“Oh! Right!” I said, all the blood in my body rushing to my face. Of course she didn't know what I was doing. How could she
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possibly? “I am a writer. I'm actually thinking about joining. You know, the Quill.”
If it hadn't been for self-?preservation purposes, I might have been alarmed that I was getting so good at lying.
“That's great. We'd love to have you,” Ariana said with a small smile. She looked at Noelle, who was, for some reason, grinning as well. “What do you write?”
Now I reached over and clicked the laptop closed, mostly to stall for time. I hadn't written anything creatively since first grade, when I'd written a short story titled “Animal Crackers” that had been universally panned by all the six-?year-?olds in my class.
“Uh . . . essays, mostly,” I said. “But lately I haven't really had much time.”
Thanks to you guys, my tone implied. You and your chore list are so the reason my muse has gone missing.
“And you're about to have even less,” Noelle said happily.
Everything inside of me slumped. “Why?”
“It's the windows,” Taylor said, her expression bordering on apologetic. “They're a disgrace.”
The windows? Didn't Easton employ a maintenance staff for this kind of thing? “What windows?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“All of them,” Noelle said, taking my notebook out of my hands. I snatched at it, but she tossed it on my bed. She reached into the paper bag and produced a bottle of Windex and a stack of fresh rags. “And you can start with mine.”
152
WEAK STOMACH
“It's going to rain,” Ariana said, turning her blue eyes toward the roiling sky the following evening. “We should hurry.”
I wrapped my scarf around my neck and scurried down the library stairs after her. The last hour had been spent listening to Ariana and her fellow Quill editors discuss the merits and flaws of various submissions for the latest issue. Since, in my moment of panic, I had expressed an interest, Ariana had invited me to come along and see what it was like. Now, having listened to these pretentious people tearing apart one another's work, I could sum it up in three words:
Not for me.
Still, I was touched that she had asked me. It meant that she thought I was worthy of sharing one of her favorite things. If only she knew that whenever I had started scribbling in my notebook during the meeting I hadn't been taking notes on the poems but jotting down new ideas for her password.
That morning, while I was supposed to be scrubbing floors, I
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had searched Ariana's room for a calendar or a date book, hoping to put Taylor's theory to the test, but had found nothing. If Ariana had a planner, she kept it with her at all times. After that failure, I had spent half an hour rapidly typing in every potential keyword I could come up with, flinching at every creak of the floor and every chirp of a bird outside the window. None of them had worked. Now I was on a mission. I had spent too much of my time on this already. I had to crack that password, if only to be able to tell myself that I had succeeded.
So I had spent most of my classes brainstorming more and more potential passwords and writing them down in my trusty notebook. At this rate I was going to flunk out of school, but at least I would know whether or not the Billings Girls had gotten Leanne Shore thrown out. Yeah. It would all be worth it.
Ha.
“So, what did you think? ”Ariana asked me as we speed-?walked along the cobbled paths. “Did you enjoy it?”
“It was interesting,” I said in a noncommittal tone. “I don't know if I feel comfortable tearing apart people's poems, though.”
“Why?” Ariana asked.
“Well, those are their most personal thoughts and feelings. It has to take a lot to put that out there,” I said. “And you guys just sat there throwing out words like pathetic and pedestrian and cliche. That one girl was on the staff and you said she had no original thought. Right in front of her.”
“I know. It's not easy,” Ariana said, shaking her head. She
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