'Yeah. Sure looked that way to us," Mis­sy said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

I ig­nored her. She didn't mat­ter.

“Con­stance, I'm telling you. I have no in­ter­est in Whit­tak­er,” I said.

“Oh, why? Is he not good enough for you?” Con­stance said, clear­ly of­fend­ed. “Now that you're in Billings the guy that I've had a crush on my en­tire life is be­neath you?”

“No! I didn't say that,” I told her. But what could I say? There was no way to ex­plain away what she had seen. And I had al­ready re­solved to keep see­ing him, at least un­til tonight. Un­til the Lega­cy. What ex­act­ly was I try­ing to do here?

“Lis­ten, I just ... I want­ed to say I was sor­ry,” I told her fi­nal­ly. “That's all.”

“Well, I'm sor­ry too,” Con­stance said. She had tears in her voice but wouldn't let them out. “Sor­ry I ev­er thought I could trust you. Sor­ry I ev­er thought we could be friends.”

202

Mis­sy and Lor­na both smirked and whis­pered to each oth­er. Di­ana looked ill and Ki­ki just stared off to­ward the caf, lis­ten­ing to her iPod.

'You know, when I first met you I thought I had lucked out. I had this cool room­mate, to­tal­ly un­af­fect­ed, to­tal­ly nice,“ Con­stance said. ”But that was all just an act, wasn't it? All you want­ed from day one was to get in­to Billings and leave me be­hind. And now you're just as shal­low and back­stab­bing as the rest of them."

Even Mis­sy looked shocked at that. No one spoke bad­ly of the Billings Girls. At least not any­one as low on the Eas­ton food chain as Con­stance.

“Just goes to show you that first im­pres­sions mean noth­ing,” Con­stance fin­ished. “Come on, you guys.”

She turned around and walked off, on some lev­el en­joy­ing the pow­er she now wield­ed over the small group. Tem­porar­ily, of course. Un­til pity­ing her was no longer en­ter­tain­ing or fruit­ful. As I watched them go I re­al­ized the full im­pli­ca­tions of what I had done. Con­stance had been the on­ly per­son who had liked me from day one, who had been there for me from day one, and who had ex­pect­ed noth­ing in re­turn.

She'd had the po­ten­tial, at least, to be a true friend. But I had killed that po­ten­tial. Now, the Billings Girls were all I had left. If I was go­ing to have any friends at Eas­ton, any life at all, it was go­ing to be them. They were it. They were all.

203

CON­FES­SION

I walked in­to Billings House with a de­ter­mi­na­tion I hadn't felt since that day in sixth grade when I had re­solved to fi­nal­ly tell off my moth­er. Of course, that had all died away when I'd stormed in­to the house and found her passed out in a pud­dle of drool. This time, how­ev­er, I wasn't go­ing to let any­thing stop me. Not Natasha, not the im­ages from that night with Whit that were burned on my brain. Noth­ing. I had a job to do and I was go­ing to do it, what­ev­er the con­se­quences.

I caught a few dis­turbed looks from ran­dom Billings res­idents as I took the front stairs two at a time, but no one stopped me or even said hel­lo, and soon I was once again stand­ing in front of Noelle's door. I rapped loud­ly.

“Come in!”

“Hey. I have to talk to you about some--”

Okay. that might stop me. Noelle stood in the cen­ter of the room in a gor­geous black ball gown, help­ing Ar­iana step in­to an even more gor­geous aqua-?col­ored frock. Ar­iana wore noth­ing but

204

a thong and a strap­less bra and her stom­ach was flat­ter than a pa­per plate. Nei­ther one of them flushed, flinched, or paused as I en­tered the room.

“Hi, Reed,” Ar­iana said with a small smile.

She let Noelle pull the dress up from the floor, and then slipped her arms through the skin­ny straps. Noelle zipped her up and there they stood, Noelle the vampy queen, Ar­iana the fairy princess. I had nev­er seen dress­es like these out­side of the Os­cars.

“Is ... is that what you're wear­ing tonight?” I asked. Strewn on Noelle's bed were half a dozen mas­quer­ade masks in var­ious col­ors, dec­orat­ed with se­quins, feath­ers, and beads.

'We're still de­cid­ing,“ Noelle said, turn­ing to face her full- length mir­ror and swish­ing the full skirt back and forth. Mean­ing they had more such gowns stashed some­where in this room? Why hadn't I found those in all my search­es? 'You said you had some­thing to tell us? ” she asked, her eyes meet­ing mine in the re­flec­tion.

Right. Fo­cus time. Bite-?the-?bul­let time. Per­haps duck-?and- cov­er time.

“There's some­thing I need to con­fess,” I said, my heart flut­ter­ing. “And you're not go­ing to like it.”

Noelle and Ar­iana ex­changed a glance. Ar­iana sat grace­ful­ly on the edge of the bed, tuck­ing her skirt be­neath her and cross­ing her legs at the an­kle.

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