At the board Mr. Cheever droned on. I held my breath and opened the text.
U KNO U’VE GOT POWERFL ALUMS ON UR SIDE W/BILLINGS. U JUST NEED 2 FIND RIGHT ONE. HINT: SHE’S FILED UNDER G.
My throat went dry. I glanced around the classroom, but everyone in sight was focused on the teacher, their pens scratching over their notebooks. No one had a phone out—not Missy, not Lorna, not Diana Waters, not Sawyer or Marc Alberro. Of course, not every student at Easton was in this classroom, but most of them were currently in class somewhere. And technically, texting in class was verboten. But anyone could have sent this message and then stashed their phone away before I even had a chance to pull my cell out of my pocket.
My fingers trembling, I texted back.
WHO R U?
The message came up that it was sending. And sending. And sending. Then the screen lit up with the words: MSG FAILED.
Pressing my teeth together in frustration, I tried again.
WHO R U?
MSG FAILED.
I sat back hard in my chair and turned my phone off, mentally letting out a string of curses that, if spoken aloud, would have landed me in detention for a week.
Then, out in the hallway, I heard a giggle. I glanced up at the open door just as someone darted past. A blond someone in a pink dress. My heart completely seized and I sat up straight, but no one else in the room seemed to have noticed. It was all I could do to keep myself from sprinting across the room and checking the hall.
I glanced around the desks again, and my eyes met Missy’s. She was glaring at me from across two rows of desks, her mouth set in an angry red line.
“Reed,” Astrid whispered from behind me. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m fine,” I whispered back hoarsely, tearing my gaze away from Missy’s to face forward again.
My hands trembled beneath my desk, holding tight to my phone. I felt vulnerable and small, as if at any moment someone or something was about to attack. But the hallway was silent now, and the construction site was still, nothing moving other than the flag atop the crane, flapping in the breeze.
MT
“You’ve been stalked more this year than half the starlets in Hollywood combined. I’m not sure whether to be proud, jealous, or just seriously disturbed.”
Ivy Slade handed my phone back to me after reading my mystery text and arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. She stood in the center of my single dorm room in Pemberly Hall with her slim arms crossed over her chest. Her dark hair hung loose over the shoulders of her white cardigan, and she looked as if she’d been spray-painted into her dark-wash skinny jeans.
“Believe me, it’s not something I’m proud of,” I told her, tossing my phone onto my bed. I glanced out the window toward the construction site, checking for dark-jacketed creepers or random girls with blond hair. “So what do I do now?”
“How much time do you have before Josh comes to pick you up?” she asked, sliding past me to sit at my desk. She opened my laptop and the screen instantly filled with at least ten open documents—outlines of my plans for the cocktail party and brunch; contact numbers for caterers, car services, florists, and hotels; guest lists; meal preferences; and arrival times. Just looking it was giving me a migraine.
“About ten minutes,” I replied, checking my watch. Josh had been busy most of the day, but we’d had a standing predinner coffee date for weeks now. So standard that all my friends knew I basically planned my day around it. It was the best and most chill part of my day. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we start by checking to see if this stalker’s info is any good,” Ivy said, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she looked back at me. I was already staring out the window again. “Hello? Can I have your attention, please?”
With a sigh I yanked the curtain over the window and then sat down on the edge of my bed. “Can we not call it a stalker? Just hearing the word gives me the heebs.”
Ivy’s red lips twisted into a smirk. “Fine. Mystery texter it is. MT for short.”
I smiled as Ivy opened the most valuable folder on my computer—the one containing all the information there was to know about every last Billings alum and all the current Billings Girls as well. There were several files, each with the information organized in different ways—by class, by initiation date, by last name. Ivy opened the alphabetical file and went right for the G’s.
“So. What are we looking for?” Ivy asked.
“I have no idea.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs and scooted forward a bit. “Someone in county government? Or state?”
Ivy clicked on the first G name, Lacey Galvin, but apparently Lacey was a world-class yachtswoman living in Florida. She closed the file and opened the next.
“Or maybe someone in construction?” she said. “Green living?”
The next woman owned five hotels in France. The next was listed as a life coach in Los Angeles. There was an Olympic equestrian, a CEO of a gourmet food corporation, and several philanthropists, but no one working on environmental causes. By the time we got to the last woman in the G section, Cori Gulberg, I was starting to think that this MT person was either out of their minds, or so bored they were making stuff up for fun.
“Here’s something,” Ivy said, snagging my attention. “Cori Gulberg is president of Glace Cosmetics.”
I turned up my palms. “So?”
“It says they’re leaders in green initiatives in their field,” Ivy said, though even she sounded skeptical.
“They make organic blush and primer. That’s gonna be really helpful,” I groused, pushing myself up. I shooed her out of my chair. “Get up. Go!”
“Why? We’re done with the G’s. What do you think you’re going to find that I didn’t?” Ivy complained. She finally stood up when she saw that I was about to sit down on her lap.
“I don’t know,” I said. “There has to be something.”
I started scrolling through the entire alphabetical list, as if I was going to find some G name misfiled under M.
“No, actually there doesn’t,” Ivy said, hovering over me. “It looks like our little MT just felt like sending you on a pointless mission.”
