Vanished

  Every once in a while, I found myself staring at the wall between my room and Ivy’s, my jaw clenched, my fingers curled into fists. I couldn’t stop thinking about the expression on her face as she watched me break up with Josh. At first I hadn’t been able to place what it was. I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain, my own regret, my own despair. But the more I thought about it, the more it looked like … satisfaction. Like pride over a job well-done. Like she’d been expecting it to happen, just waiting to revel in the end result.

  Josh had insisted Ivy couldn’t be behind this, but had anyone ever suspected that Ariana had killed Thomas? Hadn’t we all been sucked in by Sabine’s innocent act? If I was going on history here, it had to be Ivy. Somehow, the people that I thought were my best friends, always turned out to be my worst enemies.

  Part of me wanted to bang on the wall. Part of me wanted to just walk in there and shake her, demand to know where Noelle was. But I kept stopping myself. Because what if I was wrong? I didn’t think I’d be able to live with myself.

  By three o’clock in the morning I was pissed and pacing my tiny cell of a room. Why had I done all of this? Why had I made Upton fly to France? Why had I risked getting arrested in Sweet Nothings and humiliated myself in front the entire school and broken up with the love of my life? Why? For what purpose? Was it just some kind of game to these people? Were they out there somewhere just laughing at me?

  Was Ivy sitting in the next room right now, laughing at me?

  By five a.m. I was desperate, talking to the phone as if I could make it text me itself. “Come on, you stupid thing. Where is she? Tell me where Noelle is! Just effing tell me!”

  Shockingly, that didn’t work.

  So now, here I was, sitting in the library, my head heavy, my eyes even heavier, but my heart pounding as if I’d just sprinted a marathon. I had thought that getting out of my room would help. That it would distract me from my misery and despair, but I was wrong. Sitting at the end of a wide oak table, some history books open in front of me for show, I was just reminded of how low I had sunk. All around me, life went on. Study groups poured over notebooks and projects. Students tapped away at laptops. A couple of girls flipped through the latest gossip magazine, laughing over stars and their cellulite. Over in the corner, Marc and Kiki smooched in a study carrel, pretending no one could see them, all flush and gooey with the stink of new love.

  I just wanted to rip my heart out and throw it at them.

  Everything was just as it was supposed to be. This was the way Easton Academy had appeared to me in the catalog a year and a half ago. The glossy, autumn-hued catalog that had seduced me into applying, that had practically guaranteed a better life. I had envisioned a world where beautiful people strolled cobblestone paths, debating politics and laughing over the events of the day. I saw huddles of kids hanging out in the library, analyzing poetry, defending their theses, celebrating new discoveries. I had even conjured up images of me and some gorgeous, preppy boyfriend, walking hand in hand after winning our respective soccer games, chasing windblown leaves down the hill as we headed for dinner with our friends at the dining hall.

  And maybe I’d had a few of these spare moments since I’d been here, but they had been few and far between. And they had always ended in misery.

  Everyone around me was living in the Easton Academy from the catalog. They were living the dream. But me? I was living a nightmare. Over and over and over again. Full of death and near death and stalking and backstabbing and kidnapping and pain. I just wanted things to be normal. I just wanted all the drama to stop.

  I simply wanted my friend back, safe and sound.

  And still, my phone was silent on the table. It looked like the nightmare was never going to end.

  My hands shook as I held my hands under the steaming hot water in the Pemberly bathroom that night. The water in there had exactly two temperatures: arctic bitter and scalding hot. Tonight was definitely a night for scalding. The temperature outside had dipped well below freezing and the wind chill was in the single digits. Besides, cold water wasn’t exactly going to stop the trembling, which I was more than frantic to stop. It couldn’t be healthy for one’s entire body to be as frenetic as mine had been for the past twenty-four hours.

