The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (23 page)

Somewhere in my brain I knew it probably wasn’t a good idea
to drink anything else, but I also knew that Kiran mixed some kind of juice into her special concoction. And somewhere else in my brain, something decided that it might be a good idea to consume juice. Since it had vitamins and all.

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

I placed my nearly empty beer bottle down on the ground and almost fell over. My palm hit the dirt and I pushed myself back up, trying to cover, but my equilibrium was shot. When I reached for the flask, I tipped over into Whittaker’s arms. My eyes closed in embarrassment and the ground shifted. Great. Now my brain was totally misfiring.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s all right,” he replied. “Here. Let me help.”

He placed one of his solid arms around me and I instantly felt more secure, less wobbly. I managed to get the top off the flask and took a long drink. Mmmmm. The Hayes Special was yummy. And Whittaker was so warm. I closed my eyes, savoring the moment, and tipped the flask back. Once again the ground shifted. I jerked and the liquid went down the wrong pipe. All airways closed off and I choked, spitting alcohol everywhere.

“Are you all right?” Whittaker asked.

“Fine! Fine!” I choked, doubling over. Whittaker fished out a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me. I coughed into it and wiped my face. The handkerchief was soft, smelled of musk, and had his initials embroidered into it. Old school all the way. No
one I knew even owned handkerchiefs, but somehow I was not surprised.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, finally catching my breath. I tried to hand the handkerchief back to him, but he closed his hand over mine, which closed over the cloth.

“Keep it. It’s yours,” he said.

I flushed. “You must think I’m a total loser,” I said.

“Quite the contrary,” he said, looking into my eyes. “I think you’re extraordinary.”

And then he was kissing me. Okay. Not good! I was not supposed to be kissing Walt Whittaker. I was supposed to be kissing Thomas. Thomas, my boyfriend. Thomas, the perfectly gorgeous guy who had taken my virginity. If only he were here. If only I knew where the hell he was.

Thoughts of Thomas flooded my mind. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. Thomas’s lips, Thomas’s hands, Thomas’s fingers, Thomas’s tongue . . .

And suddenly, I
was
kissing him. His sweet, warm mouth; his strong, lean arms. Even with everything we had gone through in the past few days, I missed his touch. That was the one thing with Thomas that was
never
wrong.

Half delirious, I slipped my hands around Whit’s thick neck. The second I did he got confident. His mouth moved over mine in a rough, unpracticed, awkward back-and-forth motion, so fast it was as if he was trying to create fire with our lips.

Ugh. Very
not
Thomas. I grabbed his face between both my
hands to stop the madness and he took it as a sign of enthusiasm. Suddenly his tongue was everywhere, parting my lips and darting between my teeth.

This poor kid. He had no idea what he was doing. I wanted to push him away, but I didn’t want to embarrass him. Instead I let him go and hoped he would either suddenly improve or get winded and stop.

Then his large hand fell right on top of my breast and squeezed. Hard. Like he was juicing an orange.

Just like that, Thomas was back. Right there in front of me. With his sexy smile and his practiced, gentle touch and his skin against mine. What the hell was I doing? Who
was
this person who was groping me like I was some kind of CPR doll?

My stomach lurched. I held my breath. Oh, God. I was going to throw up. I was going to barf in Walt Whittaker’s mouth.

My hands flew up and I shoved him away from me. He was just letting out a confused murmur when I turned around, keeled over, and retched all over the bed of leaves behind the log. My eyes stung; my throat burned; my stomach wrenched in pain. Whittaker stood up and moved away, turning his back to me to give me privacy. Thank God. The last thing I wanted was for the guy I had just kissed to watch me puke all over the place.

And then, finally, it was over.

“Are you all right?” Whittaker asked me.

It was like his refrain of the evening.

I nodded slowly, too mortified to speak.

“Can I walk you back to Billings?” he asked.

I nodded again. Whittaker held out his hands and helped me up. He wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the clearing and I leaned in to him, mushy as overcooked pasta. Everyone stared at our arrival. I could only imagine what I looked like. For a fleeting moment my unfocused gaze fell on Josh. He looked as grim as death.

“Aw! Look at you two, all coupley,” Noelle said with a knowing smile.

I watched as Josh quickly looked away, swigging his beer.