“But why?” I asked, tearing my eyes from the screen as random names flew by faster and faster and faster. “Why bother? Just so that we’d waste a few minutes on my laptop?”
Suddenly, Ivy’s eyes widened at the computer screen. “Wait! Stop! Go back.”
I lifted my fingers from the touchpad. “Go back where?”
“To the S section,” she said, shaking her finger at the screen in frustration. “Did I just see the name Carolina Slavowski?”
“Um . . . maybe.” I scrolled back. What someone with the initials CS had to do with G was beyond me, but Ivy was acting like a puppy dog that had just spotted its first cat. I found the name Carolina Slavowski and hovered the arrow over it.
“And we’re interested in this person why?”
“Carolina Slavowski is the real name of Carolina Grant.”
I stared at Ivy blankly. “Who the hell is Carolina Grant?”
“From Renovate TV?” Ivy prodded me. She rolled her eyes at my continued dumb stare. “She does all these green renovations, overhauling houses to reduce their carbon footprint, helping businesses get up to code . . .” She clucked her tongue and nudged me aside with her shoulder, angling for the keyboard. “Here.”
It took two seconds for her to bring up the Renovate TV website and toggle to a show called Go Green! Suddenly a video popped up on the screen, featuring a bright-eyed, curly-haired woman who was spunk personified.
“Hi! I’m Carolina Grant!” she said as she walked along a pristine beach in jeans, a T-shirt, and a tool belt. “Do you want to have the greenest, most cost-efficient, most Earth-friendly home on your block? We’re looking for new homes to renovate for next season’s episodes of Go Green! Simply click on the link to my left and fill out the entry form. You could be the next person to join the Go Green revolu
tion!”
The video stopped and I gaped at Ivy. “She went to Easton?”
“That just makes her so much more awesome,” Ivy said reverently.
I leaned back, narrowing my eyes at her. “You watch Renovate TV?”
Ivy crossed her arms over her chest and stood up straight. “Sex addicts need sex. Drug addicts need drugs. I need to watch people demolish their homes and rebuild them again. Got a problem with that?”
I laughed. “Just seeing a whole new side of you, that’s all.”
“You do realize what this means, right?” Ivy said, grabbing my phone up off my bed. “It means that your MT is on the up and up.”
I turned around and stared at Carolina Grant’s frozen made-for-TV smile. “And it also means that we may have just found somebody who could help us fast-track Billings.”
Suddenly, I felt as if a huge weight was being lifted off my heart, and I found myself sitting up a little straighter. Maybe this project didn’t have to be shelved after all. Maybe there was something I could do to fix it. Who needed Noelle when I could have Carolina Grant?
“Thank you, MT,” I said under my breath.
“Should we call her?” Ivy asked, practically hyperventilating as she clutched my cell. Clearly the idea of talking to Carolina was making her dizzy.
“Definitely,” I said.
And then my stomach grumbled. My eyes darted to the clock on my desk and I frowned. Embroiled in our research, I’d lost track of time, and Josh was over twenty minutes late.
“Can I have my phone? I just need to call Josh real quick.”
Ivy’s smile drooped, but she handed the phone over. “Sure.”
It took four rings for Josh to pick up. “Reed, hey,” he whispered.
“Hey,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right. We still on for coffee?”
I was kind of dying to see him, especially now. I wanted to tell him about MT and the helpful info he or she had helped us dig up. Although, knowing Josh, he’d probably tell me to block MT’s number and never think about it again. He was decidedly anti-intrigue. And for good reason, considering our track record.
“You can’t go out now! What about calling Carolina?” Ivy hissed, nudging my arm. I batted her hand away.
“Crap, I’m so sorry,” Josh said. His voice got gradually louder until he was speaking normally. “I totally spaced. Trey got us passes to go off campus for pizza, so I’m not gonna be back for a while.”
My heart thumped extra hard. He’d spaced on our standing date? That was very not like him.
“Um, okay,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “It’s no big deal. I’ve got a lot to do anyway.”
“You sure?” Josh asked. I heard a horn honk in the background and assumed he was standing outside the pizza place now. But why couldn’t he talk to me in front of Trey? Why had he been whispering when he’d picked up?
“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile. “Call me later?”
“I will,” he said. “I love you.”
“Love you, too,” I replied.
Then the line went dead. I sat and stared at the phone until the screen went dark. I had this hot, roiling feeling in my gut. Something had been off with that phone call.
“He’s not coming?” Ivy asked.
“Apparently not,” I replied.
“Good. That means we can call Carolina now!”
She snatched the phone out of my hand and leaned toward the computer to reopen Carolina’s file and get her cell number—far more efficient than filling out the cable TV station’s online form. I rolled my eyes, but got up to give her more space. My heart felt heavy and twisted in knots thanks to Josh’s careless disregard of our date, but I told myself it was actually a good thing. Now I could get right on this Billings problem. Really, his sudden and unexpected thoughtlessness was a blessing in disguise.
Right?
