Kitabı oku: «Mean Girls»

Mean Girls

New Girl

Paige Harbison

Confessions of an Angry Girl

Louise Rozett

Here Lies Bridget

Paige Harbison

Speechless

Hannah Harrington

www.miraink.co.uk

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New Girl

Paige Harbison

PRAISE FOR PAIGE HARBISON

“For fans of Gossip Girl.” —Teen Vogue

“Here Lies Bridget is an ideal read for victims of this abysmal behaviour [bullying], offering keen and witty insight into the emotional motivations of privileged narcissists … What’s so engaging about Here Lies Bridget is its honest insight into Bridget’s self-perception … [A] solid and intriguing read.” —Los Angeles Times

“The novel unfolds with a certain sweetness and a lack of

cynicism, which I found refreshing. This may be because

author Paige is only twenty years old, so her connection

with a young audience is natural and easy.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jen Lancaster on Here Lies Bridget

“Ms Harbison wrote a fantastic book. It was filled with

great life lessons as well as great entertainment.”

—Books with Bite blog, 5 Bites

“I totally loved this book! From the moment I opened

it up and read the first page I was hooked. I seriously

couldn’t put it down … Overall a fantastic, captivating

page-turner every high-school-aged girl should

pick up and read.”

—My Precious: The Ramblings of a

Kindle Addict blog

“Here Lies Bridget is a fun, sweet, cruel and wonderfully delightful story that is part Mean Girls and part A Christmas Carol.” —Fiktshun blog

To Angela Petrunick,

who lost her computer privileges at work because of this

book—and who helped me make it what it is today

“Oh, for the time

when I shall Sleep

Without identity.”

—Emily Brontë

chapter 1 me

THE PANORAMIC VIEW OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS of the bus showed a world that wasn’t mine. It was chilly in early September and the trees were pine, not palm.

I grew up in St. Augustine, Florida. My life so far had been made up of conversations over noisy fans, shrieking at the sight of pony-size bugs in the shower, and coming home from the beach to find an alarmingly sunburned reflection waiting for me in the mirror. When I took my Labrador, Jasper, for a walk, it meant running in the surf and tossing a tennis ball into the waves. I hardly ever got in the car without my thighs sticking to the hot seats, and most of my neighbors were renters or vacationers. It wasn’t Hawaii, but it wasn’t New Hampshire, either. And that, unfortunately for this warm-weather girl, was where I found myself now.

Towering trees of dark, thick green loomed over the highway we rode down. It was fifty-five degrees out, the sun had already set at six, and it was only September second. St. Augustine isn’t bliss all year round, and I’m the first to admit it, but it’s never this cold yet. Not this early in the year. My friends back home were still going for swims after school every day and requesting outdoor seating at restaurants. Restaurants that I was already craving to order from again.

Behind me I was leaving all of the warmth of home, my best friends, and a really comfortable queen-size bed that lay next to a big window that overlooked the beach and filled my room with the smell of salty sand. I was leaving all of that for a boarding school. Up north. Where I knew no one.

I’d never been the new girl before, and I barely knew what to think. But every time I remembered that that would be my new identity, a surge of nervous anticipation spread from my chest right down to the pit of my stomach. I was about to step into the spotlight in front of eight hundred other students. Would they wait for me to dance and entertain them, or would they expect me to walk right across the stage and back out of sight?

And which would I do?

My parents had called this a “surprise.” Poor, deluded, lovely things that they are. It turned out that they had been submitting an application for me every year since I’d begged to go to boarding school in eighth grade. I’d found this place on Google somewhere, and excitedly called them to the computer where I’d gone on and on about how much fun it would be.

This was right after I’d finished all of the Harry Potter books, unsurprisingly, and would have given anything to be swept away and told that my life was more than it seemed. When my first application was submitted and rejected, I’d burst into adolescent tears. When I had stepped into my new huge, public high school for the first time, I’d felt sick with regret that I couldn’t be somewhere else. It felt so plain, so black-and-white.

But by the time my parents presented me with the fruits of their secret labors, I’d grown to really love my “plain” life—largely thanks to them, admittedly. Not even in that “never know what you’ve got until it’s gone” kind of way. I was happy all the time. Sheltered and comfortable, true. Dreading college and being away from everything, also true. But I was happy.

I had a best friend, Leah, who was regularly in and out of the same relationship with one guy, a crew of other fun friends that I wasn’t as close to but had plenty of fun with, and a seriously fantastic little family that I loved to come home to. If anything went badly in the rest of my life, there was always my mother to reassure me that the thing I really needed was a pedicure, and off we’d skip. My father could always come back from the grocery store with a York Peppermint Pattie and a tube of Pringles, knowing that my way to my happiness is often found through junk food. My four-year-old sister, Lily, could always cheer me up with a crayon drawing, or even the overheard sounds of her tiny voice in another room playing out some story with her toys. Not to mention again the warm breeze that whistled through my window every night, while I drifted off to sleep with Jasper curled up on my feet.

Oh, that feeling … I missed it already.

Last night seemed like forever ago.

But one lazy afternoon, my parents had called me in from the backyard, where I was tanning and listening to a book on my little white earphones, and into the kitchen. Lily was flinging macaroni and cheese, and my parents were beaming.

“What’s going on?” I could tell something was up. My mother, the open book, looked like she was about to burst.

“We have a bit of a surprise for you.” My dad grinned.

“We got you into Manderley!” my mother spilled.

She loved good news, gossip, excitement, parties and wine. She’d grown up in the heart of Paris with equally marvelous sisters, and so every word that came out of her mouth sounded like champagne bubbles. So I smiled, not registering what she’d said meant, or even—as was often the problem with my dear mother’s accent—what she’d said.

“Sorry?”

“Manderley Academy.” My dad held up a brochure. “We know how badly you’ve always wanted to go. You got in, honey!”

He came over to give me a hug. My mother, who had been bouncing from foot to foot, her hands clasped together, followed him.

And, like that, there was nothing I could say. They were too excited. I tried to drop hints over the coming weeks, suggesting that maybe my going there wasn’t worth the money, considering that it was only for one year. But they told me the money was already spent and that it would probably help get me a scholarship at one of the schools I’d already been accepted to.

“See, it’s actually saving money,” my father had decided.

My mom cooed from the next room that it was, “perfect, just pozee-tiffly perfect!”

Leah, ever the devoted best friend, patiently spent the rest of the summer helping me soak up as much of home as I could before leaving. We were having fun, when I wasn’t catching her looking at me mournfully. At those points I’d say, “Lee-ah, I’ll be back for college soon, and you’ll be absolutely sick of me.”

She’d nod, but then doubt would fill her eyes as she looked at me and she’d say something like, “But what if you don’t come back?”

I’d laugh and assure her that there was no way that would happen. It had always been our plan to go to college together and be roommates. I ignored the voice in my head that asked if I was sure that’s what I really wanted.

Of course it was. It’s what I’d always wanted.

I ordered coconut shrimp from my favorite restaurant every other day, in an effort to get sick of them. Instead, I think what I did was grow more desperate not to leave them behind. Leah and I went to the beach every single day, without fail. As she put it, I was going to need my tan to last through the year. The whole, long, cold year up north. Sometimes it was like she was trying to convince me to stay, but since I had no control over it, all it did was make me dread my impending departure more.

When it rained, we just moped and looked out the windows for a while before watching something obsess-worthy for the rest of the day.

The days were shorter than ever in those three months. My legs felt leaner and tanner, and my shorts shorter and more frayed. My friends were funnier and more exuberant than ever before. The boys were cuter, the neighbors more neighborly, and my home was cozier. No one argued, no one was snappish; everything was perfect.

But then the summer wound to a close, like all good things eventually do. Though you’d never know it from looking outside, where it was still sunny and warm.

My mother took me shopping for things with long sleeves—and I learned that these make my wrists feel strangled—boots, which make my feet hot, and a good coat, which made me feel panicky and claustrophobic. I said goodbye to all of my friends, knowing it wouldn’t be the same next time I saw them. I gave Jasper the biggest hug, soothed my distressed sister with a bag of Pirate’s Booty popcorn (her favorite for some reason) and the promise that I’d be home soon, thanked my parents again for the surprise, and trudged onto a plane for New Hampshire. Now here I was hours later, passing by neighborhoods with big old Victorian-style homes, trying to forget about palm trees and mango salsa. I pushed thoughts of football on the beach at night and the ability to actually leave school at the end of the day from my mind.

I knew I would be okay. I always was. I wasn’t going to feel nostalgic forever. I wasn’t going to hate everything just because it was unfamiliar. It’d be tough to jump into a new life, but that was okay. It was my last year of high school anyway. What did I have to lose?

I could be anyone I wanted to be now. I could adopt an accent—I’d always been ace at mocking my mother. I could become a slut maybe. I could be carefree and exciting….

A small, irritating voice in my head told me that I wouldn’t be any of those things. I’d lose confidence as soon as I stepped off this bus, and that was just a fact.

The neighborhoods that passed by the windows died away, and we turned onto a long, narrow, gravel road. A road like a hallway, packed with cabs, cars and other buses, with walls of tall green trees on either side of us and reaching up to the clouds. We inched our way up for fifteen minutes, and then I finally saw the actual boarding school for the first time in real life.

Manderley.

It truly took my breath away the second it unveiled itself to me. The building was old, enormous, and I could just barely see in the waning daylight that it was covered in thick ivy. Lively golden glows poured from its shuttered windows. Surrounding all this were jade lawns and a wrought-iron fence. Lamps illuminated bustling, shadowy figures in the roundabout, all unloading luggage and heading down the long path of brick that led to the building.

The campus had always been striking in the pictures I saw, but to see it in person made me feel like I was in the presence of some omniscient queen.

We filed off of the bus, and cold air hit my thighs. I had been freezing for the entire ride from the airport until I figured out how to direct the stream of air they call a fan away from me. Everyone around me was wearing long jeans, scarves, Lacoste polos, and sweaters. My Jax Beach Lifeguard sweatshirt (a real one, not a touristy one), frayed jean shorts and Rainbow flip-flops looked so out of place. I’d been sure it couldn’t be that cold here.

I’d spent my life in Southern states. I’d never even seen snow in real life.

“Oh, you’ll see a lot of that,” Dad had said.

“Hush, Daddy. Tell me there’ll be unseasonably warm weather this year,” I’d replied.

I also had brought the most stuff out of anybody I’d ridden in with. I’d gotten a lot of looks throughout the ride, and I assumed that was why, although that annoying part of me felt kind of sure I had a big embarrassing something somewhere on me. According to the snotty girl sitting in front of me—who seemed intent on informing me without speaking directly to me—everyone always leaves their things in their rooms over the summer. Still, weren’t there freshmen and transfers? Why was it so weird I should have a year’s worth of things before living somewhere for a year?

“Miss?”

I turned and saw a guy with a flashlight and a notepad.

“Yes?”

“Do you need to check in some luggage?”

“Check in?”

“There’s only a service elevator, so we just take it up for you.”

His practiced tone told me that he’d had to explain this many times.

“Oh.” I smiled. “Okay, great. I was wondering how I was going to bring it all in.” I gave a small laugh, and he smiled politely back at me.

“Write down your student ID number and room number here, please.” He handed me a clipboard. I filled out the indicated lines, referencing the letter I’d gotten over the summer for both, and handed it back. “Thanks, it should be up there soon.”

He slapped stickers on my things, and another guy put them into a cart. I followed everyone else up the walkway toward the school, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. I would not be intimidated by this place. I refused. I ignored that little voice in my head again.

As I walked down the path, I remembered when I was thirteen and looking at pictures of Manderley. I’d imagined myself prancing down this very path full of optimism, maybe already with a brand-new friend acquired on the ride in, ready to have an adventure.

I felt a little silly thinking about it, but something in me still had a flicker of that same excitement.

Once in the hall, I saw that there was a woman directing each wave of students to a line for the cell phone drop. Yes. Oh-ho yes.

The cell phone drop. In an effort to be more “traditional,” the school mandated that we could use cell phones only between seven and nine at night or on weekends, and we had to check them out, leaving our room keys behind as collateral. Leah and I’d read all about it in the letters. We’d sat on her back porch in the gray-blue of a mosquitoey twilight waiting for her dad to finish grilling the burgers and hot dogs, and read all about the new restrictions I’d be living with.

I’d be living in a dorm with a girl I’d never yet spoken to, sleeping in a twin-size bed. There would be no interdorm visitation between guys and girls, no social-networking sites except on a special computer in the library. We’d be wearing uniforms, and, perhaps most disappointingly as a new student with no friends here, the no cell phones thing.

It was like prison. Without visitors.

After reluctantly dropping off my beloved, brand-new iPhone and getting my key, I realized I didn’t know where to go.

I got up the nerve and approached two girls standing by the stairs. “Hi, um, I’m sorry, but do any of you know which way I go to get to room fifteen?”

The girls exchanged a meaningful look I didn’t understand. I resisted the urge to shrink away.

The brunette with big pearl earrings and a very thin nose tossed her hair and looked at me. “So you’re the new girl?”

“Yes, I’m—”

“Great. My name is Julia, and this is Madison. We live right across from you.”

“Oh, good.” I smiled.

She did not.

“You can follow us, we’re going up.”

“Okay.”

Follow seemed like a weird word to choose. Walk with. Or, come with. Instead, I got trail pitifully behind like a stray cat.

They started off, and I tried to keep up.

“So did you two know whoever used to live in my room?”

Another exchanged look.

The one called Julia looked straight ahead and responded, “Yep.”

“Ah.” I nodded. Trying to fill the silence I said, “That cell phone drop blows, doesn’t it? How do you guys survive?”

Madison looked back at me. “You get used to it.”

