With a bitter taste in my mouth, I left the Who’s New? category and visited the page called Rankings instead. There were rankings for a bunch of different things, but the first one to catch my eye was called Hottest Students.

In the first place was, unsurprisingly, Noelle, followed by Jasper Des Lauriers. Then came a bunch of other girls’ and boys’

names I didn’t know. And then . . .

I squinted at the screen to make sure I wasn’t seeing wrong.

But there it was: my name, in eleventh place.

For just a second my previous contempt was replaced with pride at the unexpected flattery, but I quickly caught myself.

Who even cared about the opinion of a superficial online blogger?

Not me, I decided as I closed the window and went back to the home page.

Still, out of sheer boredom and the fact that I couldn’t return to my room yet, I decided to do some research. I made sure to look over my shoulder to see if anyone was near and could see me typing Noelle’s name, but other than Miss Pepperman, who was enthralled by the book she was reading, the library was deserted.

As soon as I hit Search, article after article popped up until there were at least twenty search results. Clicking a random title brought me to an article from six months ago that talked about how Noelle had bullied the former captain of the basketball team out of her place. After reading the first few lines, I was convinced that The Watcher had made the story up. Even though Noelle could be intimidating and rude, I doubted that she would go to such lengths just to be captain. At least I hoped so.

The next article I selected started with a blurred picture of Noelle making out with a boy. She was sitting on the windowsill in her—now our—room, her legs wrapped around a guy with flaming red hair.

Written under the photo was:

To absolutely no one’s surprise, Noelle Daniels has yet another boy toy. This time it’s fellow basketball player Tom McHardy.

I wonder if this is the reason for Tom’s performance improving on the court? I’m sure his captain knows how to motivate him . . .

Attention, team: I would steer clear of the locker room for a while unless you want to walk in on some steamy post-game sex ;)

I grimaced as the memory of Noelle with that other guy in our room returned, but tried to shake off the thought and continued browsing the articles.

There were a bunch of similar reports, all announcing Noelle’s newest relationships. With each of them, the author got snarkier, more and more spiteful as they kept track of every single boy she had been seeing since her arrival at Seven Hills about three years ago.

There was one article that stood out though: instead of talking about an established relationship and giving proof in the form of explicit photos, it merely uttered a suspicion.