THE POWER
“I was so excited when I hung up the phone with you, you have no idea,” Carolina Grant gushed as she walked at an inhuman speed from the parking circle, down the pathway between Bradwell and Pemberly, and toward the quad. Her crew scurried after her—one woman with a headset and an iPad, a guy with a smallish camera, and another toting a ridiculously large microphone over her head. “I haven’t been back here since . . . oh my God, I’m too embarrassed to say when I actually graduated, but let’s just say it’s been a long time.”
“Well, I’m glad you could make it on such short notice.” We had only called Carolina last night, and less than eighteen hours later, here she was, ready to get to work and save my butt. I guess Billings connections really did mean something.
Thank you, MT, I thought, somewhat grudgingly. The very idea that I owed my new luck to some freak who felt the need to text me anonymously made my skin prickle.
“So glad,” Ivy echoed, an admiring gleam in her dark eyes.
“I sent you an invite to the ribbon-cutting festivities this weekend, but it came back to me as undeliverable,” I told her. After our phone call the night before, I’d double-checked my guest-list records and discovered the mistake, which, of course, made me feel somehow totally rude and incompetent. “Otherwise you would have known about this sooner.”
“Oh, that happens all the time, since I’m constantly changing my e-mail to avoid crazed fans,” Carolina said, waving a dismissive hand. She stopped short as she emerged onto the open green space at the center of the Easton campus. “Oh. My. God. Nothing has changed!”
She clasped her hands together in front of her chest and I glanced over at Ivy, who had never been a fan of overenthusiasm. Sometimes when she was around Constance I got the awful feeling she was going to haul off and punch the girl in the face just for being her natural bubbly self. Now I expected a good eye roll at the very least, but instead she looked . . . giddy. I guess, like she’d said last night, we all had our things. Then Carolina’s gaze fell on the still dormant construction site and her smile completely disappeared.
“Well. Except for that.” She whipped around and looked at the camera. “Christopher? Can you get a good shot of that? That is where my dorm, Billings, used to be.”
“You got it, CG,” Christopher replied, bringing the camera to his shoulder. “And we’re rolling.”
Carolina took my arm and steered me down one of the stone pathways toward the Billings site, holding me close to her side as Ivy scurried to keep up. She wore a blue-and-white plaid shirt with snap buttons and destroyed designer jeans. Her thick hair smelled of apricots and, now that I was close up, I could see that she had on tons of makeup to hide what appeared to be acne scars. It was kind of nice to know that someone so beautiful and famous still had a few flaws to deal with.
“Now just act natural,” she said under her breath. “This is all just for the B roll. Establishing shots. Stuff like that.”
“Okay.”
All around us, people dropped what they were doing and turned to stare. A group of freshmen seated in a study circle looked up from their laptops and pointed. Trey and Gage Coolidge stopped tossing around a football and eyed us curiously. Even a group of teachers over by the Hell Hall stairs paused to gape. Suddenly it wasn’t the camera I was worried about. It was all the attention.
“Ugh. I was so disgusted and sad when I heard they had torn this place down,” Carolina said. “Now that I see it, I’m just plain depressed.”
We had come to the edge of the construction site, and she stared down at the spot where the front steps had once stood—a small area still untouched by the construction. You could still make out the indent where the bottom stone stair used to be, and she traced the corner of it with the toe of her work boot.
“This place really was like a second home,” she said, staring wistfully up at the sky. Christopher zoomed in on her as the microphone guy hovered the fuzzy boom over her head. Her expression was nostalgic and morose. “I’m honored that I’ll have the chance to rebuild it,” she said reverently. Then she looked directly into the lens and
brightened like a firework lighting the night sky. “In true green fashion, of course!”
Ivy clapped quietly and I tried not to laugh. As Carolina began to walk the perimeter, dragging her crew and her superfan with her, I gazed across at the trailers and narrowed my eyes. Was that creepy figure yesterday just a curious student checking things out, or had he been here for a more sinister reason? Fingering Eliza Williams’s locket, I was about to walk over and check things out when I got that eerie, skin-tingling feeling that I was being watched. I turned around quickly, half expecting to see a mysterious blond girl staring me down, and was surprised to find Noelle standing under a tree about fifty yards off. Her arms were clutched around her stomach, and her sunglasses covered half her face. I smiled and waved her over, hoping that meeting Carolina might perk her up, but she acted as if she hadn’t even seen me. She slipped her phone out of her bag and ducked her head to talk as she walked off in the opposite direction. My heart thumped with this odd, disappointed foreboding, and again my skin started to prickle. This was never going to feel right if Noelle couldn’t get behind it.
“Now here’s what I’m thinking.” Carolina flung her arms out wide as if getting ready to paint a picture of her vision. “The taller the building, the—”
“Excuse me! Excuse me! Miss Brennan!”
We all turned around to watch as the headmaster speed-walked toward us across the quad, not even bothering to use the pathways. Missy and her cousin Paige Ryan scurried after him, like his personal and very alert assistants, which made my stomach turn. Paige and Missy had been involved in the previous plan to rebuild Billings—the one that had also included several of the women who had helped orchestrate and execute my latest near-death experience and Mr. Lange’s murder. Which, of course, made me wonder what the hell they were doing here now, and why they appeared to be so buddy-buddy with the headmaster.