class" thing. That thing I always had with Josh.
"So... friends?" I said.
Marc smiled, his whole face lighting up. What? Had he expected me to make a scene? "Friends."
"Cool."
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I smiled, possibly my first real smile of the last two days, and opened my mailbox. Inside was the
same little blue card everyone else had received. I pulled it out and flipped it over.
JOSHUA HOLLIS, KETLAR, SENIOR
"You have to be kidding me," I said aloud. Why didn't they just saddle me with Ivy Slade, too?
"What? Who'd you get?" Marc asked, leaning over.
I turned the card for him to see and he whistled under his breath.
"Someone in Hell Hall has a twisted sense of humor," he said.
I slammed the tiny metal door shut and stuffed the card into the back pocket of my jeans. "I'm
starting to think this entire school has a twisted sense of humor."
Marc glanced at our gaggle of onlookers. I saw Amberly's two sidekicks checking me out, but they
both blushed and looked away the second I caught them, pretending to be absorbed in the new
Barneys catalog. "I know what you mean. Come on."
He grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd, cutting a path so I wouldn't have to be there
any longer than absolutely necessary. As soon as we were back outside in the cool evening air, I
gulped in a deep breath.
"Thanks."
"No problem. I seriously can't believe anyone thinks you would have hurt Cheyenne," Marc said,
shaking his head. "I mean, just because a person makes a sex tape, that doesn't mean they're
capable of murder."
My face flushed crimson. "I didn't make a sex tape. Someone did that
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without me knowing. And by the way, there was no actual sex involved."
"Well, in any case," Marc said as we started across the quad, "I bet there are at least fifty suspects
who make more sense than you do. I mean, the girl was always juggling two or three guys at a
time. Maybe one of them finally snapped. A crime of passion makes a lot more sense than