Invitation Only

Gage pulled Whit­tak­er off for a pri­vate con­fab with the boys and Noelle stepped up next to me.

  “So? Work your spell on him yet?” Noelle asked.

  “You told him about me?” I said.

  'Yeah. I thought maybe you guys could get to know each oth­er,“ Noelle said with a shrug. 'Whit could be good for you. He's very. .. cul­tured.”

  I ig­nored the im­plied in­sult in that state­ment.

  “Noelle! I'm with Thomas, re­mem­ber?” I said. I no longer cared that she didn't want me to be with Thomas. The fact that he had mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared kind of negat­ed all oth­er con­cerns.

  Her ex­pres­sion turned hard. “Right. And Thomas is . . . where?” she asked, look­ing around.

  “I... I don't know,” I said, my stom­ach re­spond­ing with a clench. Over her shoul­der, I watched Ar­iana, Ki­ran, and Tay­lor ap­proach­ing, clear­ly in­ter­est­ed in the top­ic of our pri­vate tete-​a-​tete.

  “Ex­act­ly. Some boyfriend, bail­ing and not even telling you where he's go­ing. Or that he's go­ing,” she said. She rolled her eyes

  13

  again and took an­oth­er sip of beer, al­low­ing this to sink in. “Look, Whit is a great guy. He's a nice guy.”

  “Un­like some peo­ple,” Ki­ran said snark­ily.

  Even with his mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ance they couldn't let their dis­dain for Thomas go. They had nev­er liked him. They nev­er would.

  “Plus, Whit can give you things,” Ar­iana put in. “Things you might not oth­er­wise have ac­cess to.”

  Give me things, huh? Well, col­or me cu­ri­ous.

  Ar­iana gazed at Whit with her clear blue eyes and I won­dered if he felt it. If it gave him the chills the way it al­ways did me.

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Like a life,” Ki­ran said with a snort.

  “Ki­ran!” Ar­iana scold­ed.

  “Just go talk to him,” Noelle said. 'You don't have to mar­ry the guy."

  I took a deep breath and drained the last dregs of my beer, all the while keep­ing an eye on Whit. He seemed nice. Po­lite and ma­ture. Plus the guys clear­ly loved him. And yeah, maybe he was a lit­tle over­weight, but who was I to judge?

  “Bring him some of this,” Ki­ran said, hand­ing over a spare flask of her Hayes Spe­cial. “Whit­tak­er loves my recipes.”

  The flask was ice cold and sleek to the touch. I held it in one hand, my beer in the oth­er. Maybe it was time to give a Billings- sanc­tioned guy a chance. Af­ter all, I was a Billings Girl now too. It seemed high time I start­ed act­ing like one.

  14

  SOME­THING TO IM­PRESS

  “It was eye open­ing, I have to say, liv­ing among the lo­cals,” Whit­tak­er said as we strolled away from the clear­ing. “They have noth­ing. Noth­ing but a wood­en bowl and a cup of rice to eat, but they have spir­it, you know? Such spir­it.”

  “So you slept in the vil­lage?” I asked, keep­ing my eyes trained on my feet. I was on the fourth beer now, and things were start­ing to get the slight­est bit bleary. “That's so cool.”

  I couldn't re­mem­ber whose idea it had been for us to go off alone and get to know each oth­er. His? Mine? Noelle's?

  “Oh, no. We went back to the ho­tel, of course,”Whit said. “Do you re­al­ize the num­ber of dis­eases one can pick up in a place like that?”

  I looked up wait­ing for him to ac­knowl­edge the irony. “But I thought you said you lived among them.” Just then, my foot hit a rock and slid, twist­ing my an­kle in­ward. I stum­bled and fell side­ways in­to Whit­tak­er. “Oh. Whoops!”

  “Are you quite well?” he asked me, us­ing both meaty arms to steady me.

  15

  I cleared my throat. Around me the trees tilt­ed and swayed. “Yes. Quite,” I said, mim­ick­ing his tone. Who talked like this?

  “Per­haps we should sit,” he sug­gest­ed.

  Now the ground tilt­ed. Why did any­one ev­er say drink­ing was fun? This was ac­tu­al­ly quite nau­se­at­ing. “Yes. Per­haps we should.”

  Whit­tak­er led me over to a thick log that had fall­en some­time in the past cen­tu­ry and was now over­grown with moss and vines. He low­ered me down slow­ly un­til I was steadi­ly seat­ed, and on­ly then did he let me go. I braced one hand on the cold, rough wood to keep from falling over and shook my hair back. Whit­tak­er smiled as he sat next to me, study­ing my face.

  “Noelle didn't lie. You re­al­ly are quite beau­ti­ful,” he said. “You have a clas­sic look about you. Like Grace Kel­ly.”

  “Grace who?” I asked.

