Invitation Only (Private 2)

Ti­tles. That sound­ed like some­thing Ar­iana might do. I made a sur­rep­ti­tious note in the mar­gin of the Xe­rox­ed ar­ti­cle.

"You know, Reed, I read some­where that some huge per­cent­age of peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly write down their pass­word and keep it

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some­where close to their com­put­er,“ Tay­lor said. ”They jot it down on a spe­cial day in the cal­en­dar or some­thing. You know, just in case they ev­er for­get it."

“Re­al­ly?” I said, in­trigued.

“Yeah. I bet I could find the ar­ti­cle if you want me to,” Tay­lor said. “I save ev­ery­thing.”

Like I didn't know that al­ready. Of course, she had no way of know­ing how much time I had al­ready spent un­der her bed.

“Don't wor­ry about the pa­per too much,” Ki­ran said, re­turn­ing to her own work. “Mr. Kline has a very lax grad­ing sys­tem.”

“There's a the­ory go­ing around that he on­ly reads the first page of ev­ery­thing any­way,” Josh said.

“That's good news,” I said, feign­ing re­lief.

Ev­ery­one re­turned to their books and I re­al­ized that the con­ver­sa­tion was closed. There was no way to open it again with­out look­ing com­plete­ly ob­vi­ous. But at least they had giv­en me a few places to start. Now all I had to do was put these new the­ories to the test.

149

TRANS­PAREN­CIES

I should have been study­ing for my French quiz. I should have been tak­ing notes for my his­to­ry test. I should have been read­ing Be­owulf. I should have been ask­ing Ki­ran if I could raid her clos­et for an out­fit to wear out to din­ner with Whit. I should have been do­ing any one of these things. In­stead I was at Natasha's desk with the Eas­ton Acade­my web­site open on her com­put­er, bent over a note­book, brain­storm­ing po­ten­tial pass­words for Ar­iana's com­put­er.

Tak­ing a cue from Ki­ran, I had start­ed scour­ing old is­sues of the Eas­ton lit­er­ary mag­azine, the Quill, on­line. If Ar­iana's pass­word was in fact a ti­tle, then I fig­ured it might be the ti­tle of one of her very own po­ems. Un­for­tu­nate­ly she had pub­lished at least three and some­times as many as sev­en po­ems in each and ev­ery is­sue of the Quill, go­ing back to her fresh­man year. My list of po­em ti­tles al­ready filled an en­tire page.

I sighed and closed the win­dow con­tain­ing last year's fi­nal Quill is­sue and dou­ble clicked on the lat­est one--pub­lished on­ly last month. I knew that Ar­iana had at least five po­ems tucked

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in­side its pages. I opened the ta­ble-?of-?con­tents page and jot­ted down the ti­tles:

“Trans­paren­cy”

“End­less Fall”

“The Oth­er”

“Scare­crow”

“The Dark Age”

Ar­iana was a very light­heart­ed, care­free girl.

Sud­den­ly the door to my room opened, send­ing my heart in­to un­healthy spasms. It on­ly got worse when Ar­iana walked in, fol­lowed close­ly by Noelle and Tay­lor. I slapped my note­book closed and reached for the lap­top's screen, but re­al­ized it would look far too sus­pi­cious. Be­sides, they were al­ready be­hind me. Noelle placed a pa­per bag on the floor near the wall. I had a feel­ing I didn't want to know what was in it.

“Us­ing Natasha's com­put­er, huh?” Noelle said, lean­ing both hands on the back of the chair so that I tipped slight­ly back­ward. “Hope you asked or she might turn you in to the Gestapo.”

“Look­ing at the Quill, are we?” Ar­iana said, hov­er­ing be­hind me. “Get­ting ideas?” she asked, her eyes danc­ing.

My heart com­plete­ly stopped. For a sec­ond my life flashed be­fore my eyes. She knew what I was do­ing. She was ac­tu­al­ly psy­chic.

“Ideas? For what?” I choked out.

Ar­iana smiled slow­ly. 'Well, your writ­ing, of course. I know you're a big read­er. I al­ways won­dered if you might be a writ­er as well."