My stomach sinks all the way through the floor now.
She knows.
It’s the only explanation for her expression right now, the kind of grin you see on a cat right before it devours the canary. Bette tosses her head and glances up and down the hallway at her audience. I spot Yvette looking at me, wide-eyed and worried. Behind her, Sara and Leah are shifting on their feet, uneasy. Neither of them will meet my gaze, which only makes me ball my fists, furious.
“Well, Missy?” Bette says, head cocked, eyes alight with bemusement. “What’s it going to be? Are you going to tell us all where you were tonight, if this isn’t your doing?”
My choices are either to confirm what everyone here must suspect about me by now—that I’m not one of them, and I never will be—or to cave in. To let Bette win. To possibly even get suspended for it. I feel nauseous, like I’m going to be sick.
But I can’t lose my place here. Even if it means my current social pariah status will become permanent. I refuse to let Bette win.
“Tick tock,” Bette’s saying. “Come on, Missy, you only have two choices here.”
But then another voice speaks up, from behind me, up the other direction of the hallway. A familiar, deep baritone. A couple of the other girls gasp at the sound. “No,” Keanen says. “She doesn’t.”
10
I turn slowly to find Keanen standing just behind me. But his eyes are fixed tightly on his sister.
“I can handle this,” I tell him, my voice low and calming. Because this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen—for family to fight family.
But he’s glaring past me at his sister, totally oblivious. “I can’t believe you. I knew you were childish and petty, but this is a new low even for you.”
Bette’s jaw drops. All her earlier vicious excitement is gone, evaporating into tightly coiled anger. “Me? Keanen, I’m trying to help you. You don’t understand how girls like her operate. All she’s doing is using you for your money—”
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” I snarl, unable to contain myself.
“Oh, please.” Bette waves a hand, her eyes narrowing. “You’re all the same. First there’s his ex, now you—”
“She’s nothing like Anamaria,” Keanen barks.
Bette rolls her eyes. “Just another broke girl who wants to rely on Prince Charming to buy her nice things and raise her up from the ashes. After watching you last time, big brother, I couldn’t stand by and let it happen again.”
I glance from Bette to Keanen and back again, thrown. Keanen’s ex used him?
“We all know you’re just on the rebound,” Bette continues. “Vulnerable. It’s my job to make sure you don’t get hurt again.”
I wince. But her words make a certain amount of sense. After all, how hard would I defend Jake in a similar situation? If he had a girl who was taking advantage of him.
But Keanen just shakes his head, stepping forward to place one hand on my shoulder. Even through the fabric of my shirt, his skin feels so warm it borders on hot. “Missy’s not a rebound,” he says. He finally tears his gaze from Bette and looks at me—really looks at me, dead-on in the eyes. “I’m falling for her,” he adds, softer. In a voice just for me.
My stomach does a backflip, my eyes going wide. I could listen to him say that all day, every day. My eyes well with tears. “You mean it?” I whisper, my voice tight with emotion.
Behind me, Bette scoffs, but I don’t care. Right now, Keanen and I feel like the only two people standing in this hallway.
“I mean it,” he replies, softly.
“Good.” I manage a slight, half-smile. “Because I think I’m starting to fall for you too,” I admit.
Just as he’s about to bend to kiss me, a door slams at the far end of the hallway, and the familiar voice of Morgan, our hall RA, barks out, “What the hell is going on out here?”
Keanen and I jump apart, and my stomach leaps into my throat. Uh oh.
The RA isn’t sure how to handle the huge, dramatic mess we’ve made of things. So she just bundles me, Keanen and Bette all together and decides to frog-march us across campus for an emergency meeting with the chancellor, who they’ve summoned from bed at this hour.
The chancellor, as in, Bette and Keanen’s father.
I could puke I’m so nervous at the thought of meeting him for the first time. Especially like this. But as we’re being marched down the hallway, Sara and Leah step out from the group of girls all gawking at the scene.
“Missy, I’m so sorry,” Sara says.
“We had no idea things would be like this,” Leah adds.
I grimace and shake my heads at them. I’m sure they didn’t… but their betrayal still stings. The last thing I see before we’re led out onto the green lawns across campus are their deep frowns. Then cool air hits us, and the three of us fall silent, trudging after Morgan in single-file.
We’re halfway to the offices of the deans when Bette speaks up. “You shouldn’t blame your friends,” she says. “For ditching you, I mean. I might’ve… told them. Some things. About you.”
“Lies, you mean?” I snap.
Bette clears her throat, but doesn’t reply beyond that. She doesn’t have to. Her silence says it all.
We keep walking for a few paces, and then Keanen reaches over to grab my hand and weave his fingers through mine. He squeezes tightly, just once, and I squeeze back, shooting him a small smile.
For a moment, my nerves dissipate.
Then we reach the main office building, and my nerves ramp up again, because there’s Keanen and Bette’s father, Chancellor Kross, standing on the steps in his suit, his glasses on and his hair neatly combed. Does the man sleep in his suit? How does he look this prim, pressed and ready for action after being woken in the middle of the night?
There’s no time to wonder at it. He pushes open the door and gestures at Morgan, the RA. “I can take it from here,” he says.
He leads us through the main offices and into his office. It’s a beautiful room, all oak paneled and lined with thick academic tomes. The moment we enter, he shuts the door behind us, and waves us toward a trio of seats arrayed opposite his desk.
I take a seat on the furthest one, perched on the very edge of the chair, nervous and fidgety.
Chancellor Kross doesn’t sit. He leans against his desk, crosses his arms, and glares down his nose at his children, all but ignoring me entirely. “Speak,” he says.
“Keanen is—”
“Bette was—”
The chancellor holds up a finger. “One. Of. You. At a time.” He glares between his kids, as if he can’t decide who he’s more disappointed in. Then he gestures at Keanen. “Explain.”
Keanen bows his head. “It’s my fault.”
Bette and I both whip around in unison to gape at him. What?
“I threw the party,” he’s saying. “It got out of hand. The blame falls squarely on my shoulders, sir.” He straightens in his seat.
My stomach twists. It’s noble, what he’s trying to do, but Keanen is just a semester away from graduating. He can’t get a black stain on his record now, not one as bad as this. Drinking on campus, giving alcohol to minors, whatever else they could charge him with…