It was clear that I shouldn’t ask any more. I stayed silent for the next two flights.

The hallway was all open doors and girls gabbing and shrieking. The noise quieted as we walked up. Everyone was looking at us. Or at me. I didn’t know whether to wave or what, so I just walked on.

“There it is,” Julia said, and pointed at the only shut door on the hall.

Everyone was silent now, and no one tried to conceal their stares.

I went for the knob, hesitated, and then knocked. No answer. Pushing the door open, I was surprised to find that the lights were on and my roommate was there, reading a book.

“Hi, are you Dana?” I asked, and then realized that both sides of the room were fully decorated. “Am I in the wrong room?”

Was that why everyone had stared? They were just trying to embarrass me for some reason?

“No.”

“No you’re not … Dana, or—”

“You’re in the right place,” she said impatiently, not looking up at me. A curtain of shiny black hair hid her face.

I stood there, feeling like an idiot. She wasn’t being helpful at all, but still I felt like I was harping on the subject. “Sorry, but … then why is there someone else’s stuff over there?”

“Those are Becca’s things.”

Another few seconds of silence passed as she slowly, deliberately, turned a page in her book.

“Um. Okay.” I cleared my throat again and shifted my weight to my left foot, still aware of the quiet outside as everyone listened to this conversation. It seemed that Dana would be perfectly content with me standing here for the rest of my life trying to figure out if, in fact, I should take another step in or not.

Finally she revealed to me her face. She looked like a skeleton. The skin that stretched over her high, sharp-looking cheekbones was as white as Julia’s pearls. Her lashes were black and long, and trimmed narrow eyes. Thick black liner encircled them, and she looked distinctly exotic. I didn’t think I’d ever seen someone who looked quite like her.

I immediately felt the twinge of intimidation.

“Is … she coming to get her stuff?” I asked, when she said nothing.

“I don’t know.”

“What am I supposed to do with it, then?”

I blushed as my confidence promptly ebbed.

Her cat eyes moved to look at the other side of the room. “I already put some of it away for her.”

I followed her gaze and spotted a Louis Vuitton suitcase underneath the bed.

“I see,” I said.

A thoughtful moment passed before she said, “You shouldn’t sleep in the sheets.”

“No.”

I took a few steps toward the bed. The floorboards groaned.

“Stop.” She said it quietly, but exhaustedly. As if she’d told me a hundred times to stay away from that comforter.

I backed away, watching as she very slowly and carefully removed each layer. When she got to the pillow, she stopped for a minute and gave it a very slight squeeze before removing its case. Odd. But I said nothing.

When she finished, Dana walked silently back to her side of the room, and removed her own sheets, replacing them with Becca’s. I got a chill, and then realized the noise had resumed outside.

Once she’d finished, she lay down in the sheets and closed her eyes. I averted mine quickly, feeling as though I was spying on someone unaware of my presence.

My suitcases hadn’t arrived yet, so I just sat down on the nylon-encased mattress that was begrudgingly left for me. With a furtive glance in my roommate’s direction, I leaned forward and looked at the Polaroid pictures on the wall across from me.

Most of them starred a pretty girl with long, platinum-blond hair. She was pretty in that sort of affected way that you can tell she practiced. Maybe I was wrong, maybe that’s how she always looked, but to me she seemed a little pinched. I noticed in one picture that she was one of those girls who looked good in a hat. I always look stupid in them.

I scanned the snapshots of her with different friends, almost always posed and never candid, and usually including someone who was probably her boyfriend. There was more than one picture of them kissing. He was really good-looking. Not just hot or sexy, but handsome in that kind of old-fashioned way. His hair was dark and his eyes were light. He wasn’t smiling in any of the pictures, and something about him made it hard to look away.

All the girls stood with their stomachs sucked in and their hands on their hips, either squinting “sexily” at the camera or making some other very-on-purpose facial expression. Madison and Julia, the girls I’d just met, were in several of them. I could already tell that they weren’t the kind of people that I was used to being around.

Suddenly my bright pink toenail polish looked tacky, and my clothes ratty.

I was startled a moment later by a knock at the door. I glanced at Dana, who didn’t move.

“Come in?” I said, standing. It was Madison and Julia, who, clearly, never left each other’s sides.

“So, are you down to come to the party later?” Julia asked.

“Is it like a school thing?”

Madison furrowed her brows, still smiling. “No?”

I hesitated, weighing the options between risking getting in trouble but being social and taking the safe route of staying in my room. What was the worst that could happen, I’d have to transfer back home?

“Yeah, sure.”

They both smiled, said, “Cool,” and then they walked off, leaving Dana and me alone again, as if the brief exchange had never happened.

“Are you going?”

Her eyes opened, and she stared at the ceiling. “Maybe. Probably not.”

“Okay.” I sat back down.

She grabbed her book and went back to “reading.”

After a few more minutes, my things finally arrived, and I told the guy to just go ahead and set them on the floor. I stood above the pile, considering it for a long moment.

“Dana?” I said quietly. She looked up, and I withered. “Sorry. Um. Do you think … Should I take down these pictures and the frames and everything?”

She said nothing. This was unnecessarily uncomfortable.

“I mean … I could pack them up ….” I trailed off lamely, not looking forward to the prospect.

She still said nothing. All I wanted to do was text Leah and share with her how completely, totally weird this all was. I wanted to tell her how I couldn’t wait until next year; we’d both been accepted to Florida State University and fully intended to be roommates.

Instead, my phone sat in some lockbox downstairs, and I tried to arrange my things neatly and accessibly in my boxes and suitcases. After that quick task, I lay down in my new bed and tried to ignore the bright blue eyes staring down at me from almost every picture. I picked up the first Harry Potter book in an effort to get excited about boarding school again, and waited quietly in my bed for Madison and Julia to fetch me for the party that would begin it all.

chapter 2 becca

One year ago

“I MEAN, CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY SENT ME HERE?” Becca sat, legs and arms crossed, in the backseat, complaining to the taxi driver she wasn’t even sure spoke English. He nodded every now and again, but that was about it. She didn’t even care, she was venting. “And you know why?”

The driver made eye contact with her in the rearview mirror.

Becca leaned forward. “Because I can’t ‘keep my grades up.’ They think that’ll be easier here? All of these kids probably study nonstop. They’re probably all supersmart.” She sat back again, with a disgruntled noise. “I mean that’s not the only reason they made me come. I just … I hate both of my parents. My mom used to be okay, but now she just does whatever my dad says.”

Nod from the driver.

“Yeah, it sucks. They don’t know how to handle me so therefore they—what—ship me off? That is fantastic parenting.” She was silent for a moment before another thought struck her. “This is their fault anyway. Isn’t it all about the parenting? Isn’t the ‘troubled teenager’ thing just the lashing out of an ignored or neglected child?”

Nod.

“Exactly. See, even you understand it.” She sighed as they pulled up to Manderley. “But I don’t know. Maybe this will be better.”

The taxi stopped by all the others along the very long entryway road, and the driver got out to remove her suitcases and boxes.

“Lot of stuff,” he remarked with a smile when Becca clicked over in her high-heeled boots to join him at the back of the van.

“Yes, because this is my last two freaking years of high school, and they don’t even want me at home. So I just brought all of it with me.”

Nod. “Pay.” He held out a hand.

“Ah.” She dug into her purse. “You do accept cards, right? Cards?” She held one up when he clearly didn’t know what she was saying.

Nod.

She looked down at her things, and then at the sidewalk, which was another six or seven feet. Becca smiled and looked at the driver. “Could you be a sweetheart and move them up there for me? Please?”

He cleared his throat and then did as she asked. When he came back, she handed him her credit card and waited. He brought back a receipt. She signed it, putting twenty dollars on the tip line. The next minute, he was back in the car and driving off.

For the briefest of moments, she felt weird watching him go. She was alone. This was her first year at a brand-new school, and she knew no one. Even that driver, whatever his unpronounceable, all consonant name was, had felt like company on the ride from the airport.

“Miss?”

Some guy with a cart startled her. “Jesus, what?”

“I can take your things and deliver them to your room.”

“Okay, it’s all right there.” She pointed.

“Student ID number and room number?”

She screwed up her face. “I have no clue.”

“It should have come in the mail with your roommate’s name and your rule book.”

She shrugged.

He looked down at his pad of paper. “Okay, just give me your name, then.”

“Rebecca Normandy.”

“You don’t know any of your information?”

“No.”

He clicked the side of his walkie-talkie, and it bleeped. “Hey, Bill?”

A few seconds passed before “Bill” answered. “Yeah.”

“Can you look up a student’s information for me?”

Another couple of seconds. “Go ahead.”

“Rebecca … Normandy.” He spelled her last name, and then wrote down what Bill’s muffled voice reported.

She was getting impatient, and then had a terrible moment where she realized she wasn’t eager to get anywhere.

“And how many items?”

Becca looked at him for a moment. He was looking right at them, did she really need to tell him? She glanced meaningfully down at them and then back to him.

He took a deep breath and counted, then handed her a ticket he’d recorded it on. “Okay, hang on to this. On the back I wrote down your room number and student ID number. You’ll need those to get your key up there at the cell phone drop.”

She froze. “So sorry, the what?”

He gave her a look. “Didn’t read any of the info, huh?”

“Uh-uh. Did you say cell phone drop?”

“They’ll tell you the hours you can check it back out.”

Becca sighed and followed the rest of the students up to the line that ended at a window. It was way too long to wait in. She went up to the next person in line. Luckily, it was a guy.

“Hi, I’m new here, and I’m so sorry to ask this, but do you mind if I just drop off my cell real fast? I wouldn’t ask, but I’m just feeling so sick from the ride up here.”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“Thank you so much,” she cooed. She looked apologetically at everyone else in the line. “Sorry!”

They all looked forgiving. She stepped into the line and then up to the window.

“Rebecca Normandy.”

The boy behind the window was skinny and unattractive. He was the type that needed to learn that big shirts only make you look smaller.

“Freshman?”

She looked askance at him. Did she look like a freshman? “Um, no? Junior.”

“Fill out the card.” She did, using the information from the janitor guy, and then slid it back to him.

“Here’s your key and information packet,” the boy said.

“Okay, and where are the girls’ dorms?”

He pointed. She smiled at him and then again at the boy who’d let her cut in front of him.

As she turned to walk away, she saw that almost everyone in the hall was looking at her. She couldn’t help but love it.

But what a lot of average-looking people, she thought.

She had nothing to lose now that she was at Manderley. She might as well choose to be a hit while she was still here. She could be remembered when she did finally leave. But for a better reason than last time she left a school. There wasn’t exactly a plaque hanging up at Waterford High School.

The following eyes continued the entire way up to her room. When she finally got there, the door was open. There was a dark-haired girl sitting on one of the beds, and the other side of the room was empty.

“I’m Rebecca. Call me Becca if you want,” she said, making brief eye contact before looking around and taking in the entirely dreary room. The floor was a flat and ugly all-colors carpet, the walls were dingy white, and the bed looked like one you’d see in a dollhouse, i.e., not one for sleeping.

“I’m Dana Veers.” Even she sounded bored with herself.

“This room is horrible,” Becca said, and walked moodily to the empty side.

“It’s ridiculous. I hate it. I’ve been here two years, and I feel like the walls are slowly moving in every day.”

Becca looked at her new roommate for the first time. She was thin and pale, but was very pretty.

“Rocking the vampire look, I see.” Becca started to unbutton her coat.

“That means a lot coming from you, Barbie.”

Becca froze, and then started to laugh. She could see that her reaction surprised Dana.

“What are you laughing at?” Dana’s tone sharpened.

“You! That was funny. Barbie. I never get that.” She rolled her eyes.

“Because vampire was so creative?”

“Touché,” Becca said with an arched eyebrow raised. “So what happened to your old roommate?”

“She graduated. Most of the girls end up with a roommate in the same class year, but sometimes they have to combine ages.” She shrugged. “She was quiet, we didn’t really talk very much.”

Becca nodded, and then looked at her suitcases and boxes. “Wow, do I not feel like unpacking. What time is it?”

Dana hesitated before answering. It was clear that she didn’t quite know how to handle her new roommate. “Eight-thirty.”

“Mmm-kay. Is anything going on tonight?” It had been a while since she’d been social. She needed it.

“Anything … like what?”

Becca sighed. “Like, a party or something?”

“No one really parties here.”

Becca laughed. “Now that is just not possible. It’s a boarding school. That is the only thing that makes these places tolerable.”

And then Becca was out the door. She stuck her head in the doorway of the next room over. Two girls were chatting and unpacking.

“Hey, I’m Becca.” She smiled winningly at them in an omg-we-r-about-2-b-bffs! kind of way.

“I’m Julia.” The taller of the two girls ran a hand through her caramel highlights.

“I’m Madison.”

“Great. So, what’s going on tonight?”

“What?” Madison asked.

“Any kind of party or anything?”

Madison looked confused. “No …”

Becca looked to Julia, who shook her head.

“Well, we should have one. Is there anywhere we can go?”

Madison shook her head, but Julia raised an eyebrow in consideration.

“I’ve always said we should do something down at the boathouse, but we never have. They have cameras. Not on the actual beach, but in the hall on the way there and stuff.”

“Hmm … who watches the security tapes at night? Is it a student or, like, a security person?”

“He’s a security guy, but he’s kind of …” She looked uncomfortable. “He’s just kind of off ….”

“What, like, retarded?”

“Mentally challenged. Yes.” Madison nodded.

“Let’s go talk to him. What time’s he go on to his shift, anyone know?”

“I always see him in there at night. He might be down there now.”

Becca smirked. “Lead the way.”

Madison looked nervous.

“Come on,” said Becca, “don’t be spineless.”

