Ugh. Very not Thomas. I grabbed his face be­tween both my

18

hands to stop the mad­ness and he took it as a sign of en­thu­si­asm. Sud­den­ly his tongue was ev­ery­where, part­ing my lips and dart­ing be­tween my teeth.

This poor kid. He had no idea what he was do­ing. I want­ed to push him away, but I didn't want to em­bar­rass him. In­stead I let him go and hoped he would ei­ther sud­den­ly im­prove or get wind­ed and stop.

Then his large hand fell right on top of my breast and squeezed. Hard. Like he was juic­ing an or­ange.

Just like that, Thomas was back. Right there in front of me. With his sexy smile and his prac­ticed, gen­tle touch and his skin against mine. What the hell was I do­ing? Who was this per­son who was grop­ing me like I was some kind of CPR doll?

My stom­ach lurched. I held my breath. Oh, God. I was go­ing to throw up. I was go­ing to barf in Walt Whit­tak­er's mouth.

My hands flew up and I shoved him away from me. He was just let­ting out a con­fused mur­mur when I turned around, keeled over, and retched all over the bed of leaves be­hind the log. My eyes stung; my throat burned; my stom­ach wrenched in pain. Whit­tak­er stood up and moved away, turn­ing his back to me to give me pri­va­cy. Thank God. The last thing I want­ed was for the guy I had just kissed to watch me puke all over the place.

And then, fi­nal­ly, it was over.

“Are you all right?” Whit­tak­er asked me.

It was like his re­frain of the evening.

I nod­ded slow­ly, too mor­ti­fied to speak.

19

“Can I walk you back to Billings?” he asked.

I nod­ded again. Whit­tak­er held out his hands and helped me up. He wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the clear­ing and I leaned in to him, mushy as over­cooked pas­ta. Ev­ery­one stared at our ar­rival. I could on­ly imag­ine what I looked like. For a fleet­ing mo­ment my un­fo­cused gaze fell on Josh. He looked as grim as death.

“Aw! Look at you two, all cou­pley,” Noelle said with a know­ing smile.

I watched as Josh quick­ly looked away, swig­ging his beer.

“I'm go­ing to walk her back,” Whit­tak­er an­nounced, sound­ing proud.

“Nice,” Dash said un­der his breath.

“Take care of our girl,” Noelle said, pat­ting Whit on the back.

From some­where deep in­side of me, I sum­moned a trace of a smile. Even in my ex­traor­di­nary state of queasy shame, I felt the warmth of Noelle's ap­proval. And though I knew it was to­tal­ly spine­less to bask in it, I did. Noelle's ap­proval was al­ways a good thing.

20

CIN­DEREL­LA LIVES

The first thing I rec­og­nized was the dirty gut­ter taste in my dryas-?talc mouth. The sec­ond was the blind­ing pain in my skull. The third was the fact that I was freez­ing. The fourth was the bang­ing.

The bang­ing. The bang­ing. The in­ces­sant bang­ing.

“Wake up, new girl! It's af­ter six! You're nev­er go­ing to get any­where with this at­ti­tude!”

Each bang re­ver­ber­at­ed in my skull and shot a new stab of pain through my head.

I wrenched my eyes open, then blinked a cou­ple hun­dred times against their painful dry­ness. In front of me was the cream-?col­ored wall of my dorm. Be­low me was my mat­tress. Noth­ing else was right.

“That's right, sleepy­head. Va­ca­tion's over! Get your sor­ry ass out of bed!”

It was Noelle. Noelle was yelling over the bang­ing. I flipped over on­to my back, the pain in my head near­ly blind­ing, and looked up. I had to swal­low back a sud­den in­flux of bile in my throat. Not just Noelle: Ki­ran, Tay­lor, Ar­iana, Natasha, and four oth­er Billings Girls whose names I couldn't re­mem­ber in my

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