  Whit­tak­er's smile widened slight­ly. “She was an ac­tress. And a princess. Ac­tu­al­ly, it was quite an in­cred­ible sto­ry. She start­ed out as a poor farm girl, then be­came huge­ly fa­mous in Hol­ly­wood, mar­ried a Eu­ro­pean prince--”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said bleari­ly, lift­ing my beer bot­tle in a toast.

  “Then died in a fiery car crash,” Whit­tak­er fin­ished.

  “Oh.” Nice. Thanks a lot.

  Whit­tak­er sud­den­ly flushed and looked away, tak­ing a drink from his flask. “Would you like some?” he asked.

  Some­where in my brain I knew it prob­ably wasn't a good idea

  16

  to drink any­thing else, but I al­so knew that Ki­ran mixed some kind of juice in­to her spe­cial con­coc­tion. And some­where else in my brain, some­thing de­cid­ed that it might be a good idea to con­sume juice. Since it had vi­ta­mins and all.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

  I placed my near­ly emp­ty beer bot­tle down on the ground and al­most fell over. My palm hit the dirt and I pushed my­self back up, try­ing to cov­er, but my equi­lib­ri­um was shot. When I reached for the flask, I tipped over in­to Whit­tak­er's arms. My eyes closed in em­bar­rass­ment and the ground shift­ed. Great. Now my brain was to­tal­ly mis­fir­ing.

  “Sor­ry,” I said.

  “That's all right,” he replied. “Here. Let me help.”

  He placed one of his sol­id arms around me and I in­stant­ly felt more se­cure, less wob­bly. I man­aged to get the top off the flask and took a long drink. Mm­mmm. The Hayes Spe­cial was yum­my. And Whit­tak­er was so warm. I closed my eyes, sa­vor­ing the mo­ment, and tipped the flask back. Once again the ground shift­ed. I jerked and the liq­uid went down the wrong pipe. All air­ways closed off and I choked, spit­ting al­co­hol ev­ery­where.

  “Are you all right?” Whit­tak­er asked.

  “Fine! Fine!” I choked, dou­bling over. Whit­tak­er fished out a hand­ker­chief from his pock­et and hand­ed it to me. I coughed in­to it and wiped my face. The hand­ker­chief was soft, smelled of musk, and had his ini­tials em­broi­dered in­to it. Old school all the way.

  17

  No one I knew even owned hand­ker­chiefs, but some­how I was not sur­prised.

  “I'm so sor­ry,” I said, fi­nal­ly catch­ing my breath. I tried to hand the hand­ker­chief back to him, but he closed his hand over mine, which closed over the cloth.

  “Keep it. It's yours,” he said.

  I flushed. “You must think I'm a to­tal los­er,” I said.

  “Quite the con­trary,” he said, look­ing in­to my eyes. “I think you're ex­traor­di­nary.”

  And then he was kiss­ing me. Okay. Not good! I was not sup­posed to be kiss­ing Walt Whit­tak­er. I was sup­posed to be kiss­ing Thomas. Thomas, my boyfriend. Thomas, the per­fect­ly gor­geous guy who had tak­en my vir­gin­ity. If on­ly he were here. If on­ly I knew where the hell he was.

  Thoughts of Thomas flood­ed my mind. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. Thomas's lips, Thomas's hands, Thomas's fin­gers, Thomas's tongue . ..

  And sud­den­ly, I was kiss­ing him. His sweet, warm mouth-, his strong, lean arms. Even with ev­ery­thing we had gone through in the past few days, I missed his touch. That was the one thing with Thomas th
at was nev­er wrong.

  Half deliri­ous, I slipped my hands around Whit's thick neck. The sec­ond I did he got con­fi­dent. His mouth moved over mine in a rough, un­prac­ticed, awk­ward back-​and-​forth mo­tion, so fast it was as if he was try­ing to cre­ate fire with our lips.

  Ugh. Very not Thomas. I grabbed his face be­tween both my

  18

  hands to stop the mad­ness and he took it as a sign of en­thu­si­asm. Sud­den­ly his tongue was ev­ery­where, part­ing my lips and dart­ing be­tween my teeth.

  This poor kid. He had no idea what he was do­ing. I want­ed to push him away, but I didn't want to em­bar­rass him. In­stead I let him go and hoped he would ei­ther sud­den­ly im­prove or get wind­ed and stop.

  Then his large hand fell right on top of my breast and squeezed. Hard. Like he was juic­ing an or­ange.

  Just like that, Thomas was back. Right there in front of me. With his sexy smile and his prac­ticed, gen­tle touch and his skin against mine. What the hell was I do­ing? Who was this per­son who was grop­ing me like I was some kind of CPR doll?

  My stom­ach lurched. I held my breath. Oh, God. I was go­ing to throw up. I was go­ing to barf in Walt Whit­tak­er's mouth.

