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WHIT­TAK­ER

It was a cold night Cold and ex­treme­ly dark, with no stars and no e of leaves from the trees when­ev­er it blew--leaves that were still wet fro driz­zle They felt slimy and foul when they hap­pened to fall on ex­posed skin, so as an­oth­er gust whipped through the hills, we all ducked and cov­ered I felt in to shiv­er

“Augh! There's one onover with her shoul­ders to her ears She clutched the bot­tle of vod­ka she'd been swig­ging froht in one hand and slapped in­ef­fec­tive­ly at her back with the oth­er The large yel­low maple leaf had sucked it­self al­ down the blond curls that had es­caped from the back of her pony­tail “Get it off!”

Nor­ht she had been pound­ing straight al­co­hol like it was the nec­tar of the gods, per­haps be­cause she, like e par­ents week­end--which had end­ed just hours ago with a

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cer­emo­ny in the Eas­ton Acade­my chapel--from her meh, and she had ap­peared to be at least co else could be both­er­ing her

“Get it off!” she whiain “Guys!”

“Don't look atfro cash­mere coat around her knees and held it there “I just had a paraf­fin wrap”

Ki­ran, the first ac­tu­al irls I had ev­er seen in re­al life, had al­ways just had sohts, der­ Most of it sound­ed like tor­ture, but ap­par­ent­ly it all worked

Noelle Lange rolled her eyes and plucked the large wet leaf from Tay­lor's skin “Pri­ma don­nas,” she said de­ri­sive­ly She whipped the leaf at the ground, and it land­ed right in front of the long, flat rock on which Ar­iana Os­good sat Ar­iana looked down at the leaf for aof life A lighter breeze lift­ed her long, al­most white-?blond hair from her shoul­ders and she looked up in­to it, then closed her eyes in plea­sure

I pulledand watched this tableau un­fold like I was an an­thro­pol­ogist study­ing some pre­vi­ous­ly un­clas­si­fied sub­set of hu­s Girls froh the win­dow of my sopho­more dorm at

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Eas­ton Acade­­ly no hope of ev­er gain­ing up-?close ac­cess But that hadn't been the case for long The Billings Girls were now my friends My doral­ly in the woods on the out­skirts of ca­ular ba­sis

If you could call “twice” a reg­ular ba­sis

I was one of theh if some­one asked me to sit down and tell them how I had done it, I would be ren­dered speech­less Last I checked, I had pissed the to talk to my boyfriend, Thoht I had lost the to stick with hih his is­sues In­stead, I had ap­par­ent­ly im­pressed them

Soht ac­tu­al­ly have a shot of leav­ingone of the e­ny who re­turn to the hoe to take as­sis­tant s Girls be­hind me, I ac­tu­al­ly had a shot at a life A fu­ture A shot at be­ing part of a world I had on­ly ev­er dreae Of free­dom

“Are you all right over there, Reed?” Noelle asked, lift­ing her long, dark hair over her shoul­der “If you don't want an­oth­er beer I'm sure Ki­ran would be hap­py to mix up a Hayes Spe­cial for you”

Her eyes danced with mis­chief and I knew she had no­ticed my

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state of con­te been in­vit­ed here, for ev­ery­thing they had done fora beer forer­rands for the pret­ty much non­stop since the first week of school So I waved her off