114

Turned out Ki­ran was not as flaw­less as she would have the world be­lieve. From her cool de­meanor and the ca­su­al way she chose her food at meals, I nev­er would have known. As bad­ly as I felt for her, I can't say it wasn't good to know. Com­fort­ing, in a way, to know some­one that per­fect didn't ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist. But, of course, this had noth­ing to do with Leanne.

Re­luc­tant­ly, I shoved the food di­ary back where I'd found it and re­placed all Ki­ran's things. The clos­et search had turned up noth­ing to help Natasha's case.

Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

I had a few more min­utes, so I de­cid­ed to check un­der Tay­lor's bed. I yanked out a few un­der-?the-?bed box­es full of note­books and texts. When I pulled one of them out, a sheaf of print­er pa­per ex­plod­ed all over the room, white sheets fly­ing ev­ery­where.

“Oh, crap,” I said un­der my breath, gath­er­ing them up. They must have been piled loose­ly atop one of the box­es. There was no way I was ev­er go­ing to get them back in the right or­der.

Please let them be num­bered. Please, please, please.

But as I stacked the pages back up, I re­al­ized it didn't mat­ter if they were num­bered. Each and ev­ery page was filled with ex­act­ly the same thing--the same phrase typed over and over and over again:

I am good enough. I am good enough. I am good enough. I am good enough.

I snort­ed a sur­prised laugh. I couldn't help it. But then I in­stant­ly felt guilty. Tay­lor was los­ing it, clear­ly. Of course, I sup­posed all ge­nius­es were a lit­tle off. But this was ridicu­lous.

115

Fifty pages, at least, of this? She was the smartest girl ev­er to walk the halls of Eas­ton. I couldn't be­lieve she need­ed all this af­fir­ma­tion. When did she have time to sit down and do this?

Hid­den snack cakes and ob­ses­sive af­fir­ma­tions. No won­der these two were room­mates. Did each know what the oth­er was hid­ing? Maybe if they did they could help each oth­er.

“Tay­lor! Hur­ry up!” some­one shout­ed from down­stairs.

There were foot­steps on the stairs.

“I just have to get my plan­ner!” Tay­lor called back. She was right down the hall.

Shak­ing vi­olent­ly, I shoved the pa­pers back on top of the box and pushed it un­der the bed. Then the sec­ond, then the third. The third got caught on the leg of the bed and I was just jim­my­ing it back in­to place when the door flew open. I stood up, straight­ened my sweater and looked right in­to Tay­lor's sur­prised eyes.

“Reed! God! You scared me,” she said, then glanced at her bed.

“Sor­ry. I was just fin­ish­ing up in here,” I said.

“Oh. Okay,” she said, step­ping un­cer­tain­ly to­ward me. It was al­most as if she knew what I had found. She grabbed her PDA off the night­stand and smiled. “Come on. Let's ... go to break­fast.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let me just grab my book bag.”

“Oh, hey. Reed?” she said, paus­ing as she stepped in­to the hall. She fum­bled with her bag and pulled out a neat­ly typed pa­per in a l

ight blue cov­er. 'You're good with the clas­sic writ­ers, right?"

I closed the door be­hind me. “Yeah.”

“Well, I was won­der­ing if you could read this pa­per over for me,” she said, hand­ing it to me. "I know I'm a year ahead and

116

ev­ery­thing, but it needs an­oth­er eye be­fore I hand it in. I just want to be sure it's . . . you know . . . good enough."

Good enough. Good enough, good enough, good enough.

Oh, my God.

“I'm sure it's great,” I told her firm­ly. “Ev­ery­one's al­ways say­ing you're the smartest per­son ev­er to even go here.”

Tags: Kate Brian Private
Source: readsnovelonline.net