there. I had no idea what the hell was go­ing on.

  “And did you?” Noelle asked.

  “Snoop or find proof?” I asked.

  “Ei­ther. Both,” Ar­iana said.

  My head au­to­mat­ical­ly bowed. “Yes. I did. I found some­thing, but I haven't done any­thing with it. I swear.”

  I wished they would say some­thing. Any­thing. I wished they would yell and scream. They were silent as monks. And it was far more dis­turb­ing than any freak-​out could ev­er be.

  “Well, any­way, here's what I found,” I said, whip­ping the disk out of my back pock­et and hold­ing it out. Nei­ther one of them moved. Fi­nal­ly I had to step past Noelle and place the disk on her desk. Then I backed up to my spot and wait­ed. And wait­ed. This was tor­ture of the most bru­tal kind. “So ... what're you go­ing to do?”

  Noelle sighed dra­mat­ical­ly. She turned around and lift­ed an­oth­er ear­ring out of a box. “Noth­ing.”

  “What do you mean, noth­ing? ” I said. Al­though I knew I had no right to, I was start­ing to get a lit­tle an­gry. Couldn't they see how dif­fi­cult this was for me? Couldn't they see the fu­ture-​threat­en­ing

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  predica­ment I was in? They could at least re­act in some way. “Aren't you mad?”

  “Not es­pe­cial­ly,” Ar­iana replied, stand­ing. She float­ed past me over to her side of the room and re­moved a pair of sil­ver san­dal­like shoes from the floor of her clos­et.

  “But . . . what about Natasha?” I said, a swirling mire of des­per­ation open­ing in­side my chest. “If I tell her I gave that to you, she's go­ing to send those pic­tures. I'm go­ing to get kicked out.”

  “Stop whin­ing,” Noelle said. “It doesn't be­come you.”

  She fas­tened an ear­ring in­to her ear and then turned around, re­gard­ing me with an al­most pity­ing smile.

  “Wait--,” I start­ed to protest.

  Noelle brought her hands up to her lips. “Ssssh­hh,” she said, in an al­most com­fort­ing way. “Look, just for­get about that for right now, okay?” And then she smiled. “Now, did Whit­tak­er ask you to the Lega­cy or not?” she said.

  What the hell did that have to do with any­thing?

  'Yes."

  “Good,” Noelle said. “He gave you the neck­lace?”

  “Yeah. What's that about?” I asked.

  “You have to wear it. It's your pass to get in,” Noelle said.

  Damn. Who­ev­er heard of a par­ty where the proof of in­vi­ta­tion was a sol­id-​gold-​and-​di­amond neck­lace? Who paid for this stuff?

  “Let's do this.” Noelle nod­ded over my shoul­der at Ar­iana, who reached in­to her clos­et and pulled out an in­cred­ible, shim­mer­ing gold gown in a clear bag. A gold mask with a white feath­er across

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  one side hung from the sil­ver hang­er. She draped the dress across one arm and brought it over, hold­ing it out to me. The gown took my breath away, even as the rest of me was still reel­ing from ev­ery­thing else.

  “That's for me?” I said.

  “Ki­ran guessed your mea­sure­ments,” Ar­iana ex­plained.

  “Girl has a nine­ty-​nine point nine per­cent suc­cess rate,” Noelle said. “It's a tal­ent.”

  “I don't be­lieve this,” I told them, over­whelmed.

  Noelle shrugged. “I called in a fa­vor at Rober­to Cav­al­li. You can't ex­act­ly go to the Lega­cy in jeans and a T-​shirt.” She looked me up and down, amused. “We'll talk about this lat­er.” She turned around and lift­ed her thick mane of hair. “Un­zip me?”

  I hes­itat­ed. 'You're get­ting un­dressed?"

  “It's not like we sneak off cam­pus in ball gowns, Reed. That would be a lit­tle too con­spic­uous,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  I reached out and un­zipped her dress from the top all the way down her back. She stepped out of the gown, com­plete­ly naked, and walked slow­ly over to her clos­et to slip in­to her silk robe. As she turned around I caught a glimpse of her an­gry red stom­ach scar. She didn't seem to be in a hur­ry to hide it--or any­thing else for that mat­ter.

  “Take it,” Ar­iana said, hold­in
g the gold dress up.

  'Yeah. Then go see if Ki­ran has any shoes that will match,“ Noelle said, then laughed. ”I think it's safe to as­sume she does."

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  Gin­ger­ly, I took the dress from Ar­iana's arms. She smiled at me in a proud way. Like she was a moth­er dress­ing her lit­tle tomboy for the prom. I had no idea what to say. I knew I should thank them, but how was I go­ing to walk out of here with ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing re­solved?

  “But-”

  “We'll talk about it lat­er,” Noelle re­peat­ed firm­ly. “Now go. We on­ly have an hour be­fore it gets dark.”

  I had a feel­ing that one more mo­ment's hes­ita­tion would push her over the edge, and as of now I was get­ting off rel­ative­ly easy. So I took the dress and left, just hop­ing that some­how, some way, all of this would just work it­self out.

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  WEIRD­NESS

  An hour and a half lat­er, as the Am­trak train zipped through ru­ral and sub­ur­ban towns, blur­ring by trees and steeples and schools and parks, I un­der­stood what Noelle had meant when she said they hadn't de­cid­ed what they were wear­ing yet. It meant that all the Eas­ton girls who were go­ing were gath­ered in the back of the train car, slip­ping in and out of gowns, pass­ing them around, try­ing them on, gig­gling and flash­ing their skimpy un­der­wear for all the men to see. They did this while I sat alone in a dou­ble seat in my gold dress, my Lega­cy neck­lace se­cure­ly fas­tened, avoid­ing Natasha for dear life, won­der­ing how I had ev­er got­ten here.

  'Yeah, ba­by! Take it off!" Gage shout­ed to­ward the back of the car, whoop­ing it up with Dash. A silk thong came fly­ing over and hit him in the face, ac­com­pa­nied by a round of girl­ish laugh­ter. Dash passed Gage a flask of liquor as Gage pock­et­ed the lin­gerie. He took a swig of vod­ka, nev­er tak­ing his las­civ­ious eyes off the show.

  “And you didn't want to take the train,” he said to Dash mock­ing­ly.

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  Dash smirked. “I can ad­mit when I'm wrong.”

  “Don't feel like play­ing dress-​up?”

  I looked up to find Josh stand­ing in the aisle, one hand on the back of my seat, one hand on the back of the seat in front of me. He looked adorable in his black tuxe­do, his curls as un­ruly as ev­er.