heart all but stopped. Her lips were practically touching my ear. She meant business. "This is for your own good."
Someone jammed socks and shoes onto my feet. I tried to suck in some air.
"Now get up."
Two sets of hands yanked me up and turned me around. Someone shoved me from behind and I tripped forward. I had no control and I was terrified. As if at any second I might trip over the stairs or slam into something. As if the whole world might turn upside down. The girls had fallen silent, but I could feel them close in around me. Somehow, that made my heart pound even harder.
As we walked out of my dorm room, I twisted my head from side to side, trying to make the blindfold ride up. Give me a little something, anything, so that when we got out of the dorm I could keep an eye on where we were going. Where were they taking me? Had I, by snapping at Noelle yesterday, broken some cardinal Billings House rule? Even before I got into Billings and Noelle and the others were messing with me every other day, they had never done anything like this. A hundred gory hazing stories gone bad from a hundred evening news broadcasts fizzled through my brain. My temples started to throb.
They wouldn't actually hurt me, would they?
For a split second I thought I could see light out of the corner of my eye. But then my coat was thrown over my shoulders and the hood was lifted around my face and everything was dark.
From that moment on, I was at the mercy of the Billings Girls.
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The cold air on my face gave me hope. From what I could tell, we were walking right across the wide-open quad. Someone had to see us. Put a stop to this thing. What time was it? Where were Detective Hauer and his morning stroll when I needed them?
Not that I wanted to get my friends arrested. At least,part of me didn't. The other part really wanted to avoid getting my head shaved or being left in the middle of the woods somewhere to find my way home in my pajamas.
"This way. Around here," Noelle whispered.
I was pushed to the right and stumbled slightly, bumping into someone's side. Someone shorter than me and kind of soft. Taylor? Natasha? If they were both still there maybe this would be fine. Natasha was a semi-decent person, and Taylor was too skittish to do anything really awful.
I hoped.
Suddenly I was hit with a strong gust of wind and my hood flew off. Light flooded the blindfold and my heart leapt. But I
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still couldn't see anything. The swirling paisley pattern of blues and greens was just that much brighter. A car engine hummed nearby and I could smell that acrid scent that warming-up engines give off.
A painful knot tied in my stomach. They were taking me off campus.
"You guys, come on," I said, sounding fairly desperate. "What are you--"
"Just get in," Noelle said.
A shove at the small of my back tipped me forward. My hands flew out and touched the side of the car. There was frost on the window. My fingers trembled.
"Get her head," Noelle instructed.
A strong hand pushed my head down and I crawled inside. Vanilla air-freshener choked me. I fell into a seat and immediately reached for the blindfold. Someone sat down beside me, and her hands made it there before mine. My hair was yanked once again as the blindfold was torn free. Tears stung my eyes.
"Surprise!"
There was a pop and a screech and a splatter on my foot. I blinked a dozen times and tried to focus. When I did, I saw that Taylor, Natasha, and Kiran were sitting across from me in the back of a gray limousine, all dressed and fresh-faced and smiling. Natasha handed out champagne glasses while Kiran held a spouting bottle away from her six-hundred-dollar heels.
"What the hell?"
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"Reed Brennan, this is your day," Ariana said, reaching for my hand.
Her fingers were cold as ice, but somehow I found them comforting. Perhaps because they were kindly holding mine instead of forcing me to eat cow dung or something. On my other side, Noelle reached out and took three glasses from Taylor. She handed one to me, then grabbed the still-foaming champagne bottle.