“I didn't in­tend to eaves­drop, but I couldn't help over­hear­ing,” Whit­tak­er be­gan, rest­ing his wrists on the edge of the ta­ble like a well-?man­nered boy. “Reed, if there is, in fact, some­one in Billings who has cheat­ed . . . you can­not, un­der any cir­cum­stances, turn them in.”

“What?” Josh blurt­ed.

'Your opin­ion is kind of naive, don't you think?“ Whit­tak­er said, pick­ing up his fork and toy­ing with the eggs on his plate. ”Not to men­tion hyp­ocrit­ical."

Josh pushed back a bit and crossed his arms over his chest. “Wow. Called a naive hyp­ocrite be­fore I even get to morn­ing ser­vices. That's a first.”

'Well, it's true,“ Whit­tak­er said. 'You sit there talk­ing about how peo­ple in the wrong should be called on their ac­tions, but did you ev­er do any­thing about the fact that your room­mate was a drug deal­er?”

172

I felt as if the en­tire room had just been hit by a cold north wind. Goose bumps ev­ery­where. Josh's face went ashen.

“That's none of your busi­ness,” he said.

“It is when you're fill­ing my friend's head with emp­ty moral­ity,” Whit­tak­er told him.

Then, sat­is­fied that he'd ren­dered Josh speech­less, Whit­tak­er turned and looked me dead in the eye.

'You do not want to os­tra­cize your­self from the wom­en of Billings, Reed,“ he said. ”Trust me. Not if you want to have a life af­ter you grad­uate this place. That's re­al­ity."

I swal­lowed hard and looked at Josh. He rolled his eyes, but said noth­ing. I re­al­ized that Whit­tak­er had just hit up­on the very rea­son Josh's ide­al­ism had made me squirm. Ev­er since my first day at Eas­ton, all I had heard was that the Billings Girls had the bright­est fu­tures of any­one at this school. It was all about con­nec­tions. The con­nec­tions got you ev­ery­where. If I turned in Noelle and the oth­ers, would all my Billings con­nec­tions be sev­ered for life? Would ev­ery­thing I had gained by get­ting in there be au­to­mat­ical­ly oblit­er­at­ed?

“You know I'm right,” Whit­tak­er said haugh­ti­ly. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“Ex­cuse me,” Josh said, shov­ing away from the ta­ble. “I'm feel­ing a lit­tle nau­seous all of a sud­den.”

He grabbed one of the re­main­ing dough­nuts and stormed out. Whit­tak­er took a deep breath and shook his head. “He'll learn,” he said. “Even­tu­al­ly.”

173

I watched Whit­tak­er shov­el eggs in­to his mouth and was sud­den­ly dis­gust­ed by the very sight of him. Even if he was right on some lev­el, some­thing about his all-?know­ing tone com­plete­ly turned me off. Who had died and made him the fourth wise man?

“Now that we're alone . . ,” he said, lift­ing him­self out of his chair and tak­ing Josh's, so that he was sit­ting di­rect­ly across from me. “I want­ed to let you know that all the ar­range­ments are in place for Fri­day night. I'll pick you up on the cir­cle at six o'clock. That should give us plen­ty of time to get to Boston for our reser­va­tion. I am so look­ing for­ward to this, Reed.”

The way he was look­ing at me made me feel al­most fever­ish with re­vul­sion. There was de­sire in his eyes, plain and sim­ple and ob­vi­ous. He thought that this date was go­ing to end the same way that night in the woods had.

Well, he was prob­ably hop­ing to avoid the vom­it.

“Are you ex­cit­ed?” he asked.

It's for Thomas. It's so that you can go to the Lega­cy and see Thomas.

“Sure,” I said weak­ly.

Then he reached out and took my hand. He cov­ered it with both his big, clum­sy, oafish ones. Star­ing at them, I had sud­den flash­es of an­oth­er pair of hands. Thin but strong. Self-?as­sured and ten­der. Hands that had caused me to flush with plea­sure ev­ery time they touched me.

I glanced to the left and saw sev­er­al ju­nior girls from one of the oth­er dorms eye­ing me with en­vy. Ev­ery­one knew what

174

Whit­tak­er's ges­ture meant. It meant I was one step clos­er to be­ing his plus-?one. And they were one step clos­er to sit­ting at home on Hal­loween night.

“Maybe af­ter din­ner we can stop some­where,” Whit­tak­er said, col­or­ing slight­ly. “Some­where we can be alone.”

His thumb pressed in­to my palm. My stom­ach turned and I pulled my hand away. There was no way I could do this. No way I could sit in a car with this guy for hours each way won­der­ing when he was go­ing to make his move, dread­ing the thought of his lips on mine. He was a sweet guy--an awk­ward, hope­ful, sweet guy who was just try­ing. I could see that. But he was try­ing on the wrong girl.

“Is some­thing wrong?” he asked, his eyes wide.

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