I glanced at Sabine, who confirmed it all with one guilty and sad look. Amberly would be moving
her stuff into our room. Into my space. I felt nauseated and dizzy. That was my room. My bed.
Mine.
"But she's a... a freshman," I stammered.
"So? You were a sophomore when you got in," Missy reminded me. "Clearly if they can bend the
rules once they can bend them again."
"Why didn't you warn me?" I asked Sabine, my throat dry.
"I didn't... I'm sorry... I just didn't want to upset you," Sabine said, as a stiff wind tossed her long
dark hair behind her. "After how hopeful we were yesterday... I didn't even know we were holding
a vote until they woke me up in the middle of the night."
Holding a vote. The Inner Circle ritual. Suddenly I could see it all so vividly. The girls being roused
from their beds. The candlelight as they trailed down the stairs in their nightgowns. The chairs in
the circle. The marbles being dropped one by one. I could even see Amberly's picture set before
them. Her sniveling, smiling little face beaming hopefully out at them.
And they had voted her in. There was no longer an open spot in Billings. I had already been
replaced. And by a freshman.
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"Can we go now? It's freezing out here," Missy said, shoving her hands into her coat pockets.
She and Lorna started for the cafeteria, but Sabine and Astrid hung back.
"I'm really sorry, Reed," Astrid said.
"It's okay," I heard myself croak.
But it wasn't okay. It would never be okay. Because I knew that Noelle had done this on purpose.
Just like she'd told everyone about my meeting with Hauer before Thanksgiving and let everyone
believe I was a killer. She had chosen Amberly because she had known it would be the ultimate
snub. The Billings president replaced by a lowly freshman. She was trying to show me how very
little I had meant. How very easy it was to fill my shoes.
She was trying to hammer it home to me that it was over. I would never get back into Billings.
Never.
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