Page 5 of Invitation Only

  Lon­don and Vi­en­na, or “the Twin Cities,” as the rest of Billings called them, were two very bux­om, very big-​haired so­cialites who had ap­par­ent­ly been friends for­ev­er. They had sum­moned me to their room the mo­ment I had got­ten back from din­ner be­cause they need­ed some help “feng shui-​ing,” as Lon­don had put it, which ac­tu­al­ly meant they want­ed me to or­ga­nize their shoes by col­or, then by heel height. At the mo­ment, I was on the floor, do­ing ex­act­ly that.

  “At least do­nate it or some­thing,” Vi­en­na sug­gest­ed.

  Lon­don, who was ad­mir­ing her dou­ble-​D's in the mir­ror, turned to look at me.

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  “Sor­ry,” she said, pluck­ing the sweater out of the can. “Did you want this?”

  Her brown eyes were com­plete­ly in­no­cent. She blinked, wait­ing for my ex­cit­ed re­ply.

  “Uh, no thanks,” I said flat­ly.

  “Not to her! To the needy!” Vi­en­na said, rolling her eyes as she picked up her nail file and walked over. “Don't mind her, Glass- lick­er,” she told me, pulling the sweater out of Lon­don's fin­gers. “The skin­nier she gets, the dumb­er she gets.”

  I smirked.

  “Omigosh! You're just jeal­ous!” Lon­don said, swip­ing at Vi­en­na.

  They both set­tled back on their beds again to con­tin­ue their primp­ing rit­uals. I yanked an­oth­er pair of red shoes out of the back of the clos­et and lined them up with all the oth­er red shoes, com­par­ing heel heights. I was al­most done. Then I could fi­nal­ly, fi­nal­ly get back to my room and show­er.

  “I saw Walt Whit­tak­er on cam­pus to­day,” Lon­don said ca­su­al­ly.

  In­stant­ly, all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Some­how I had man­aged to avoid Whit all day. Ev­ery time he saw me he blushed and looked away. Ap­par­ent­ly he was just as em­bar­rassed by our en­counter as I was. He'd spent most of our meal­times chat­ting with pro­fes­sors over at their ta­bles, some­thing I'd nev­er seen a sin­gle stu­dent do be­fore, and out­side the caf I hadn't seen him at all. But did the Twin Cities know that we had hooked up?

  'V, I am so go­ing to make him mine."

  Ap­par­ent­ly not.

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  Vi­en­na snort­ed a laugh. “Please. Ev­ery oth­er girl on this cam­pus is gonna be af­ter Whit­tak­er in the next cou­ple of weeks.”

  Wha-​huh? Why?

  “So? You don't think I can get him?” Lon­don asked in­cred­ulous­ly.

  'You've got as good a shot as any­one else,“ Vi­en­na replied. ”But no one knows what goes on in­side that thick head. Per­son­al­ly, I've al­ways thought he was gay."

  I sti­fled a laugh and shoved the last pair of red shoes in­to place. If he was gay it would cer­tain­ly ac­count for his lack of skills in the feel­ing-​up de­part­ment.

  “Just be­cause he's gay doesn't mean I can't use him,” Lon­don said.

  Then they both laughed. I pushed my­self up and slapped my hands on my apron. Part of me was dy­ing to know what Lon­don want­ed to use Whit for. Mon­ey? Doubt­ful. Ev­ery­one around here had more than they knew what to do with. But an even big­ger part of me was dy­ing to get the hell out of there. Plus I had a feel­ing they wouldn't tell me any­way.

  “All done,” I said.

  “You're ex­cused,” Lon­don said dis­mis­sive­ly.

  I shot her a look of death that she didn't even no­tice, then turned and walked out. I prac­ti­cal­ly ran down the dim­ly lit hall to my room, blow­ing by all the black-​and-​white framed pho­tos of Billings “Through the Ages.” At some point I had ap­pre­ci­at­ed the beau­ti­ful touch­es of Billings, the gleam­ing wood­work, the thick

  54

  car­pet­ing, the bronze wall sconces, the French win­dows at ei­ther end of each hall­way. But now all I saw was more stuff to clean, more to scrub, more to wax. I couldn't get back to my room and away from it all fast enough. My hand was on the door­knob when I heard some­one en­ter the hall be­hind me.

  “Miss Bren­nan.”

  I stopped and closed my eyes. So close.

