"Noelle."
"Well, that would be a first."
"What if he did it, Natasha?" I said quickly. "What if he killed this guy?"
"First of all, I'd like to point out that Josh's name appears nowhere in these articles," she said.
"Yeah, because he's a minor," I replied.
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"But Josh Hollis? Come on, Reed. You really think he's capable of something like that? You know him."
"I thought I did," I said. "But clearly ..."
Suddenly, snippets of conversations with Josh started playing themselves out in my mind. Josh saying Thomas didn't appreciate me. How Thomas never thought about other people's feelings. Had he been trying all along to undermine Thomas? To make me hate him? To make himself--his thoughtful, considerate self- look like an angel in comparison? I remembered the look Josh had given me when I had first hooked up with Walt Whittaker in the woods. He had looked so angry, but I had thought he was angry on Thomas's behalf. Now I wondered . . . had Josh always liked me? Had he been manipulating me all along?
"He turned in Rick," I heard myself say.
"What?"
"That townie guy. It was Josh who turned him in. Josh who finally told the police that Thomas was dealing," I said, my mind rushing ahead. "Natasha, what if he just did that to deflect blame from himself. What if he--"
"Josh Hollis did not kill Thomas Pearson," Natasha said.
"How do you know that? The police questioned him all weekend long! And he was so freaked when they decided Rick was innocent. More freaked than anyone else," I told her. I felt like my heart was about to squeeze itself into oblivion.
"Even more so than the mob-mentality boys?" she asked.
"Why are you defending him?" I snapped.
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"Because if you're right, then that means we've been eating lunch every day with a freaking murderer, that's why!" Natasha cried.
Her words hung in the silence. I suddenly felt as if the very walls were listening to us. Mocking us. Laughing at our paranoia.
"You're right," I said, rubbing my face with both hands. 'You're right. There's no way. This is Josh we're talking about here."
"This proves nothing," Natasha said. "Nothing except that something horrible happened at St. James. Maybe Josh wasn't even this guy's roommate. There's no name. What're the chances it was actually him?"
Suddenly, I felt energized. "You're right," I said, turning for the door.
"Where're you going?" Natasha asked.
I stormed into the hallway, Natasha on my heels. "Someone has some explaining to do."
Noelle was just getting up from her desk when I walked into the room she shared with Ariana. Without knocking. She had a brown envelope in her hand. She froze and glanced at Ariana, who was fiddling with the lace on one of her throw pillows. The moment we arrived, she tossed it aside and stood.
"Reed!" Noelle said. "I was just coming to see--"
"Okay, so some guy named Connor died at St. James last year," I blurted. "But that doesn't prove anything. If Josh really was involved, why didn't you tell me before? You must have suspected
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something, right? With Thomas winding up dead too? Why didn't you tell me? "
"Reed, calm down," Ariana said.
"No! Don't tell me what to do!" I shouted. "Tell me what's going on!"
Noelle and I stared at each other. I could see her nostrils flare as she breathed. When she spoke, not a single muscle outside of her mouth moved.
"If we'd sat you down on your first day in Billings and told you about every single scandal that every one of the students at this school had been involved in, we would still be talking about it," she said through her teeth. "We didn't tell you because we didn't care. Until now. Until you made it necessary for us to care by hooking up with a psycho."
"He's not a psycho," I said automatically.
"I had a feeling you wouldn't believe me, after the way you treated me earlier," she said coolly. She flicked her eyes over me derisively. In that one moment, I felt like I had lost more ground than I had gained in the past two months. "So I got you this."
She held out the brown folder. It was thick and the flap was open.
"What is it?" I asked, too petrified to move.
"Just open it," she told me. "It's fairly self-explanatory."
I glanced at Natasha. She shrugged, at a loss. I grabbed the envelope, all high and mighty, and yanked out the document inside. It was about forty pages long. The Easton crest was
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stamped at the top of the first page. Typed across the center were Josh's name, his birth date, and the words Dr. David Schwartz, Results of Psychiatric Evaluation. Status: Approved. The pages fluttered in my hands.
"Not everyone has to go through a psych eval before being admitted to Easton," Noelle said. "You have to be a real. . . special case."
Natasha stepped up behind me to read over my shoulder. My vision blurring, I turned to the first page. The paragraphs were long and filled with jargon I did not understand, but certain phrases popped out at me.
"Seems to have accepted death of friend Connor Marklin . . . becomes truculent and withdrawn when asked to talk about the state in which roommate Connor was found and how it made him feel. . . refuses to discuss sessions in which he was questioned by police . . . grows agitated and borderline violent when asked if he had anything to do with death of Connor Marklin ..."
I swallowed hard. This couldn't be right. It couldn't be real. There was just no way. My insides were crumbling in on themselves. I found myself sitting without knowing how I'd gotten there. Numb, I flipped a few pages and stopped on an entry from late August.
"Responding well to new medications . . . mood swings under control. . . expresses genuine excitement about prospect of starting at Easton and rooming with his friend, Thomas Pearson ..."
"Oh my God." The document dropped from my hands.
