“Go on,” she said.
“Where to start?” I said, looking at the ceiling and wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans.
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“The beginning always seems a good place,” Ariana said.
I laughed nervously. “Right. Okay, well. Remember that night out in the woods? At the end of parents' weekend? The night I met Whit?”
I swallowed hard.
“Yes,” Noelle said, holding a diamond chandelier earring up to her ear.
“Well, that night, Natasha apparently took some pictures of me. And Whit. Doing things,” I said.
That got their attention. Noelle finally turned away from the mirror and looked directly at me. I expected her to be shocked and appalled, but she simply smirked.
“What kind of things?” she said.
Oh, God. She was going to make me say it. Couldn't she see my skin was burning off over here? “Kissing, drinking. You know.”
“Okay,” Ariana said blankly.
“Well, she showed me the pictures and threatened to send them to the dean and have me kicked out of school unless . . . unless...”
They were going to kill me. They were going to tear my hair out and gouge my eyes and, worse, have me thrown out of Easton faster than you could say “nice try.”
“Unless ...,” Ariana prompted, waving a hand blithely in front of her.
“Unless I spied on you guys,” I blurted finally, closing my eyes. "Well, not spied exactly, but snooped. Through your stuff. While I was supposed to be cleaning. She thinks that you guys
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got Leanne Shore kicked out of school and she wanted me to find proof."
I waited for the explosion, but none came. When I was finally able to focus again, Ariana was still staring at me. Noelle was still smirking. Where was the shock? The indignation? They should have been furious at me. Or at the very least surprised and angry at Natasha for trying to use me. But they just stood there. I had no idea what the hell was going on.
“And did you?” Noelle asked.
“Snoop or find proof?” I asked.
“Either. Both,” Ariana said.
My head automatically bowed. “Yes. I did. I found something, but I haven't done anything with it. I swear.”
I wished they would say something. Anything. I wished they would yell and scream. They were silent as monks. And it was far more disturbing than any freak-?out could ever be.
“Well, anyway, here's what I found,” I said, whipping the disk out of my back pocket and holding it out. Neither one of them moved. Finally I had to step past Noelle and place the disk on her desk. Then I backed up to my spot and waited. And waited. This was torture of the most brutal kind. “So ... what're you going to do?”
Noelle sighed dramatically. She turned around and lifted another earring out of a box. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing? ” I said. Although I knew I had no right to, I was starting to get a little angry. Couldn't they see how difficult this was for me? Couldn't they see the future-?threatening
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predicament I was in? They could at least react in some way. “Aren't you mad?”
“Not especially,” Ariana replied, standing. She floated past me over to her side of the room and removed a pair of silver sandallike shoes from the floor of her closet.