“Wow,” I said. “He's a hero.”

“He is, isn't he?” she asked, scrunch­ing her nose. “Any­way, I think he might ac­tu­al­ly be in­ter­est­ed in me. Walt Whit­tak­er. I can't be­lieve it. He even said we should have din­ner some­time. Just me and him. To catch up on old times!”

I took a deep breath and tast­ed re­lief. “Con­stance, that's so great. I'm re­al­ly glad it went so well.”

“Me too!” she said. Then she grabbed me in both arms and hugged me. Hard. Con­stance was bonier than she looked.

“Come on. Let's go study!” she said.

As she dragged me through the door and in­to the li­brary, I couldn't help feel­ing I'd fi­nal­ly dodged at least one bul­let. If Whit

132

and Con­stance start­ed spend­ing time to­geth­er, he would have to see that she was ten times more ap­pro­pri­ate for him than I was. And ten times more ea­ger to be with him. And then I wouldn't have to wor­ry about de­flect­ing his ad­vances or try­ing to re­mind him of our agree­ment to be just friends. One less thing to stress about.

I need­ed this. I need­ed it bad­ly.

133

* * *

When I ar­rived at the din­ner ta­ble that night, a heat­ed de­bate was tak­ing place. Dash was def­inite­ly on one side, Noelle on the oth­er. It was un­clear as of yet whom the oth­ers had aligned them­selves with. I blushed as I walked by Dash and sat down on his side of the ta­ble, as far from him as I could get, mak­ing it near­ly im­pos­si­ble for me to see him. Ev­er since my il­lic­it dis­cov­ery in Noelle's room, I'd had a hard time be­ing in the same room as Dash with­out con­stant­ly see­ing his nether re­gions in my mind's eye.

Two sec­onds lat­er, Josh sat down across from me. “Hey,” he said.

I smiled. “Hey.”

“I don't un­der­stand,” Dash was say­ing. “One phone call and we could have a limo wait­ing for us any­where in town. Do you want to be un­com­fort­able for two hours?”

“Dash, you're not get­ting it. This par­ty is all about tra­di­tion,” Noelle replied, ges­tur­ing with her fork. “And part of the tra­di­tion is tak­ing the train.”

134

They were talk­ing about the Lega­cy. They had to be. The Billings Girls had nev­er talked about it right in front of me so open­ly be­fore. Were they fi­nal­ly, fi­nal­ly go­ing to in­vite me?

“She's right, man,” Gage said, lean­ing back on two chair legs and bal­anc­ing. “The train ride is half the fun.”

'Yeah. It was re­al­ly fun when you boot­ed all over the win­dow last year on the way home and it dripped down the back of my coat,“ Dash said grumpi­ly. ”That was fun."

“Look. The Lega­cy has been go­ing on for gen­er­ations,” Noelle said, tak­ing a bite of a ba­by car­rot. “Our fore­fa­thers took the train to the Lega­cy and we will take the train to the Lega­cy.”

“Since when do you give a crap about our fore­fa­thers?” Dash asked.

“Since when are you us­ing wax in your hair?” Noelle asked, eye­ing him dis­dain­ful­ly.

“Oh, that's rel­evant,” Dash replied.

God, this was tor­ture. Didn't they re­al­ize that no one had of­fi­cial­ly told me about this thing yet? Didn't they want me to come? Talk about Cin­derel­la. This was what she must have felt like when her an­noy­ing step­sis­ters kept talk­ing about the damn ball.

Okay. Clear­ly I was go­ing to have to make this op­por­tu­ni­ty for my­self. Some­times a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

“Um, I have a ques­tion,” I said, lean­ing for­ward.

Ev­ery­one turned to look at me. Noelle, Ki­ran, Tay­lor, Ar­iana, Gage, Josh, Dash, and Natasha. It was as if they had all for­got­ten that I ex­ist­ed and my speak­ing was, there­fore, a com­plete shock.

135

“What is the Lega­cy?”

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