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room­mate, Leanne Shore, had been es­cort­ed from school grounds af­ter be­ing found guilty of break­ing the Eas­ton hon­or code by cheat­ing, Natasha had ac­cused Noelle of hav­ing had some­thing to do with it. I had been there, in the quad, when she had got­ten right up in Noelle's face. But I had thought Natasha was ba­si­cal­ly in­sane.

“How .. . how do you know?” I asked.

“I just know,” Natasha said. “The prob­lem is, I have no proof. That's where you come in.”

Oh, God, no. No, no, no. Please tell me she isn't go­ing to make me--

“Now that you're our new scrub girl, you have un­lim­it­ed ac­cess to their rooms,” Natasha said. “I want you to find the ev­idence I need. I want you to go through ev­ery­thing they own. They have to have kept some­thing. They're big on tro­phies. Find me what I need to nail their ass­es to the wall.”

I stared up at her, my hair drip­ping cold as ice down my neck. “I... I can't do that,” I said.

I would lose ev­ery­thing. They would find out and they would kick me out of Billings. They would nev­er speak to me again. Ev­ery­thing I had worked for would be gone in an in­stant.

Plus Noelle would kill me. There was al­ways that.

“Oh, but you can,” she said with a smirk. “Un­less you want that e-?mailed to the dean and the board and ev­ery sin­gle stu­dent and teach­er at this school.”

I glanced up at the screen again. Whit­tak­er's tongue was down

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my throat. I tast­ed bile. I tried to swal­low but couldn't. Tears stung my eyes all over again. These pic­tures rep­re­sent­ed the end of me. The end of my life, my fu­ture. Didn't she see that?

“I thought we were friends,” I said blankly. Maybe guilt would work. I was grasp­ing at straws.

“Aw! That's so sweet!” Natasha trilled. “So, do we have an un­der­stand­ing? ”

I stared at her, hard. There wasn't a trace of re­gret or un­cer­tain­ty in her eyes. This was so wrong. Natasha was sup­posed to be the moral cen­ter of Eas­ton. At least, that was what Noelle had once called her, and Natasha had seemed proud of the moniker. Now here she was tak­ing se­cret soft-?core porn shots of her sup­posed friends and black­mail­ing peo­ple with them. Where was the moral­ity in that?

Of course, she was al­so pres­ident of the Young Re­pub­li­cans club. From ev­ery­thing I'd read and heard my en­tire life, this was a ma­neu­ver of which any politi­cian would be proud.

“Reed? I asked you a ques­tion.”

My hands were trem­bling. I couldn't do this. Not af­ter ev­ery­thing Noelle had done for me. Not with ev­ery­thing she could take away.

But Natasha could take away more. And I was look­ing at the proof of that.

The sit­ua­tion was a per­fect lose-?lose.

'Yeah. We have an un­der­stand­ing," I said.

“Good. Now get to bed,” Natasha told me, mer­ci­ful­ly shut­ting down the slide show. 'You've got a lot of work ahead of you."

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* * *

The next morn­ing I me­thod­ical­ly moved through my chores, my mind on ten mil­lion oth­er things. For some rea­son, ev­ery­one was up and out of their rooms ear­ly, and I was able to make the beds with­out hav­ing to en­dure snide com­ments or de­tailed di­rec­tion. The en­tire time I was in Noelle and Ar­iana's room, Natasha's voice played like a skip­ping CD in my mind.

Nail their ass­es to the wall. . . nail their ass­es to the wall. . . nail their ass­es to the wall. . .

I stared at Noelle's dress­er. It taunt­ed me, beg­ging me to ri­fle through its draw­ers. No one was around. It would on­ly take a few min­utes. If Natasha made good on her threats, it would mean a one-?way tick­et back to Cro­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia, and my pre­scrip­tion-?drug-?ad­dict moth­er and my de­pressed fa­ther. It would mean the end of ev­ery­thing.

And yeah, if I found the proof she was look­ing for, not on­ly would Noelle and the oth­ers hate me, but they would al­so get thrown out of school. They would be gone and I would still be here, in Billings. Even with­out them, I would still have a chance, right?

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