  Mrs. Lat­timer, the mid­dle-​aged house moth­er of Billings House, ap­proached me at a bro­ken pace, her stride hin­dered by her skin­ny pen­cil skirt. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun and her white shirt was, as al­ways, but­toned all the way up, with three strands of pearls sit­ting on top. Mrs. Lat­timer was skin­ny and pointy; her skin was rough as leather. She was nev­er seen with­out a thick lay­er of eye­lin­er and mas­cara, as if she thought draw­ing at­ten­tion to her wa­tery eyes would cause the av­er­age per­son to miss the rather large birth­mark on her chin. I had met her on my first night at Billings and she had looked me over as if con­fused by my very ex­is­tence. I had avoid­ed her ev­er since.

  “Miss Bren­nan, I un­der­stand that you made all the beds this morn­ing,” she said, her crag­gly hands clasped in front of her.

  Wait a minute. She knew about that?

  “You some­how, how­ev­er, over­looked my own,” she said, lift­ing her chin. “I would ap­pre­ci­ate it if you af­ford­ed me the same cour­tesy you have the oth­er wom­en of this dorm.”

  She was kid­ding. She had to be kid­ding. Not on­ly did she know about this haz­ing rit­ual, but she con­doned it? She want­ed in on it?

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  “Do I make my­self clear?” she asked.

  “Uh . .. sure,” I said.

  “Good,” she said with a nod. We both stood there for a long mo­ment. “Well. Go about your busi­ness,” she said, shoo­ing me with her hand.

  “Right. Okay.”

  I shoved the door open, closed it be­hind me, and leaned back against it, wish­ing there was a lock. A bolt. Some kind of alarm sys­tem that could alert me to ap­proach­ing heiress­es. I couldn't be­lieve our house moth­er was in on this. As if I didn't have enough to do al­ready, enough to wor­ry about.

  Tak­ing a deep breath, I sank down a bit, un­able to move an­oth­er mus­cle. My nerves were fried. All day I had been wait­ing for my class­room doors to open, wait­ing to be called to Hell Hall to talk to the po­lice. I was com­plete­ly un­able to con­cen­trate and had man­aged to shred no few­er than ten sheets of loose-​leaf in­to tiny squares. But noth­ing had hap­pened. The day had end­ed with­out a sin­gle in­ter­rup­tion and now a ru­mor was float­ing around that the po­lice were start­ing with the se­nior class and work­ing their way down, that they might not even get to us low­ly sopho­mores un­til late in the week.

  Per­son­al­ly, I want­ed to get it over with. I felt like my blood had been re­placed with pure caf­feine. Why didn't they at least come get me? Hadn't the crack in­ves­ti­ga­tors found out yet that Thomas had a girl­friend?

  I pushed away from the door and dropped down on my bed,

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  look­ing blankly around my new room. My new room. In all the in­san­ity I'd had yet to have the time to ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the space. It was at least three times big­ger than my old room in Brad­well, with a huge arched win­dow over­look­ing the quad. My desk was im­mense, with a built-​in bul­letin board and study lamp, and the dou­ble dress­er near the wall ac­tu­al­ly dwarfed the small­ish bed. It was al­so on­ly half full and com­plete­ly de­void of pic­tures, jew­el­ry box­es, and knick­knacks, un­like ev­ery oth­er dress­er in this place--which, by the way, were that much more dif­fi­cult to dust and pol­ish.

  Yes, my side of the room was pa­thet­ical­ly bare com­pared to Natasha's, which was re­plete with posters hung at ex­act right an­gles, per­fect­ly or­ga­nized books and pa­pers, a clear plas­tic tack­le-​style box keep­ing each piece of her in­cred­ibly ex­pen­sive jew­el­ry sep­arate from all the oth­ers. But it was home. My home in Billings. I had to re­mem­ber that. I was here. And all the chores they could throw at me were worth it.

  I think.

  Fi­nal
­ly I shoved my­self away from the wall and trudged over to my desk. Some of my books were still in a crate on the floor from when the Billings Girls had gath­ered them and brought them over. Might as well un­pack now while I still had a sliv­er of en­er­gy left in me. I picked up a few of my ex­tra his­to­ry tomes, which had been as­signed to me the first day of school, and lift­ed them on­to the shelf above the desk. The mid­dle one slipped out and fell with a thud to the floor, and try as I might to grab the oth­ers, they all slipped and slid and fol­lowed, one land­ing right on my toes.

  “Dammit,” I said un­der my breath, drop­ping to my knees.

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  I leaned my back in­to the side of my bed and sighed as sev­er­al bones cracked and a few mus­cles un­coiled. Wow, was it nice to be sit­ting. Maybe the un­pack­ing could wait.

