Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,71

in their direction, I can see that Elisa is grinning. Lydia lifts her chin in a nod.

“Okay, no, seriously,” I murmur, quiet enough that only Chloe can hear me. “What the hell is this?”

Before she can reply I spy Principal DioGuardi coming down the hallway from the direction of the admin suite in a blue button-down so shiny it’s nearly iridescent. He catches my eye and motions us over, popping his whistle into his mouth.

“Girls,” he says, pulling it out again as we approach him. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”

I take a breath. “Mr. DioGuardi,” I begin, just like we practiced in Chloe’s bedroom, “Chloe and I are happy to discuss whatever concerns you had about this week’s issue. But I should let you know that we looked at the organizational paperwork for the Beacon before we published, and it says very clearly that the administration shall not interfere with the editorial page unless there’s an egregious violation of—”

Mr. DioGuardi shakes his head. “It’s not about that,” he tells me. “Or it is about that, but—” He jams the whistle back into his mouth, looking visibly pained. “I just wanted to let you both know that Mr. Beckett has been removed from the faculty.”

For a second I just blink at him dumbly. That is . . . not what I was expecting him to say.

“Really?” I blurt.

Mr. DioGuardi nods. “Other students have already come forward,” he explains miserably. He looks exhausted, greenish bags under his eyes and a day’s worth of beard on his chin; if things had gone a little bit differently between us, I’d almost feel sorry for him. “It seems there was . . . well. More of a problem with Mr. Beckett than we realized, certainly. Both here and at the last school he worked at.”

The last school he worked at. I remember the first day Bex drove me home, that line about cooking dinner for students in his apartment, and can’t keep from shaking my head.

“He’s really gone?” I ask, still looking for the catch somewhere, but Mr. DioGuardi nods again.

“Effective immediately,” he reassures me. “He won’t be back.”

“Wow.” It’s more than I ever dreamed would happen, honestly. “That’s . . . wow.”

Chloe seems to consider that for a moment; to my surprise, she doesn’t actually look satisfied. “So, Mr. DioGuardi,” she says politely, cocking her head to the side, her eyes sharp and keen behind her glasses. “It sounds like what you’re saying is that you were wrong not to believe Marin when she came to you in the first place, hm?”

Mr. DioGuardi frowns. “Well, it wasn’t a question of belief or not,” he explains, his gaze cutting from her to me and back again. “The board was working with the information they had at the time—”

“Including the information she gave you, right?”

“I . . . yes,” Mr. DioGuardi admits. “But without corroborating—”

“So it almost kind of feels like you owe her an apology.”

For a moment Mr. DioGuardi looks like he’s going to argue, but in the end he just sort of sags.

“I’m sorry, Marin,” he says, the words as stiff and awkward in his mouth as if he’s trying to speak Klingon. “I know you’ve been through a lot these last couple of months.”

It’s not exactly stellar, as far as apologies go, and it turns out that I don’t actually give a shit if he’s sorry or he’s not. I told the truth. Bex is gone. And Chloe and I are friends again. All told, I could have done worse. “Thanks,” I say, cool as a glass of my gram’s iced tea on the hottest day of summer. “I appreciate that.”

Once he’s gone I look around the hallway, then back at Chloe. Her expression is a shocked, delighted mirror of my own. “You wanna skip first period and go to the diner for breakfast?” I ask her. “Just you and me?”

“You know,” Chloe says thoughtfully, “I think that is the best idea I’ve heard all year.”

We link arms again and head back out into the parking lot. The sun is warm on the back of my neck.

Thirty-Seven

I go by Sunrise after school on Friday and find Camille standing at the nurses’ station, humming quietly to herself while she fills out some paperwork. Her Crocs are hot pink today, her scrubs printed with toucans and flamingos. An enormous Dunkin’ iced coffee sweats at her side.

“I’ve got something for you,” I tell her, digging around in my backpack for a moment before