“That's what they think.” Tay­lor man­aged a wan smile. “Still, I could use your help.”

“Oh. Def­inite­ly. I'll read it to­day,” I said, back­ing away.

“Where're you go­ing?” she asked.

“To my room. To get my bag, re­mem­ber?” I said.

“Oh. Right. Okay. See you down­stairs!” Tay­lor said bright­ly. “And Reed? Thanks.”

“No prob­lem.”

I jogged back to the safe­ty of my own room, closed the door be­hind me, and looked at the pa­per. Poor Tay­lor. She thought she need­ed a sopho­more to tell her that her pa­per was good? And Ki­ran! Who knew it was pos­si­ble that these paramours of per­fec­tion could be hid­ing such se­crets?

The oth­er girls in this school would kill for in­for­ma­tion like this. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there was one per­son who couldn't have cared less: Natasha. There was on­ly one bit of in­fo she was look­ing for and I hadn't found it. Yet.

117

MATCH­MAK­ER

Sat­ur­day was a gor­geous fall day, with a crisp wind and a sky so blue it looked fake. A per­fect day for soc­cer. A per­fect day for tak­ing out days of pent-?up ag­gres­sion on un­sus­pect­ing Bar­ton School girls. Or­ange, brown, and yel­low leaves danced their crack­ly dance across the dewy grass as Josh, Noelle, Ki­ran, Tay­lor, and I made our way to the vis­itors' park­ing lot, where sev­er­al bus­es were parked, wait­ing to whisk us to Bar­ton for our away games. Tay­lor and Ki­ran both played field hock­ey and their game would be on the field ad­ja­cent to ours. Ba­si­cal­ly, it was go­ing to be may­hem- whis­tles, shouts, and crunch­ing bones. I was very much look­ing for­ward to it.

“God, I could just go to sleep right now,” Josh said, stretch­ing his arms above his head. “I think I ate too many pan­cakes this morn­ing. They put me right out.”

'Wow. You're gonna be re­al­ly use­ful on the soc­cer field to­day," I teased.

Josh, like me, played de­fense--on the men's team, of course.

“I don't know how you can eat those things,” Ki­ran said,

118

cross­ing her arms over her stom­ach as we round­ed a bend un­der a tun­nel of col­or­ful leaves. “That's enough calo­ries for a whole week right there.”

“Like you've ev­er eat­en enough calo­ries for a whole week. Even in a whole week,” Noelle joked.

“Hey! I eat! I do! You've seen me eat,” Ki­ran replied, sud­den­ly man­ic. “You've seen me eat, right, Reed?”

“Uh . . . yeah,” I said. Be­cause I had. Un­til I'd found that psy­cho box I nev­er would have known Ki­ran had is­sues. “Of course you eat. And you look per­fect, by the way.”

A lit­tle af­fir­ma­tion couldn't hurt, right?

“See?” Ki­ran said tri­umphant­ly. “Reed's seen me eat.”

“Okay! Okay! Calm down al­ready be­fore you give your­self the shakes,” Noelle said.

“I vote for a change of top­ic!” Tay­lor put in, cast­ing Ki­ran a wor­ried look. So maybe she did know what went on in her room­mate's clos­et.

“Fine. Reed, how's it go­ing with Whit­tak­er?” Noelle asked.

I glanced war­ily at Josh, who in­stant­ly be­came very in­ter­est­ed in the near­est tree.

“How's what go­ing?”

“Has he asked you to go steady yet?” Ki­ran said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, caus­ing Tay­lor to snort a laugh.

'Yeah. Did he pin you?" Tay­lor asked.

“He does sort of seem like he's out of an­oth­er era, doesn't he?” I said. “Like we should all be wear­ing poo­dle skirts and su­per­high pony­tails.”

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