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the Lega­cy. If that was the case, I was sure he wasn't go­ing to let a lit­tle holis­tic treat­ment get in his way.

I mean, okay, Thomas wasn't good for me. He was prob­ably right about that. Tech­ni­cal­ly, af­ter the first week or so of to­tal bliss, all he'd caused me was con­fu­sion, pain, and em­bar­rass­ment. But that bliss part? That had been re­al­ly good. So good that I had slept with him. And I couldn't just for­get about that. He couldn't just take my vir­gin­ity and slink off in­to the night leav­ing noth­ing but a note. What we had done meant a lot to me, and Thomas need­ed to know that. He need­ed to know that I wasn't just go­ing to for­get him. That I would nev­er for­get him, even if we weren't ev­er go­ing to be to­geth­er again. I cared about him. And that was that.

I slipped in­to my ter­ry-?cloth robe and cinched it, then grabbed a tow­el and start­ed rub­bing a

t my hair hard, as if I could rub out all the con­fu­sion as well. My head was tipped for­ward as I walked out of the steamy bath­room, so I didn't see Natasha stand­ing there un­til I had walked right in­to her.

“Oh! God! Sor­ry,” I said, jump­ing back. My free hand flew to my chest and I laughed. 'You scared the crap out­ta me."

Natasha didn't crack a smile. She didn't move. Her stare had “doom” writ­ten all over it.

“What?” I said ner­vous­ly. Had she found the note? Oh, God, had she some­how found the note?

“We need to talk,” she said grave­ly.

“Okay,” I said, try­ing to egg her in­to a smile with my own. No such luck.

63

She walked over to her lap­top and flipped it open. “Sit,” she said, pulling out her desk chair for me.

I shot her a quizzi­cal look but did as I was told. “What're we do­ing?”

“Just a lit­tle slide show,” Natasha told me.

She leaned over me, her breast graz­ing my shoul­der and mak­ing me flush with em­bar­rass­ment, and clicked open a win­dow on her com­put­er. What I saw on the screen at first made no sense to me. It was a pho­to­graph of what looked like a tongue. A very up- close shot of a tongue be­ing stuck out at the cam­era. Then sud­den­ly the view went wide and my heart dropped.

It was a tongue. My tongue. It was me. And my eyes were half- closed. And I was laugh­ing.

“When did you take this?” I asked, glanc­ing over my shoul­der.

“Just watch,” she said.

So I did. The next pic­ture fea­tured me chug­ging a beer in the woods. The next, me with my hands on Whit­tak­er's chest. Me and Whit­tak­er walk­ing away from the clear­ing to­geth­er. Me with my arms around Whit­tak­er, my mouth hang­ing open slop­pi­ly, a flask of liquor in my hand. Whit­tak­er with his mouth pressed to mine as I held his face with my hands. Then Whit­tak­er's hand on my breast.

Dread and shame over­whelmed me as I stared at my own face. My head was tipped back and it looked like I was moan­ing in plea­sure, when in fact I had been about to throw up. It made me look like a slut, like a drunk­en whore who had lured some guy out to the woods.

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“Why . . . why are you show­ing these to me?” I asked, as the slideshow start­ed up all over again. I turned my face away, from her, from the screen, from the truth of what I'd done.

“Be­cause I want you to un­der­stand how very se­ri­ous I am about what I am about to pro­pose,” Natasha said. She grabbed the chair and spun it around on its wheels so that I had to face her. Brac­ing her hands on its arms, she leaned for­ward and looked me dead in the eye. “You do know what these pic­tures mean, right? You do re­al­ize that if I choose to do so, I can get you boot­ed out of here so fast your head will spin.”

Tears prick­led at the cor­ners of my eyes. She was right, of course. She had pho­to­graph­ic ev­idence of me break­ing some very se­ri­ous school rules. Even worse, it looked as if Whit­tak­er and I had done it all alone. Even though there had been close to a dozen oth­er peo­ple in the woods that night, not a sin­gle one of them ap­peared in these pic­tures.

“Why are you do­ing this?”

What was wrong with me? I had be­lieved her when she told me she want­ed to be my friend. When had I be­come so gullible?

“Be­cause there's some­thing I need you to do for me,” she said, stand­ing up straight.

“What?” I was al­ready her in­den­tured ser­vant. Did we need twist­ed es­pi­onage in our re­la­tion­ship?

“Noelle Lange and her friends are re­spon­si­ble for get­ting Leanne kicked out of school,” Natasha said. “They set her up.”

Her ac­cu­sa­tion did not sur­prise me. On the day that Natasha's

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