"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.