Julia straightened up almost imperceptibly and walked out of the room. Madison followed. Then Becca. They led her to a wing off the great hall.

“That guy?” Becca pointed to the lanky, red-haired boy in the small, all-windowed office.

“That’s him….” said Madison meekly.

Becca adjusted her hair, pulled down her shirt a little and knocked on the door. When he turned to look at her, she smiled and waved. “Hi!”

“Come in?”

“Hi, I’m Becca.” She leaned down and held out a hand, which he took. “What’s your name?”

“Danny.”

“Danny? I like that name.” She smiled again when he did. “So, Danny, I was wondering if you could help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“Some people want to have a little get-together tonight, but we don’t want to get in trouble.” She stuck out her lips a little. “We just don’t want to get told on. And we were just sure that you would be the right person to talk to about that.”

He groaned. “I don’t know….”

Becca smiled. “Oh, come on … it’ll be our little secret! And maybe one of these times when we do it you can come down? Maybe?”

Danny laughed. “That would be nice.”

“Good. So when you see everyone walking down the stairs to this boathouse, you won’t say anything?”

He bared his teeth in worry, but shook his head. “I won’t say anything.”

“Good. Good. That’s very, very sweet of you.” She took his hand. “Thank you so much, Danny. If you ever get in trouble, I’ll take full responsibility. But let’s not let that happen, okay?”

He nodded eagerly.

“I’m going to go now, but I’ll stop by soon to say hello, okay, Danny?” He nodded again.

She walked out and looked at the girls. “Okay, we’re all set.”

“Oh, my God, how did you do it?” Julia asked.

Becca shrugged. “Okay, now we need people. Guys.”

“That’s going to be difficult,” said Madison.

“Why?”

“We’re not allowed in the boys’ dorms.”

“Ugh, are you serious?”

Both of the girls nodded, looking somber.

“Okay, well then I’ll do it. I’m new. I didn’t know.” She gave a wide-eyed dumb-girl look and then smiled.

Madison laughed. “You’re so … ballsy.”

“Take me to the boys.”

Their next stop was a door directly across from the one that led to their own dorms. While Julia and Madison stayed put, Becca walked through it, nonchalantly as could be, and into a long hallway, where she knocked on a door at random.

A chubby but okay-looking guy opened it. He looked surprised to see her.

“Hi, I’m Becca.” She smiled.

“Cam. What’s … what’s up?”

“Hi, Cam,” she said, looking up at him. “We’re having a party at the boathouse. Get as many people as you can to come. I have a bunch of tequila and stuff.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Tell everyone.”

“Sure. Are you new?”

“Yes, I am. Okay, so tell people. I’ll see you tonight.”

“I will. Nice to meet you.” As soon as he shut the door, she walked to another room a few doors down. She had to tell someone who at least looked like they had friends to tell. It took a few doors until she finally decided she’d told enough people of the right kind.

When she emerged from the boys’ dorms, it was to find Madison and Julia looking impressed.

“Okay, now let’s just get the things we need.” Becca smiled, and set off with her new posse to find cups for beer pong. She didn’t have much beer, but they could just play with water when they ran out.

They returned to their hall with their collection, stolen from the dining hall.

“Hold these.” Becca handed Madison the sleeve of cups she’d been holding.

She set off down the hallway, pounding on every door she passed. “Ladies! Everyone out of your rooms! Come on! Whoooo!”

By the time she reached the end of the hall and her own door, the hallway was filling up. She turned and smiled at them all.

“Good evening, girls. My name is Rebecca Normandy. Call me Becca. Tonight we are sneaking out of our dorms.”

The girls exchanged glances, all looking eager and ready to be told what to do.

“We’re going down to the boathouse. I’ve got a few bottles of tequila, and I’ve already started recruiting the boys.”

“But we’ll get in trouble,” said a small, strawberry-blonde with tight curls, “won’t we?”

“What’s your name?”

“Susan.”

“No, Susan. I’ve already handled that.” She looked back to everyone else. “So are we all in?”

Most of the girls nodded.

“Good. See you out here at eleven.”

She turned and went into her room.

“So, Dana, are you coming to the party tonight?”

“Um. I don’t know.”

“Just do it. I couldn’t possibly go without my roomie.” She smiled, and Dana smiled back.

chapter 3 me

WE SNUCK DOWN SOME CREAKY, SANDY STAIRS to get to a beach that was so, so different from the ones back home.

My bare legs were swathed in chilly air and I wished I could go stick my feet in the water and have it be warm. But, alas, this was not Florida.

There was a boathouse at the foot of the stairs. It was pounding quietly with music, and a slivery border of gold indicated the door to us. When the door was opened, sound and light poured out and smacked us in the face.

I followed the other two and their booted feet with my sandaled ones, and took a deep breath. I was ready.

No you’re not, said that nag in my brain.

“I brought the new girl!” Julia said once we were in view of the rest of the party.

“Hey,” I said with a wave. My insides melted and I felt my face grow hot.

She introduced me to everyone. I smiled and gave them my name, promising them we’d have to remeet later. After that, Madison and Julia went off to different guys, and left me alone.

I surveyed the scene and immediately felt out of my element. I had no guide. There were a few people on a shabby couch taking deep, strained breaths out of a bong. Another few were playing beer pong, a game I was familiar with but entirely awful at. And some people just hung around like me.

Some guy rose from a chair nearby and sidled up to me. “Hey, sweetie.”

“Hey.” I almost felt like I would rather be ignored.

“I’m Ricky. And you’re the new girl.”

I nodded and laughed, unable to think of anything to say.

He gave me what I was sure he thought was a winning smile, and asked if I wanted a shot.

“Oh, no, thank you.”

“Oh, come on, you’re fun, aren’t you?” another guy asked, wandering over to us.

He said it in the distinct tone that usually goes with, “Come on, little girl, you want some candy?” Either that or like he was starring as a villain in some 1950s after-school special.

My cheeks, I was sure, were growing even redder. “I’m not a prude, I just … I’m not thirsty.”

That was a stupid response. They looked like they knew it, and walked off.

I sighed and took a step backward. There was a yelp behind me, and I leaped as I realized I’d stepped on some girl’s foot.

“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.”

“No problem. I’m Blake.”

“Hi, I’m apparently ‘the new girl.’”

She laughed. “This is my boyfriend, Cam.”

“Hi, Cam.” I glanced back at the two guys who had just walked away from me.

“I’d stay away from them.” Cam took a sip from a red cup.

“Really?”

“Yeah, they’re harmless, but I mean, they’re pushy.”

I looked around at everyone else. It was strange, because there was music and drinking and there were games, but everyone was kind of quiet. It was like a detention pizza party. “Everyone’s sort of … subdued.”

“Yeah.” She looked around, too. “It’s not usually like this.”

I nodded, as if in understanding, and looked back out. Then the two of them started talking, and I felt like I should drift away. So I did. I sat down against a wall, suddenly eager to leave.

“You want to play?”

Another guy I hadn’t met yet walked over to me. I really hoped they weren’t all skeevy. This guy didn’t look like he would be, though. He had shortish blond hair and an overall pleasant look about him. He probably didn’t have to resort to being creepy.

“Play?” I asked.

He gestured to the table behind him. “Beer pong? Well … water pong. We don’t have any beer.” He smiled.

I envisioned the scene. Me playing, being terrible and being entirely lame and disappointing. “No, thanks, I’m really bad.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “With no beer it’s just for fun.”

“No, really. Thank you, though.”

Now I was being antisocial.

“Well, then.” He held out a hand. “I’m Johnny.”

“I—”

“Oh, new girl, right? Can I get you a drink?”

I sighed. “Right.” Then, abruptly feeling like it might not be a bad idea, I said, “Maybe one small drink.”

Johnny laughed and made me one. He added one shot. I thanked him, and took a sip.

“So what brings you to Manderley in your senior year?”

“My parents. I used to want to come here when I was younger. My parents got me in because a spot opened up, thinking I still really wanted to come.”

His features hardened a little.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it here so far, I just … I liked my old school, too.”

“Are you … Is Dana your roommate, then?”

“Yes, she is. I haven’t really talked to her yet.” I thought of her stony silence. “She didn’t want to come down tonight.”

“That’s too bad. Not surprised, though.” He looked behind him. “Well, if you change your mind about playing let me know. I have to go find someone since you don’t want to.” He gave me a smile, and found a new partner.

I stayed for another half an hour without being approached by anyone. I drank my drink and then headed out after saying goodbye to the few people I’d talked to. Ricky tried to convince me to have more shots before I left. I declined, and then hurried away from him as politely as possible.

Outside, I turned the corner on the dark, dusty stairs and nearly screamed as I ran into a figure.

“Whoa,” he said.

“I’m sorry.” It was dark, and we were illuminated only by the running lights at our feet. I could just barely make out his face, which seemed almost familiar. I looked away and started up the steps. I stumbled, dumbly, and he caught my wrist.

“Are you a freshman?” he asked.

“N-no.” I shook my head. His hand was warm, and still held on to me.

“Then you’re the new girl.”

It wasn’t a question. “Yes.”

I saw his pale eyes squint briefly, and then he dropped my hand. A small chill ran through me, and I wanted him to say more. I wanted to say more, but I didn’t know what.

“Sorry for running into you.” I turned and walked up the steps, not understanding at all what had just happened.

As I snuck quietly through my door, I realized I didn’t know where the light switch was. More than that, I couldn’t turn on the overhead light since Dana was apparently sleeping. I flicked on my flashlight and stepped carefully to my bed, but not without stubbing my toe painfully on the suitcase under the bed. I bit my lip to keep from swearing, and then searched in the darkness for any of my things.

In the end, all I could find was my comforter and my pillow. I took off my jeans and slid noisily into bed. It was hard at first to fall asleep. I was cold and uncomfortable. I missed my big, cushy bed and the rest of my pillows, and even Jasper’s annoyingly frequent snoring that would only cease after a nudge in the ribs from me.

At home when I couldn’t sleep, I would make myself a little crudités plate like my dad always did, with Ritz crackers, cheeses, Wickles Pickles (the only kind worth buying), different kinds of meats, grapes….

Or maybe just a cup of tea and some of those jam-and-shortbread cookies my mom made and almost always had around. Suddenly nothing would be better than to tiptoe into my quiet living room, always lit by the fancy dim light in the corner, and cozy up on the couch to watch old Frasier reruns until unconsciousness swept me away.

I couldn’t even think about it without getting a pain in my stomach.

I finally fell asleep, into weird dreams filled with distorted elements of Manderley I must have subconsciously taken in, but which I still didn’t recognize.

Suddenly I was on the beach by the boathouse. It was pitch-black and freezing cold, even colder than before. I stepped into the water, which was so sharp and frigid that it felt like broken glass. Despite the pain, I kept walking. Before I knew it, I was swimming in the middle of the black sea. I couldn’t see where I was, or how far away the shore was.

Panic wrapped around my heart as I realized I couldn’t find my way to safety. There was a thunderous roar behind me, before a wave curled around me. It was strong, like a million forceful hands pushing me under. Every time I felt air, it would suck me under again and thrash me around like a Raggedy Ann doll.

A memory of those pale eyes I had barely been able to see floated into my suddenly aching head. He was mad, he was shouting. I couldn’t stand to see him like this.

I couldn’t catch my breath. I tried, and got a mouthful of salty water instead. I thought I reached the dry surface and took a breath. Instead I breathed in a rush of water that made my throat ache. My salty tears were mixing with the water around them and my body was contracting oddly as if I couldn’t control it.

“Anyone who has not already, please proceed to the Kenneth L. Montague auditorium for the First Day Assembly.”

I was shaken from my dream very abruptly when a voice I didn’t expect came over a PA system I didn’t know existed.

Why hadn’t my alarm gone off? I inspected it, to find that I’d set it for 6:00 p.m., not a.m.

Without thinking, I threw on some jeans and grabbed my bright yellow staff T-shirt from my last year at the Jax Beach Surf Competition. I flip-flopped out the door thirty seconds later with only my key in hand.

It took me fifteen minutes of running around like a rat in a maze before I found the auditorium. I pulled on each of the doors, but they were all locked. I looked around for anyone, but I was completely alone. Left with no other option, I knocked.

The door opened suddenly, and a youngish man let me in. “Freshman?”

“Oh, no, I’m a senior. But I’m new.”

“Try to be on time from now on.” He was stern but not unkind. He glanced at my clothes. “And at the end of the assembly, please put on your uniform.”

A shock of humiliation ran through me. I looked at the sea of navy-blue, white and khaki uniformed students in the seats. “Sorry, I’m coming from public school, I’ve never had—”

He nodded politely, though a touch dismissively, as I drifted into my annoying habit of overexplaining. I stopped, and he told me there was a seat down in front. To get to it, I’d have to walk—duck—past everyone.

I got there as quietly as possible and ignored the stares I could feel on me. Once seated, I stared straight up at the stage where I was only just noticing that there was a woman speaking.

She was reminding the students of the rules. Mostly everyone had no doubt heard the spiel as many times as I’d read it over the summer. I cringed when she got to the part about wearing uniforms every day to every function but Saturday and Sunday and social events. Weekends were mostly our own. We were allowed out from 9:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and from noon till 7:00 p.m. on Sundays. There were shuttles that would go back and forth from town to Manderley.

“… and absolutely no sexual relations of any kind anywhere on school property,” the speaker said, a tad optimistically, and adjusted her papers. There was a snicker in the audience that she must have heard but ignored. “And now I’m inviting Professor Andrews up to the stage. Thank you for your continued attention.” She took a seat at the back of the stage with several other teacher-looking people.

I clapped once, but the rest of the auditorium stayed silent. I shrank in my seat.

Professor Andrews turned out to be the man who’d let me in. He walked to the podium looking a little frazzled.

