SUPPORT

Twilight was just descending on the Easton campus as I sat down on one of the many stone benches dotting the quad. The air was warm and scented with honeysuckle. It was the kind of evening that made me want to take a deep breath and just be.

Unfortunately, my cell phone had other ideas.

“Hello? This is Reed Brennan,” I said, answering the fifth call in as many minutes. As much as I wanted to cling to the high of our victory at the board meeting, the world wasn’t about to let me. My many bags, papers, and poster rolls slipped out of my hands and tumbled to the ground at my feet. One of the posters bounced off and came to rest under a nearby birch tree. I sighed and just left it there.

“Miss Brennan? This is Lissa Knight.” I racked my brain, trying to remember who, exactly, Lissa Knight was. One of the Billings alumnae, undoubtedly, but I’d just talked to four of them in a row and my brain was too fried to remember anything about this one. “I’ve heard there are some issues with the ribbon-cutting ceremony? I’ve already had my assistant charter a plane for myself and the other Dallas-area alumnae, and if I have to cancel it I need to know as soon as—”

“You don’t have to cancel anything,” I said, closing my eyes and praying for patience. “I’ve just come from a board hearing and I can guarantee you the ribbon-cutting ceremony will proceed as planned this Saturday morning, and all the other events are on as well.”

“You’re sure,” she said. It was more of a statement than a question.

“I’m sure. I promise I wouldn’t waste your valuable time if I wasn’t one hundred percent positive we were going forward as scheduled,” I assured her, trying for my most responsible voice.

As long as nothing else goes wrong in the next twenty-four hours, I thought, gritting my teeth.

“Well, all right, then.” Her tone brightened considerably. “I’ll let the others know.”

“Would you?” I said gratefully, collapsing into the back of the bench and slumping down slightly. “That would be so helpful.”

“Absolutely. I look forward to meeting you in person, Miss Brennan,” Lissa said. “Good-bye.”

“Me as well,” I replied, then almost gagged. Was that even close to good grammar? “Good-bye.”

I hung up the phone and groaned, dipping my head toward my knees. Someone sat down next to me, and I recognized by the polished, pointed toes of her shoes and signature musky scent that it was Noelle.

“Bad day?”

“Not entirely,” I said, lifting my face and flipping my thick hair back. I sat up straight, feeling the need to keep up appearances with her as much as I did with all the alums. Lately, when I was around Noelle, all I wanted to do was prove to her that I was doing the right thing. “In fact, the board voted to let us go ahead as planned.”

Noelle rested her arm on the back of the bench, gazing out across campus, taking in the beautiful pink and purple sky. The torchlights lining the walks suddenly flickered to life, painting a quaint and peaceful picture, the kind of warm, scenic shot Tiffany would have loved to have captured on her camera. The kind of image the Easton Academy catalog would have gladly slapped on its cover.

“I heard,” she said, with a sour twist of her lips. “So why with the groaning and moaning?”

“I guess the rumors got ahead of me,” I said, holding up the phone as the screen lit up once again. “All the alums and their assistants are calling to make sure everything’s okay.” I sighed and hit ignore. “I never realized that explaining and ass-kissing could be so exhausting.”

Noelle looked me over. “You do look tired, Reed. And stress lines do not become you,” she added, waving a finger around my brow area. I batted her hand away. “I’m just saying! Why don’t you just let this whole Billings thing go? You’re only here for one more year anyway. Why don’t you try focusing on other things? Things that you can actually control?”

I blinked. What, exactly, made her think I couldn’t control the Billings reconstruction? Hadn’t I just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could take on anything and anyone?

“Just live in Pemberly, spend your weekends at Cornell with loverboy like you know you’re going to anyway, graduate with honors, and put it all behind you,” she added, leaning back.

“Is that what you’re going to do? Just put it all behind you?”

Put me behind you? I added silently, feeling like a needy loser.

She pressed her lips together, giving me a condescending look that made my toes curl. “It’s hard to explain, but there’s something that changes when you get this close to the end,” she said, gazing out at the quad again. Couples strolled hand in hand, enjoying the warm evening. A gaggle of freshman girls giggled their way across campus toward the solarium. Off in the distance, a church bell clanged. “You suddenly start to feel . . . no, you start to know, that none of this . . . it just doesn’t matter, Reed.”

