“I'm gonna let you two catch up,” I said, in­ter­rupt­ing be­fore I got stuck. Be­hind Con­stance, I saw Noelle and some oth­er girls from the soc­cer team fi­nal­ly board­ing a bus. “Looks like they've got us sort­ed out.”

Whit­tak­er's brow knit­ted as he looked at me. “But I--”

“See ya!” I said, then turned and jogged off.

I climbed on­to the bus, sat down in the first seat, and hun­kered down to peek through the bot­tom of the win­dow. Whit­tak­er was still talk­ing, ges­tur­ing huge­ly as he spoke, and Con­stance was rapt with at­ten­tion. Stand­ing out there in the sun, her in her Eas­ton sweats and him in his trench, they looked like the per­fect fresh-?faced, over­priv­ileged, prep school cou­ple.

All I could hope was that very soon Whit­tak­er would start see­ing that too.

124

TRUNK SHOW

Noelle Lange had sick amounts of stuff. Hun­dred of CDs stuffed in­to leather crates in her clos­et. A half-?dozen silk box­es filled with tan­gled neck­laces, bracelets, and ear­rings, most of which looked far too ex­pen­sive to be treat­ed with such care­less­ness. Draw­ers full of pho­tographs and post­cards and in­vi­ta­tions to char­ity events and fash­ion shows. Tick­et stubs from Lon­don the­aters, shot glass­es from ex­ot­ic lo­cales, three iPods of var­ious sizes and col­ors, crys­tal-?stud­ded make­up cas­es, leather wristlets, gold and leather key chains, scent­ed can­dles, dig­ital cam­eras, lace thongs, man­icure kits, cell phone cas­es. It nev­er end­ed. How I would ev­er sort out some­thing that mat­tered from all this swag that clear­ly didn't, I had no idea.

I stood up af­ter clos­ing her bot­tom desk draw­er and blew my hair out of my face. I was al­most afraid to try un­der the bed. What did she keep un­der there? Her il­le­gal furs and bars of gold and sil­ver?

At least I had time on my side. Noelle and Ar­iana were sup­posed to be at the li­brary all night study­ing for some mas­sive

125

En­glish ex­am. Or, more like­ly, gos­sip­ing all night and trust­ing that their gold­en streak of luck and blessed­ness would, as al­ways, get them through.

That gold­en streak was the rea­son I was here. All I want­ed in life was to have their kind of luck. Too bad I was go­ing to have to take them down to get it. But I couldn't think about that now. I had work to do.

Down on my hands and knees, I was about to lift Noelle's duponi com­forter when I saw some­thing out of the cor­ner of my eye. On the floor, stick­ing out from be­hind her dress­er, was a sliv­er of some­thing red. Cu­ri­ous, I crawled over and in­spect­ed. It looked like the end of a patent leather bag. Sud­den­ly my pulse went in­to over­drive. This looked like it could be some­thing.

Brac­ing one hand on the front of the dress­er, I reached around and yanked the bag free. It was long and slim, a plain red clutch. I leaned back against the foot of her bed and slow­ly un­zipped it. In­side were about ten four-?by-?six pho­tographs.

I pulled the first one out and al­most gagged. It was Dash, and he was naked. Com­plete­ly stark naked. And very... well... ex­cit­ed.

Bark­ing a laugh, I slapped the pho­to face­down in­to my lap.

Oh. My. God. Was this for re­al? Slow­ly, I lift­ed the cor­ner of the pho­to again and peeked. Yep. Still there. He was ly­ing on his side on a dou­ble bed, his head propped up on his hand, his hair­less chest cut as could be, and his pe­nis com­plete­ly erect.

Damn, was he ev­er en­dowed. This guy could to­tal­ly be in porn.

Quick­ly, I pulled out the rest of the pic­tures. Dash, naked,

126

sit­ting on the edge of the bed. Dash, naked, stand­ing with a smirk on his face. Dash, naked. Dash, naked. Dash, naked. And the piece de re­sis­tance: Dash, naked, hug­ging a ted­dy bear. Talk about black­mail. If I ev­er felt like tak­ing Dash Mc­Caf­fer­ty down, I had just found the moth­er­lode.

Shak­ing my head, I stuffed the pho­tos back in their case and shoved them be­hind the dress­er again, this time mak­ing sure no part of it was vis­ible. No one else need­ed to find that. It was my good deed for the day.

I blew out a sigh and de­cid­ed to try Ar­iana's side of the room. This time I went for the clos­et first and straight for the top shelf, since that was where I had un­cov­ered Ki­ran's big se­cret. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Ar­iana's shelves con­tained noth­ing scan­dalous, aside from a pink cro­cheted sweater that I had nev­er seen her wear and hope­ful­ly nev­er would. Def­inite­ly one of those gifts giv­en by a grand­ma that one just couldn't man­age to throw away. I jumped down off the desk chair and dropped to the floor.

Tucked back to­ward the rear wall was an old-?fash­ioned trunk. Huh. That def­inite­ly looked like some­thing that might hold some­thing scan­dalous. I pulled it to­ward me and opened the lid. In­side were piles and piles of note­books, copies of the Eas­ton lit­er­ary mag­azine, var­ious edi­tions of Po­et­ry mag­azine and Writ­er's Week­ly, and box­es of pens and pen­cils. I lift­ed out a stack of mag­azines and dug through the mem­ora­bil­ia, look­ing for any­thing that seemed as if it didn't be­long. There were ran­dom pages and scraps cov­ered

127

in Ar­iana's hand­writ­ing, drafts of po­ems and lines of ideas. If I'd had more time and a free pass from Ar­iana, I might have stopped to read some of it, but that wasn't what I was here for. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it looked as if I'd hit an­oth­er dead end.

I was about to re­place the mag­azines when I saw a tiny piece of brown rib­bon that seemed to be lodged be­tween the bot­tom of the trunk and the side. How had that got­ten wedged in there? I reached in and tugged at it and my breath caught in my throat. Had the bot­tom of the trunk just moved?

I glanced at the out­side of the trunk. Sure enough, the “floor” of the in­side was about four inch­es high­er than the bot­tom on the out­side.

The trunk had a false bot­tom.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net