Revelation (Private 8)

other," she said lightly. "Even when it means deciding between two sisters and turning our backs

on the one in the wrong."

My heart felt sick. Sick and black and sour. How many times had she told me this in the past? That

she would always take care of me, always watch out for me, because that was what Billings was all

about.

17

But now I no longer had a right to that privilege. Now she was taking that all away.

"One hour," Noelle said, tapping her gold watch once. Her tone was so final it weakened my

knees. "The clock's ticking."

Then she turned her back on me and was gone.

18

PUSH BACK

Packing. I was packing up my room. I was no longer welcome in Billings, the only place I had ever

really wanted to live. As I shakily removed my clothes from the dresser and placed them in my

larger suitcase, I realized my heart had never felt this heavy. It might as well have been made out

of lead."We tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn't hear of it," Astrid said in her thick British

accent. She was slowly, reluctantly, folding up my bedding and stashing it in a large green garbage

bag someone had fished out of a supply closet. This was how low I had sunk. Garbage bags as

luggage. "It's a bunch of bollocks if you ask me. Everyone trips up now and again, right? We're only

human."

"I think a lot of the girls wanted to vote for you to stay, but everyone's afraid of Noelle," Constance

added. Hovering by the closet, she tugged on a lock of her red hair over and over and over again,

eyeing me nervously like I might be on the verge of a breakdown. At least

19

Constance was speaking to me again. After the fund-raiser she hadn't even been able to look at

me, unable to believe I had backstabbed Noelle. Apparently the thought of me getting booted for

it, however, had seemed unfair punishment to her. Neither she nor Sabine had done anything to

speed along the process of moving me out. Clearly they were still having as hard a time with this

as I was.

"Is there anything we can do?" Sabine asked, sitting on the end of her bed, her green eyes probing