In­stant­ly, guilt twist­ed at my heart. I hadn't called my fa­ther in days.

“Why? So he can make me feel guilty with­out even try­ing?”

“I got news for you. I've been tak­ing psych. Ap­par­ent­ly we get to feel guilty for the rest of our lives. Might as well get used to it.”

I sighed. “Fine. I'll call him.”

“He miss­es you. So does Mom, in her own sick and twist­ed way,” Scott said.

Sud­den­ly all I want­ed to do was get off the phone. But he'd

46

done his job. He'd re­mind­ed me full force of why I was here--of who I was run­ning away from.

“What­ev­er. Go back to sleep,” I told him, get­ting up. “I'll talk to you lat­er.”

“Lat­er,” he said.

And the line went dead.

I sighed and turned my steps to­ward class, ig­nor­ing the mur­murs that fol­lowed my path. Bet­ter get used to those, too. Bet­ter get used to a lot of things.

47

MEAN GIRLS

“So, what are you wear­ing to the Lega­cy this year?”

I paused on my way out of the cam­pus book­store, clutch­ing the box of pens I had just pur­chased. It seemed that when the en­tire cam­pus wasn't talk­ing about me it was talk­ing about the Lega­cy. Maybe it wouldn't be too hard to find out about it on my own. “I don't know. I was think­ing the black Chanel.” Sit­ting on a bench just a few feet away were two girls I rec­og­nized from Brad­well--two glossy-?haired, skin­ny chicks whose cell phones were per­ma­nent­ly at­tached to their ears. Even as they spoke, one of them held her phone to her ear, the mouth­piece away from her mouth, while the oth­er one texted on her own sleek num­ber. I dropped to the ground and pre­tend­ed to tie my shoe.

“Didn't you wear that to, like, your moth­er's wed­ding last year?” the blon­der girl asked the less blond girl. “Yeah. So?”

“So? You were pho­tographed!” Blon­der said. “You can­not wear a dress in which you were al­ready pho­tographed to the Lega­cy. It is just not done.”

48

Less Blond nod­ded thought­ful­ly. “You're right. What was I think­ing?”

Then Blon­der's slate eyes fell on me. “Uh, ex­cuse me? Do we amuse?”

“Sor­ry,” I replied, stand­ing. “What ex­act­ly is the Lega­cy?”

The two girls ex­changed an in­cred­ulous look. “No place we'll ev­er see you,” Less Blond said, di­al­ing her phone. “Even if you are in Billings.”

“Dana! You're so bad!” Blon­der said, shov­ing Less Blond's arm.

My face turned pink. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Less Blond said, “don't act like just be­cause Billings took you in you're some­how bet­ter than the rest of us. We all know where you came from, schol­ar­ship girl.”

“Don't wor­ry, some­body might take pity on you and bring you to the Lega­cy. You know, since your boyfriend's all MIA.”

I swal­lowed back the huge lump that had formed in my throat. Would it be wrong to ac­tu­al­ly beat these girls down? I'd nev­er ac­tu­al­ly got­ten in­to a fist fight be­fore, but with all the psy­chot­ic emo­tions roil­ing around in­side my chest, they had picked the wrong time to mess with me. The thought of jump­ing Less Blond ac­tu­al­ly crossed my in­co­her­ent mind. I could even hear the ex­act pitch of her sur­prised screech, see her cell phone fly­ing in­to the air and crack­ing on the stone path. It was not an un­amus­ing vi­su­al.

I stood up straight, not en­tire­ly sure what I was go­ing to do. They both looked up at me. I could tell Blon­der was about to say

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