"Astrid Chou," we said in unison.
All night I had been wanting to ask him why he thought Astrid was a good suspect, but we had
been so busy talking about Ivy, I hadn't had the chance. Now he paused at the bottom of the
steps, hugging himself against the cold.
"Yeah, she's a weird one," he said as a gust of wind nearly knocked us both off our feet. "Not only
do she and Cheyenne have a long history,
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but no matter what I do, I can't get anyone to tell me why she was expelled from Barton last year."
I yanked my hat on as well and concentrated on not letting my teeth chatter. It was beyond bitter
out. "What do you mean, no matter what you do?"
Marc shrugged. "Well, I've tried talking to at least five people over at Barton and they all tell me
her records are sealed. Which means that whatever she did, it was really bad."
There was a sinking feeling in my gut and my knees started to shake in the cold. "Define really
bad."
"Like, could-be-violent bad," Marc replied, his tone ominous.
My mind immediately flashed back to a couple of awkward moments I had shared with Astrid
recently. Her going through my bag at the last soccer game, her bizarre comment about me trying
to take Cheyenne's place. And then there were all those arguments she and Cheyenne had had at
the beginning of the year. Plus she had been really paranoid when she found out about the Billings
disc....
"Damn," I said under my breath as my heart sank even further.
The Billings disc. Why did I have to break that stupid thing? Why had I never made a copy? I would
have bet my life that the information we needed about Astrid's expulsion had been in her file.
"What?" Marc asked, visibly shivering.
"Nothing. I'm just an idiot," I told him, starting to walk. If I didn't move soon I was going to turn
into a Reed-shaped ice sculpture. "I had this way I could have found out about Astrid, but... now I
don't."
I had already told enough people about the disc's existence, but at
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least they had all been in Billings and therefore had a vested interest in said disc. Marc didn't need