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blessed. Today I was the most loathed of the loathed. It wasn't like I'd pulled a crazy Mrs. Rochester and run through Gwendolyn with
a lit torch, cackling as I burned the place to the ground. The fire had been a result of London and Vienna's toking tour of Easton.
Someone had left a burning joint behind, and it hadn't been me. But even as my cheeks stung at the unfairness of being singled out, I
realized the situation was dire. When our crimes were compiled that way, they sounded really, really awful.
"Like we were the only ones at Gwendolyn," Noelle Lange said under her breath. For all her partying the night before, Noelle
looked as perfect as ever in a crisp white shirt and gray wide-leg pants, her long brown hair pulled back in a tortoiseshell headband. In
jeans and a black cashmere sweater she had given me a few weeks back, I felt troll-like in her presence. I wriggled back in my seat
and endeavored to sit up straight. Endeavored to meet Cromwell's cool stare with my own.
"Headmaster Cromwell?" London blurted, standing up in her four- inch heels. "I just want to point out that we weren't the only
ones there last night," she said, glancing at Noelle for backup. "I mean, the guys were there too, and--" "I don't believe I opened the
floor to comments, Miss Simmons," Headmaster Cromwell said, leaning so close to his microphone that his voice blasted through the
suspended corner speakers like the voice of God. London let out a yip of surprise and sat right back down. "Now, where was I?" As
Cromwell sifted through his papers, Constance leaned in close to my ear from behind. "Whit talked to his grandmother, and she said
they're going to deal with the other students individually, but since our whole dorm was there, they're viewing it as an overarching
house problem and they're going to, quote, 'deal with Billings accordingly.'"
Whit was Walt Whittaker, Constance's older boyfriend, whose grandmother sat on the Easton board, which meant she was one of
the gray faces judging us. But right then the diminutive old woman looked like she was starting to doze off at the far end of the table.
My life was on the line and she was catnapping. Real nice. Meanwhile, Susan Llewelyn, the Billings alumna who sat on the board--the
woman who had sent us to the secret passage in Gwendolyn Hall--was nowhere to be found. Her seat at the table was empty. "I am
S.N.S.," Portia Ahronian said, rolling her big green eyes. "So not surprised," she clarified. "The Crom has been trying to find a way to
get rid of us from D-one. He may be acting all stern and appalled, but you know he's L.O.T.I."
Headmaster Cromwell cleared his throat loudly. "Well, with a list of infractions this long, a vote seems superfluous," Cromwell
said. "But the school bylaws dictate that we must vote. So, the directive on the table is this: Shall the board of directors hereby dis-
solve Billings House and redistribute its members throughout the remaining girls' dormitories? Yay or nay? All those in favor--" My
pulse pounded in my temples, my eyes, my throat. They were going to do it. They were going to take our home away. "This isn't hap-
pening," Rose Sakowitz mumbled. "They can't close Billings. I just got in," Lorna Gross whined. Sabine DuLac leaned forward,
grasping the back of my chair. "Do something," she whispered urgently. "Reed, you have to do something." "Wait!" I was on my feet.
My voice reverberated off the high ceiling of the Great Room, the largest gathering space on campus aside from the cafeteria and the
chapel. Dead silence enveloped the room as everyone gaped at me. Dead silence as hundreds of faces blurred before my heavy, hun-
gover eyes.
