“That's okay. I'm good with this,” I said, lift­ing the bot­tle. I used the rust­ed bot­tle open­er to pop the cap off and took a long drink, know­ing she was still watch­ing me. Ear­li­er tonight I had my first beer ev­er. Now I was on my third one, which was go­ing down more smooth­ly. The key, it seemed, was to take long drinks and not let it stay in my mouth long enough to touch my tongue. Yeah. Re­fresh­ing. I took a deep breath and let it out in­to an­oth­er cold breeze, pulling my sweater clos­er to my goose- bumped skin. I was about to re­join the girls, when a sud­den con­ver­sa­tion shift near the fire stopped me.

“I'll tell you one thing,” Dash Mc­Caf­fer­ry said. “This is go­ing to go down as one of the great dis­ap­pear­ing acts of all time.”

“Maybe he's at his grand­moth­er's in Boston,” Josh Hol­lis sug­gest­ed.

Dash shrugged. “Eh, I'm sure they al­ready raid­ed the old bat's place.”

Thomas. They were talk­ing about Thomas. I couldn't be­lieve that the last time I was here, he was here as well. It had been ap­prox­imate­ly forty-?eight hours since any­one had seen Thomas Pear­son. He had dis­ap­peared from Eas­ton with­out leav­ing so much as a note be­hind. And, ac­cord­ing to his room­mate Josh

5

Hol­lis--who stood near the fire with the oth­er guys just then, star­ing in­to the flames--Thomas had gone with­out pack­ing one stitch of cloth­ing, not even his fa­vorite black T-?shirt. On Fri­day morn­ing Thomas had told me he loved me, had made me promise I would be there for him no mat­ter what, and had then pro­ceed­ed to van­ish.

I won­dered how much Josh knew--about me, about what Thomas and I had done to­geth­er. Had Thomas told Josh what we had done in their dorm room? I wasn't sure. I hadn't known him long enough to find out. But now, ev­ery time I saw Josh, I won­dered if he knew what I'd done and the thought made me squirm. I didn't need half the school know­ing I had lost my vir­gin­ity to a guy who maybe meant well but was clear­ly too trou­bled to be in a healthy re­la­tion­ship. Lost my vir­gin­ity to a guy who I now knew (even be­fore he van­ished) I prob­ably should not be with, but who I still felt ir­re­sistably at­tached to any­way. Lost my vir­gin­ity to Thomas Pear­son, the most pop­ular guy at Eas­ton and al­so, as I'd re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered, the cam­pus's fore­most drug sup­pli­er. I still couldn't be­lieve it.

Josh took a swig of his pre­vi­ous­ly un­touched beer. He had such a ba­by face that he looked out of place hold­ing the green glass bot­tle. His blond curls danced in the breeze and he wore a l

ong, striped scarf over a wrinkly, rust-?col­ored T-?shirt and brown cor­duroy jack­et. He had that art­sy, earnest, cre­ative thing go­ing. I liked that about him. I al­so liked the fact that he had a loud voice--loud enough for me to eaves­drop with­out let­ting on.

“What about their place in Vail?” he of­fered.

6

“Dude, Pear­son is not hol­ing-?up any­where ob­vi­ous. Be­lieve me,” Dash said with an elab­orate snarfle of phlegm. For an ex­traor­di­nar­ily good-?look­ing guy--chis­eled, blond, Aber­crom­bie-?es­que--he had some se­ri­ous hy­giene flaws. He spat in­to the fire and took a swig of his beer.

“Very at­trac­tive, Dash,” Noelle called across the clear­ing.

“Thanks, babe,” he replied, and then got back to the top­ic at hand. “I just can't be­lieve they called the lo­cal po­lice in. It's such a waste. If Pear­son is crash­ing any­where, he's crash­ing in New York.”

“You think?” The hope in Josh's voice gave life to my own.

“Are you kid­ding?” Gage Goolidge said. Gage was of the skin­ny, tall, met­ro­sex­ual va­ri­ety, with dark hair that stood straight up from his head--he looked like a mem­ber of some British pret­ty-?boy band. “Thomas Pear­son is pulling the biggest punk of all time right now. He's got the en­tire east­ern seaboard look­ing for him and he's off some­where par­ty­ing him­self sick.”

'Yeah, maybe," Josh said, chew­ing on his in­ner cheek and star­ing at the fire.

“No maybe,” Dash told him. “Trust me. Hal­loween is in less than a month. And you know what that means.”

“The Lega­cy,” Josh said.

“Ex­act­ly.” Dash re­moved one fin­ger from his beer bot­tle and point­ed it at Josh. “Pear­son is not go­ing to miss that. If his ass isn't there, I'll give up the Lo­tus.”

“That's se­ri­ous, man,” Gage said.

7

“No shit.”

“It's true,” Josh said, nod­ding. “Pear­son is the Lega­cy.”

“Dude. If he's there, we should drag his sor­ry ass back up here and col­lect our medals,” Gage said.

“Aw, yeah,” Dash replied, smack­ing hands with Gage over Josh's head.

The Lega­cy? What the heck was the Lega­cy? I pushed my­self away from the tree where I had been loung­ing, fig­ur­ing Noelle and the oth­ers could clue me in, but be­fore I could take a step, Natasha Cren­shaw in­ter­cept­ed me.

“Reed! Where are you go­ing?” she asked, sling­ing her arm around my neck.

I froze, won­der­ing what the joke was. Natasha Cren­shaw was my new room­mate at Billings House. And the on­ly rea­son she was my new room­mate was be­cause her best friend, Leanne Shore, had got­ten kicked out for cheat­ing in the biggest pub­lic scan­dal Eas­ton had seen all year. Ev­er since I'd start­ed to un­pack my stuff yes­ter­day morn­ing, Natasha had been seething with re­sent­ment. It dripped from her very pores.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net