  Us­ing a min­imal amount of ef­fort, I slid a cou­ple of the books to­ward me and stacked them in my lap. In do­ing so, I un­cov­ered a small piece of white pa­per, fold­ed up tight­ly, sit­ting on the hard­wood floor. Huh. Where had that come from?

  I picked it up and turned it over in my hand. Un­fa­mil­iar. Had it fall­en out of one of my books? They had all been tak­en out of the li­brary the first week of school. Maybe it was an old love let­ter some­one had left in there. In­trigued, I un­fold­ed the page. My eye went di­rect­ly to the sig­na­ture. The note was com­put­er print­ed but signed in ink.

  By Thomas.

  “What?” I said out loud.

  In­stant­ly my pulse start­ed to pound in my ears. In my fin­ger­tips. In my eyes. I pulled my knees up to my chest, scat­ter­ing the books to the floor, and read, the page trem­bling in my hands.

  Dear Reed,

  I'm leav­ing tonight. I don't know what else to do. A friend of mine knows of this holis­tic treat­ment thing where they don't re­quire parental per­mis­sion. I'm not go­ing to tell you where it is, be­cause I don't want you or any­one else try­ing to find me. I want to get bet­ter. And I don't think I can do that if I stay in touch with the peo­ple in my life.

  Please don't be mad. It's bet­ter for you this way. You're too

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  good for me. I'm shit for you. You know I am. I love you. I do. But you de­serve bet­ter than me. So much bet­ter.

  I just need some time. Some time on my own, away from my par­ents and all the in­san­ity. You un­der­stand. I know you do. You know me bet­ter than any­one.

  I love you so much, Reed. And I'll miss you. More than you'll ev­er know.

  Love,

  Thomas

  Re­lief flood­ed through me so quick­ly and with such force that my eyes blurred with tears. I wiped them away, and read the note again. And again. Thomas was all right. He was fine! He wasn't ly­ing in a pool of his own vom­it some­where; he had gone to get help. He was out there try­ing to get well. He was, in fact, bet­ter than he'd ev­er been.

  I took a deep, shaky breath and read the note one more time. Sud­den­ly a new emo­tion poi­soned the re­lief, caus­ing the mus­cles in my neck to tense. Thomas had bro­ken up with me. In a note. Af­ter I'd promised to help him in any way I could, he'd tak­en off with­out so much as a good-​bye and hid­den a breakup note in my stuff. What kind of per­son did that?

  Even worse, how could he leave a note in some book and just trust I would find it? I might have re­turned this thing to the li­brary and nev­er seen the note that was tucked away in­side. I might have just gone on wor­ry­ing for­ev­er. He could have just

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  called. Just a five-​sec­ond call and he could have told me the same thing. Did he not re­al­ize the tor­ture he'd put me through?

  “Ass­hole,” I groaned, mash­ing the pa­per in­to a ball and throw­ing it across the room. Who the hell did he think he was, just de­cid­ing we were over? Not let­ting me have a say in any­thing. Dis­ap­pear­ing and mak­ing all of us wor­ry. The boy need­ed help. Se­ri­ous, pro­fes­sion­al help.

  At least he was get­ting it.

  Two sec­onds af­ter toss­ing the note away, I got up and grabbed it from the floor. It wasn't as if I could leave it around for Natasha to find. I flat­tened it out on my desk and read it one more time.

  That was when a new, even more tor­tur­ous thought oc­curred to me.

  The po­lice. Should I tell the po­lice about this note? Show it to them? Clear­ly Thomas didn't want me to. He said right there that he was leav­ing to get away from the in­san­ity--from his par­ents-- and if I told, they would track him down and he would nev­er get the time he need­ed to get bet­ter. But not show­ing the cops would be like ly­ing. It would be with­hold­ing ev­idence. I could get in se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous trou­ble.

  God, I just wished I could talk to him. See him. Hold him. Talk some sense in­to him. Maybe if I could talk to him I could get him to take re­spon­si­bil­ity for what he had done. Didn't he re­al­ize how much trou­ble he had caused? Was he that scared of his par­ents that he thought this was the on­ly way?

  I imag­ined Thomas out there some­where, alone, try­ing to deal

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  with his is­sues, try­ing to make him­self well, and my heart swelled so fast I thought it might pop. I was an­gry at him, yes, but I al­so missed him. I al­so wor­ried about him. I just wished that I could see him and tell him that ev­ery­thing was go­ing to be okay.

  And then, yeah, maybe smack him up­side the head for do­ing this to me.

  It re­al­ly is amaz­ing, how close­ly hate and love are aligned.

  “Screw this,” I said. I couldn't think about it now. I was too tired. Too emo­tion­al. Too in­clined to vi­olence. I fold­ed the note, stuffed it in the very back of my desk draw­er, and slammed it closed.