“Okay, well, I think Eloise, er, Headmaster Jenkins, pardon me, did a pretty good job of welcoming everyone, and reviewing the rules with you, so I won’t be getting into any of that.” He took his glasses from the neck of his shirt and put them on. “I’m sure most of you, at least many of you for whom this is not your first year, have already heard about Rebecca Normandy.”

There was a slight rustling in the audience, but an immediate halt in the whispering.

“In the interest of providing correct information to all of you at once, and keeping the school from crippling rumors, I’ll tell you what we know. Since May fourteenth, Rebecca Normandy has been missing. It’s not clear what happened, only that she was here one moment and gone the next. If anyone hears anything from her, sees her, or is in any kind of contact with Miss Normandy, you must tell someone.”

I listened carefully, and then felt my stomach plummet through my seat.

Rebecca Normandy was Becca, the old roommate. Hers was the “slot that opened up” at Manderley.

“This is a very small school, and I’m sure that everyone here has been affected by the event. Because of that, I hope you all know that Dr. Morgan—” he gestured behind him to one of the seated women who was small and older and looked quite nice “—will have her door open at any time and will be offering counseling. I advise everyone who wants to or needs to, to make an appointment with Dr. Morgan. It can’t hurt. And now, Dana Veers would like to say a few words on behalf of Miss Normandy’s parents.”

He stepped aside, and was quickly replaced by Dana. She peered out at the audience through her narrow eyes.

“So, we all know Becca is missing, but way too many people are just assuming she’s dead. Anyone who can should write to her on Facebook and beg her to come back. Because I am sure she is out there, and probably checking it. If there is any way that she might come home, we have to make her want to. Her parents and the police have pretty much given up hope.” She looked sick. “But I haven’t, and I hope the rest of you haven’t.” She glanced down to the front row.

Then, abruptly, she thanked us for our attention and went back to her seat.

I was horrified at how I’d acted the day before. Dana’s old roommate was missing. They had probably been friends.

Professor Andrews replaced her behind the stand. “Now Dr. Morgan has a few words she’d like to say, and then we’ll release you to go to your first classes. Dr. Morgan?”

The tiny woman shuffled up to take his place, pulling the microphone down to match her height.

“Hello, everyone.” She had a nasally English accent, and reminded me a little of the fairy godmother in Cinderella. “I know this is a very difficult time for each and every one of you, no matter how well you know Miss Normandy, or in what capacity. What you must remember is that you are all in this together. You are all going through something as one, unified group.” She grasped the air and made a fist, as though collecting all of our leashes. “If you need someone to talk to, you could simply look left or right, and find someone who knows what you’re going through.” She smiled tenderly. “Why don’t you do that now? Just look to the person sitting next to you, and tell them you’re here for them. Go ahead.”

There was a small murmur of reluctant participation, and some giggling. I looked to my left and saw the back of a girl’s head, and to my right to see a boy slouching in his seat and leaning his face on his fingers.

I faced forward.

“Good.” Dr. Morgan clasped her hands together. “Now take the hand of the person sitting next to you. Everyone, please?” She looked down at the front row, and with a surge I realized she was looking at me. Or … the boy next to me. “Mr. Holloway? You of all people …” She said the last part away from the microphone, but trailed off when the boy held out his hand for me to take. I put my hand in his.

As soon as we touched, it felt like an electrical current ran through me. I remembered the touch of the boy on the stairs the night before and wondered if this was him. I glanced sideways, not wanting to make it obvious that I was looking at him.

Dr. Morgan went on. “Now shut your eyes. And put yourself in the place that makes you the happiest.” She was silent a few seconds, and shushed the people who laughed. “Wonderful. Now take a deep breath, and think to yourself, I will get through this. I will get through this. I will get through this. Deep breath in … and now out.”

I was afraid my hand was clammy. Was I holding too hard? Did I seem eager?

“Good,” said Dr. Morgan.

At her word, the boy let go of my hand as though it had burned him.

“Remember that everyone around you understands, and that you are absolutely more than welcome to come visit with me. Over the next two weeks, I will be meeting with each one of you. We will discuss your plans for college, and anything else you might need to get off your chest. Thank you all for listening so carefully. Welcome back to Manderley, and if you’re just starting, then welcome to your new home.”

She smiled kindly, and went back to her seat as I and everyone else filled the room with the spattering of polite applause.

I was locked in my own head. There had been one spot at Manderley, and I’d gotten it. I was Rebecca’s old roommate’s new roommate, and the whole school was hoping she would come back at any second.

The boy next to me gave me a nod and then stood to leave.

Everything came together with a horrible lurch in my stomach. He was the one I’d run into on the stairs last night. Not only that, but the reason he was familiar was because he was the one pictured with Becca.

That startlingly handsome boy had been her boyfriend.

chapter 4 becca

ELEVEN O’CLOCK CAME. BECCA HAD ON A SHORT black pencil skirt and a low white tank top.

“I’m so glad you decided to come,” Becca said to Dana, as she sprayed her Givenchy perfume where it mattered: neck, wrists and boobs.

“Me, too.”

“Here, before everyone else drinks it all.” Becca took a swig of tequila and handed the bottle to Dana.

“Oh, no—”

“Oh, come on, please!”

Dana took a deep breath and then took a sip. Becca tipped the bottle a little higher and Dana gave a shriek as it filled her mouth and spilled onto her cheeks.

Becca laughed and handed her roommate some tissues.

They emerged from their room to find that every girl on the hall had put on their best outfit and stood waiting to be led. Madison and Julia were standing with big purses filled with cups and balls slung over their shoulders. Becca had her own bag, filled with all the liquor she had brought with her to Manderley.

“You really think we won’t get caught?” one of the girls asked.

“Oh, God no, we’re not getting caught.” She waved away the very idea. “Come on, stop worrying. You only live once, so live like it’s your last night. Okay? Let’s go.” She smiled at all of them. “Lead the way,” she said to Julia.

They walked down some side stairs and through an emergency exit that apparently didn’t set off any alarms anywhere.

“Where are we going?” Becca heard someone ask from behind her.

“The boathouse,” Julia answered, wielding a blue LED flashlight. “No one’s ever down there at night, and it’s out of view of all the teachers’ rooms. It’s the perfect place. I can’t believe we never did this before.”

They got down to the bottom of the stairs and to a small beach. There was some sand, but mostly a lot of rocks. In all, it looked like what you’d find at the bottom of a cartoon cliff.

Walking up to the boathouse, Julia pushed open a screen door, then a storm door. The light was already on and exposed a small house filled with dust and boating equipment. She wondered if she’d ever have to learn to use any of this stuff. Hopefully not.

“This place is disgusting,” Becca noted, not helping matters.

Some people were already there, sitting around on the floor. One of them, Ricky, she thought his name was, was leaning on the speakers she’d told him to bring. She’d seen them in his room and “pretty-pleased” him into bringing them.

“Here.” She handed him her iPod. “Put this on. It’s the first playlist on there.”

People trickled in for the next fifteen minutes. Becca got the guys to help her put together a makeshift beer pong table. She took the Ziploc bag full of Ping-Pong balls and set them next to the case of beer and bottles she’d managed to stuff into her suitcases. The stolen cups were piled, and her plastic shot glasses set out next to the water bottles she’d had Dana fill with soda for chasers.

Soon the room was filled with laughing, talking, singing and squealing. As everyone got drunker and the room grew warmer, Becca felt more and more like herself. This was who she liked to be. She loved a chaotic atmosphere she could lose herself in. When everyone was drunk, no one was watching her too closely or looking for mistakes. If she said something she shouldn’t, she could blame it on the drinks. Not like in real life, when the world was quiet and everyone could see and hear perfectly.

“Yeah, I’m rooming with some girl named Dana.” Becca was shouting over the music to Ricky.

“Where is she?”

“Right over there,” she pointed. “Don’t you know her?”

“No, I’ve seen her around, but …”

“Dana!” Becca shouted her name across the room. Dana looked up, and then crossed the room to her. Becca took her hand. “This is my roommate!”

“Damn,” said Ricky, looking between them, “you girls are so fucking hot.”

Two other guys walked up. One of them swallowed his drink quickly. “Are you two gonna make out?”

Dana looked shocked.

“What, are you scared?” Becca asked with a laugh.

“What? No, I just—”

Becca looked to the group of guys suddenly surrounding them. “You dare me?”

All of them said yes, nodding.

“But—” Dana started, but was cut off by Becca, who had just planted a kiss on her.

Becca pulled away, laughing. The guys were all laughing and clapping at them.

“Oh, shit, she really did it!” One of the guys threw an arm around Becca. He let go of her and held a hand out to Dana. “I’m Barry.”

Becca slapped his hand. “This is her third year here, the fact that you don’t know her yet means you don’t get to introduce yourself.”

She looked at him playfully, and led Dana away.

“That guy was so annoying, wasn’t he?” she said to Dana. “Barry? He totally tried to hit on me earlier. I’d ignore him.”

It was a lie. But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t Dana’s time to get looked at. Becca was the new girl. Not her.

“Let’s have another drink,” said Becca. She took Dana’s hand and led her to the alcohol table.

When they got there, a tall boy was already pouring two shots.

“Make it four.” Becca sidled up to him and saw that he was not just tall, but attractive, too. Blond, light brown eyes—and a good smile. He looked like he’d play baseball and was always nice to his mom.

“You the new girl?” he asked, and then turned to Dana. “Hey, what’s up, Dana?”

“Yes,” Becca answered quickly, before Dana could say anything. “I am the new girl. I’m glad you know Dana, no one else seems to. What’s your name?”

“Johnny.” He smiled and looked down at the shots he was now pouring for them. “Of course I know Dana. She’s that girl that sat next to me in Algebra last year.” He mouthed hot at Becca, and then smiled at Dana.

Becca was about to say something about how little anyone else seemed interested in Dana when another boy walked up. He was about the same height as Johnny, but an utter contrast. His skin was tan, like he’d spent the summer working outside and maybe had some Italian or something in him. His hair was black and a little messy, and his eyes were light blue. There was something in them that intrigued her. He looked … she tried to think of the word to describe him, and landed on sly.

“Hey.” He nodded curtly at her, then turned his last words to Johnny. “Pour me one.”

Immediately intrigued by this person who ignored her, she said, “I’m Becca.”

“Here, Max.” Johnny handed him a shot. They all clinked their glasses together, swallowed the burning liquid and then pounded back chasers.

“Becca,” Max said, finally acknowledging her. “Hey.”

“So, where’d you move here from?” asked Johnny, leaning back on the table.

“Chicago.” Becca cast a side-glance at Max, who was now in conversation with Dana about how awful some teacher had been.

“Chicago? That’s pretty cool. I’ve never been there. Why’d you transfer here?”

Chatty, wasn’t he? “My parents can’t stand me and hope someone else can.” That was the simple answer.

He laughed. “I bet that’s what a lot of people here feel like.”

“Come on,” Becca said suddenly to Dana. Her conversation with Max was going too well. And Becca was the one that wanted attention from him. She smiled. “Let’s go pick some other music to put on, huh?”

Half an hour later, Becca had been flirted with by another group of guys and had her self-esteem restored. Now she was talking to that guy Cam and looking for a way out of the conversation. She spotted a girl staring at them. As soon as Becca caught her, the girl looked away.

“That girl,” she said to Cam, and pointed. “Is that your girlfriend?”

A small smile and a tinge of pink appeared on his face. “No, that’s Blake.”

“But you like her.”

He laughed it off. “What? That’s crazy, I didn’t … She’s not … She wouldn’t like me. She’s gorgeous.” His eyes were on Blake, but she had turned to talk to someone next to her.

“She likes you, I can tell.”

“No …” he said, but something in his tone asked for an elaboration.

“She was just looking over here at you, and looking totally jealous that I was talking to you.” It was obvious, and it’s not like she wanted Cam’s attention for herself, so she might as well tell him.

“Really?” Cam looked doubtful.

Becca rolled her eyes. “Blake!”

“No, don’t—”

The girl looked up, surprised to see who was calling her name.

“Come here!” Becca motioned.

Blake glanced at Cam, who looked like he wanted to run but was too paralyzed with fear to do so. She walked over to them.

“I’m Becca. You know Cam?”

She nodded and smiled at him sheepishly. “Yes. Hi, Cam.”

“Hi.”

Ugh. “Yes okay, so you guys totally like each other. So,” she said, and shrugged, “talk or whatever,” and then she wandered off.

A little while later, Johnny sat down next to Becca and asked if she was having fun. This close, and with a little more light on him than before, she could see that he was cute. Or maybe that was just that last shot sinking in.

“Yeah, it’s pretty good.” She felt Dana’s eyes on her. She was jealous that Johnny was all about talking to Becca. And Becca couldn’t help but rub it in. She tossed her hair and looked charmingly at him. “So tell me about you, Johnny.”

“Well, what do you want to know?”

“Becca!”

She turned from Johnny to see Madison beckoning her over with a flapping hand.

“What?”

“Come outside with us!”

“Sorry,” she said to Johnny. She saw that her roommate was now talking to Max.

Careful, Dana dear, you don’t want to mess with Becca and what she wants.

“Come on, you!” She pulled Dana away. “You will be social from now on. I accept nothing less. I can’t believe you don’t know anyone at your own school.”

Dana smiled apologetically at Max.

As soon as they were outside, she untangled her arm from Dana’s and sat down on the sand with Blake (who was positively beaming), Madison and Julia. Everyone was clearly less worried about being quiet than they had been at first, and were laughing and talking without filter.

“So, Becca,” Blake started, “who do you think is hot?”

All the girls laughed. Becca simply smiled back. “I’m not telling.”

Of course not. She needed to be told who everyone else wanted first.

