Vanished (Private 12)

Piss off the headmaster? Steal something from Easton? What the hell did these tasks have to do with saving Noelle’s life? These kidnappers were insanely juvenile. I mean, didn’t they know they’d snatched one of the wealthiest teenagers in the country? Shouldn’t they have been, I don’t know, calling up Mr. Lange and demanding five million dollars in unmarked bills rather than leading me through a series of playground pranks?

Was I really going to let them do this to me?

No.

Surprised by a sudden surge of anger, I grabbed my phone, and hit reply. Standing up, I paced across my room as I texted back. My fingers were still trembling, but this time they were trembling with ire.

IF U WANT ME TO KEEP DOING THIS STUPID CRAP U NEED TO SEND ME PROOF THAT NOELLE IS ALIVE AND OK. NOW!!!!!

I hit send, held my breath, and waited. I paced to the door, pressed my forehead against the cool glass of my full-length mirror, and breathed, making a steam cloud just under my nose. I counted to ten before looking down at the phone. Nothing. I paced over to the slim window looking out over the quad, pressed my forehead against that freezing cold glass and breathed another cloud. Once more, I counted to ten. Still nothing. I was just about to turn around and pace back, when my laptop pinged, indicating I had an e-mail.

I walked back over to my desk, my heart pounding in my ears, and brought up Internet Explorer. The message was from someone apparently named x7hrp8q. There was no subject, but there was an attachment.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I reached for the mouse pad, and clicked open the attachment. It was a video. At first, static filled the screen, but then, there she was. Noelle. The video was grainy, but it was her. She was tied to a metal chair, her hands behind her back. The chair sat in the center of a gray-walled room, with no other furniture in sight, and there was a fresh gash across her cheek. I gasped out loud and stepped back, my hand over my mouth.

“Reed,” Noelle said to the camera, her eyes wide. She glanced over her shoulder and leaned closer. As close as she could with her arms straining behind her. Her hair stuck to the drying blood on her cheek and there was something wild about the look in her eyes. Something I’d never seen before. “Whatever they’re telling you to do, just do it!” she hissed. “Please!”

And then, with a buzz, the video went black.

“Omigod,” I whispered, sitting down on my bed and curling my knees up under my chin. “Omigod, omigod, omigod.”

I hadn’t even begun to contemplate what it might all mean when there was a sudden peal of laughter in the next room. My head popped up and I turned to look at the wall, as if I could see through to the other side.

That was Ivy. My friend. My confidant.

My best friend’s worst enemy. The ex of my current boyfriend.

Had my suspicions in Sweet Nothings been correct? Was there a reason Ivy had cracked up laughing two seconds after the video feed had gone blank?

Suddenly, my meager dinner revolted on me. Sweat bursting out along my hairline, I turned and sprinted through the door and into the bathroom. I just made it to the first stall before throwing up. When I was done, I flushed, sat back on the cold tile floor, and wiped my lips with a huge wad of toilet paper. I hung my head in my hands, heaving for breath, picturing Ivy alone in her room, laughing at me.

Was it possible, really possible, that I was being betrayed, played, and tortured by yet another “friend”?

When I really started to think about it, I realized that there are many, many ways to piss off a headmaster. From the mundane, like letting out a string of curses right in front of him, to the profane, like streaking across campus, to the blasphemous, like destroying some important historical Easton artifact. But I had a hunch that the cursing wouldn’t be big enough, that streaking might send me to the nurse with frostbite, and the destruction would be a tad redundant, seeing as I’d already been blamed (along with my friends) for the torching of Gwendolyn Hall.

So as Josh and I made our way from breakfast over to the chapel for morning services on Wednesday, I made my final decision. I would go with a fourth option: the ridiculous. I just hoped that in the next five minutes I could get up the guts to do it.

“I can’t believe they actually sent you a video of her,” Josh whispered, his hands in the pockets of his coat. His shoulder bumped mine every so often as we walked, keeping us close together without having to expose our already cold-chapped fingers to the elements. “You really couldn’t tell where she was?”

I shook my head, blinking as a sharp wind stung my eyes. Neither one of us had mentioned the incident with Sawyer, and I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t come up. That maybe Josh had thought about it and realized it was perfectly innocent and that his storming away had been an overreaction. I had to hope, because it wasn’t something I was capable of dealing with right now.

“The whole thing was about eight seconds long,” I replied. “And there was literally nothing in the background.”

Josh cursed under his breath. He sidestepped and ducked as Gage and a couple of the other guys went tearing by, tossing snow at one another. They weren’t even industrious enough to make snowballs. They were just grabbing up snow and flinging it.

“Who the hell is doing this?” Josh said through his teeth.

I swallowed hard, the lump that masqueraded as my heart these days felt dead and lifeless inside my chest.

“I have a feeling I know who it is,” I told him, glancing back over my shoulder. Ivy was walking at least twenty yards behind us, huddled together with Vienna, Tiffany, and Rose.

“You do? And you didn’t lead with that?” Josh asked, his eyebrows shooting up.

“Honestly, I just … don’t think you’re gonna like it,” I told him.

We came to the final bend in the path before reaching the front of the chapel. I tugged him toward a bench to get out of the way of the others, but didn’t sit, seeing as the surface was covered in ice and snow.

“Who is it?” he asked, ducking his head toward mine.