The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (44 page)
“Thomas,” I whispered.
I whirled around and looked at Noelle. Her skin was as white as the mist swirling all around her. She stared past me, unblinking.
“Do you think it’s—”
Pounding footsteps interrupted my words. A hand fell on my shoulder. Instantly every pore in my body filled with dread.
“Reed,” Josh said, his voice harsh and strained. “Reed.”
I turned around slowly. I didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see on his face what I had already heard in his voice. He stood before me, panting. Anguished tears streamed down his face.
“It’s Thomas. They found his body,” he said, bracing his
hands over his knees. “Reed, he’s . . . Thomas is dead.”
I shut my eyes and squeezed my hands into fists, so tight I could feel my nails breaking through the skin of my palms. I silently begged my heart to keep on beating. I willed my lungs to keep filling with air. I looked down at my hands, at my new ring glittering in the flashing lights. I tried to concentrate on this. And only this.
I knew if I opened my mouth even the tiniest crack I would start screaming. I would just start screaming and I would never, ever be able to stop.
Chapter 5: The Right Thing to Do
Chapter 23: Pleasant Development
Chapter 33: The Art of Distraction
Chapter 37: Search and Destroy
My first funeral. My first funeral was for the first guy to ever see me naked. This could not be right.
It wasn’t for a grandparent or for a friend’s elderly aunt with wrinkles so deep you could stash stuff in them, but for Thomas. Thomas Pearson. The first classmate I had met at Easton Academy. The first person who had made me feel semi-welcome. Gorgeous, mysterious, intense Thomas Pearson. The person I had lost my virginity to.
So many moments kept replaying themselves in my mind, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to make them stop. The moment Josh Hollis had rushed back through the fog to tell me that Thomas was dead. The moment I had found the note from Thomas telling me he was going to be all right, and how stupid I felt now to have believed it. The last moment I had seen Thomas, leaving my dorm room at Bradwell. It seemed like so long ago. I didn’t even live there anymore. Thomas had never seen my new room at Billings. Now he never would. Because now he was lying
cold and dead in a coffin. In the ground somewhere, in a coffin. The family had opted for a private burial, so I didn’t even know where he was. I just knew he was down there somewhere. Rotting.
Every time I thought about it, I gasped for breath.
“What is it?” Noelle Lange asked me.
We were standing next to the huge marble fireplace in one of four massive living rooms in the Pearsons’ co-op on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A few kids from school were staring at me, just as they had been ever since Thomas had first gone missing. It was like they were just salivating for the nervous breakdown they were sure I was going to have. But so far I hadn’t even cried in their presence. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I waited for the soul-gripping fear to pass before answering.
“Nothing,” I told her. “That just keeps happening.”
“You’re still in shock,” Ariana Osgood whispered, her voice soothing. “It’s perfectly normal.”
Noelle nodded and put her hand on my back. Noelle. Being comforting. That was a new one. Mostly she just opted for sarcastic and mocking. She also looked softer than usual today. Less threatening. Her light-gray cashmere crewneck and simple black skirt were perfect, of course, but her brown hair was product-free and fell around her face, framing it in a way that made her appear gentler. She had also forgone the mascara and subtle eyeliner she always wore. Without it, she almost looked her real age. Like she was my equal.
I looked around the spacious room, feeling numb now and
extremely hot. Hundreds of people had turned out for the wake. They mingled in the muted opulence in their designer suits and black dresses, sipping wine and talking in low tones. Peppered among the gray-haired gentlemen and Botoxed ladies were dozens of kids from school, all of whom looked shocked and shaken. Like Noelle, some of Easton’s most renowned Shiseido worshippers hadn’t even bothered with makeup. They perched on sofas and settees, dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs, consoling one another. The guys, meanwhile, stood around with their hands in their pockets, looking skittish. As if their confidence had been somehow shaken. Maybe if Thomas Pearson was capable of dying, they weren’t quite as invincible as they had once thought. Reality had just set in for these guys who normally walked around in a dream world, a world where they were completely untouchable.
“Could this be any more morbid?” Kiran Hayes said, swinging her wineglass around a bit too brazenly. “This many people didn’t turn up when the pope died. It’s like everyone has some sicko fascination just because he was a kid.”
Kiran tipped her wineglass toward her mouth and downed what was left in one gulp. An actual billboard model, she was the most beautiful person I had ever met in real life. And after knowing her for a month, I was starting to feel like she might also be the one most likely to end up in rehab. A few pieces of her dark hair had fallen out of her carefully twisted bun, and her green eyes were unfocused. Still, every guy in the room was checking her out when they thought no one was watching.
