Un­der­state­ment of the mil­len­ni­um.

“Well, I think I may have tak­en ad­van­tage,” he said, look­ing down briefly at his loafers. “And for that I am tru­ly sor­ry.”

Wow. A guy ap­prox­imate­ly my own age who was ac­tu­al­ly a gen­tle­man. My shoul­der mus­cles un­coiled slight­ly. Clear­ly I had been right about Whit from the be­gin­ning, even though my orig­inal judg­ment had been made in the midst of an al­co­hol blitz. This was a gen­uine­ly nice guy. I couldn't take Natasha's evil­ness out on him.

“It's okay,” I said.

“No. It's not. I-”

“Re­al­ly, Whit­tak­er,” I said. “I was there too. I knew what I was do­ing.” At least I thought I knew. Un­til last night, when I found out what it ac­tu­al­ly looked like. “It's not all on you.”

Whit­tak­er smiled his thanks. “Still, you are a la­dy. You de­serve to be treat­ed like one.”

Oh, I am so not a la­dy.

“Thank you,” I said, try­ing to smile.

75

“So,” he said, then laughed. “Now that the awk­ward part is over, shall we agree to be . . . friends?”

Friends? Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“Sure,” I said.

“Good. Friends it is,” Whit­tak­er said. Then he caught my hand in his, lift­ed it, and kissed it light­ly.

Right. None of my oth­er friends did that, but okay.

“I have a meet­ing with the dean now, but I'll see you at din­ner?” he asked, rais­ing his eye­brows.

“See ya then,” I replied.

As he turned and strolled away, I won­dered if he was telling the truth about this friends thing, but I de­cid­ed not to dwell on it. I had too many oth­er things to dwell on. For now, I'd take the gen­tle­man at his word. And lat

­er, if need be, I'd hold him to it.

76

SKELE­TONS

The more peo­ple the po­lice in­ter­viewed, the more the Eas­ton Acade­my ru­mor mill took on a life of its own. If Leanne's ex­pul­sion had been an eight, then Thomas's dis­ap­pear­ance was a ten- plus. Ev­ery­where I went, ev­ery­one was ask­ing ev­ery­one else what they knew, what they'd heard--and yet, no one seemed to know any­thing. It was all very frus­trat­ing. The longer we all went with­out a clue, the more pan­icked the vibe be­came, un­til I felt as if the ki­net­ic en­er­gy of the stu­dent body might ac­tu­al­ly cause a nu­cle­ar melt­down.

“So, have you heard any­thing?” Con­stance asked me, slid­ing in­to the seat next to mine in trig class, our last of the day.

“No. You?” I asked.

“I heard they kept Dash Mc­Caf­fer­ty in there for over an hour,” Con­stance said breath­less­ly. “And ap­par­ent­ly Tay­lor Bell came out in tears.”

“What? No,” I said. “Why would Tay­lor be cry­ing?”

“Who knows?” Con­stance said. “Maybe she has a se­cret crush on Thomas or some­thing.”

77

Tay­lor? Not pos­si­ble. Or was it? I had nev­er seen her look twice at Thomas, and that was hard to keep from do­ing. More like­ly she had just got­ten over­wrought by the whole sit­ua­tion. Or some­one had just made this whole cry­ing thing up.

I re­mem­bered Noelle's the­ory and won­dered if Thomas re­al­ly was out there hav­ing a big laugh at the dra­ma he was caus­ing. Was that the re­al rea­son he hadn't told any­one where he was go­ing? I wished for the ten mil­lionth time that I could just see him, just ask him what the hell he was think­ing. But there was a way. If I could just find out more about this Lega­cy thing and score an in­vite, I might have a chance to fi­nal­ly, fi­nal­ly track him down.

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