Vengeance (Private 14)

Of course, Ivy had no such concerns.

“Oh, this?” Noelle concaved her stomach and looked down at the scar, running her finger over it. “That was from my own near-death experience.”

I swallowed against a dry throat. “When?”

Noelle narrowed her eyes as she stepped into the tulle skirt. “I was, like, seven years old, riding horses with my cousins at my grand mother’s ranch—this would be my mom’s mom, not our grandmother,” she clarified. “Anyway, my horse got spooked and threw me and I fell onto an old gardening fork thing that someone had left out.”

“Ugh.” Amberly stuck out her tongue.

“Gross.” London shuddered.

“Yeah. Even grosser? The country hick MD who sewed me up,” Noelle said with a wry grimace. “Thus, the scar.”

She jammed the black veil down onto her head and flipped the front piece of lace over her face. I stared at her as everyone else got back to dressing.

“That’s it?” I said.

She lifted the veil and cocked one eyebrow. “What? You expected something more sinister?”

“Can you blame me? I mean, considering our history . . . ,” I said.

Noelle let the veil fall again. “Just goes to show you, Reed. Not everything is part of some big conspiracy.” She plucked the mask out of my hands and brought it down over my face. “Some things just . . . happen.”

The mask smelled of new rubber and I instantly felt dizzy. But not in an exactly bad way. More like that sugar-high-from-Halloween kind of way.

“Come on,” she said, pulling me up by my good arm. “I’ve always wanted to dance with death.”

Someone cranked up the music and Noelle swung me around toward the open area of the church, in front of the first pew. I had a vague inkling that this was somehow sacrilegious, a feeling that only grew as Rose, dressed up as a devil, and Tiffany, decked out as a priest, started twirling around us, holding hands. But considering all I’d been through in the past few days, I decided to just go with it, and within a few minutes I was laughing, relaxing, forgetting.

Maybe Noelle was right. Some things just happened. And even though I didn’t exactly believe that my broken arm and my stitches and the broken pallet and the crashing cement truck weren’t part of something bigger, tonight I would pretend that I did believe it. Just for my friends. Just for tonight.

My phone beeped in my back pocket and I let go of Noelle to dig it out, figuring it was Josh. But instead it was a text from MT. When I saw the words, my heart all but stopped.

“Is it him?” Noelle asked, looking down over my shoulder.

I took a deep breath and lifted the phone so she could see it better. “Yep.”

The text read:

U DON’T WANT 2 GO 2 THE AWARDS BANQUET TMRW. TRUST ME.

CONFESSIONS

“So we’re agreed?” Tiffany said as we walked toward the dining hall for breakfast on Thursday morning. “No more putting yourself in mortal peril? At least until after graduation?”

I glanced around at her, Portia, Rose, and Ivy and forced a laugh, thinking of MT’s latest text and wondering for the millionth time whether I should, in fact, trust him. “I’ll try.”

Ivy gave the others a wry smile, her dark hair falling forward over her sunglasses. “Unfortunately, I think that’s the best we’re going to get out of her.”

The others rolled their eyes collectively. “Fine,” Portia said, shrugging her tweed cropped jacket off and hooking it over her arm. It was a warm morning, and everyone on the quad looked like they were already dressing for summer. “But honestly? I think you should have tried to graduate early. You need to get the HOOHFG.”

“Whatever that means,” Rose joked, nudging Portia with her hip.

We were still laughing when Josh jogged up next to me and joined us. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy he was still alive or irritated he hadn’t called all night last night.

“Hey,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Can I talk to you?”

Finally! I wanted to scream. “Sure.” My friends paused in a semicircle for a moment. “I’ll catch up to you guys.”