perative." Sabine laughed and my heart felt a lot lighter. "Are you sure Noelle won't mind?" she asked. I paused and looked over my
shoulder at her with a mischievous grin. "It doesn't really matter, does it?" I said. "It's not up to her."
* * *
Somehow, getting up the next morning was harder than it had been all week. It was like I suddenly realized that the nightmare of
being without Josh was not going to end. That I was actually going to have to do this brave-face thing every day. The thought was ex-
hausting. But tonight was my study date with Jason. The first date of the rest of my life. I had to get up. Get psyched. Act like the girl
who was super-fine with moving on. So I stripped off my covers and swung my legs out of bed, forcing myself to smile, even though
Sabine was in the shower and there was no one there to see me. I could do this. I could be fun, confident Reed. I had to be.
Then I heard a loud spattering sound and glanced at the window behind my bed. It was gray outside and raindrops battered the
pane. Wind whistled past, as if to hammer home the message that stepping outside today would be frigid, wet, and decidedly unfun. I
groaned, shoved my feet into my slippers to protect myself from the always freezing wood floors, and trudged over to my closet. For-
get the Single Reed power uniform. This was a jeans-and-sweatshirt day if I had ever seen one. I yanked open the door and reached up
to the left side of the first shelf for the cozy Penn State sweatshirt my brother had given me last Christmas. As my hand fell on the em-
broidered white letters, I froze. Hanging at the far end of my closet, perfectly spaced on unfamiliar wooden hangers, were three items
of petal pink clothing. A cardigan. An oxford. A short-sleeved silk blouse. Three items of pink clothing. Not one of them mine.
Shaking, I withdrew my hand and took a step back, as if the clothes were going to jump off their hangers and attack. Pink? I owned
nothing pink. But I knew those clothes. Would have known them anywhere. They were Cheyenne's. Some of her favorites. My hand
shot forward and slid the closet door shut with a bang. My heartbeat pounded in my chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
What were Cheyenne's clothes doing in my closet? How the hell had they gotten there? Okay, Reed, think. Take a deep breath and
think. Maybe they're not Cheyenne's. Maybe they're Sabine's. She likes colorful clothing. Maybe she hung them up in your closet by
mistake. Feeling slightly comforted by this theory, I breathed in again and opened the closet door. I tentatively reached for the sweater
and held it out at arm's length. Little white roses embroidered around the collar. Tiny mother-of-pearl buttons. Instantly, I was assault-
ed by images of Cheyenne wearing this sweater. Laughing at some stupid joke of Gage's in the dining hall, slipping it over her shoul-
ders in the parlor when she got cold one Friday night last spring. It was Cheyenne's, definitely Cheyenne's.
There had to be a logical explanation for this. Maybe someone had taken these clothes from Cheyenne's room before her parents
had packed it up. Maybe they had sent them out to get laundered and somehow they had ended up in here. London and Vienna had a
cleaning woman come every week to work on their room. Maybe she'd been confused and had left their cleaning in my closet.
But these things hadn't been here yesterday. Had their cleaning woman, Rosaline, come yesterday? I doubted it. No, she usually
came on weekends. And I was sure I hadn't heard those heavy steps of hers plodding around the hallway. Of course, there was another,
more disturbing explanation for this. Whoever had planted the black marbles in my desk drawer had planted these clothes here as well.