  Okay. Deep breath. At least I knew Thomas was all right now. At least I knew he was out there some­where. And if he had any sort of con­science, he'd have to call me even­tu­al­ly. This note was not enough. We need­ed to talk. Big time.

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  MORAL CEN­TER

  Af­ter a long show­er, and an equal­ly long think, I felt mon­umen­tal­ly bet­ter. Thomas's note, while it had opened up a huge can of worms, had ac­tu­al­ly ab­solved me from a cou­ple of things I had been stress­ing over. First, he had bro­ken up with me days ago, which tech­ni­cal­ly meant that what I had done in the woods with Whit­tak­er wasn't cheat­ing, which made me feel much bet­ter. Sec­ond, he was gone from school in­def­inite­ly, which meant that I wouldn't have to wor­ry about keep­ing him and the Billings Girls in sep­arate cor­ners. I wouldn't have to wor­ry about that any­way, since he had bro­ken up with me.

  Yes. I could be very prac­ti­cal about this. Lev­el-​head­ed Reed. That was go­ing to be my new, in­ter­nal nick­name.

  That was part one of the plan. Part two of the plan was find­ing out more about this Lega­cy thing and get­ting my ass there so that I could track down Thomas, yell at him for about an hour, and then give him a chance to ex­plain. A very brief chance. Af­ter all, Dash had said Thomas would be there no mat­ter what. That Thomas was

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  the Lega­cy. If that was the case, I was sure he wasn't go­ing to let a lit­tle holis­tic treat­ment get in his way.

  I mean, okay, Thomas wasn't good for me. He was prob­ably right about that. Tech­ni­cal­ly, af­ter the first week or so of to­tal bliss, all he'd caused me was con­fu­sion, pain, and em­bar­rass­ment. But that bliss part? That had been re­al­ly good. So good that I had slept with him. And I couldn't just for­get about that. He couldn't just take my vir­gin­ity and slink off in­to the night leav­ing noth­ing but a note. What we had done meant a lot to me, and Thomas need­ed to know that. He need­ed to know that I wasn't just go­ing to for­get him. That I would nev­er for­get him, even if we weren't ev­er go­ing to be to­geth­er again. I cared about him. And that was that.

  I slipped in­to my ter­ry-​cloth robe and cinched it, then grabbed a tow­el and start­ed rub­bing a
t my hair hard, as if I could rub out all the con­fu­sion as well. My head was tipped for­ward as I walked out of the steamy bath­room, so I didn't see Natasha stand­ing there un­til I had walked right in­to her.

  “Oh! God! Sor­ry,” I said, jump­ing back. My free hand flew to my chest and I laughed. 'You scared the crap out­ta me."

  Natasha didn't crack a smile. She didn't move. Her stare had “doom” writ­ten all over it.

  “What?” I said ner­vous­ly. Had she found the note? Oh, God, had she some­how found the note?

  “We need to talk,” she said grave­ly.

  “Okay,” I said, try­ing to egg her in­to a smile with my own. No such luck.

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  She walked over to her lap­top and flipped it open. “Sit,” she said, pulling out her desk chair for me.

  I shot her a quizzi­cal look but did as I was told. “What're we do­ing?”

  “Just a lit­tle slide show,” Natasha told me.

  She leaned over me, her breast graz­ing my shoul­der and mak­ing me flush with em­bar­rass­ment, and clicked open a win­dow on her com­put­er. What I saw on the screen at first made no sense to me. It was a pho­to­graph of what looked like a tongue. A very up- close shot of a tongue be­ing stuck out at the cam­era. Then sud­den­ly the view went wide and my heart dropped.

  It was a tongue. My tongue. It was me. And my eyes were half- closed. And I was laugh­ing.

  “When did you take this?” I asked, glanc­ing over my shoul­der.

  “Just watch,” she said.

  So I did. The next pic­ture fea­tured me chug­ging a beer in the woods. The next, me with my hands on Whit­tak­er's chest. Me and Whit­tak­er walk­ing away from the clear­ing to­geth­er. Me with my arms around Whit­tak­er, my mouth hang­ing open slop­pi­ly, a flask of liquor in my hand. Whit­tak­er with his mouth pressed to mine as I held his face with my hands. Then Whit­tak­er's hand on my breast.

  Dread and shame over­whelmed me as I stared at my own face. My head was tipped back and it looked like I was moan­ing in plea­sure, when in fact I had been about to throw up. It made me look like a slut, like a drunk­en whore who had lured some guy out to the woods.