The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (31 page)

After Kiran’s surprising gesture, I realized there was no way I could spy on her and the other girls. No way in hell. These were my friends we were talking about here. Natasha had to understand that. She just had to.

After another round of chores, I trudged back to my room, determined to put an end to the insanity. I paused in front of my dorm-room door and took a deep breath. I could hear Natasha moving around inside. This was it. I was just going to have to tell her to forget it. I’d just have to appeal to her conscience. She had to have one in there somewhere, or she wouldn’t care so much about Leanne—about bringing wrongdoers to justice. I had to make her see that what she was doing to me was just as wrong as what she thought Noelle and her friends had done to Leanne.

It had to work.

“You have to open the door in order to go through it, new girl,” Cheyenne said, startling me as she came around the corner. “Unless you’ve got some superpowers you haven’t made us all aware of.”

I shot her a scathing look and walked into my room. Natasha’s
bed was covered with desk supplies, pens in one pile, Post-its in another, paper clips in another. She stood up, pulling various pads and notebooks out of the bottom desk drawer and tossing them near her pillows. Apparently she was reorganizing.

“Good. You’re here,” she said. “What’s the status report?”

“Status report?”

“On our little project,” Natasha said impatiently. “Or did our earlier conversation not get through to you? Because I can show you the slide show again right now if you need a refresher.” She started for her laptop, which was also on the bed.

Okay. So much for her conscience.

“No. That’s not necessary,” I said grumpily.

I hefted my book bag over my head and tossed it on my own unmade bed. The socks I’d worn to bed last night lay crumpled and dirty on the floor, and soda cans littered my desk. One thing the fairy tale never talked about was Cinderella having the messiest room in the house.

“So? I know you’ve been cleaning ever since dinner,” Natasha said, crossing her arms over her Easton sweatshirt. “Anything?”

This was not going to be pretty. “No.”

Her eyes widened like a doll’s. “Nothing? Reed, I’m starting to think you’re not one hundred percent invested in this project.”

“Natasha, these are my friends,” I said, feeling desperate. “I don’t want to do this.”

Natasha blinked. For a second I thought I had thrown her. “Well . . . you
have
to,” she said, sounding like a petulant five-year-old.

Well. If that was her strongest argument I was home free.

“Isn’t there some other way for you to deal with this?” I asked.

Natasha stepped to the center of the room and looked me in the eye. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not like I can go up to them and
ask
them to confess. I say one word and they’re going to take whatever loose ends they might still have out there and tie them right up. They’re impenetrable unless we can take them by surprise. About the only weakness they have is their overconfidence. They would never even
think
that you would go behind their backs, which is why you’re the perfect weapon.”

I stared at Natasha. She had really thought this through. Very thorough. And also very psychotic.

“No. If I’m going to confront them, I need proof,” Natasha said. “And I can’t get proof without you.”

“Natasha—”

“Do I need to remind you of where you’ll end up if you get kicked out of here?” she asked.

Everything inside of me stopped. “What do you mean?”

“I looked up your hometown on the Internet,” she said. “Very quaint. It has its own chamber of commerce and everything. Were you guys just
so
psyched when they opened the new Blimpie last year?”

My fingers automatically curled into fists.

“Apparently you have a community college there too,” Natasha said. “I bet people really go places with
that
degree.”

“You are seriously deranged,” I said through my teeth.

“Wrong again,” Natasha said. “I’m the sane one around here. It’s Noelle and her satellites who are deranged. Maybe if you did what I told you to do, you’d start figuring that out.” She turned and went back to her bed, flipping open her laptop. “Or, I could just send this little e-mail. . . .”

“No!” I blurted. Natasha paused, her fingers hovering over the keys. “Don’t,” I said, resigned. “Fine. I’ll do it. But I don’t think I’m going to find anything.”

Natasha closed her laptop with a click. “Sure you don’t, honey,” she said condescendingly. “Sure you don’t.”