“I’m going to walk her back,” Whittaker announced, sounding proud.

“Nice,” Dash said under his breath.

“Take care of our girl,” Noelle said, patting Whit on the back.

From somewhere deep inside of me, I summoned a trace of a smile. Even in my extraordinary state of queasy shame, I felt the warmth of Noelle’s approval. And though I knew it was totally spineless to bask in it, I did. Noelle’s approval was always a good thing.

The first thing I recognized was the dirty gutter taste in my dry-as-talc mouth. The second was the blinding pain in my skull. The third was the fact that I was freezing. The fourth was the banging.

The banging. The banging. The incessant banging.

“Wake up, new girl! It’s after six! You’re never going to get anywhere with this attitude!”

Each bang reverberated in my skull and shot a new stab of pain through my head.

I wrenched my eyes open, then blinked a couple hundred times against their painful dryness. In front of me was the cream-colored wall of my dorm. Below me was my mattress. Nothing else was right.

“That’s right, sleepyhead. Vacation’s over! Get your sorry ass out of bed!”

It was Noelle. Noelle was yelling over the banging. I flipped over onto my back, the pain in my head nearly blinding, and looked up. I had to swallow back a sudden influx of bile in my throat. Not just Noelle: Kiran, Taylor, Ariana, Natasha, and four other Billings Girls whose names I couldn’t remember in my
current state of excruciating pain hovered over me. Kiran was pounding a red and black steel drum with the handle end of a pair of scissors. Noelle had folded something white and ruffly over her arm. Taylor held a DustBuster with grim determination, her eyes hollow and rimmed with hangover red. Natasha gripped my covers in her hands at the end of my bed—thus the goose bumps and shivers.

“What the hell are you guys doing?” I whimpered, squeezing my eyes closed. The banging, mercifully, had stopped. I pressed both palms into my forehead to keep my brain from gouging its way out.

“It’s chore time, new girl,” Noelle said.

As my brow screwed up in confusion, I felt another shock wave of pain through my temples. “What?”

She grabbed both my wrists and yanked me up into a seated position. My head exploded and I was seized by an overwhelming urge to heave. As I gasped for breath, sweating and praying that I wouldn’t puke in front of everyone, Noelle slipped her frilly something over my head, then tied it behind my back. When I was able to open my eyes again, I was wearing a white French maid–style apron over my pajamas. Pinned to the left strap was a big red button that read
NEED HELP? JUST ASK! MY NAME IS GLASS-LICKER.

I groaned. It was about all I could summon the energy to do.

“You didn’t think you were done, did you?” Kiran asked. Her highlighted hair was piled atop her head and her dark skin shone against the white silk of her robe as if it had been polished. The girl had imbibed more than anyone last night and yet this morning she looked gorgeous enough to be photographed. “No, no, no, no, no. Why did you think we let you
in
here? Now we have access to you
twenty-four seven. And that means that you get to do whatever we ask you to do twenty-four seven. That
is
how it works, isn’t it?” she asked with mock seriousness, looking around at her friends.

“Well, yes. I believe it is,” Ariana said, her light southern accent softening the betrayal of her words.

They had to be kidding me. They were really going to drag me out of bed in the middle of my first hangover to work? After everything I had done for them just to get in here, there was still more? I had thought this proving-myself thing was over. That I was officially one of them. Apparently the torture was just beginning.

Suddenly I felt hollow inside, which, on top of the excruciating head pain and the gut-clenching nausea, was not fun. But what was I going to do? Say no? Yeah, right. I’d be back in Bradwell and at Sophomore-Nothing status before you could say, “Suck it.”

“Here,” Taylor said, shoving the DustBuster at me. Her hangover had aged her normally nubile and chipper self at least ten years. “I haven’t dusted under my bed since I’ve been here. It’s starting to affect my sinuses.”

Dumbly, I took the contraption from her and held it against my chest, petrified of what might happen if I moved again. The detachment of my head from my body seemed likely.

“And when you’re done with that you can make all the beds,” Noelle said. “And vacuum the halls before breakfast. The real vacuum is in the hall supply closet.”

I stared up at them, my temples throbbing, hoping they would all laugh and tell me it was just a joke. They gazed back at me with impatience.

“You’re serious,” I croaked.

