Private 03 - Untouchable (10 page)

SOMEONE ELSE

"He did it. We all know he did. I say we take justice into our own hands," Dash said at dinner that night. His eyes were wide and he was unable to sit still. I had never seen him so fidgety, and every time his hand jerked or he shifted in his seat, I flinched. This guy was primed to blow.

"Does anyone know where this fuckhead lives?" Gage said.

"What are we going for now, mob rule?" Noelle joked.

She seemed to have recovered nicely from her initial shock. Of course, teasing the guys was always good for her mood.

"If that's what it takes." Dash let a bit of spittle fly. "I'm not playing here, Noelle."

Noelle rolled her eyes and sighed. We all stared at one another. It had been like this all through dinner, and neither my stomach nor my nerves were enjoying it.

"Can we talk about something else?" I suggested.

"Maybe he didn't do it," Natasha said.

"What did you say?" Dash blurted.

Noelle leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. Kiran pushed her vegetables around on her plate. Ariana stared down at her book. Taylor was MIA. Probably curled up in a bed in the infirmary, where she seemed to spend half her time lately.

"I'm just saying, clearly they didn't have enough evidence to keep him in custody, so maybe he didn't do it," Natasha said, lifting a shoulder. "Sometimes you just have to trust in the system."

"That's good stuff, coming from you," Gage said.

Natasha dropped her fork and crossed her arms on the table. "Is this going to be another 'Republicans are evil' diatribe? Because I so don't get enough of those," she said sardonically.

"I'd love to hear about why Republicans are evil," Kiran put in. "At least it would be a change of subject."

"Look, Gisele, just because you don't give a shit that Thomas was murdered doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to figure out who did it," Gage said. "The world does not revolve around Kiran Hayes."

"You think I don't give a shit?" Kiran blurted. Her tone was so venomous, it made me jump. Startled tears came to my eyes and I was instantly embarrassed, but I couldn't control it. I was that on edge. "Who the hell do you think you are? You have no idea what I do and don't care about! I would love to know what really happened to Thomas, what the police are thinking. But no one seems to want to tell us, do they? No! They just want us to sit here and suffer."

"Kiran," Ariana said in a warning, soothing tone.

Kiran looked around as if just remembering that anyone other 
than Gage was at the table. "Sorry. I'm just sick of this," she grumbled. "It's too weird. A few weeks ago he was sitting right there being obnoxious and now we're talking about who did and didn't kill him. I mean--"

"I can't listen to this anymore," I blurted.

I pushed my chair back so hard it slammed into Cheyenne's, who was sitting at the next table. Clumsily, I gathered up my bag and coat. One of the wood buttons whacked Cheyenne on the back of the head and she made a big show of how much it hurt. I ignored her.

"I'll see you guys back at Billings."

"Reed-"

I had already turned to go, but I paused and swung around. "I thought you guys were planning a party for Thomas," I said, looking at Dash and Gage. "Why don't you concentrate on that instead of making everybody even more miserable than they already are? "

I turned and stormed out, narrowing my eyes to try to quell the tears as I shoved through the door and into the cold night. The second I hit the pathway, I slammed directly into Josh.

"Reed! Are you okay?" he asked.

He placed his hands on my arms to steady me. The wind blew a few of his blond curls across his forehead. Being so close to him so suddenly brought on another huge rush of emotion that I wasn't sure I could take. I moved aside and sucked in a broken breath.

"I'm fine," I said, pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead.

Breathe in, breathe out. Remember how you felt this morning. How 
you felt before everything caved in again. I'm at the spa. I'm cuddled into that soft, soft robe. I'm lying back in the chair, content.. . .

"I was freaking out all day. Where were you?" Josh demanded.

I blinked at him, confused. Ripped from my reverie before I could fully realize it. Was he angry at me for some reason? "I was with Noelle and them."

"Oh." Josh's face became hard as he stood up straight. "I thought we were going to Boston."

I felt as if someone had just dumped a bucket of water over my head. Josh's brother and his girlfriend. The day of fun in Boston. I had completely forgotten about it, what with being forcibly torn from my bed and everything. My heart squeezed as I noticed the depth of disappointment in Josh's face. This had meant a lot to him, and I had completely blown it off. And even as I realized this, I was touched. Josh really wanted to be with me. Introduce me to his brother. Treat me with that level of importance. Which made my forgetfulness that much worse.

"Josh, I am so sorry," I said. "I completely forgot. Noelle and Kiran woke me up at the crack of dawn and I was half out of it. I'm an idiot."

"It's fine. Really," he said, all aloof. "It's good to know I'm that forgettable."

He turned to go. Guilt overcame me. All I wanted to do was explain.

"Josh, wait," I said, grabbing his arm.

"No, Reed. It's okay. You'd rather spend the day with your 
girlfriends than me. I get it," he snapped. "Message received."

I'd never seen him this angry. Where was this coming from?

"I would not rather spend the day with them than you," I said, desperate. "Believe me."

Josh paused and searched my face. "Yeah?"

"I swear."

Slowly his demeanor relaxed. He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. "Oh, God. I'm sorry. I was just worried about you. I called you twenty times and I kept getting your voice mail. I was freaking out. I mean, after what happened to Thomas ..."

I felt like I was trying to swallow my heart. Everything was different now, wasn't it? A few unanswered phone calls and one could reasonably assume disappearance and death.

"Josh, I'm really sorry. I didn't think," I said.

"Why didn't you answer your phone?" he asked. The accusation was gone from his voice, replaced by concern. I took a deep breath, glad to have normal Josh back. He was supposed to be the rock around here.

