Invitation Only (Private 2) - Page 25

“Here! This col­or would look amaz­ing on you, Reed,” Tay­lor said, hold­ing up a silky red dress.

“Take the suede jack­et. Ev­ery girl needs a lit­tle suede,” Ar­iana said, hand­ing over a box.

“We'll make a fash­ion­ista out of you yet,” Ki­ran told me, of­fer­ing a cham­pagne flute.

“Wow. This is in­cred­ible, Ki­ran. Thanks,” I said.

“Well,” she said, step­ping in front of me and look­ing me in the eye. “What are friends for?”

My in­sides squeezed with guilt and I took a slug of the cham­pagne. Friends, huh? What would she think if she knew that a few min­utes ago I had been con­sid­er­ing paw­ing through her stuff? And Noelle's and Ar­iana's and Tay­lor's? Would she still call me a friend then? Not like­ly.

71

I shook my head and tried to clear the neg­ativ­ity. I hadn't done it. I hadn't be­trayed them. Not yet any­way. But for the first time, as I looked around at their ea­ger, hap­py faces, I sud­den­ly re­al­ized what I had to lose if I went through with Natasha's plan. It was this. If I went through with it, these girls would all be gone from this place, gone from my life.

I had this to lose.

72

PER­FECT GEN­TLE­MAN

All through­out my morn­ing class­es, I was in a daze. If my art teach­er had called on me dur­ing her lec­ture about French Im­pres­sion­ism, I prob­ably would have mut­tered an an­swer like, “The ra­tio of the height to the hy­potenuse.” I had no idea where I was.

To spy or not to spy? That was the ques­tion. And when that wasn't the ques­tion, there was al­ways that oth­er in­finites­imal is­sue: When were the po­lice go­ing to come get me? And when they did, was I or was I not go­ing to tell them about Thomas's note?

I had a few more press­ing things on my mind than whether or not Claude Mon­et could be con­sid­ered a rev­olu­tion­ary.

When I was fi­nal­ly re­leased from my fourth class of the day, I was the first one out the door. I prac­ti­cal­ly jogged down the hall­way, in des­per­ate need of oxy­gen. I had to clear my head. I had to go some­where and think. I had no idea what any of my teach­ers had said all morn­ing long. If I didn't fig­ure all this out soon, Natasha's black­mail would be a moot point. I would flunk out be­fore she could get me ex­pelled.

73

As I shoved open the door of the class­room build­ing and emerged in­to the sun, I took a nice deep breath of the crisp au­tumn air. This was what I need­ed. I would stroll at a leisure­ly pace across cam­pus to the cafe­te­ria. I would take a sec­ond to breathe and re­group. A few min­utes of alone time were just what the shrink or­dered.

“Hel­lo, Reed.”

Walt Whit­tak­er was lean­ing up against the stone pil­lar at the bot­tom of the stairs. In­stant­ly Natasha's nasty slide show re­played it­self in my brain. Lips, hands, tongues. Ugh. Ap­par­ent­ly he had fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed it was time to talk to me. The boy of­fi­cial­ly had my nom­ina­tion for the Worst Tim­ing Award.

“Hi,” I said, walk­ing right by him.

As al­ways, a few gos­sip­ing girls were watch­ing me and I was hop­ing he would be em­bar­rassed in front of them and take the hint. I phys­ical­ly shud­dered as I passed him. What should have been a quick­ly for­got­ten, de­tail-?fuzzy hookup had now turned in­to a messy en­counter that was per­ma­nent­ly burned in­to my brain.

“I was hop­ing we could talk.”

With his long legs, he had caught up to me in two sim­ple strides.

I took a deep breath and let it out au­di­bly. Okay. This was not his fault. He wasn't the one black­mail­ing me. As far as I knew he didn't even have a clue that those pic­tures ex­ist­ed. And it wasn't as if I could avoid the guy for­ev­er. Might as well get this over with, I thought. At least it would be one less thing to think about. I stepped off the cob­bled path and un­der the shade of a gold­en maple.

74

I tried not to cringe when I looked at him.

“How are you?” Whit­tak­er asked me, his brown eyes full of con­cern.

“Fine,” I told him. “You?”

“I'm well. Thank you for ask­ing. Lis­ten, about the oth­er night,” he be­gan, caus­ing my in­sides to squirm. “I want­ed to apol­ogize. I was a tad over my lim­it and I think you may have been as well.” He looked at me for con­fir­ma­tion.

“A tad.”

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