Invitation Only (Private 2)

Heart pound­ing a mile a minute now, I dove in and took ev­ery­thing out. I knew this was dan­ger­ous. There was a ton of crap here and it would take me a while to re­place it all. But I had to see what was in the bot­tom of this trunk. If Ar­iana was hid­ing some­thing, she had done a much bet­ter job of hid­ing it than her friends had.

Once the trunk was clear, I grabbed the rib­bon and pulled. The en­tire floor of the trunk pulled free. Sit­ting un­der­neath it was a sleek black lap­top com­put­er.

I turned and looked over my shoul­der. Ar­iana had a Mac all set up on her desk. What did a high school stu­dent need with a sec­ond, se­cret com­put­er?

I took the com­put­er out and rest­ed it in my lap. I popped the

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top and hit the pow­er but­ton, just pray­ing no one would walk

in. It took the com­put­er a few ag­oniz­ing sec­onds to pow­er up. What was on this thing? Was it the proof Natasha was look­ing for? Had Ar­iana and the oth­ers ac­tu­al­ly plot­ted to get Leanne thrown out of school? It was clear that Ar­iana, at least, had some­thing worth hid­ing. These were pret­ty elab­orate mea­sures for sim­ply stash­ing a lap­top to keep it from get­ting stolen. Es­pe­cial­ly when ev­ery­one at this school could buy one of these things four thou­sand times over.

“Come on,” I whis­pered. “Come on, come on. . . .”

Fi­nal­ly, a black screen ap­peared with a prompt win­dow in the cen­ter.

“Wel­come, Ar­iana,” it read. “Pass­word?”

And there was that white box un­der­neath with a flash­ing cur­sor, mock­ing me. There would be no get­ting past this with­out a pass­word.

Shit.

Down­stairs, the front door of Billings opened and slammed. I was on my feet in an in­stant, care­ful­ly re­plac­ing the com­put­er and the false bot­tom and all the con­tents of the trunk. I shoved it back in­to the clos­et, slipped out the door, and ran to the stair­well, jog­ging down to my own floor. It wasn't un­til I was back in my room that I al­lowed my­self to breathe. I leaned back against my door and heaved, my hand over my stom­ach.

I was on­to some­thing. I knew I was. I had to get the pass­word

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to that com­put­er, but how? I couldn't fig­ure out what Ar­iana meant half the time when she was speak­ing di­rect­ly to me, so how was I sup­posed to de­duce her se­cret pass­word?

Didn't mat­ter how. I had to do it. Be­cause if there was any­thing to be found, it was on that com­put­er. I was sure of it.

130

PER­FECT COU­PLE

“Reed! Reed! Wait up!”

I paused on the steps to the li­brary as Con­stance jogged to catch up with me. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright with ex­cite­ment. She placed her hand over her heart as she stopped in front of me to catch her breath. Just look­ing at her made me think of mead­ows in spring­time and flow­ers bloom­ing.

“Thank you so much for mak­ing me talk to Whit­tak­er the oth­er day,” she gushed. “I nev­er would have gone up to him on my own, but he was so sweet. We talked for so long Mr. Shree­ber was scream­ing at me to get on the bus. I made us late for the meet!”

“Wow. Glad I could be of ser­vice,” I said.

“He told me all about his trip to East Asia and asked me about the Cape,” Con­stance said. “He re­mem­bered that my fam­ily goes to the Cape ev­ery sum­mer. Not that he shouldn't. I mean, his fam­ily has vis­it­ed us there a few times. But still, it was nice of him to ask, wasn't it?”

“Sure,” I said, grin­ning as well. It was near­ly im­pos­si­ble not to in the face of that much gid­di­ness.

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“Do you think he was flirt­ing?” she asked me, grab­bing my fore­arm, which was wrapped around my books.

“Of course he wasn't flirt­ing. Why would he flirt with me?” Con­stance said, pulling me aside to let a few stu­dents through to the door. “He's known me since my El­mo ob­ses­sion,” she said, look­ing at the ground.

'Your El­mo ob­ses­sion?"

“Oh, I was ob­sessed with El­mo--you know, from Sesame Street?-- for way too long. I car­ried that stupid doll around with me un­til I was, like, nine years old,” Con­stance said. “My old­er broth­er Trey threw it in the ocean one year and Whit dove in to save it.” She sighed. For the first time in my life, I saw first­hand what the ex­pres­sion “stars in her eyes” looked like. Kind of spooky. “I'll nev­er for­get that.”