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everything isn’t always what it looks like, huh?”
    Mark snorted. “With you, it was exactly what it looked like.”
    “You just wanted any excuse to bail,” Joelle shot back. “You wouldn’t even hear me out—”
    “Let it go!” Mark stood so quickly that the bench jerked backward. “Move on, Jo, and stop with the bullshit. You know me, and this”—he poked a finger at her iPad—“isn’t who I am. Someone’s on a mission to make me look bad, and we both know who.” Mark turned to glare at Steve Getty. “The guy’s a total narcissist. It’s all about him.”
    Joelle briefly touched Katie’s shoulder. “I warned you, didn’t I?”
    “Mark, tell me the truth,” Katie said, standing up. She’dbelieved in him these past three months. Had he been with someone else?
    “Good luck with that,” Joelle said softly as she headed off.
    “I mean it, Mark.” Katie could hardly breathe. “Is it real or not?”
    He flinched. “It might be real, but it’s not the truth,” he told her. “Steve must’ve set me up. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He gave me a beer, the one I was drinking when I got sick and passed out—”
    “Wait! What?” Katie’s head spun. “You passed out?” He’d conveniently left that part out when she’d asked about the party before.
    “I’ve been trying to piece things together, but I don’t remember much before I woke up in the maid’s room.” There was desperation in his voice. He reached for her, clutching her fingers. “You just have to trust me.”
    “Trust you?” Katie had trusted him blindly until a minute ago. Now it wasn’t that easy. Her hands felt like ice. She looked at Tessa, who stared back across the table, her cool blue eyes watching. “So this girl with the rose tattoo, nothing happened with her, is that what you’re saying?”
    “Yeah, nothing happened. At least, I don’t think so.” Mark’s face turned red. “Like I said, I can’t remember—”
    “You’re kidding, right?” Katie hated the high pitch of her voice. “You can’t remember being in bed with a girl?”
    He winced. “What I know is that Steve handed me a beer that made me sick. The last thing that sticks with me is talking to Charlie, telling him I needed air. After that”—heshrugged—“nothing. Why would I make something like that up?”
    “No clue.” Katie wanted to believe him, she really did. “Is that all?” she asked, giving him one more chance.
    “Yeah.” The muscles in his jaw started to twitch. “That’s everything I know.”
    The room seemed to go freakishly quiet, or was that just her mind growing still while the rest of her world fell apart in a noisy
whoosh
?
    Please
, she thought,
please let this be a joke. Am I getting punked?
She swallowed and looked around, only to see the curious stares and Steve Getty’s smug face, gloating like a highway billboard.
    “C’mon, Katie, you know I would never risk losing you. I would never do anything so stupid.” Mark held her arms so tightly it hurt. “It has to be Steve. There’s no other explanation. Who else would’ve taken that picture and made sure it was seen by everyone at Whitney?”
    That made sense. It did. If only Katie could get the image of her boyfriend and that tattooed girl out of her head.
    She stepped over the bench, snatching up her book bag from the floor. “I’ll see you later,” she said. Then she walked away, even as her legs shook beneath her.
    “Katie, wait—”
    But she didn’t turn around.

K atie didn’t realize that she’d been holding her breath until she’d escaped the dining hall and rushed down the steps. The off-and-on drizzle had turned into a downpour. She clutched her book bag to her chest, sloshing through puddles, blinking as rain stuck her lashes together, obscuring her tears.
    Students huddled under colorful umbrellas hurried past, and Katie felt invisible against their vibrant reds and yellows. Her head down, wet hair plastered to her cheeks, she