Invitation Only (Private 2) - Page 1

WHIT­TAK­ER

It was a cold night. Cold and ex­treme­ly dark, with no stars and no moon and a wind that ripped a del­uge of leaves from the trees when­ev­er it blew--leaves that were still wet from a morn­ing driz­zle. They felt slimy and foul when they hap­pened to fall on ex­posed skin, so as an­oth­er gust whipped through the hills, we all ducked and cov­ered. I felt my­self be­gin to shiv­er.

“Augh! There's one on my neck!” Tay­lor Bell cried, dou­bling over with her shoul­ders to her ears. She clutched the bot­tle of vod­ka she'd been swig­ging from all night in one hand and slapped in­ef­fec­tive­ly at her back with the oth­er. The large yel­low maple leaf had sucked it­self al­most all the way around her neck, mat­ting down the blond curls that had es­caped from the back of her pony­tail. “Get it off!”

Nor­mal­ly, Tay­lor was not the biggest drinker, but tonight she had been pound­ing straight al­co­hol like it was the nec­tar of the gods, per­haps be­cause she, like many oth­ers, felt the need to ex­punge par­ents week­end--which had end­ed just hours ago with a

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cer­emo­ny in the Eas­ton Acade­my chapel--from her mem­ory. Tay­lor's par­ents had seemed like nice peo­ple, though, and she had ap­peared to be at least com­fort­able in their pres­ence. I won­dered if some­thing else could be both­er­ing her.

“Get it off!” she whim­pered again. “Guys!”

“Don't look at me,” Ki­ran Hayes said, tak­ing a la­dy­like swig from her sil­ver flask. She pulled her long cash­mere coat around her knees and held it there. “I just had a paraf­fin wrap.”

Ki­ran, the first ac­tu­al mod­el I had ev­er known and one of the more gor­geous girls I had ev­er seen in re­al life, had al­ways just had some­thing done. High­lights, low­lights, der­mabra­sion, sea­weed thigh wrap, eye­brow thread­ing. Most of it sound­ed like tor­ture, but ap­par­ent­ly it all worked.

Noelle Lange rolled her eyes and plucked the large wet leaf from Tay­lor's skin. “Pri­ma don­nas,” she said de­ri­sive­ly. She whipped the leaf at the ground, and it land­ed right in front of the long, flat rock on which Ar­iana Os­good sat. Ar­iana looked down at the leaf for a mo­ment, study­ing it as if it held the mean­ing of life. A lighter breeze lift­ed her long, al­most white-?blond hair from her shoul­ders and she looked up in­to it, then closed her eyes in plea­sure.

I pulled my third beer from the cool­er across the clear­ing and watched this tableau un­fold like I was an an­thro­pol­ogist study­ing some pre­vi­ous­ly un­clas­si­fied sub­set of hu­man. I had been fas­ci­nat­ed with the Billings Girls from the mo­ment I had first seen them a month ago through the win­dow of my sopho­more dorm at

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Eas­ton Acade­my--fas­ci­nat­ed from afar, that is, with seem­ing­ly no hope of ev­er gain­ing up-?close ac­cess. But that hadn't been the case for long. The Billings Girls were now my friends. My dorm mates. The peo­ple with whom I par­tied il­le­gal­ly in the woods on the out­skirts of cam­pus on a reg­ular ba­sis.

If you could call “twice” a reg­ular ba­sis.

I was one of them now. I had as­cend­ed to great­ness at Eas­ton. Though if some­one asked me to sit down and tell them how I had done it, I would be ren­dered speech­less. Last I checked, I had pissed them all off by con­tin­uing to talk to my boyfriend, Thomas Pear­son, of whom none of them ap­proved. I thought I had lost them for­ev­er by go­ing be­hind their backs and of­fer­ing to stick with him and help him through his is­sues. In­stead, I had ap­par­ent­ly im­pressed them.

Some­how. And thank God I had, be­cause with their help I might ac­tu­al­ly have a shot of leav­ing my past be­hind. Of not be­ing one of the many Cro­ton, PA, proge­ny who re­turn to the home­town af­ter two years of com­mu­ni­ty col­lege to take as­sis­tant man­age­ment po­si­tions at Cost­co. With the Billings Girls be­hind me, I ac­tu­al­ly had a shot at a life. A fu­ture. A shot at be­ing part of a world I had on­ly ev­er dreamed of--a world of suc­cess. Of priv­ilege. Of free­dom.

“Are you all right over there, Reed?” Noelle asked, lift­ing her long, dark hair over her shoul­der. “If you don't want an­oth­er beer I'm sure Ki­ran would be hap­py to mix up a Hayes Spe­cial for you.”

Her eyes danced with mis­chief and I knew she had no­ticed my

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state of con­tem­pla­tion. I didn't want to ap­pear un­grate­ful for hav­ing been in­vit­ed here, for ev­ery­thing they had done for me. For the fact that I was get­ting a beer for my­self, rather than run­ning er­rands for them, as I had been do­ing pret­ty much non­stop since the first week of school. So I waved her off.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net