“Hey, let me ask you a ques­tion. Do you know any­thing about this thing called the Lega­cy?” I asked.

Con­stance snort­ed de­ri­sive­ly and sank down in her seat. 'Yeah. It's pret­ty much all any­one can talk about. Be­sides you, of course."

“Right. What is it?” I asked.

“It's some huge par­ty in the city or some­thing,” Con­stance said. “It's all very hush-?hush. At least from peo­ple like us.”

I blinked. “Peo­ple like us?” Oth­er than our both be­ing sopho­mores, Con­stance and I had pret­ty much ze­ro in com­mon.

“Non-?lega­cies,” Con­stance said. “On­ly peo­ple who come from, like, a long line of pri­vate-?school peo­ple are in­vit­ed. So not peo­ple like us.”

Now it was my turn to sink in­to my seat. So that was what those girls had meant when they'd said they'd nev­er see me there. “Oh. Re­al­ly? ”

'Yeah. Sucks, huh?“ Con­stance said. ”It sounds like it's gonna be in­cred­ible. Mis­sy Thurber said that last year ev­ery guy who

78

went got a plat­inum Rolex and ev­ery girl got a lim­it­ed-?edi­tion Har­ry Win­ston neck­lace. I'd kill for a Har­ry Win­ston any­thing. My mom won't let me have any good jew­el­ry un­til I'm eigh­teen. She thinks I'll lose it."

“Bum­mer,” I said, my hopes of see­ing Thomas slip­ping away be­fore my eyes.

“But, hey, you're in Billings now, so maybe you'll get to go any­way.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know. The Billings Girls get ev­ery­thing,” Con­stance said, like it was so ob­vi­ous. “You prob­ably get an au­to­mat­ic in­vite or some­thing.”

I con­sid­ered this the­ory for a mo­ment. It wasn't a bad one, ac­tu­al­ly. Ev­ery­one at Eas­ton knew that the Billings Girls were nev­er left out of any­thing un­less they chose to leave them­selves out. Maybe this would be my first chance to ex­er­cise my au­to­mat­ic in. And see Thomas. God, I hoped so.

“Omigod! There he is!” Con­stance said sud­den­ly, grab­bing my arm.

My heart com­plete­ly stopped. I looked out the win­dow. “Thomas?”

“No! Walt Whit­tak­er,” Con­stance whis­pered, pulling her desk clos­er to mine. “I heard he was back from his trip.”

In­stant­ly, ev­ery sin­gle part of me drooped. Nice tease. I turned around and sure enough, stand­ing in the hall­way out­side the class­room talk­ing to our trig teach­er, was none oth­er than Whit

79

him­self. The Twin Cities, Lon­don and Vi­en­na, hov­ered near­by, clutch­ing their books, clear­ly wait­ing for him to fin­ish his con­ver­sa­tion. Ap­par­ent­ly, what­ev­er Lon­don was plan­ning on us­ing Whit for, the cam­paign had be­gun.

“You know him?” I asked.

“Know him? Our par­ents are to­tal­ly old friends,” Con­stance said, still grip­ping my arm. “They're the ones who ac­tu­al­ly sug­gest­ed I ap­ply here. Omigod, look at him. He is so hot.”

In­ter­nal alarm. I sat up a bit straighter. “What?”

“Wow. He's to­tal­ly lost weight,” Con­stance said, all star­ry- eyed. “He must be work­ing out.”

Lost weight? Re­al­ly? Huh. What had he been tip­ping the scales at be­fore? Three bills?

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Do you . . . like him?” I asked.

Con­stance ripped her gaze away from Whit for the first time and looked at me. She might as well have been one of those blissed-?out fans in the front row at some pop con­cert.

“I've had a crush on him since I was about ten,” she said. “Of course, he bare­ly even knows I ex­ist, but I--”

“What about Clint?” I asked. She did, af­ter all, have a boyfriend back in New York.

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net