“I bet one of these blond chignons walking around here is covering it for the rags,” Noelle said stoically. “A good prep school scandal is their wet dream.”
There was the Noelle I knew and feared.
“Noelle!” Ariana scolded, her blue eyes piercing. Her own blond hair was also back in a loose chignon. In her dark clothing, with her diamond earrings securely fastened in her ears, Ariana looked less wispy and more in charge than she ever had before.
“What? No one heard me,” Noelle said, smoothing her long, dark hair behind one shoulder. “And I’ll bet you my entire trust fund I’m right. Just wait. ‘The Thomas Pearson Tragedy’ will have a four-page spread in
Hamptons Magazine
next month.”
“I can’t believe anyone would want to exploit his death,” I said. “It’s not like he’s famous or something.”
“He was around here,” Noelle said with a sigh.
At that moment, Taylor Bell, who had been sniffling and quietly weeping all day, burst into another round of tears. Her dark-blond curls shook as she buried her cherubic face in a handkerchief. Ariana reached out and rubbed Taylor’s arms.
Taylor’s display of emotion made me so uncomfortable I had to look away. She and the rest of these girls hadn’t even liked Thomas. They had, in fact, hated him. Warned me to stay away from him. And now, like everyone else, they were all completely shattered. As if Thomas had meant the world to them.
Still, it wasn’t like I should have been that surprised. Love him
or hate him, Thomas had been a classmate. One of them. They had known him for years. So of course they would be shocked and freaked. I was just surprised at
how
freaked.
My strained eyes fell on Missy Thurber—big nostrils, bigger attitude—leaning back against the tastefully papered wall in her chic black suit, her nose all red from crying. At her side, as always, was Lorna Gross, whispering in her ear, looking very somber. I suddenly wanted to hurl something at them from across the room. Where the hell did they get off pretending to mourn? Neither of them had ever spoken to Thomas in their lives.
Between them and Taylor and Kiran’s continued rantings, I was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic. Then I saw Constance Talbot, my former roommate, making her way across the room toward me. The last time I had seen Constance she had told me off with tears in her eyes for dating the guy of her dreams, Walt Whittaker. Walt Whittaker, who was here somewhere, chatting up a few members of the older generation, as usual. Whit and I were definitely no longer an item (not that we’d ever really been one), but I had no idea whether or not Constance knew this or not.
I stood up straight as she stepped up to me, my whole body tense. Constance met my gaze, then threw her arms around me.
“Reed! I am so, so, so,
so
sorry!” she said over my shoulder.
I was so surprised, it took me a moment to respond. But then I hugged her back. Hard. In a million years I never would have been able to predict the relief that rushed through me at her gesture of
friendship. Apparently Constance was a lot more important to me than I’d realized.
“Thanks,” I said as she pulled away.
Her green eyes were bright and red-rimmed, her wavy, dark-red hair held back in a simple ponytail. It was hard to tell if she was paler than usual or if it was the lighting, but somehow the freckles on her nose stood out more today, making her look almost precious.
“Are you okay?” she asked me, biting her lip.
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know,” I said. A bubbly sob rose up into my throat and I swallowed it back. “It’s all just a little surreal.”
Surreal didn’t even begin to describe it, but it was the only word I could come up with. Every other second I experienced a new and intense emotion. Just forty-eight hours ago I had been on a train back to Easton from the city, telling Josh—Thomas’s roommate—that I was over Thomas. That I was moving on. And I had felt really good about that decision. Thomas, after all, had disappeared from school without warning. Without a goodbye. I had found that note from him days later, but it had raised more questions than it had answered. And for weeks he hadn’t bothered to get in touch with me, even to let me know that he was all right. I had decided that a guy like that was not worth my time. That I deserved better.
But now I had found out that the reason Thomas had been incommunicado was that he was
dead.
And every time I thought about how indignant and angry and self-righteous I’d been over
the past few weeks, I felt this soul-sucking guilt unlike anything I had ever felt before.
“It must make it harder, not knowing how he died,” Constance said. She turned around to stand next to me and survey the room.
“You bet your ass it is,” Kiran said, a bit too loudly. She grabbed another wineglass from a passing waiter and drained half of it.
“Kiran, keep your voice down,” Ariana said.
“What? I’m just saying I’d like to know, you know, exactly
how
they think it happened, that’s all,” Kiran ranted. “Wouldn’t it make you feel better to just know, once and for all, what they’re thinking? If they have any theories?”
“You’re rambling,” Ariana said, taking the glass right out of Kiran’s hands and placing it on the mantel, out of reach. Kiran looked after it longingly.