  My hands flew up and I shoved him away from me. He was just let­ting out a con­fused mur­mur when I turned around, keeled over, and retched all over the bed of leaves be­hind the log. My eyes stung; my throat burned; my stom­ach wrenched in pain. Whit­tak­er stood up and moved away, turn­ing his back to me to give me pri­va­cy. Thank God. The last thing I want­ed was for the guy I had just kissed to watch me puke all over the place.

  And then, fi­nal­ly, it was over.

  “Are you all right?” Whit­tak­er asked me.

  It was like his re­frain of the evening.

  I nod­ded slow­ly, too mor­ti­fied to speak.

  19

  “Can I walk you back to Billings?” he asked.

  I nod­ded again. Whit­tak­er held out his hands and helped me up. He wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the clear­ing and I leaned in to him, mushy as over­cooked pas­ta. Ev­ery­one stared at our ar­rival. I could on­ly imag­ine what I looked like. For a fleet­ing mo­ment my un­fo­cused gaze fell on Josh. He looked as grim as death.

  “Aw! Look at you two, all cou­pley,” Noelle said with a know­ing smile.

  I watched as Josh quick­ly looked away, swig­ging his beer.

  “I'm go­ing to walk her back,” Whit­tak­er an­nounced, sound­ing proud.

  “Nice,” Dash said un­der his breath.

  “Take care of our girl,” Noelle said, pat­ting Whit on the back.

  From some­where deep in­side of me, I sum­moned a trace of a smile. Even in my ex­traor­di­nary state of queasy shame, I felt the warmth of Noelle's ap­proval. And though I knew it was to­tal­ly spine­less to bask in it, I did. Noelle's ap­proval was al­ways a good thing.

  20

  CIN­DEREL­LA LIVES

  The first thing I rec­og­nized was the dirty gut­ter taste in my dryas-​talc mouth. The sec­ond was the blind­ing pain in my skull. The third was the fact that I was freez­ing. The fourth was the bang­ing.

  The bang­ing. The bang­ing. The in­ces­sant bang­ing.

  “Wake up, new girl! It's af­ter six! You're nev­er go­ing to get any­where with this at­ti­tude!”

  Each bang re­ver­ber­at­ed in my skull and shot a new stab of pain through my head.

  I wrenched my eyes open, then blinked a cou­ple hun­dred times against their painful dry­ness. In front of me was the cream-​col­ored wall of my dorm. Be­low me was my mat­tress. Noth­ing else was right.

  “That's right, sleepy­head. Va­ca­tion's over! Get your sor­ry ass out of bed!”

  It was Noelle. Noelle was yelling over the bang­ing. I flipped over on­to my back, the pain in my head near­ly blind­ing, and looked up. I had to swal­low back a sud­den in­flux of bile in my throat. Not just Noelle: Ki­ran, Tay­lor, Ar­iana, Natasha, and four oth­er Billings Girls whose names I couldn't re­mem­ber in my

  21

  cur­rent state of ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain hov­ered over me. Ki­ran was pound­ing a red and black steel drum with the han­dle end of a pair of scis­sors. Noelle had fold­ed some­thing white and ruffly over her arm. Tay­lor held a Dust-​Buster with grim de­ter­mi­na­tion, her eyes hol­low and rimmed with hang­over red. Natasha gripped my cov­ers in her hands at the end of my bed--thus the goose bumps and shiv­ers.

  'What the hell are you guys do­ing?" I whim­pered, squeez­ing my eyes closed. The bang­ing, mer­ci­ful­ly, had stopped. I pressed both palms in­to my fore­head to keep my brain from goug­ing its way out.

  “It's chore time, new girl,” Noelle said.

  As my brow screwed up in con­fu­sion, I felt an­oth­er shock wave of pain through my tem­ples. “What?”

  She grabbed both my wrists and yanked me up in­to a seat­ed po­si­tion. My head ex­plod­ed and I was seized by an over­whelm­ing urge to heave. As I gasped for breath, sweat­ing and pray­ing that I wouldn't puke in front of ev­ery­one, Noelle slipped her frilly some­thing over my head, then tied it be­hind my back. When I was able to open my eyes again, I was wear­ing a white French maid--style apron over my pa­ja­mas. Pinned to the left strap was a big red but­ton that read NEED help? just ask! my name IS GLASS-​lick­er.

  I groaned. It was about all I could sum­mon the en­er­gy to do.

  'You didn't think you were done, did you?“ Ki­ran asked. Her high­light­ed hair was piled atop her head and her dark skin shone against the white silk of her robe as if it had been pol­ished. The girl had im­bibed more than any­one last night and yet this morn­ing she looked gor­geous enough to be pho­tographed. ”No, no, no, no, no. Why did you think we let you in here? Now we have ac­cess to you

  22

  twen­ty- four sev­en. And that means that you get to do what­ev­er we ask you to do twen­ty-​four sev­en. That is how it works, isn't it?" she asked with mock se­ri­ous­ness, look­ing around at her friends.