“Oh, come on,” Julia cooed. “Who? Is it Johnny?”

She started to shake her head when Madison cooed.

“Ooh, he’s so sweet. He’d be, like, the best boyfriend.”

“Max is pretty attractive, too,” Becca said.

“Well, obviously.” Julia rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that, but he’s not even worth it.”

“Why not?”

“Everyone has had a crush on him at some point,” Madison elaborated. “But he’s just …”

“Unattainable?” Becca filled in the blank. That’s who she’d have to go for, then. Too bad he’d already exhibited little to no interest in her.

“Exactly.” Blake nodded. “I do want to warn you though, Becca.” Blake leaned in a little bit. “The girls at this school will be crazed with jealousy if you get together with Max.”

So she couldn’t act like that was her plan…. Becca shrugged. “Maybe he’s gay and that’s why he doesn’t date.”

Everyone laughed again, but then made it very clear that no one thought that was the case.

Madison, who was clearly seeing the world in double, leaned toward Becca. “No, but seriously. Seriously. Max is so hot. But you and Johnny would be so cute together!”

“I don’t know, Max is okay,” she said, playing it cool. He was much more than okay. And that’s why she had to have him. But she couldn’t seem too interested—not to anyone.

“What?” Everyone squealed in unison.

Madison’s jaw dropped. “I’ll be right back.” She darted inside.

“What’s she doing?” Becca asked.

“Probably puking,” Julia said simply. “Okay, but so you’re not into Johnny. I don’t know, I mean—”

The boathouse screen door flew open and Madison stumbled out, dragging Max behind her.

“I got Max!”

Julia and Blake burst into laughter.

“Oh, my God! I can’t believe you did that!” said Julia.

Becca stood cautiously and raked a hand through her hair. “Are you even drunk?”

“Not as drunk as you.”

She raised an eyebrow.

Madison slung an arm over each of their shoulders. A struggle for her because she was probably about five feet, Becca was five-nine, and Max had to be about six-two.

“Guys, I have a secret.” Madison was trying to whisper but barely succeeding. Julia and Blake were listening intently, ready to laugh at any second. “Max. Becca thinks you might be gay.”

He raised his eyebrows and grinned, exposing straight white teeth. “That so?”

Becca smiled. “I was hypothesizing, since it was said that apparently you never date.”

He nodded and looked away from her.

“Sh-sh-shh. Also,” Madison said, reeling her audience back in. “She doesn’t think you’re that unattractive. Or … that you’re not attractive. Or … wait …”

He looked back to her, appearing amused.

“I didn’t mean you weren’t attractive. I just meant—”

“It’s okay. I don’t think you’re all that attractive, either.”

He was obviously kidding, but Becca didn’t think it was funny at all. She scoffed, trying to mask her embarrassment. Three other people had heard him say it. They might report that to other people, who would then think he wasn’t kidding. She was going to have to make him want her.

Immediately.

“Well, aren’t you sharp?” She looked him straight in the eyes.

“We should let you two get to know each other.” Blake stood and pulled up Julia. Madison nodded vigorously and led the way back into the boathouse.

They were alone. She smiled at him and walked toward the waves that were breaking quietly on the shore. She turned to crook a finger at him. “Come on.”

He followed her. She stepped into the water.

“Cold?” he asked.

Becca didn’t look back before answering. “How scared are you?”

He chuckled, and a moment later he’d rolled up his jeans and stood next to her. The water wrapped itself around their ankles, and he sucked air in through his teeth.

“Yup. It’s cold.”

“Wimp.”

They were silent together for a moment, looking out at the black water and sky. It all ran together, with no horizon.

“This is seriously the worst beach.”

“Are you always so unhappy with your surroundings?”

She glared at him. “No, I’m not unhappy with them. I’m just saying. It’s hardly a beach. It’s just sand and rocks that happen to be next to water.”

Max stepped backward and sat down on the sand, away from where the water was breaking.

She followed him.

She leaned back like a pinup girl, and was quiet for a moment. “Why doesn’t anyone here drink?”

“What’re you talking about, there’s a bunch of people in there drinking as we speak.”

“Yeah, but at my old school, there were parties all the time.”

“Public school?”

“Yep.”

“Where can you have parties ‘all the time,’ doesn’t everyone live with their parents?”

“Yeah, but there was this guy Vince that always had people over. He was like nineteen and lived by himself.”

He nodded. “We drink in the dorms, we’ve just never come down here.”

“That’s because of the cameras, but I handled that.”

“What’d you do, blow the guy?”

She turned sharply and was about to look angry when she saw that he was smiling.

She smiled, too. “No, I didn’t blow him. I just talked to him.”

“Okay.” He said it like he didn’t believe her.

So her conversation wasn’t doing it for him. She’d try something else.

She put her hand on his hipbone and moved it up his stomach. He didn’t flex, but it was still flat and solid.

She looked up at him and moved her hand across his stomach muscles. “Should I stop?” Please don’t say yes …

He shook his head. She ran her fingernails up his chest. She put her face close to his. Her hand, now in his hair, tugged lightly. He kissed her. A moment later they were making out.

He was on top of her. He kissed her cheek, her neck, pulled up her tank top and kissed her more.

They took each other’s shirts off. He put a hand on her thigh, and then up her skirt. She let him. She was getting nervous, but fought it off. He was strong and a little forceful—but not in a bad way. Then Becca made a decision.

If he wanted to, then she was going to. And it seemed like he did.

He was an amazing kisser. He was hot enough that everyone else was obsessed. He was evidently popular. And she was sixteen already. This needed to happen.

“Do it,” she whispered in his ear when the time seemed right. The second he did, Becca realized she didn’t even know his last name.

That was messed up—even Becca knew that. You should seriously know the full name of the guy you lose your virginity to.

chapter 5 becca

“HEY, BECCA.”

Johnny stopped in front of Becca. He, Cam and Max all had lacrosse bags over their shoulders. Blake smiled at her, her hand in Cam’s. Apparently the last two had taken her advice and had been talking, a lot.

Becca smiled, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Hey,” she said to Cam and Blake. To Max she said, “Mike, was it?”

He had not said anything to her since they’d hooked up. That was weird. And she hadn’t just made out with him. They’d actually done it. He was really going to act like it hadn’t happened?

Max grinned. “Yep, that’s it.”

She looked back to Johnny, wondering if he knew what she and Max had done. “I was just on my way to the courtyard,” she let out.

“Mind if I come with you?” he asked.

No, she didn’t mind. Maybe Max would get jealous and then realize he should really talk to her.

“Sure.” She glanced back to Cam, Blake and Max. “I’m sure I’ll see you all soon.”

Cam said nothing, but smiled and started off with Blake. Max held her gaze a few extra seconds, laughed, and followed them. Something in her plummeted as he did it.

She shook it off, and turned her focus to Johnny. Walking with him to the courtyard felt like walking the red carpet with Brad Pitt for all the stares they were getting. In the tabloids, she’d be a “mystery blonde.”

Not for long.

He held the door open for her. “After you.”

She walked through and sat down on a bench obscured mostly by bushes. “These socks are so ugly,” she remarked, taking a cigarette from the top of one of hers.

“Everyone has to wear them, so it’s not like you’re going to stand out. You’re not going to be the girl with those weird, ugly socks.”

Becca raised her eyebrows. “Well, at least I found a use for them. They’re so freaking bulky you can’t even see my cigarettes—” she reached for her other sock “—or my lighter.”

“You kind of can,” he said, and watched her as she lit it. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“What, do you not like it or something?”

He made a face. “Not my business.”

True.

“I’d stop if I had to.” She eyed him, and took a drag. “So, why did you want to come out here with me?”

He looked as if this was a subject he’d hoped she wouldn’t broach. “I don’t really know. I kind of … just wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh, really?” She smiled playfully. She was used to this approach. This was much more comfortable for her than what Max was doing. Or wasn’t doing.

People passing by the windows that overlooked the courtyard were noticing them. She blew some smoke out of her lungs and stood in front of him.

“Do you like me, Johnny?”

“I barely know you.” He looked into her eyes. “But I’d like to get to know you.”

“Good. I like you, too.” She focused on the grass beneath her feet. “But I don’t want to get a bad reputation.”

She raised her head, hoping he’d say that Max had told him about what had happened. She envisioned a proud scene in which Max went for high fives and everyone was jealous.

But Johnny just furrowed his brows. “Bad reputation?”

Dammit. “Oh, you know. I don’t want to jump into something with someone too fast.”

“That’s okay, I’m not saying—I just feel like I want to know you. It’s stupid….”

More looks from inside. She smiled winningly at him. “It’s not stupid at all. Let’s go eat lunch.”

They walked down the hallway, Becca telling a story about her old school. He made a joke, and she laughed, laying a hand on his arm. “You are so funny.”

Together they waltzed into the dining hall.

“Let’s sit by ourselves, okay?”

“Sure,” he said.

Becca set her purse down on a table and got a small bowl of soup. As they ate and he talked about whatever it was he was talking about, Becca surreptitiously scanned the hall for Max. Finally she caught him at a crowded table across the room. He wasn’t looking at her. She couldn’t help but glance up every now and then at him. Finally he did look in her direction, then quickly averted his gaze.

It was working, she could tell. He cared if she talked to Johnny. So she didn’t look up again, but directed her attention to Johnny only.

“So how long have you and Max been friends?”

He ignored the change in subject and took a bite of his sandwich. “Since we were kids. We both grew up in D.C.”

“Cool. How come he doesn’t date?”

He looked at her with a small smile. “You like Max, don’t you? See, here I thought you weren’t like every other girl here.”

She laughed, trying to look as though this were preposterous. “I do not! I’m just curious. He’s not even that good-looking, I don’t get the appeal. So many girls like him, and he never dates.” She took a sip of her water. “It’s just weird.”

“Girls are always throwing themselves at him. He doesn’t need to date.” Johnny shrugged. “I guess he’s never gone for the desperate type.”

“Well, who does?”

“True.”

“So,” she said, “tell me something about you.”

Whatever he said, she didn’t listen. She was just trying to look like she thought every word he said was fascinating.

A couple days later, as Becca left her last class of the day, she saw Max going into the gym. She hurried upstairs to put on her “workout clothes” and then walked in, too. She stepped onto a treadmill a few down from his, her headphones on, and acted like she didn’t see Max.

She had to run for fifteen minutes before he came up next to her.

He was in a gray T-shirt, soaked with hard-earned sweat in all of the right places. She lowered the speed and took out her pink headphones.

“Hey,” she said, with a small smile.

He smiled back. “So, you’re hanging out with Johnny now?”

“What do you mean ‘hanging out with’?”

He shrugged. “You tell me.”

“I’m getting to know him, but I’m not hanging out with anyone.”

“Right.”

Not being able to take it anymore, she turned off the treadmill.

“I’m going to get in the sauna. You want to come?”

He considered her for a moment, and then said, “I thought you weren’t hanging out with anyone?”

“I’m not,” she said, and led the way. Then she added, without looking back at him, “And besides, we’ve already done our hanging out. What interest are you to me now?”

“Ha!” he said.

The sauna was already warm. She took off her shirt and her shoes, leaving her in her neon pink sports bra and black nylon shorts. He followed her lead and stripped down, too.

It was the first time she’d really seen his body. It was perfect. The type of body artists would want to sculpt and poets could gab endlessly about. He was lean but strong.

They sat next to each other for a minute in silence, him leaning against the wall with his eyes shut, and her looking around the small brown room. The door had a lock. She leaned forward and turned it.

He turned to her, a small smirk on his face. “Yeah?”

Determination filled her. He had to want her. She couldn’t be just another girl throwing herself at him, but she needed him to do something.

“What? I’m generally quite modest,” she said, “and I just want to make sure no one comes in while I don’t have my shirt on.” She indicated her sports bra.

He nodded, visibly not believing her. “Come here,” he said.

Yes. Now she had the power. “Why?”

“You know why.”

She smiled and stepped up to where he was and lowered herself onto his lap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him kiss her. Soft at first but then with urgency.

The surge she felt in her chest was not romantic. It was victorious. She knew that as soon as he started to show interest in her, that she’d have no trouble walking away. But right now …

He laid her on the surface of the wooden bench and they did it again. By the time they emerged from the room, their faces were pink, and their bodies were slick with sweat from the heat.

chapter 6 me

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAD BEEN INTIMIDATING about heading to Manderley was its boast that almost every student had a 4.0 GPA. My 3.2 was pretty good, but who knew how that would translate from a public high school in a beach town to a private New England boarding school.

I suspected “not so well” when I sat down on my first day in my first class.

“Good morning, everyone.” The teacher was a small woman with black, beady eyes and hair that looked like it would feel like straw. Her voice was a bit low and booming. “I am Professor Van Hooper. Welcome to English. I’ll tell you now that this class will not be easy. Expect a C to be a good grade.”

I got a chill as I imagined what we’d have to do to stay afloat. As if she’d read my thoughts, Professor Van Hooper went on.

“Every two weeks, we will begin another book. At the end of those two weeks, you will owe me a paper written on your own choice of topic. The only restriction is that you must find something worth investigating in the book and write about it.”

A girl in front raised her hand. “Like a book report?”

“No. Not like a book report.” The way she responded made me sure I’d be keeping my hand down as much as possible. “For example, this week, we are reading To Kill a Mockingbird. You may, for instance, choose to theorize on how the main character, Scout, grew through her experiences in the book. Or you might get a little bit more creative, and talk about her relationship with her father or brother. It’s up to you to write something I want to read. It’s up to you to find something about the book that isn’t on the back cover. Now. Let’s talk about basic formatting. Times New Roman, one-inch margins …”

There was a sudden shuffle as people dug through their backpacks for pens and notebooks. At my school back home we’d pretty much started using laptops, but the brochures had made it perfectly clear that they were not allowed in class. Stupid rule. I have terrible handwriting.