Noelle scrunched her nose, waving her hand in front of it. “I suggest you Listerine first,” she said. “I don’t want your toxic breath stinking up my room.”

“Glass-licker, huh? Still?” one of the nameless girls asked, tilting her head. “Don’t you think we should change the nickname to something more apropos? Like Glass-cleaner?”

“Or Glass-scrubber,” Taylor suggested.

“Glass-wiper?” Natasha added.

Noelle narrowed her eyes, considering. “Nah. They just don’t have the same ring. She’s Glass-licker all the way.”

I flinched as she patted my shoulder. Hard.

“Let’s go, ladies,” Noelle sang.

Together they all traipsed out. Everyone but Natasha, who dropped my sheets on the floor and stepped on them with her bare feet on her way to our shared bathroom. I wanted to get up. I did. But between the pain in my skull, the churning in my belly, and the dryness in my throat, it didn’t seem physically possible.

“Oh, and if you don’t get it all done before breakfast, you’ll be taking a toothbrush to the toilets tonight,” Noelle said, pausing by the door. “
Your
toothbrush.”

“I’m up!” I said, standing straight. Instantly the entire room caved in around me, crushing my cranium. I closed my eyes against a new wave of nausea.

“That’s my girl,” Noelle said.

Then she made a point of slamming the door.

“I like my pillows fluffed,” Cheyenne Martin told me as she pinned her diamond studs through her ears. Studs she had chosen from an impressive collection of gorgeous, sparkling jewels she had tucked away in a velvet box inside her dresser. She turned toward the mirror and smoothed down her perfectly straight blond hair, giving herself an imperious once-over. Ever since I entered the suffocatingly flower-scented room she shared with Rose Sakowitz, she had been directing me, yet she hadn’t looked at me once. “And do the sheets nice and tight. I do not want to get into a wrinkly bed.”

I drew my hand over her raw silk comforter, evening out the lumps. All I wanted to do was fall into it. This was my fourteenth bed. Rose’s would be number fifteen. My own, sixteen. After the vacuuming. Unfortunately, I had a feeling I would never get to my bed as the vacuuming would strike me dead of an aneurysm. Death by Dyson.

“Did you hear me, Glass-licker?” she asked, gracing me with a corner-of-the-eye glance.

“Yes,” I told her in my new croaky voice. “Fluff the pillows. No wrinkles.”

She turned toward me and took a deep breath. How anyone breathed deeply in the perfumed air of this place was beyond me. “Exactly. I told the girls you’d be good at this,” she said, plucking at the cuffs on her pressed Ralph Lauren shirt. “You have that blue-collar air about you.”

I stopped short, my hands gripping one of her pillows. I was so stunned, I couldn’t even formulate a coherent thought. All I could think was . . .
Kill. Kill. Kill.

“Cheyenne,” Rose scolded, lifting her large leather bag from her desk chair. Rose was a tiny, superskinny girl with chin-length red hair and an orangey tan that was just now starting to fade. I had no idea how that big bag of hers didn’t just pull her right down. “Don’t listen to her,” she told me.

I forced myself to smile at Rose, then melted Cheyenne’s fourth layer of Estée Lauder base with my eyes.

“What? I was just paying her a compliment!” Cheyenne said. “You knew that, right, Glass-licker?”

“Sure,” I said with a tight smile. “I’d rather have a blue collar than a silver spoon up my ass,” I whispered under my breath.

Cheyenne’s face clouded over, but she quickly recovered. “Someone has an attitude,” she said smoothly. “Whatever shall we do to teach her her place?”

She picked up a big pot of pink blush beads and turned them over on the white-and-green flowered area rug in the center of the hardwood floor. “Oh! Oops!”

“Cheyenne!” Rose cried.

She responded by lifting her heel and grinding the little pellets
into the thick weave. Part of me wanted to grab her by her perfect hair and grind her face in there as well. But of course I did not.

“You can clean that up when you’re done, Glass-licker,” Cheyenne said. “Unless you want me to tell Noelle how clever you are.”

She turned and walked out. Rose sighed and hesitated by the door.

“You don’t have to worry about that now. There’s always tonight,” she said. “And don’t take too much time on my bed. Just throw the covers over it in case Noelle checks.”

“She checks?” I asked.

Rose looked at me pityingly. Clearly I was too naïve for words. “Good luck.”