The next morning I got up before the sun had even sent a wisp of light over the hills that surrounded Easton. It wasn’t as if lying there wide awake, as I had all night, was doing me any good. All I had done was stare at the wall and imagine myself getting caught by Noelle, Ariana, Kiran, and Taylor in a million different ways. I pictured what they would do, how they would react. In one version Noelle took out a bat and whacked me across the head, showering her bestest friends with blood and brains. But I think I had been drifting off when that one occurred, so it was a half-dream. Whatever the case, it had kept me awake for the next three hours.

So I got up, made my own bed, straightened my stuff, and took a shower. Natasha tossed and turned and huffed whenever I made a noise above a whisper, but she said nothing. Good thing. I was, after all, doing this all for her.

And for myself. And my future.

Soon everyone started to stir and I was able to vacuum. Some girls said good morning to me on their way downstairs; others
didn’t bother. I didn’t care much. All I could think about was what I was about to do.

I was hovering in the shadows at the end of the hallway when Kiran and Taylor walked out together, debating whether travel within the contiguous United States was even worth the time it took to pack a bag. (Taylor was pro, Kiran was con.) Shaking like I was about to meet my executioner, I waited until they rounded the corner, then sprang forward and slipped into their room. The second I was inside, I realized there was no need for the cloak-and-dagger act. I was supposed to be here. There were the unmade beds, the piles of laundry, the musty bathroom. I could have walked in here while they were still getting dressed and it would have been fine. Expected, even. Way to stress myself out.

Relaxing ever so slightly, I got to work on the beds. I’d do the chores first and get them over with, then snoop around a little. That way if I had to leave suddenly, my work would be done when I bailed. After making sure everything was in order, I stood in the center of the room and looked around. Where to begin?

My eyes fell on Kiran’s closet. Might as well start with my favorite place in the room. I walked over and placed my hands on the two knobs that worked the sliding doors. I listened for noises. Someone was showering in another room, but that was all I could hear. I steeled myself—I was doing this for a reason, I was doing this because I had to—and threw the doors open.

Right. Don’t get distracted by the thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes. You want to get this over with.

Shoe boxes lined the floor, stacked three boxes high and at least twelve across. I dropped to my knees and opened the first box. Black stilettos. The one under it, suede camel sling backs. The one under that, red kitten-heeled sandals. God, a girl could go crazy in here.

Focus. Your future or trying on a pair of shoes?

I opted for a future. One by one I went through all the boxes and found nothing but shoes, shoes, and more shoes. Then on the far end, the purses began. I worked my way up through shelves of clutches and hobos and shoppers and minis to the shelves of sweaters above the hanging rod. Already I was sweating. This could take forever.

I dragged Taylor’s desk chair over and stood up on it, moving the first stack of sweaters aside carefully so that they would appear untouched. My eyes fell on something out of place. It was a huge, black-and-white
NO!

Well. That was incriminating enough. Tenderly I took down two stacks of sweaters and laid them reverently on Kiran’s bed. I stepped back up on the chair to have a better look. There, shoved into the farthest, darkest corner of Kiran’s closet, was a brown box with a small padlock and magazine clippings pasted all over it. Like something out of a serial killer’s house.

NO!

STAY AWAY

DON’T TOUCH

Itching with curiosity, I reached for the box and pulled it toward me. It was heavy and made of wood. Among the words and
hastily assembled letters were clippings of pictures of farm animals. Pigs and cows, mostly. What the hell
was
this thing?

I reached for the lock, expecting it to be, of course, locked, but it fell right open. My heart skipped a beat. I removed the lock and slowly opened the box. The first thing I noticed was the picture of some poor woman’s humongous, cellulite-ridden ass in a flowered bathing suit taped up inside the box top. The second was the smell of icing.

Oh. My. God.

The box was full of snacks. Hostess cupcakes, Twinkies, Oreos, Ding Dongs, Nutter Butters, brownies, coffee cakes, SnoBalls, Milanos. It was sick. If she was so worried about eating it, why go to all the trouble of creating a box to keep it in—a box designed to keep her away? Was it some kind of torture?