"Noelle stole my phone," I told him. I shivered in my thin sweater. The hot streak of anger had passed and I suddenly realized I was freezing. I placed my bag on the ground and pulled my coat on. "I really am sorry."

"It's cool," Josh said. "Just. . . next time, don't let her take it. With everything that's been going on . . ."

For a second I thought he was going to reach for my hand, and my heart skipped nervously, but then he thought the better of it.

He shoved his fists into the pockets of his coat instead. My fingers itched for the phantom contact.

"I know," I said. "Won't happen again."

Josh managed a smile. "Good. Because if anything happened to you . . ."

My chest felt warm and full. I had all but forgotten the unpleasantness in the caf.

"Okay," I said. Because there were a million things I wanted to say but couldn't.

Josh leaned back against the brick wall behind him and tipped his head up. He let out a huge sigh.

"So, did you hear about Rick?"

"Yeah," I said. I leaned back next to him. Looked down at my shoes. "It's all anyone can talk about."

"I can't believe it. After all that, they let him go? How incompetent are these people?" he said.

"I know. I feel like we're never going to know what really happened," I said.

"I know what happened," Josh snapped. "Rick and Thomas got into it and Rick killed him. End of story. Why can't these people ever just accept the easy answer?"

I felt something flip in my mind and tried to keep the thoughts at bay, just as I had all day long. But there was no more avoiding it. On they came. If the police were right, if Rick was not the killer, then the killer was obviously still out there. One thing we knew for sure was that Thomas's body had been found in the 
area. Somewhere near Easton. Rick the townie had made sense because he lived in town, but if it wasn't him, then it stood to reason that it was someone else from around the school. Maybe even someone at the school.

Whenever I got to that point on the logic train, my engine died. I just could not wrap my brain around the idea that someone at Easton hated Thomas that much. That someone at Easton was capable of murder.

"I don't know," I said, glancing away.

"It had to be him," Josh said. "It had to be."

"It would make everything so much easier," I said, feeling numb. "Because if it wasn't him, then it was someone else. Maybe someone--"

I couldn't finish the sentence. There was no way.

Josh stared into the darkness. "Maybe someone we know."

* * *

"This feels sort of weird," I said as my friends and I approached the Great Room in Mitchell Hall on Tuesday night. I could already hear the dance music pumping through the walls. A few of the former headmasters' portraits were shaking in their gilded frames.

Headmaster Stern from the early 1900s did not look happy about it.

"What doesn't these days?" Natasha asked.

She had a point. Ever since Thomas had died, everything had felt weird. Laughing, eating, talking, studying. But partying, no matter how much we tried to justify it, felt even weirder than everything else.

"All we have to do is get through the next couple of hours," Kiran said with a degree of grimness unfit for a party girl of her caliber. "Then, tomorrow night, we'll all be outta here."

"It will be nice to be home for a few days," Ariana agreed, pausing outside the open double doors. Inside, our classmates 
milled about, sipping punch and chatting. Some were even dancing. "Get away from all this insanity."

I nodded my agreement, even though I neither a) agreed nor b) was actually going home. On day one, my father had arranged for me to spend Thanksgiving here at Easton with some of the other scholarship students and foreign kids who didn't celebrate the holiday and were too far from home to travel. Getting home was too expensive and just not worth it. Thanksgiving had never been big in the Brennan household anyway--what with so little to give thanks for and a mother whose idea of a big home-cooked meal was ordering in from Boston Market and having it delivered instead of picking it up.

"Shut up, you guys. You're depressing Reed," Noelle said.

"Are you sure you don't want to come home with me? " Natasha asked. She had floated this option earlier in the week, but I had declined. I knew she wanted to spend as much time as possible with Leanne while she was in New York and I didn't want to be in the way. Plus, to be honest, I didn't like Leanne all that much. Or at all. But to each her own.

"Really, I'll be fine," I said, feeling conspicuous. I shook my hair back and smiled, standing up straight. "I heard the apple pie is to die for," I joked.

All the pretty faces around me fell. Everyone looked into the Great Room. My heart thumped. Wow. That had been a highly inappropriate thing to say.

"Let's just go in," I suggested.

"Good plan," Noelle said.

She cleared her throat and led the way. Only a few steps off the plush carpet of the hallway and onto the hardwood floor inside, she stopped. Suddenly I felt as if the whole room was closing in on me.

Thomas was everywhere.

"He has got to be kidding me," Noelle said.

Huge photos of Thomas clung to poster board on every available, wall surface. Thomas standing in front of Grecian ruins. Thomas two-fisting tropical drinks with a straw hat on his head. Thomas and his brother, Blake, on skis. Thomas on a horse. Thomas with Dash and Gage on the back of some boat named My Second Bride. Thomas and Josh in suits and ties. Thomas and some random girl dressed for a formal. Thomas and three big-breasted waitresses. Thomas and an exotic beauty who was licking his face while he grinned.

Thomas. Thomas. Thomas.

And now I couldn't breathe.

Noelle stormed across the room and unleashed that stored-up shit fit on Dash. I turned around to flee. Don't.

Ariana's cold hand was on my arm. I felt like all the oxygen was being sucked directly out of my lungs.

"I can't do this. I can't stay here," I said.

Everyone was watching me. Concerned faces. Amused faces. A camera bulb flashed. I felt as if there was a space heater inside my 
body, emanating heat through my pores. Thomas was dead. Thomas was dead. Thomas was dead.

"Reed, we have to do this. We have to look at him and accept what we've lost," Ariana said. She swallowed, took a breath, and looked around. "We have to accept that he's gone."

My mind felt like it was a whirling moth, trapped inside a lantern, frantically trying to beat its way out. "How can you say 'we'?" I asked. "You don't understand what it's like."