Page 132 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“I choose death by Louis Vuitton,” Leo said. “And your secret is safe with me.”

“But I mean like, seriously,” I said. “This is hypothetical, obviously, but if it weren’t, all joking aside, if you knew I killed someone, you wouldn’t go to the police?”

“If you accidentally killed someone?” Leo asked. “I don’t know. No, I guess not.”

“Why not? Shouldn’t I be held accountable?”

“Family is family,” Leo said, shrugging.

“So the fact that we’re blood gives me a Get Out of Jail Free card? You wouldn’t feel morally compromised?”

“Listen, loyalty to the people you love, to your family, is a moral code. If you don’t have loyalty, what do you have?”

“Family loyalty,” I said. “That’s funny, coming from you.”

I still wasn’t completely over what Leo had done to me, and I liked to give him a hard time about it.

“You can’t forgive Dalton and not me,” Leo said. “That’s not fair.”

“Fine,” I said.

I still wasn’t sure where that left me.

“You’re still going to help me with the donations for the Trustee Benefit Gala tomorrow, right?” Leo asked.

“What do you mean ‘still’?” I asked. “I don’t remember volunteering in the first place.”

“I’m making everyone help, and you’re no exception,” Leo said. He was president of the junior class and since the student council was in charge of organizing the event, he had to help out. “Besides, I’ve been so busy lately, I’ve barely had time to do anything for it, and the gala’s on Saturday.”

I looked pointedly from him to the TV screen, where his attention was still fully absorbed in his game. “Yeah, you look really busy,” I said.

“What’d you get for your final ticket?” Leo asked, ignoring my comment.

“I have to publish the pictures you took of Mr. Andrews groping me in the Chronicle,” I said.

“That’s not so bad,” Leo said.

I suppose he meant execution-wise.

“I guess,” I said. “Do you have any idea what Mr. Andrews did to get on the A’s bad side?”

“It’s more like what he didn’t do,” Leo said. “Or, should I say, who he didn’t do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I guess Ren had a thing for him, and he didn’t reciprocate. It must have really pissed her off.”

“So we’re framing Mr. Andrews for hooking up with a student because he didn’t hook up with a student?”

“Something like that,” Leo said.

I couldn’t help but think of the dean of arts from last year, and how the A’s had driven him off campus by exposing his very explicit emails with a minor to the whole school. Had that been a setup too? At the time, I had viewed the A’s as some sort of dark-knight vigilantes, but now . . .

“But doesn’t that seem messed up to you?” I asked.

Leo shrugged. “It’s not that far off from what we’ve done so far, is it?”

“Yes, it is,” I said.