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"Where did you get this?" Natasha asked, bending to retrieve the evaluation. She slipped it back into its envelope and held it in both hands.
"Turns out doctor-patient confidentiality does not apply to everyone," Noelle said. "I'm sure the police have already memorized that particular document."
"We just want you to be careful, Reed. That's all," Ariana said, her southern accent softening her words. "It's not just a rumor. It's solid fact."
I trembled as I looked up at them. The three of them. Standing over me all concerned. Like I was a mental patient. My brain still refused to accept what I had just read. It felt like it was expanding, trying to fill my skull to keep me from fully processing the words.
"The only solid fact that I can see ... is that Josh Hollis is really unlucky," I said, my voice surprisingly clear.
"Reed--"
"No. I am not going to sit here and let you try to twist everything," I said, standing. My hands were rock-solid fists at my sides. "I won't let you do this."
"What about the meds?" Noelle said. "How do you explain that?"
"So he's got a chemical imbalance. That's hardly gonna make headlines. Every other person I know is on Ritalin or Prozac."
"Yes, but he lied about it, didn't he?" Ariana said. "Why would he lie?"
"If you were on all that stuff, would you advertise it?" I demanded.
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"I wouldn't," Natasha said.
Noelle and Ariana were silent and it buoyed me. I felt better. I did. My logic was actually logical. But it wasn't enough. I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
"Where are you going?" Noelle shouted after me. "Reed! We need to talk about this."
It took every ounce of self-control I had in me, but I kept walking.
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DEFIANCE
I needed to hear it from Josh. I needed him to tell me the story of what had happened to him last year. If I didn't hear it from his lips, I would always be wondering. And I couldn't have that uncertainty. Not again. I needed something to be certain.
/> I walked into my room and grabbed my cell phone from my bag.
"What are you doing?" Natasha asked, closing the door behind us.
"I'm calling him."
My palms were sweating and I could hardly breathe. I stuffed my left hand under my arm and held it there to keep it from quaking.
"Hey, Reed."
His voice filled me, as always, with warm fuzzies. Even as typed words like withdrawn, agitated, and death flitted through my mind.
"I need to talk to you," I said firmly.
"Are you okay?" he asked. See? Always concerned.
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"I'm fine," I said. "I just need to talk to you. In person."
A moment of silence. "It's past hours."
"So we'll meet somewhere."
Natasha widened her eyes at me, but I turned my back on her.
"What's this about, Reed?" he asked.
"I'll tell you when I see you. Wherever," I told him. "We just have to do this. Now."
"Fine. The cemetery. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."
He hung up before I could say goodbye.
I tossed the phone on my bed and grabbed my coat and scarf. I might have been sweating, but it was frigid outside. I was practically trembling with anxiety. I just wanted to get this over with. Hopefully tomorrow everything could go back to normal.
Not that we had yet figured out what that was. I was starting to realize that the term normal was relative.
"You're sure about this?" Natasha asked me.
I checked my watch and buttoned the last button on my coat.
No, I'm not sure. But what else am I supposed to do?
"Yes. I'm sure. I'll. . . see you later."
Natasha sighed and I walked out into the hallway. "Normally," I would have been concerned about getting snagged by our housemother, but I knew that she actually didn't much care what any of us did as long as we could bribe her heavily enough. I didn't have the means for that kind of thing, but by now I knew plenty of people who would do it for me as a reflex. It was us against Lattimer, and we always had the upper hand.
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I was two steps from the front door. I needed to plan out what I was going to say. How was I going to broach this? How did you ask someone why they'd been lying to you when the only reason you knew they'd been lying was because you had searched through their stuff when their back was turned. What was I doing?
"Reed."
I froze. As did my heart. It was Noelle.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
I turned around. She stood on the bottom step of the common stairs. I hadn't even heard her behind me.
"I'm going to meet Josh."
Her dark eyes were piercing. "Do you really think that's the best idea?"
She was too serene. Too placid. How did she do that?
"It's not true, Noelle," I told her, infusing my voice with certainty. "Josh could never hurt anyone."
"If you believe that, then why are you going to meet him?" she asked me. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"
"I... I just want to clear the air," I told her. "I want to be--"
I stopped myself. Noelle's full lips twisted into a smirk. "You want to be sure. Which means that you're not. You're not sure that this guy isn't a cold-blooded killer and yet you're going out, at night, to meet with him. Alone."
I could feel my heart pounding in every vein. I wanted to rip that smirk right off her face. She was messing with my mind again, her favorite pastime. I had no idea why she wanted me to believe
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that Josh was a dangerous psychotic, but she did. But this time I wasn't going to fall for it.
"I am sure," I told her.
"I don't appreciate this, Reed," she said. "I go through all that trouble to get you evidence, to prove to you that I would never lie to you--which, by the way, I should never have had to do--and this is how you repay me?" She crossed her arms over her chest and stared me down. 'You're not going to go."
I pulled my hat down over my head, covering the tips of my ears. "Watch me."
Then I turned around and shoved the door open, blasting my way into the cold.
