Noelle and Kiran exchanged a look. Gage snorted a laugh and dropped his chair back down, reaching for a roll on his plate.
“That's for us to know and you to most likely never find out,” Gage said, enjoying himself a little too much.
“Funny,” I replied.
Josh cleared his throat. “He's fairly serious,” he said, his expression apologetic.
I felt a blush creeping onto my cheeks. “Come on.”
Dash cleared his throat and leaned onto the table to better see me. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing and tried as hard as I could not to see his guy parts superimposed over his face.
“Reed, the Legacy is an exclusive party,” he said sagely. “Only private school legacies are invited.”
My insides turned. I had kind of expected someone to make me an exception, to tell me they would find a way around the rule. Was it possible that Constance's theory had been completely off base?
“Not just legacies,” Kiran corrected. “Multiple-?generation legacies.”
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my food.
“We came over on the Mayflower' legacies,” Gage added.
I get it. I'm not invited. Thanks for the hammer to the head.
“The only way to get in if you're not a legacy is to be a legacy's plus-?one,” Noelle said, looking directly at Dash until he started concentrating very seriously on his food. "And only a very,
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very select few even get a plus-?one. Your family has to go back to practically the dark ages."
“Now where on Earth would Reed find a legacy with a plus- one?” Kiran pondered aloud.
I looked around at all of them, waiting for the answer, until Noelle tilted her head toward the other side of the room. I turned and followed her gaze. Whittaker. Whittaker, who was, as he always seemed to be, chatting with an adult. This time, Dean Marcus.
Suddenly it hit me like a cartoon piano to the head. This was why London had wanted to use him. This was why Vienna had suggested that every girl in school would be after him in the next few weeks. Whit could get one lucky girl into the Legacy with his coveted plus-?one. If I had any shot in hell of going, I would have to be Walt Whittaker's date.
I looked at Noelle again. She arched one eyebrow and lifted a shoulder, like
, Told you so. She had planned this from the start. The things Whittaker could get me that I wouldn't otherwise have. We weren't talking about diamond earrings or other random luxury items. We were talking about entre into exclusive parties. We were talking about acceptance among the elite. Just being a Billings Girl wasn't enough. At least not for me. I was a special case. I needed another leg up.
I took a deep breath. What Noelle didn't realize was that I couldn't be Whittaker's plus-?one. I couldn't lead him on just to get an invite to some party, no matter how intriguing and mysterious and exclusive. He clearly liked me. A lot. Using him would
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be way too mean. And besides, Constance was totally in love with him. There was no way I was doing that to her. Except...
“Do you guys really think Pearson is going to be there?” Josh asked.
Except for that.
“Are you kidding? Wherever Pearson is right now, he'll be at the Legacy,” Dash said. “Dude wouldn't miss this party if he was dead.”
Thomas was going to be at the Legacy. His friends seemed fairly certain of that fact. That was the whole point of me trying to get to this thing, wasn't it? So that I could yell at him for everything he'd put me through. So that he could explain. So that I could see that he was okay.
Slowly, I looked up at Whittaker again. He was laughing heartily at something the dean had said--a nice, big belly laugh. And sure enough, a few random girls were looking on with stars in their eyes, just waiting to pounce on him once he was free. Thomas was going to be at this party. The only way for me to get into this party was to get Whittaker to invite me. If I wanted to see my maybe - ex, I was going to have to use my maybe-?stalker to do it.
Fate had a really messed-?up sense of humor.
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