  I dipped my head forward and splashed my face with the hot water. As I stood up straight again, my phone, sitting on the small silver shelf in front of the mirror, beeped. I snatched it and it slipped right out of my wet hand, crashing to the floor.

  “Frak!” I said through my teeth.

  At that moment, Ivy walked into the room. She took one look at my dripping face, then grabbed the phone up off the floor and handed it to me.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I snatched the phone and took a step back. Was her appearance at that moment just a coincidence? Had she just sent a text about Noelle from the hallway then walked in here to gauge my reaction?

  I looked down at the screen. It was a text from Constance. My heart ricocheted off in a whole new direction. Constance was texting me again? It read:

  Sry bout U + Josh. Hope everythings ok. X C

  I pressed my lips together to keep a whole new wave of emotion at bay. Tossing the phone back on the shelf, I grabbed my towel and dried my face, taking an extra moment to breathe in the Tide-scented softness. When I lowered the towel again, Ivy was staring at me.

  “What?” I snapped.

  I turned to look at myself in the mirror. Water splotches dotted my Penn State sweatshirt and my skin was the color of pea soup. All of these things with Ivy … they couldn’t all be coincidences. They just couldn’t. Standing there with her breathing over my shoulder, my frustration mounted and mounted and mounted, like hot lava rising up inside of me. Any second, I was going to blow.

  “Nothing!” Ivy said, clearly offended. She dropped her basket of toiletries on the shelf and turned the water on over the sink next to mine. “Could you be any more on edge?”

  “Oh, please,” I blurted. “Don’t give me the innocent act.”

  Ivy glanced at me in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know what you’re doing, Ivy,” I said, shoving my toothbrush and toothpaste back into my own toiletry kit shakily. “And you’re not going to get away with it.”

  Ivy turned to look at me, her dark eyes wide. “What am I doing, Reed? Seriously. Tell me. Because if you’re going to suck me into one of your paranoid delusions, I think I have the right to know the details.”

  “I’m not paranoid!” I shouted, trembling from head to toe.

  “Is this about Josh?” Ivy said, turning off the water. “Because whatever happened between the two of you, I had nothing to do with it. Gage and I are back together, so you can just stop thinking everyone wants what you’ve got.”

  “Oh, really? Gage is your new boyfriend now? Not Tattoo Guy?” I demanded, my chest heaving.

  Ivy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you, spying on me now?”

  “Who needs to spy? You’re the one parading that freak show around campus all the time!”

  Ivy took a deep breath and jutted her bottom teeth out for a second, as if she was steeling herself. “Okay, first of all, KC is not a freak show. He’s one of my best friends from home and he’s been hanging around here because his dad is on a permanent bender and he needs me,” she snapped. “And secondly, where do you get off walking around here like the entire world revolves around you? Like you can say anything to anyone and then act like everything’s fine? Well, guess what, Reed? It’s not fine. You can’t just suddenly start treating me like shit and then expect me to be your friend again the next day.”

  My nostrils flared. “I haven’t been treating you like—”

  “Yes,” she said with a bitter laugh. “You have. Avoiding me? Shooting me looks? Refusing my lip gloss like I have herpes or something? And now this?” She whipped her toiletry kit down off the shelf, where it slammed against the sink with a loud clatter. “You didn’t even tell me you were thin
king about breaking up with Josh. You didn’t even talk to me about it, and I thought we were supposed to be best friends.”

  I blinked. For the first time since she’d walked through the door, I started doubting whether she even knew Noelle was really missing.

  “Ivy, you don’t under—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear it,” she said, lifting her free hand. “I’m done, Reed. Don’t talk to me again until you’ve had your inner bitch surgically removed.”

  Then she turned around and stormed out, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

  “Hey, Reed. How’s the extra-credit project going?”

  I blinked a few times, slowly pulling myself out of my deep, dark daze. Tiffany, Portia, and Rose all hovered around my marble-topped table in the solarium, toting steaming coffees and yummy-smelling scones. Slowly, I looked down at my laptop. There was nothing on the screen in front of me other than a lonely, blinking cursor.