She switched on the overhead, and it hummed into life.

She sped through what she expected technically from us, and skipped straight into finding the deeper meaning in the classics. I loved to read, so I wasn’t dreading it.

“I assume you’ve all read To Kill a Mockingbird, yes?”

There was an uncomfortable shuffle from the students who I guessed had skimmed through it and used Spark Notes.

“So as you read it this second time, I want you to start thinking more about the underlying themes. Yes, we know it’s about prejudice and the struggle between right and wrong—but what else is there? What else did Harper Lee bury within her pages?”

World History demanded a lot more prior knowledge than I had. The teacher started off the class by asking us what we knew about the religious beliefs of the Neanderthals. I sank in my seat and hoped to God I wasn’t called on.

Math, which was always my worst subject, started off with a quiz. Really? Day One of Algebra II and we’re taking a quiz? Just to see what we know, but still. It’s a quiz. Everyone else around me seemed to know what was going on, making my inability to follow along stick out like a sore thumb.

And then I walked into the huge concrete studio on the top floor of the main building. The windows went from floor to ceiling, and there were big black filing cabinets with wide, skinny drawers lining the walls. There were about thirty easels standing on the hard, cold floor, which was splattered with the paint of a million masterpieces gone by.

The room echoed the music that came out of a silver MacBook Air on one of the black cabinets. It wasn’t until then that I realized I’d gone almost three days without hearing music, and thought how unusual that was for me.

There were a couple of people there already, sitting on stools and talking to each other. I sat down on an empty one and stared at the floor while people filtered in for the next five minutes. I didn’t talk to anyone and they didn’t talk to me. Maybe I was being paranoid, but as their whispers echoed throughout the room, I heard a lot of “she,” and I automatically and self-pityingly felt sure they were talking about me.

Professor Crawley walked in as the clock struck three, marking the beginning of my last class of the day, and smiled at us. He’d been the first teacher to crack a smile all day long.

“How’s everyone doin’? Good first day?”

Silence.

“Yeah, me, too.” He sat on a stool and looked down at the papers on his clipboard. He ran through attendance, reading our last names and waiting for the small murmur of acknowledgment.

“… Francis? Gordon? Hanover? Holloway?” He looked up and around. I did, too. Had I not noticed him somehow? “Nope, no Holloway. All right, Langston? Marconi?”

My stomach dropped. I didn’t know why, but I was disappointed he wasn’t there. Maybe he was just late.

As Professor Crawley reached the end of attendance, everyone’s heads turned toward the door. I followed the collective gaze to see—

“Mr. Holloway, there you are. Don’t let your tardiness become a habit. You go by Max?”

He nodded his head and sat down on the stool next to mine. I looked straight ahead, suddenly unable to feel natural.

“So on to class, then. Welcome, all of you. Some of you I know, some of you I don’t.” Professor Crawley looked at me. “But I’m absolutely sure we’ll get to know each other in no time. I’m Professor Crawley. You can just call me Crawley while we’re in the classroom. Too many syllables otherwise. So how many of you have any experience in painting? Or art of any kind, really? Drawing, sculpting, maybe just doodles in your biology notes?”

A few people raised their hands. He smiled at them. “Right after piano lessons and right before tennis, huh?”

There was a small titter of appreciative laughter.

Crawley went on. “I’m just going to assume, for the sake of starting on the same foot, that we all have no experience, which is totally fine.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, and felt Max’s eyes shift to me. I glanced at him, and saw the smallest trace of a smile. I quickly looked away.

“So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to pair you guys up, and you’re just going to start painting, see what comes out. This is your Gamsol.” He held up a glass pot with a lid. “You rinse your brushes in here. It’s like turpentine, except I’m not allergic to it.”

Another titter from the girls.

“You’ve got your brushes, your oil paints, your palette, your palette knife and a rag. Make sure you rinse your brushes thoroughly or all of your colors will go muddy. Squeeze out only the smallest amount of paint. I assure you, this stuff goes far.”

He paired us off. In this kind of situation I usually ended up partnerless and had to work with the teacher. But not this time.

“All right, so go ahead and grab a canvas and an easel and then stop off with me to get your box of supplies.

Once we were set up and sitting across from each other, I gave the boy in front of me an awkward and probably very unpretty smile.

“Max,” he said, holding out a hand. “We met by the boathouse.”

Oh, did we? I hadn’t recalled …

“Yes, I remember, I nearly fell to my death on those stairs.”

With a sickening lurch, I realized what poor taste that had been in. I wanted to say something to make up for it, but before I got the chance, he just nodded as he squeezed out some blue paint and said, “But here you are.”

“Here I am.”

I squeezed out a couple of colors and blended them until it resembled Max’s tanned skin tone.

“So are you any good?” he asked.

“Good?”

He nodded at my canvas. “At painting.”

“Oh.” I laughed nervously. “I doubt it, I’ve never really done it before. I helped paint a mural back at my old school, but it was basically like painting in between the lines. Like a huge coloring book.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“St. Augustine. In Florida.”

“Did you grow up there?”

“Yeah.”

He gave a small smile. “You’re in for a hell of a winter, then.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Oh, I’ve heard.”

“Ever seen snow?”

I shook my head.

“You’re gonna see a lot of it here.” He furrowed his brow at his canvas and looked at me.

“Are you any good?” I asked, indicating his canvas.

“Not at all. Don’t be insulted by my portrait of you. I just took this class because I needed an elective and Crawley is awesome.”

“He seems cool, yeah.”

We settled into a silence I struggled not to fill with stupid rambling. I mixed up some more color to match his dark hair. I laid the brush on the canvas with the blackish color I’d mixed up. But it wasn’t quite right. There was a small tinge of another color in there somewhere. I sifted through the paint tubes and found Alizarin Crimson. I added a tiny bit. Yes, that was a lot better.

“Look at me for a sec,” he said.

I looked up. “What?”

He squinted and leaned toward me. “Green, okay. But …” He stood and came over to me. He put his hand under my chin and lifted up my face. My heart skipped.

“Trust me,” he said with a smile. “I’m an artist.”

“Paint me like one of your French girls.”

Oh, the words spilled from my mouth before I could stop them. I was too used to my group of friends. My cheeks turned hot.

He dropped his hand and looked at me. “Did you just make a Titanic reference?”

“Maybe.”

He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “My older cousin Sarah watched that for the entirety of a family trip at the Outer Banks once. And if I remember correctly, in that scene, he wasn’t just painting her face.”

“Well, we probably won’t be asked to do that in here.”

“Probably not.” He smiled. “Now look at me, I need to look at your eyes.”

He tilted my head so that my eyes caught the light.

“They’re not just green. They have some brown in them, too. Right in the middle.” I looked at him as he studied my eyes.

“Really?” I said, even though I fully knew it.

“There’s also …” He narrowed his own eyes. “Also some blue. They’re like the color of … a pond or something.”

I laughed, and it echoed in the otherwise silent room. Everyone looked at us. I bit my lip and looked around apologetically.

Max smiled. “What?”

“A pond? So, like, the brown is mud and the green is pond scum?”

He laughed, too, sitting back down. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

I laughed and focused back on my canvas.

The end of class came, and we were able to reveal our paintings to each other. I actually kind of liked mine. It didn’t look like a photograph or anything, but it really looked like Max.

“You ready?” I asked him.

He furrowed his brow once again at his painting and said, “I guess.”

We turned around our paintings. I don’t think I’d laughed so hard in weeks. I was one big circle with pink tinge in my cheeks, little dots for freckles, and huge blue-green-brown eyes. I had no eyelids, and my lashes were like little black spiders.

“All right, all right, so I’m not an artist.” He put his canvas back on the easel. “But at least I got your eyes right.”

The rest of the week passed by in a frenzy of getting situated in classes and talking about the year full of work that lay before us. I could already tell that the huge studio was going to be my sanctuary, because as far as the other classes went, it was looking like the year wouldn’t be an easy one. Manderley had block scheduling, so one day we’d have four classes, and then the next day we’d have four different ones. Fridays we had all of them, but they were cut in half. On A days, I had English, World History, Algebra II and Painting. On B days, I had Gym (a bummer because at my old school we didn’t need to take it in senior year, and also because it’s at freaking 8:00 a.m.), Biology, French II (a breeze, since my Paris-born mother had mostly taught me the language) and study hall (which I could hardly believe was a real thing).

A couple days into this schedule, I approached Blake in the dining hall as we slathered bagels with cream cheese, and she assured me things would settle down soon.

“It’s always like this,” she said. “It’s superbusy and then teachers cool off. Trust me, two weeks from now it’ll be ten times better. It’s like they sprint and then get tired and drag their feet for the rest of the year.”

I saw her and Cam every day in the hallways and a few times during meals. They were clearly a very happy couple, and I got along with both of them. I saw a few other people in the halls that I’d met, but no one said much more than a passing hello. I didn’t see Max as much as I wanted to, but when I did, he was usually coming in from lacrosse practice with slightly flushed cheeks and a sheen of sweat on his sculpted cheekbones.

It was odd for me to be mostly solitary. Back home I was out all the time and did something at least kind of social every day even if it was just watching TV with Leah. I was missing home more each day. Every memory I had of home was suddenly set in a perfect sunny day, whereas Manderley was set to the backdrop of gray rain and cold drafts that seeped through ancient walls.

I was alone and cold, and since the food was nothing like my mother’s or what I was used to, I was hungry. Even the salad, usually a safe go-to, tasted like nail polish remover.

It was really hard to stay positive. And that’s normally a talent of mine.

Unable to simply quit school or even tell my thrilled parents about the mild disappointments of the past week, I sat by myself and read or did homework during meals, went to class alone, and then headed to my room where Dana would look disappointed to see me and then ignore me. Sometimes I wanted to just kick her in the shins and tell her to stop being such an unpleasant cloud of gloom, but then I’d remember Becca—it was hard not to, when my side of the room still displayed a wallpaper of her pictures—and feel guilty again.

So that put me in the dining hall at nine at night on my first Friday evening. I was filling my travel mug with hot chocolate. I’d decided I wasn’t ready for bed and that I didn’t want to spend time in the same room as Dana quite yet. I figured I’d read To Kill a Mockingbird and try to find the deeper motifs in the rotunda until I got tired.

It was meant to be a social place, but the chairs were clearly not built with comfort or extended sitting in mind. They were all stiff, and some of them were mysteriously itchy. The rotunda itself was pretty noisy, what with the entrance hall directly beneath us, but it was better than my room.

My hot chocolate looked thin and watery, but it was deceptively delicious. I turned to see Blake putting a piece of bread in the toaster.

I summoned the nerve and then said, “Hey, Blake.”

She looked up, and took a second to register. “Oh, hey! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s okay, I just walked up.”

She smiled kindly. “I’m just taking this up to my room or I’d sit with you.”

“Oh, me, too,” I said, not wanting her to think I was desperate. “I’m just getting some of this and then reading a little for English.”

“I suggest reading on the second floor of the library. Have you been up there yet?”

“Not yet.”

“There are some spiral stairs near the back of the library that lead up to a bunch of study rooms. Go into the room right across from the landing.”

“What is it? Am I allowed?”

She giggled. “Yes, it’s the senior study room. There’s a gas fire in there, and a bunch of armchairs. It’s really nice. It’s empty a lot at night. Most of these kids do their homework right after classes.”

“I’ll go check it out, thanks.” I brought my hot chocolate to my lips.

“Oh, and hey,” she added quickly, “we’re going down to the boathouse tonight, you want to come?”

“Um …” I scrunched up my face in consideration.

“I know you can. Harper Lee can wait until tomorrow.” She looked knowingly at me. “You just don’t want to go. Well, look, it’ll be better this time. Last time you went, it was just a little weird. The last party we had last year was the one when … Becca went missing. Not only that, but she was the one who kind of … started the parties down there.”

“Oh …” Then the question I’d been waiting to ask all week fell from my lips like an anvil. “What … what happened to her?”

Blake’s toast popped up in the toaster. She removed it and concentrated on smothering it in butter and jelly. “She and Max got into a fight about something to do with Johnny … and it was right after Dana and she’d had a fight … and then the next thing we knew she was just gone. So was the training sailboat.” Her hand slowed on the knife. “It was really strange. There was a horrible storm brewing, so it doesn’t make sense for her to think she could go out in the boat … that would be suicide. But maybe that’s what it was … or maybe she was pushed out onto the boat. Or maybe she just left, and the boat thing was a coincidence. It’s really not clear what happened.”

Blake went silent, and it was clear to me that she’d spent a lot of energy trying to figure this out.

“That’s awful.”

“It was also the last night though, so she might have just called a cab and left for the summer. She had her purse on her. And her family is incredibly rich. I don’t know … It just doesn’t make sense. I’m sure you’ve heard all of the talk about it. All the theories.”

I shook my head. “No, not really. People talk about her a lot, but … what do you mean by theories?”

She sighed and took a bite of her toast. “She’s been missing for so many months now that it’s kind of … the longer she’s missing, the more likely it is she won’t come back.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“So I guess …” Blake went on, “I guess people are starting to wonder if she was killed.”

“Killed? Really? By someone—by a student?”

She nodded somberly. “Yeah. It’s hard to believe, but the whole thing is so surreal.”

“Who do they think did it?”

“You know how it is—everyone became a suspect at one time or another, really. Rumors are like that. Since she and Max were a thing, he became the most consistent rumor….”

I felt like my blood had frozen. I pictured Johnny, asking me to play beer pong, and smiling at me with blond hair almost touching his bright eyes. I thought of Dana, so deep in mourning she couldn’t seem to see straight.