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THE QUESTION
I stepped into the silence of Mitchell Hall and paused. The only light came from the tiny spotlights set into the ceiling, illuminating each of the ghostly headmasters. The place might as well have been a mausoleum, and for the first time since I'd walked righteously out of Billings, I considered turning back.
"Reed."
His voice echoed down the hall. He was nowhere and everywhere.
"Josh?"
My heart beat in my throat. Why was he hiding? There was nothing but the sound of the blood rushing in my ears. How could I have come here without telling a soul where I was going? What was I thinking?
Answer: I hadn't been thinking. I had been working on pure emotion, adrenaline, defiance. And now here I was. Alone.
"Josh, where are you?" I hated the fear in my voice, but it worked on Josh. He stepped into the hall at the far end, from the doorway to the art cemetery.
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"Hi," I said.
Josh didn't smile.
Go home now. Get out of here.
"What are we doing here, Reed?" he asked.
I have no idea.
"I... I needed to talk to you."
"Then come over here and talk to me," he said.
I hesitated. There were a good twenty yards separating us. His face was half in shadow.
"Why don't you want to come over here?"
Okay. Clearly this was a mistake.
"Is it because of what you found in my bag this afternoon?"
I felt like I had been shoved from all sides.
"How did you--"
"Lucas told me." Josh slowly walked toward me. His footsteps were silent. Lucas? Ah, the Dreck boy. He'd done me a real solid. "Guys do talk, you know."
No wonder he was acting so strange. He knew I had searched through his bag. He was pissed. As he came closer, his fingers clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched, causing my throat to knot.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I said, staring at his hands.
"Tell you what?" Josh asked with a scoff. "That I'm on five different mood regulators? That if I wasn't, I wouldn't even be the person you, well, that you know and like? Why would I tell you that? So that you could think I was some freak?"
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I stared at him. Who would he be without them? Did it matter?
"You do like me, don't you, Reed?" he asked. He was close enough that I could see his eyes now, and they were all hope.
"You know I do."
"So then what?" He reached for my hand. I flinched, and he looked like I'd just driven a dagger into his back. I felt guilty and sorry and sad all at once. "What's going on?" he asked.
Here it was. The moment of truth.
"Why are you at Easton, Josh?" I said quietly.
His face completely morphed. Everything went slack and his eyes swam. For a long, long moment he just stared at me like I'd betrayed him somehow. Finally, he turned away from me, shrouding himself in darkness.
"How did you find out?"
I took a breath. It hurt my lungs. "It doesn't matter. I just need to know. What happened last year?"
His back to me, Josh pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He let out a sort of low, strangled groan. It was insanely loud in the still hall. I flinched but didn't move.
"My roommate died, okay?" he said, turning his face slightly so that I could see his profile. "He killed himself and I found him and it sucked and I lost it."
"You lost it," I repeated.
"Yes!" he shouted.
I jumped. He whirled around and approached me. "Of course I lost it. Wouldn't you? You live with a guy for a year and a half and
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you think you know him. You think that if he was really depressed or something he would tell you. But no! No. He's walking around like he's king of the world
and his shit's all in a row and you're going to Vail over Christmas with your families and everything's freaking fine, and then one day you come back from biology and he's there and he's dead and there's all this drool and blood from where he cracked his head when he fell and his eyes are all wide and you're the one who gets to find him!"
With one, swift step, Josh was right in my face. His eyes were wild. Wild and not the slightest bit familiar. I didn't move. My heart sent tiny little knives into my chest.
"But you don't believe that, do you?" he said, screwing his face up in indignation. He took a step forward and now I edged away. 'You think I don't know what you're thinking? You think I don't know why we're here?"
With each word his voice grew louder, more strained. He kept coming. And now I was scared enough to contemplate running, but somehow he had positioned himself between me and the door.
"Josh . . . calm down."
I wanted him back. Wanted the Josh I knew. Not this crazy, spitting force of nature.
"Why should I calm down?" he blurted, placing one hand at the back of his head and flinging it away again. "I'm not an idiot, Reed."
"So what am I thinking?" I asked. I was stalling for time.
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Trying to figure out how I could get past him. Wondering if he'd try to stop me.
'You're thinking, Oh! Here's this guy on all these psycho drugs with two dead roommates in two years, both of whom may or may not have been murdered. You're thinking I'm a killer!"
He barked the last word and it startled me enough that I tripped backward. Josh stood up straight and looked at me, his face turning to stone.
'You're afraid of me. Of me. God, how did this happen?" Josh covered his eyes again and took a deep, shaking breath. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I yelled at you." His voice was suddenly pleading. "It's just been so much and I thought... I thought you trusted me. I wanted to tell you about last year. I was going to, that day in Boston. I knew Lynn would bring it up, and I figured it would be the perfect time to tell you everything, but then you weren't there and .. . and when you called me I was so scared you didn't trust me anymore and I. . . was right."
I took a deep breath and the tension inside me deflated ever so slightly. The violent outburst portion of tonight's program seemed to have passed.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
Josh dropped his arms. "What?"