  “Um, not good,” I said.

  Portia pulled out a chair and placed her plate down. “How NG are we talking? VNG or BNG?”

  My brow knit. Sometimes, talking to Portia was like trying to decode a secret spy message from the CIA.

  “Um, BNG?” I said. “That’s beyond not good, right?”

  “What can we do to help?” Tiffany asked, taking the chair across from Portia. Rose sat down across from me, her diminutive frame pretty much disappearing behind my laptop screen.

  “Oh, you guys don’t have to—”

  “It’s due tomorrow, isn’t it?” Rose asked, sitting up straight so I could at least see her blue eyes over the monitor.

  “Yeah,” I said miserably. Where had the last week gone? Oh yeah. It had flown by with me running around at the beck-and-call of some crazed lunatic who didn’t even feel the need to reward me for my efforts by telling me how to save my friend.

  “Then let us help,” Tiffany said. “History’s Portia’s best subject.”

  “Aside from finance,” Portia said, lifting her chin.

  “It’s true. Mr. Barber worships her,” Rose put in, taking a sip of her coffee. “Remember that presentation you did on the influence of first ladies on international policy? I thought he was going to drop down on one knee and propose to you right there.”

  “Okay, ew,” Portia said with a shudder.

  “Girl’s holding out for a bona fide prince, remember?” Tiffany said, her eyes sparkling as she lifted her coffee mug to her lips.

  “Preferably a western European one,” Portia confirmed. She shrugged out of her fur-lined jacket and rested her elbows on the table, her gold necklaces glinting in the light from overhead. “But Rose is right. I am the only person in the history of Easton Academy ever to earn an A-plus from the Barber.”

  I frowned, duly impressed.

  “Come on, Reed. No one could be expected to concentrate on extra credit at a time like this,” Tiffany said, referring to my breakup with Josh, of course, not to Noelle’s suspended fate. “Just tell us what you need and we’ll do it. Delegate.”

  “You’re sure?” I said, sitting up a bit straighter.

  “You need to learn how to accept a little help,” Portia said, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. “You don’t have to do everything yourself, FYI.”

  “And what else is the Billings Literary Society for?” Rose asked slyly, arching one eyebrow. “I mean, if not to support one another academically.”

  I felt a smile tug at my lips and the sensation was very odd, but very welcome. “Okay, I’m supposed to write an article as if I’m a reform journalist, covering the breakup of the Standard Oil Company,” I said. “So first … I need to find out what, exactly, the Standard Oil Company was. Also, it’d probably be good to know why it broke up.”

  “Wow. You really do need help,” Portia said. “I’m on research!”

  She pulled her own laptop out of her bag and moved her coffee and blueberry scone to the next table to make room for it.

  “I’ll pull up some of Ida Tarbell’s articles so you can get an idea of the writing style of the day,” Rose offered, producing her laptop as well.

  “Okay, we’re getting a little crowded here,” Tiffany said. She got up and moved all her stuff to the next table, then pulled out her sleek, silver MacBook. “I’ll do photo research.”

  “Photo research?” I asked.

  “Yeah. You need to set this up so it looks like an actual article,” Portia said, as if this was entirely obvious to the world. “Barber will love that.”

  “It’s too bad we’re not in with Constance anymore. She could typeset it at the newspaper office and make it look really authentic,” Rose said, screwing up her mouth.

  “I could always ask Marc,” I interjected, feeling an actual flicker of academic excitement. It was dim, but it was there. “Maybe he could even print it out on newspaper stock.”

  “If you can get him to remove his lips from Kiki’s for more than five seconds,” Portia replied, her fingers flying over her keyboard. “Those two are totally gunning for the PDA award.”

  I sat back in my chair as the three of them feverishly got to work. Suddenly my heart was full to overflowing. My friends were the best. Hands down, the best friends on earth.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked, feeling a tad guilty.