I noticed a small, spiral-bound notebook propped flat against the side of the box and moved some Devil Dogs aside to pull it out. Inside was an entry marked September 9. Beneath it was a list of every single thing Kiran had eaten that day and the calorie content of that item. At the bottom was written “Twenty Oreos,” and next to it, in a psychotic scrawl, the words “No, No, No!”

I covered my mouth with my hand. This poor girl. This poor,
poor
girl. Talk about an eating disorder; this was more like an infectious disease. Kiran was seriously struggling.

I turned the page in the notebook. The following day there was no sugar intake and a smiling face was drawn at the bottom. But every day after that there were more snacks and more crazy admonishments.

Turned out Kiran was not as flawless as she would have the world believe. From her cool demeanor and the casual way she chose her food at meals, I never would have known. As badly as I felt for her, I can’t say it wasn’t good to know. Comforting, in a way, to know someone that perfect didn’t actually exist. But, of course, this had nothing to do with Leanne.

Reluctantly, I shoved the food diary back where I’d found it and replaced all Kiran’s things. The closet search had turned up nothing to help Natasha’s case.

Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

I had a few more minutes, so I decided to check under Taylor’s bed. I yanked out a few under-the-bed boxes full of notebooks and texts. When I pulled one of them out, a sheaf of printer paper exploded all over the room, white sheets flying everywhere.

“Oh, crap,” I said under my breath, gathering them up. They must have been piled loosely atop one of the boxes. There was no way I was ever going to get them back in the right order.

Please let them be numbered. Please, please, please
.

But as I stacked the pages back up, I realized it didn’t matter if they were numbered. Each and every page was filled with exactly the same thing—the same phrase typed over and over and over again:

I am good enough. I am good enough. I am good enough. I am good enough.

I snorted a surprised laugh. I couldn’t help it. But then I instantly felt guilty. Taylor was losing it, clearly. Of course, I supposed all geniuses were a little off. But this was ridiculous.
Fifty pages, at least, of
this
? She was the smartest girl ever to walk the halls of Easton. I couldn’t believe she needed all this affirmation. When did she have time to sit down and
do
this?

Hidden snack cakes and obsessive affirmations. No wonder these two were roommates. Did each know what the other was hiding? Maybe if they did they could help each other.

“Taylor! Hurry up!” someone shouted from downstairs.

There were footsteps on the stairs.

“I just have to get my planner!” Taylor called back. She was right down the hall.

Shaking violently, I shoved the papers back on top of the box and pushed it under the bed. Then the second, then the third. The third got caught on the leg of the bed and I was just jimmying it back into place when the door flew open. I stood up, straightened my sweater and looked right into Taylor’s surprised eyes.

“Reed! God! You scared me,” she said, then glanced at her bed.

“Sorry. I was just finishing up in here,” I said.

“Oh. Okay,” she said, stepping uncertainly toward me. It was almost as if she knew what I had found. She grabbed her PDA off the nightstand and smiled. “Come on. Let’s . . . go to breakfast.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me just grab my book bag.”

“Oh, hey. Reed?” she said, pausing as she stepped into the hall. She fumbled with her bag and pulled out a neatly typed paper in a light blue cover. “You’re good with the classic writers, right?”

I closed the door behind me. “Yeah.”

“Well, I was wondering if you could read this paper over for me,” she said, handing it to me. “I know I’m a year ahead and
everything, but it needs another eye before I hand it in. I just want to be sure it’s . . . you know . . . good enough.”

Good enough. Good enough, good enough, good enough.

Oh, my God.

“I’m sure it’s great,” I told her firmly. “Everyone’s always saying you’re the smartest person ever to even go here.”

“That’s what
they
think.” Taylor managed a wan smile. “Still, I could use your help.”

“Oh. Definitely. I’ll read it today,” I said, backing away.

“Where’re you going?” she asked.

“To my room. To get my bag, remember?” I said.

“Oh. Right. Okay. See you downstairs!” Taylor said brightly. “And Reed? Thanks.”