“I thank you in ad­vance for your co­op­er­ation.”

The chief pushed him­self away from the podi­um and leaned down to whis­per some­thing to the dean. It was all the pause the stu­dent body need­ed be­fore break­ing in­to full pan­de­mo­ni­um.

“Do you think he bailed?”

“Maybe he was kid­napped.”

“I bet that freak Mar­co knows where he is. You think the po­lice have talked to him yet?”

“Why would they? No one in the ad­min­is­tra­tion knows where he got his shit. They're so obliv­ious.”

Mar­co? Who the hell is Mar­co?

I squirmed, try­ing to ig­nore all the voic­es around me. I tried even hard­er to ig­nore the im­pli­ca­tions of what they were say­ing-- that it seemed that these ran­dom girls might ac­tu­al­ly know more about Thomas than I did.

39

“Please. I bet the kid just scored some taint­ed shit and is ly­ing in a pool of his own vom­it some­where.”

Okay. That was it. Sud­den­ly, all the mor­bid thoughts I had been try­ing to keep at bay for the past two days hit my al­ready frag­ile skull with the force of a freight train. In that mo­ment, the fee­ble hope that Thomas was fine was all but oblit­er­at­ed. My heart pound­ed shal­low­ly and, pan­icked, I leaned for­ward to press my fore­head in­to the cool back rail of the pew in front of mine. The sour taste in my mouth in­ten­si­fied.

Breathe. Just breathe.

I could sense ev­ery­one look­ing at me. Could feel their cu­ri­ous, in­trigued stares.

“Reed. Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to the in­fir­mary?” Con­stance asked, lay­ing her hand on my back.

“Take her to a show­er first,” Mis­sy sug­gest­ed help­ful­ly.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Kid­napped. Taint­ed. Vom­it.

Where the hell was Thomas? Where the hell had he gone?

40

THE GIRL­FRIEND

The whis­pers fol­lowed me out of the pew and all the way back down the aisle af­ter ser­vices. I crossed my arms over my stom­ach and held on tight, try­ing to keep all the ner­vous­ness and fear and to­tal con­spic­uous­ness I felt from burst­ing out of me in all di­rec­tions. Thomas was miss­ing. Thomas was miss­ing and the po­lice were look­ing at all of us like we were sus­pects. And as if that wasn't bad enough, now the en­tire school was watch­ing me too.

Why couldn't he just come back? If Thomas could just show his face for five sec­onds on cam­pus, all of this would go away. I just want­ed it to go away.

Ar­iana and Tay­lor stepped away from the arched door­way to the chapel as I ap­proached and I was re­lieved to see friend­ly faces, even if they were the same faces that had dragged me out of bed and in­to an apron that morn­ing. My grip on my own el­bows even loos­ened a bit.

But then Tay­lor whis­pered some­thing quick­ly to Ar­iana, cast me an al­most skit­tish look, ducked her head, and speed-?walked

41

off across the quad. I won­dered if she was feel­ing guilty about what she and her friends had done to me ear­li­er. She had, af­ter all, al­ways dis­played a tad more of a con­science than the rest of the Billings Girls.

“But I heard they broke up. . . .”

“I know, but they got back to­geth­er, like, the day he dis­ap­peared. ...”

I glared over my shoul­der and two sopho­more girls I rec­og­nized from class quick­ly blushed scar­let and hur­ried away. Ar­iana fell in­to step next to me and I was glad to have her there. My gos­sip buffer.

“Ev­ery­thing all right?” she asked.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net