  “Here.” Tiffany handed me her plate, which was full of chocolate biscotti, never taking her eyes off her screen. “Eat chocolate, read up on the Standard Oil Company, and try to come up with a snazzy headline.”

  I laughed and placed the plate down on top of my keyboard. I could take a break for the amount of time it took to devour one biscotti, couldn’t I? I took a bite, the chocolate coating melting in my mouth. For a split second I started to feel better, like maybe I could actually pull this off, but then Mr. Hathaway had appeared as if from nowhere. He stood right behind Rose, holding a steaming to-go cup of coffee.

  “Ladies,” he said, his expression suspicious as his gaze slid from one computer to another. He’d already tried to bust the Billings Literary Society once, and he seemed to get tense whenever he saw more than two or three former Billings Girls hanging out together. After my outburst in chapel and Noelle’s continued absence, he was probably starting to suspect that he was somehow being snowed by a bunch of teenage girls. Which, let’s face it, he was. “What’re we working on?”

  “Extra credit,” Portia said, unfazed. She reached for her coffee and took a sip, crossing one leg over the other as she gazed up at the headmaster, all cool. “What’re you working on?”

  Tiffany hid a laugh behind her hand. The headmaster gave Portia a tight smile.

  “A cinnamon latte,” he replied, lifting his cup.

  “Nice choice,” Portia replied. “I like a man with a sweet tooth, Double H.”

  For the first time since I’d known him, Mr. Hathaway looked flummoxed. “Thank you, Miss Ahronian, for that entirely inappropriate comment,” he said, his face all red.

  “DMI,” she replied. Then she turned and got back to work.

  “Don’t mention it,” Rose translated helpfully.

  “Ah, well. It’s nice to see our students being so industrious,” Mr. Hathaway said, looking directly at me. “Remember, ladies, if you ever need any help with anything, my door is always open.”

  My heart skipped a beat as he held my gaze for a long moment. “Good night, ladies.”

  “Night!” my friends called after him as he strolled off.

  As soon as he was a safe distance away, they all cracked up over Portia’s brazen behavior.

  “I don’t think Double H has any royalty in his blood, P,” Tiffany said.

  “But my, is he hot,” Portia said, watching him go. “For a geriatric,” she added, earning another round of laughter.

  Meanwhile, my eyes followed Mr. Hathaway, my breath coming short and shallow as he wove his way around the crowded tables, stopping to talk to a group of students. It had been two days since I’d completed my fourth assignment for the kidnappers.
Two days and no word. Two days Noelle might have spent out there somewhere alone and scared, clinging to life by a thread.

  Maybe Josh had been right all along. Maybe I needed to tell someone what was going on. Especially now that I’d done my part and it had gotten me nowhere. So what if the kidnappers had warned me not to tell anyone? They’d also told me that if I completed four tasks for them, Noelle would be fine, and they hadn’t exactly come through there. And Headmaster Hathaway had said I could trust him.

  But could I? I hadn’t exactly proven to be the best judge of character in the past.

  He was at the door of the solarium and was about to walk out. My heart made the decision for me as I suddenly found myself jumping to my feet. My chair scraped against the marble floor as I shoved it behind me.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told my friends, ignoring their surprised looks.

  I caught up to the headmaster in the wide, carpeted hallway just outside the solarium. A group of sophomore girls milled around on the other side of the hall, texting and laughing as they checked out one another’s phones.

  “Headmaster!” I blurted.

  He turned around, his eyebrows raised, surprised to see me gasping for breath behind him.

  “Reed,” he said.

  I swallowed hard, just hoping … praying I was doing the right thing. “I was wondering … can I talk to you about something?” I glanced sidelong at the gigglers. “Somewhere … else?”

  The headmaster squared off with me, rounding his shoulders. “Sure. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, I just … wanted to take you up on your offer,” I said.