Now my fingers curled into fists. Didn’t she realize what she was saying? That this place that I loved despite everything, this place that had changed my life, didn’t matter? That I didn’t matter? That none of the crap we’d been through together over the past two years mattered?

I swallowed hard, not wanting to voice these thoughts. Not wanting to give her the opportunity to look down on me that way again. Like I was some pathetic middle schooler begging for her attention.

“I hate to say this, Noelle, but Billings . . . it’s part of our heritage,” I reminded her, shifting in my seat to face her. My phone rang again and I hit ignore as quickly as possible. “The Billings School for Girls was founded by our ancestors. I’m just trying to keep a part of that alive. Don’t you care about that at all?”

Noelle lifted her shoulders, then let them fall. “That’s all in the past. And after everything that’s happened, I think we should keep it there. It has nothing to do with us.”

I stared at her, wondering if she really believed that. Even when Josh walked up behind Noelle, hovering at the end of the bench, I didn’t break eye contact.

“Hey, guys,” he said tentatively. “What’s up?”

Noelle sighed audibly and stood, lifting her bag onto her shoulder. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her, Hollis. I’m out of ideas. And quite honestly, I’m starting to be bored by this whole thing.”

I let out a disbelieving bark of a laugh as she walked purposefully away. Josh slowly, tentatively sat down next to me and touched my shoulder, drawing a circle on my sweater with his thumb.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“Just Noelle trying once again to squash all my hopes and dreams.” The phone rang and I jammed my finger into the screen over the word “ignore.” Then I turned it off and tossed it into my bag, already dreading the ten million calls I’d have to return later. I turned toward Josh. “She still wants me to give up on Billings, even though we just scored the board’s approval. She thinks I should be focusing on ‘other things,’” I told him, throwing in some highly sarcastic air quotes.

Josh tilted his head and chewed his lip, something he seemed to do often when he had something to say, but knew I wouldn’t like it. I felt my heart drop. “Well, there is a lot of other stuff going on.”

“Josh!” I wailed.

“Just hear me out,” he said, putting his hand on my knee. “We have finals next week, then graduation, and we haven’t even nailed down our plans for the summer yet. We’ve got all these parties and you’ve got the awards ceremony. . . . It’s just a lot to pack in, that’s all.”

I turned my knees away from him in indignation. My insides felt crammed uncomfortably beneath my ribcage. Why couldn’t I get just a teeny bit of support for something that mattered to me so much?

But even as I fumed, I couldn’t help picturing the stack of assignments on my desk back in my room. And the dozens of unanswered e-mails and texts from my friends. Not to mention the fact that my calendar was so jammed I was running out of space to type in new events and appointments.

“And not that I want to be known for taking Noelle’s side, but this whole thing seems like it depresses her every time it comes up,” he said, looking off in the direction of Pemberly. “I almost feel . . . bad for her.”

That got my attention. No one ever felt bad for Noelle Lange. Least of all Josh. And he was right, of course. Noelle had been through a horrible thing. Was Josh that much more in tune with my best friend’s emotional state than I was?

Ugh. I loathed myself. Here I was, whining about how no one was supporting me, when all the while Noelle was needing my support.

I looked down at the mess of bulging bags and plans and papers and checklists and felt exhausted all over again, like I could just curl up in my bed and sleep for days. Maybe Noelle and Josh were both right. Maybe I’d taken on too much and lost sight of what was important in the process. Not just Noelle, but my other friends as well. This was supposed to be all about the Billings Girls, but other than at meals I’d barely seen any of them lately, and a lot of them would be graduating soon—Ivy, Tiffany, Rose, Portia, London, Vienna, Shelby. Wasn’t I a total hypocrite if I ignored all of them in the name of Billings?

In the distance a construction vehicle roared to life. Carolina waved her arms in the air, directing the driver, and the last ray of sun glinted off the lens of Christopher’s camera. It looked like someone was wasting no time in getting the project up and running again.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t take a step back and take some time to deal with what was really important. Starting with my friendship with Noelle.

I narrowed my eyes and looked over at Josh. “I hate you, you know that?”

He smiled and put his arms around me. “Yes. But only when I’m right.”