  “Well, yes. I be­lieve it is,” Ar­iana said, her light south­ern ac­cent soft­en­ing the be­tray­al of her words.

  They had to be kid­ding me. They were re­al­ly go­ing to drag me out of bed in the mid­dle of my first hang­over to work? Af­ter ev­ery­thing I had done for them just to get in here, there was still more? I had thought this prov­ing-​my­self thing was over. That I was of­fi­cial­ly one of them. Ap­par­ent­ly the tor­ture was just be­gin­ning.

  Sud­den­ly I felt hol­low in­side, which, on top of the ex­cru­ci­at­ing head pain and the gut-​clench­ing nau­sea, was not fun. But what was I go­ing to do? Say no? Yeah, right. I'd be back in Brad­well and at Sopho­more-​Noth­ing sta­tus be­fore you could say, “Suck it.”

  “Here,” Tay­lor said, shov­ing the Dust-​Buster at me. Her hang­over had aged her nor­mal­ly nu­bile and chip­per self at least ten years. “I haven't dust­ed un­der my bed since I've been here. It's start­ing to af­fect my si­nus­es.”

  Dumb­ly, I took the con­trap­tion from her and held it against my chest, pet­ri­fied of what might hap­pen if I moved again. The de­tach­ment of my head from my body seemed like­ly.

  “And when you're done with that you can make all the beds,” Noelle said. “And vac­uum the halls be­fore break­fast. The re­al vac­uum is in the hall sup­ply clos­et.”

  I stared up at them, my tem­ples throb­bing, hop­ing they would all laugh and tell me it was just a joke. They gazed back at me with im­pa­tience.

  23

  “You're se­ri­ous,” I croaked.

  Noelle scrunched her nose, wav­ing her hand in front of it. “I sug­gest you Lis­ter­ine first,” she said. “I don't want your tox­ic breath stink­ing up my room.”

  “Glass-​lick­er, huh? Still?” one of the name­less girls asked, tilt­ing her head. “Don't you think we should change the nick­name
to some­thing more apro­pos? Like Glass-​clean­er?”

  “Or Glass-​scrub­ber,” Tay­lor sug­gest­ed.

  “Glass-​wiper?” Natasha added.

  Noelle nar­rowed her eyes, con­sid­er­ing. “Nah. They just don't have the same ring. She's Glass-​lick­er all the way.”

  I flinched as she pat­ted my shoul­der. Hard.

  “Let's go, ladies,” Noelle sang.

  To­geth­er they all traipsed out. Ev­ery­one but Natasha, who dropped my sheets on the floor and stepped on them with her bare feet on her way to our shared bath­room. I want­ed to get up. I did. But be­tween the pain in my skull, the churn­ing in my bel­ly, and the dry­ness in my throat, it didn't seem phys­ical­ly pos­si­ble.

  “Oh, and if you don't get it all done be­fore break­fast, you'll be tak­ing a tooth­brush to the toi­lets tonight,” Noelle said, paus­ing by the door. “Your tooth­brush.”

  “I'm up!” I said, stand­ing straight. In­stant­ly the en­tire room caved in around me, crush­ing my cra­ni­um. I closed my eyes against a new wave of nau­sea.

  “That's my girl,” Noelle said.

  Then she made a point of slam­ming the door.

  24

  IN­SIDE THE IN­SIDE

  “I like my pil­lows fluffed,” Cheyenne Mar­tin told me as she pinned her di­amond studs through her ears. Studs she had cho­sen from an im­pres­sive col­lec­tion of gor­geous, sparkling jew­els she had tucked away in a vel­vet box in­side her dress­er. She turned to­ward the mir­ror and smoothed down her per­fect­ly straight blond hair, giv­ing her­self an im­pe­ri­ous once-​over. Ev­er since I en­tered the suf­fo­cat­ing­ly flow­er-​scent­ed room she shared with Rose Sakowitz, she had been di­rect­ing me, yet she hadn't looked at me once. “And do the sheets nice and tight. I do not want to get in­to a wrinkly bed.”

  I drew my hand over her raw silk com­forter, evening out the lumps. All I want­ed to do was fall in­to it. This was my four­teenth bed. Rose's would be num­ber fif­teen. My own, six­teen. Af­ter the vac­uum­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, I had a feel­ing I would nev­er get to my bed as the vac­uum­ing would strike me dead of an aneurysm. Death by Dyson.

  “Did you hear me, Glass-​lick­er?” she asked, grac­ing me with a cor­ner-​of-​the-​eye glance.