And of Max. Max looking into my eyes. I’d looked into his, too. He wasn’t capable of murder; surely I would have seen it. I knew that wasn’t true—I didn’t even know him. But still, I couldn’t imagine it.

“But she’s not even necessarily dead,” she added quickly. “A lot of people think she’s alive. That’s just as likely.” She looked at her toast for a quiet moment. “So you’ll come?”

“Come?”

“To the party tonight.”

No. No. Say no. “Sure.”

“Great! Any time after eleven.” She gave a small smile and then walked back out of the hall.

I set off for the library a moment later, and as I walked, my mind reeled as I thought about the missing girl. No one knew what had happened to her, and yet this time last year she’d been walking the same halls as me. It had been her first year, too. Had everyone been as chilly toward her? Probably not. She was probably why they were like that toward me. They all hated me for coming along.

I was like the new baby sibling that everyone resented.

The study room was empty when I arrived. The lights were off, and I had to feel around the walls until I found a switch. But rather than turning on a fluorescent overhead as I’d expected, it turned on a floor lamp in each corner of the room. They illuminated a smallish, cozy room paneled in dark wood, with comfy-looking armchairs and couches filling the place. Along one wall, there were desks with those old-fashioned green bankers’ lights with the gold, beaded pull string. Right in the middle was a huge ornate mantel, with a modern electric fireplace. I flicked on a light switch and fire burst into life.

This, I supposed, was the charm of Northern states and cold places. It was a different type of charm and warmth than I was used to, but as I read for the next few hours with the fire warming my bare feet and I drank my hot chocolate, I could see that this wasn’t bad, either.

I fell asleep and into another strange dream, as I had on my first night.

I was standing on the beach again. Someone was yelling at me. It was a male voice. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t let myself. I felt determined and strong, but sick and weak all at once. Everything was blurry, as if I was looking through the water of a chlorine pool.

My chest stung and my head pounded. I wanted to hit him, whoever he was. I wanted to scream back at him. But no … I didn’t need to. He was wrong. He’d see. I wasn’t like he thought I was. I could be better. I would be from now on….

chapter 7 me

I AWOKE WITH A START AND LOOKED AROUND, disoriented.

I had no way of knowing what time it was. In a world where cell phones were barely allowed, you’d think there would be a clock on every wall. But there wasn’t. I put the fire out, turned off the lights and ran to my room. It was eleven forty-five. Just in time for bed, and I was fully awake.

I remembered Blake’s invitation. I wasn’t sure if I had the nerve to go down alone.

I got that butterfly flutter in my stomach as I wondered if Max was there. I ignored the thought. Of all ways to start off at Manderley, developing a crush on the most unavailable guy there was probably not the best.

The flutter turned to a shudder as I went down to the beach.

The breeze coming off the ocean felt good. Refreshing. A little bit like home, only way colder than usual. The air, in only these few days, had dropped a few degrees. But at least today it hadn’t rained.

I clutched the fabric of my new peacoat closer to me and walked to the boathouse. I measured my breath carefully, loosened my grip on the book I still had in my hand and opened the door. I could tell immediately that the mood here was better than at the last party. Not so somber. I was met with a few astonished faces, and an immediate approach from my across-the-hall neighbors.

“You came! Finally!” Madison said, her smile big.

“I did.” I smiled, too. “I’m sorry I’m here so late.”

Julia hooked her arm with mine, as if we were best friends. “It’s no problem.”

I could smell that she’d already been drinking, and I could see by looking at and hearing everyone else that they had been, too. She dragged me across the musty room.

“Take a shot of this,” she said, holding up a blue bottle. “It is whipped-cream-flavored vodka and it is so good.”

I let her pour it into a shot glass and tried not to mentally relive the experience of the last time I’d had straight liquor. No one I hung out with back home really drank because we were always driving places, and didn’t want to bother with the expense anyways. Sometimes at parties if someone else was driving I’d have a drink or two if Leah was, but not usually. One time, we were at my friend Lucy’s aunt’s house on Vilano Beach. I had about seven margaritas, made for me by someone else. That night I learned what it felt like to not care about how intimately close I was becoming with a toilet, and what it feels like to wake up with the imprint of a bathmat on my cheek. Bad. That’s what it feels like. Freaking. Bad.

Especially when it doesn’t go away for the next forty-eight hours. The sickness or the imprint.

“How do you get this stuff in here, anyway?” I asked, warily postponing the shot.

“Take it!” Madison said, and the two of them clinked their glasses with mine, sloshing the slightly syrupy liquid onto my hand.

Three, two, one. And with the burning, numbing yuck came the memories and the churning stomach. They laughed at my facial expression, and I indicated that Madison should hand me a can of Sprite. My head spun instantly, and the deep bass of whatever heavy bass song was playing vibrated right through me.

“Whoo,” I said, after a few sips of the soda. “It’s been a while.”

“Let’s do it again!” Madison said, and poured another.

“No, really, I had a terrible hangover once—”

Julia put a hand on my shoulder. “Look. I drink all the time. I’m not gonna let you get a hangover. Cuz we’re friends, right?”

I mean, that might be a slight exaggeration…. “I believe you,” I said, “I just—”

Before I could object, they refilled my glass. I hesitated before taking it with them, and decided that one more shot couldn’t hurt. And clearly this was the way to get in with these girls.

I downed some more Sprite and took a deep breath.

“So,” said Julia, inching a little closer to me. “So. Who do you like?”

“Who do I what?”

“Like! I mean, so far do you think anyone is hot?”

I tried not to think of Max Holloway. “I don’t really know anyone yet.”

“You don’t need to know them.” Madison looked at me like this was obvious.

I felt under pressure, trying to think of someone, anyone besides Max to say. But I couldn’t. “Really, I don’t even know anyone’s name.”

“Just look around and point at someone!” Julia said, a little louder.

They were clearly not letting this go. I looked around for someone to point to, and landed my gaze on Johnny. He was smiling at some girl with strawberry-blond hair. I thought of what Blake had said earlier.

“Johnny?” Madison asked.

The girls exchanged a meaningful look.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean him, I was just looking at him. I didn’t mean him—”

“Let’s go back outside.” Julia pointed toward the door.

Madison grabbed me and the next thing I knew, we were outside and walking away from the house. My flip-flops slapped cold pricks of sand into my calves.

“What?” I was sure my face was red, and was glad we were in such shrouding darkness.

Julia looked as if she was trying to say something tactfully. “That’s Johnny Parker.”

“Like I said, I didn’t even know him or anything. I didn’t say anything about thinking he was cute.”

“Well, do you?”

This is the kind of question that girls ask each other, with the one intention of screwing the other over by her answer. So I just said, “I have no opinion on him, because I don’t know him.”

“There are only two guys here who are off-limits,” said Julia. “One is Johnny Parker—”

She followed my gaze as it shifted over her shoulder. Max had just loped down the steps. Madison said, “Shh …”

“How many cats did you say your mom has? Ten? That’s like so many.” Julia’s voice was loud and fake. My face grew hot.

Max looked at us as he walked by, and then went through the boathouse door without a word.

“I don’t have any cats, why did you say that?” I asked.

“Why do you care? Oh, no, you like him, don’t you?”

“What? Like him—no!”

They clearly wanted to back me into the Bitch Corner. They exchanged another look.

I looked at each of them, my heart skipping a little at being so accurately pinned. “I don’t know either of them.”

“But do you think you might like Max?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Because.” Julia looked helplessly at me, and then to Madison.

Madison gave me a pitying look. “Because you really shouldn’t. He’s not going to like you back.” She rested a hand on my shoulder. “Not because there’s anything wrong with you … just …”

“He’s in love with Becca. Like crazy in love.”

I shook my head, and smiled. “No, no I don’t like him. Don’t worry about it.”

“Good.” Madison looked relieved. “We just don’t want you to get hurt. And when she comes back …”

“If she comes back.” Julia looked morosely down at her feet.

“Right. If … if and when she comes back, you just wouldn’t want to …”

“No, really,” I said, my voice unnaturally high, “it’s fine! Let’s go back inside.”

We did, the two others drifted off, and I found myself surprised to learn that Dana was not in our room back up at the school. She was here. And by the looks of it, she was wasted. When I passed her she didn’t notice me.

Johnny was at the makeshift bar, pouring himself a shot of Captain Morgan.

I stood next to him. “Hit me.”

He laughed, and wordlessly screwed the cap back on the Captain, and opened the blue bottle of vodka.

“How’d you know that’s what I wanted?”

“It’s girl stuff.” He cast a side-glance at me and smiled.

“Hey, I don’t need to pretend to be tough, Captain Morgan.” I smiled. “I hate straight liquor. At least this stuff is easier.”

“Well, then,” he said, handing me my shot, “cheers to not pretending.”

We clinked, swallowed, and then I made that face again. He popped open a soda and handed it to me.

“Thanks.” I swigged it. “I had a can, but I don’t know where it is.”

“Never leave a drink unattended and then drink from it again. That’s how girls get roofied.”

“Are there people here who would do that?”

He furrowed his brows. “I really don’t think so. But Ricky is the pill guy.” He shrugged. “You should just always be careful anyway.”

“There it is!” Johnny said, as I made the winning cup in beer pong. “You finally made one, and right when it really mattered.”

He smiled at me.

“Took long enough.” I smiled back, all too aware that Max had just come into our part of the room.

“Who wants next?” Johnny asked loudly.

For a small moment I hoped Max would volunteer.

“We do!” Blake said, pulling Cam to the table.

Probably for the best—I didn’t need to make a fool of myself when I knew he’d be watching.

“Your shot,” Johnny said, nudging me with his elbow.

I aimed, shot and missed.

My head spun every time Cam or Blake made a shot and I had to take a sip of the vodka and pineapple that she’d made for me. Finally they made their last cup, and Johnny and I had lost. I tried very hard to concentrate on the game, but even though my eyes were on the red cups, my brain was in the crowd around us.

I turned to Johnny with an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry I’m so bad!”

I sipped my drink and wavered a little. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself.

“You want some water?”

I nodded, my eyes still shut, thinking it was Johnny. But when I opened my eyes, it was to see Max.

I felt my stomach lurch, and I took the bottle he handed me. “Thanks.” Then, to overexplain as usual, I said, “I’m kind of a lightweight.”

“That’s better than being a hardened alcoholic by seventeen.” He sat back down, and I saw that next to him was Dana. She was finishing a red cup filled with something and wobbling into the wall behind her.

I fanned myself with my hand, suddenly feeling hot.

“You okay? You wanna step outside?”

“Um, sure.” My skin grew even warmer as surrounding gazes shifted to us when we stood and walked toward the door. It was like they were all motion-sensor security cameras, and I was a clumsy thief.

We stepped out into the chilly air, and I breathed deeply.

“So, how do you like it here so far?” he asked.

In that moment I was very aware of how cute he was.

“Max, get in here. Dana’s freaking out.”

He looked puzzled, but went inside. I followed him

“—doesn’t anyone even care? You’re all just acting like it never happened! Like it didn’t happen here, only a few months ago.”

“Dana, come—” Johnny tried to pull her away from the center of attention, but she swatted his hand away.

“Shut up, Johnny, you’re … you’re one of the reasons she’s gone and you know it. I will never look at you the same way.”

She may as well have slapped him. His eyes turned to stone, and he stepped away from her again. I glanced at Blake.

“Nobody cares,” shrilled Dana. “Nobody understands what it’s like to care about someone. You’re all so wrapped up in yourselves. I—Just fuck all of you!”

“Dana, we are all just as worried and hopeful as you.” Blake’s voice was steady and calm.

Dana’s face contorted into an unpleasant smile, and she started to laugh. “You’re so wrong about that.” She shifted her gaze to me, and then beside me to Max, who had just stepped up. Her smile turned into a grimace. “You are both disgusting.”

I felt stung as she looked directly at me.

I started to stutter out a response, but she got close to my face and said, “You’re just a little slut from the South. You want everyone, and you can’t have them. They don’t want you.”

Everyone hung on her every word.

“You don’t … you don’t even know me.” My voice was not steady or calm.

“Shut up.” She held a hand up in my direction and looked at Max. “If it wasn’t for you, she’d be here tonight. Do you realize that? And that bitch—” she pointed to me “—would not be.”

Dana stalked over to us, her gaze never leaving Max’s.

“You know,” she said, when she was face-to-face with him. Her voice was low, but everyone was listening hard. “You know. No one else here does, because I kept everyone’s secrets. You know that’s probably what she’s off doing, right? Handling the situation?”

“Stop talking now.” He said it firmly.

The air was thick and she stared at him for a long moment. Finally she walked out of the boathouse without saying another word. Johnny followed her.

The room filled with the immediate buzz of chatter that had been bound to follow her outburst. I felt sick and embarrassed. She so clearly hated and resented me. I didn’t want to go back to that room. I wanted to go home. But I had no choice.

“I’m sorry about that,” Max said. He didn’t look at me, simply followed Johnny and Dana’s lead by walking out of the boathouse. There was no reason for me to stay. After a five-minute search for my coat, I left, too.

I heard the screen door slam, and then footsteps. Johnny shouted after me when I was a few steps up. I turned, and he was coming up the stairs.

“Hey, you want me to walk you up?”

Not really. I was feeling sicker by the second, and really wanted to just dart from here to my room. I could hardly imagine saying very much at all. But I probably wasn’t in a position to say no to people.

“Sure.”

We walked in silence for a moment before he said, “So … did you have some fun at least, before the blowout?”

“Yeah, sure, it was fun.” Though it was hard to think of anything else besides what Dana had said.

“People have been pretty messed up about her.”

“Who, Dana?”

“Becca.”

Obviously. I’m an idiot. “Right, right. Of course.”

“Tensions run a little high when her name comes up.”

“I’m sure. Yeah.”

I didn’t want to talk, and suddenly I didn’t want to listen.

What was it about this girl Becca? Everything I’d heard about her made it seem like she was some kind of goddess who enchanted people just by being around them. I mean, I understand that it’s really awful to have a peer be missing and possibly dead … but it’s like she was friends with everyone. It was like she’d been perfect.

I didn’t want to go to my room, where Dana would inevitably be at some point. I was humiliated. I was sick. And to make matters worse, I felt cold pricks of rain start to fall into my hair.

A wave of sickness washed over me. We were only about fifty yards from the girls’ dorm door. I wanted to run to it, but I couldn’t.

“Well, I’m glad you came. We should, I don’t know, hang out or something.”

“Yeah sure. Um … thanks for walking me. I’ll see you tomorrow or something.” I gave a pitiful attempt at a smile and then flew through the door and up to my room.

When I got there, I took a deep breath. In almost that same instant, I was in the bathroom, getting close with the mouth of another toilet.

chapter 8 me

I WOKE UP BRIGHT AND EARLY AT TWO IN THE afternoon. Dana had made it her business to amble around as loudly as possible until she finally fell asleep. I had lain there for God knows how long with my eyes shut, pretending to sleep and trying not to move.

I was trembling and weak when I awoke, and I felt that putting my head in a vise might be a lot more preferable to the pounding it endured now. My churning stomach needed something in it or it was just going to shrivel into a raisin. But I really didn’t feel like eating was going to go well. Even so, I made it down to the dining hall.

Sandwiches, soup, salad, chicken, pancakes … my stomach had all the options in the world and was rejecting even the thought of any of them. I groaned and turned to leave.

And then there was Max, walking in.

I gave a small smile. God I hope I don’t puke.

“Hi.” He looked uncomfortable.

“Hey.”

“Did you just get here?”

I nodded. “Yes. Trying to decide what to eat.” I looked around again at all the things I couldn’t imagine putting down my throat and keeping there.

“Do you want to sit with me?”

A chill filled my chest. I felt so stupid for letting myself drink so much last night that I was screwing myself over today. “Sure.”

We walked through the line together. I looked around me. I didn’t want him to know how bad I was feeling. I really didn’t want to give him the opportunity to picture me with my face in a toilet.

Potato soup. Nope. Would look the same going down as it would five minutes later.

Sandwich. Entirely too many textures.

Yogurt. Only one texture, but it was a nasty one.

Salad. That nail-polish-remover taste in the lettuce would remind me way too much of the alcohol directly.

Bread of any and all kind seemed out of the question. People always say bread and water is the way to go, but the very thought of either one of those things was absolutely revolting.

Chicken tenders. Maybe I could do that. Maybe. I grabbed them and a ginger ale, and sat at the nearest table.

I exhaled slowly and purposefully, trying to soothe my quivering stomach. I shut my eyes fast when I saw Max’s cheeseburger. This was going to be tough.

“Did you have fun last night?” he asked. “Before Dana freaked out?”

“Yeah, up until then.”

“Just … ignore everything she said. You’re obviously not disgusting.”

Only in this bizarre context could that give me the thrill of flattery.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t know why she attacked you like that.”

I shrugged. “I don’t, either.”

I considered the chicken tenders, and took another bite. Oh, big mistake. The second it hit my throat I had to cough and swallow hard.

“You okay?”

I nodded vigorously. Too vigorously. “Mmm. Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

“Hey, so …” He looked uncomfortable. “I hope you didn’t take anything Dana said to heart last night.”

“I … No. I’m not even thinking about it.” My stomach felt as though it was being pulled like taffy. “You know, I just remembered something I need to do. I’m sorry.”

I fled from the hall like it was on fire. I jumped down the last four stairs of the staircase, and banged into a stall. I puked before I could get the door shut.

I was there for another fifteen minutes, my knees picking up God knows what off the floor, and my elbows turning red from being planted on the hard, plastic seat.

I wasn’t sure if I was miserable about having to dart from the conversation right then, or if I was okay with that. It had sounded a lot like I was about to get rejected when I’d never even offered myself.

I didn’t know. And before I could even begin to figure it out, the fluttering was back in my throat.

I slept until that night. Then of course, I could do nothing but sit up, wide-awake in my room. Dana read in her bed again, saying nothing about the night before, and all of Becca’s pictures still stared down at me. I looked away from them and spent the next ten minutes trying to read the spine of Dana’s book. Finally I saw what it was. It was called Coping, and was written by some doctor I couldn’t see the name of. I felt a small tinge of pity.

A knock came on my door at ten-fifteen. I opened the door to find Madison and Julia looking very serious. I had a feeling I was going to start feeling sick again.

“What’s up?”

“Would you mind coming over to our room for a minute?” Julia asked, as Madison looked at the floor.

“Okay.” I followed them, sat down on one of the beds, and they sat across from me. “If you guys are getting a divorce, I know it’s not about me.”

“It’s about Max and Johnny.”

“We just think it’s important for you to know a few things before your interest in either one of them goes any further.”

I was baffled. “My interest in either one of them? I don’t … What?”

Madison looked earnestly at me. “You already know Max was with Becca before she went missing. But what you might not know is that he was crazy in love with her. And so was Johnny.”

Johnny had loved Becca?

Julia took over. “But Max and Becca were so in love. He said he wanted to marry her and everything. She tried to break up with him a hundred times, and he always begged for her back.”

I found it hard to picture Max begging anyone for anything.

“If they were so in love, why did she try to break up with him so many times?”

They were silent for a few seconds, but then Madison spoke. “I really think they would have gotten married. And if—and when—she comes back … they’ll definitely get back together.”

“We just don’t want you to get hurt,” Julia explained.

“We don’t want that at all.”

“And if Johnny does have any interest in you, it’s kind of weird.”

My stomach was slowly plummeting. I didn’t even know him. “Weird, why weird?”

“I mean … she was the new girl last year. Now you’re here … in her room….”

“You even kind of look like her,” Julia said. She observed me for a moment and clearly decided that if I did indeed look like Becca, I was a much less attractive version. “No wonder he likes you.”

I froze. “I’ve only had a few conversations with him. I’m not trying to … anything.”

“But we also don’t want you to misread anything Max might say or do. He’s protective of girls, so if he talks to you it’s probably just him trying to make you feel better about how everyone is talking about you.”

“Is everyone talking about me?”

I wanted to go home.

The two girls stared blankly at me.

“Look,” I said, sparing them the duty of having to say yes, “I won’t go near either of them.”

“Do you promise?” Madison asked. “It’s really for your own good.”

“Yes. I’m—I’ve gotta go.”

I went back into my room. I wished I could run farther. It seemed suddenly to be a horrible idea, sleeping in the school you go to. Everyone was everywhere, every second of every day. And in high school, that’s pretty much the fastest way to lose your sanity.

I didn’t even know what I wanted, and Madison and Julia were assuring me that anything I might consider was out of the question. I couldn’t put one toe onto Becca’s property. Max could never like me. Johnny might, but I was supposed to know it was creepy. I got it. I wasn’t going to start “going after” anyone. I never had, and I wasn’t going to start now.

I sat down on my own bed, breathing hard. I looked straight across from me at all the many smiling faces of Becca, Becca and Max, Becca and Max kissing, Becca and Johnny, one of the three of them and Becca and the rest of her friends.

“Are you upset?”

I almost jumped at the sound of Dana’s voice. “Yes. I’m upset.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather not talk about it with you?”

Um. Obviously.

“Does it have to do with Max? I saw how you looked at him. You have feelings for him.”

“No, okay, I don’t.”

“You better not, because—”

“Because he was madly in love with Becca—I get it, okay?”

“Is. He is in love with Becca. She’s not gone. She’s not dead. I wish everyone would try to remember that every once in a while.” Dana threw down Coping. “Max and Becca are meant for each other … you couldn’t even begin to understand! Anything she did … it was just—She’ll come back and it’ll be for him, not for anyone else!”

Dana had gone from less than zero to over a hundred in five seconds flat.

“I didn’t mean to imply that she’s definitely gone or … or anything!”

“Yes, you did!” Dana’s eyes were wide and scary. She looked crazed. “And you don’t even know her! I knew her, okay? She’ll be back, nothing happened to her!”

“Okay!”

“No! She will! You have to understand that. And you’ll understand why no one will ever see you how they saw her, so you can just stop trying. Her hair? Her face? Her body? She’s physically better than you. Her hair is shinier and lighter, she doesn’t have stupid little freckles all over her face like you do, and she’s taller than you.”

I didn’t even know what to say. This was baffling. She just went on and on.

“And that’s just physically. But otherwise? Everybody loves her. She started everyone going down to the boathouse to have parties. She came up with that. She’s fun, and you’re drab. You and your hippie lifestyle—”

“Hippie lifestyle? Are you kidding?”

“Yes, you’re all tan and your hair’s all wavy, you’re always wearing flip-flops and beat-up jeans—you’re trying so hard to look like some kind of ad for Sex Wax. How much do you spend a year on self-tanner and highlights? How much of your life have you spent trying to look like you’re not trying?”

“I …”

It was impossible to defend. This was crazy. For one small and pretty irrelevant thing, I actually really didn’t use self-tanner. It was something my mom was always reprimanding me for. And as for my hair, it was the one thing I really liked about myself. I never highlighted it or colored it, and it always got lighter in the summer. But I couldn’t insist that to a crazy person. I couldn’t engage in this. And she was grief stricken. I wanted to understand her but she was making it impossible.

“Becca will come back,” she threatened, “and then you’ll see. If anyone is giving you any kind of second look right now, you’ll see how quickly that goes away, because you could never compare to her. You’ll never be as good as her. You’ll never be as pretty. You’ll never have what she has.”

That was it. I whipped around, and my hands were moving of their own volition. I was pulling thumbtacks out of the wall and gathering the pictures of perfect little Becca and hurling them at Dana.

“Stop it!” Horror was filling her eyes, and seemingly paralyzing her where she stood. “Becca put those there! You put them back!” She was screaming now, reminding me of that scene in Lord of the Rings when that blonde girl goes from beautiful to a big computer-graphic monster.

“No! You take these. Put them up on your own damn wall if you want to. Put them in a box for when and if she comes to pick them up, but I am not going to stare at these pictures anymore.” I threw the last of them on the floor and then threw the thumbtacks at her closet. It may have been the most violent act I’d ever made. “This is my bed. This is my shelf—” I picked up the remaining four picture frames “—and this shit is not mine.”

“You bitch. You fucking bitch!”

“I don’t care what you think. I’m sorry you’re worried about your friend. I really, truly am. But you will not belittle me and my life because of it.”

I grabbed my wallet and key and left the room, slamming the door. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, that every single door along the hallway was closing as I walked out into it. Great. If everyone was talking about me, then now they could add psycho to the list of things wrong with me.

I had no idea whether it was too late to go check out my phone, but I needed to call someone. My mom. Leah. Emma. Someone.

I ran to the cell phone office. It was eight forty-five. I glanced out the doors. Dark already.

“Hi, I want to check out my phone, please.” I handed him the checkout card I’d been given on my first day.

He handed me my phone. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Okay.”

I turned it on and darted out the side door into the courtyard. It was freaking cold, and my Florida-based wardrobe only made it colder. I called Home the second it turned on.

No answer. My desperation was starting to make my hairs stand on end. I needed someone to tell me that I was right.

But I had a bunch of voice mails.

The first one was from my mom:

“Hey, sweetie, I miss you already! I know you’re going to have a fantastic time at Manderley. You really are. It’s such a good school, you’re going to get into a fabulous college, and oh, you’re going to have so much fun. You’re going to make so many friends there. Oh, gotta go, I think I’m getting pulled over. Call me sometime soon. Love you!”

She sounded so sure that I would do well here. I made sure not to delete the message and listened to the second one. It was from Leah, my best friend. The first few seconds was just a bunch of screaming, talking and laughing. Then finally:

“… give me the phone, Michael! Jeez! Okay, finally! It’s all of us here—” she was interrupted by a bunch of people yelling their hellos into the phone “—and we just miss you so much! The senior cookout was at the A-Street Pier this year, and it’s so freaking awesome! Rita’s is giving out free desserts, and Mango Mangos is catering—I know you love their French fries and we just—Shut up! I’m trying to leave a message!” More laughing, and then my friend Emma took over the phone.

“Hey! Oh, my gosh, we miss you so much, seriously, it is not the same without you. Plus I don’t think the guys know who to lust after now that you’re gone—”

The phone exchanged hands again. My throat was tight, and there were chills going up and down my back. “It’s totally true—” I recognized Jake’s voice “—you were the hottest thing to ever happen to SAHS.”

“Anyway,” Leah said, taking the phone back, “we miss you, and you would have loved this cookout it’s so much fun. Not as much as if you were here though. Call me back! Or write to me on Facebook or something—jeez—I can’t believe I haven’t heard from you yet! Must be too busy with all your—Stop it! Okay, love you, bye!”

More laughing until they got the call to end. There was one more voice mail from home, left only an hour ago. It started with barking I recognized. Then I heard the small barely-familiar-with-a-phone voice of my little sister Lily.

“That was Jasper saying hello. He misses you lots, I can tell, and he’s always sleeping in your bed! I think he’s really sad every time someone comes to the door because it’s not you. You have to come home soon so you can pet him and hug him, because he’s really sad and missing you. He got a new collar and leash! I lost the other ones … but that’s okay, because these are pink! Daddy let me pick them out, and Mommy thought it was silly because Jasper is a boy, but I think they look good with his black fur. He’s really cute. Also another doggie moved in next door and Jasper is always talking to it. It’s making Mommy irritated though, she says, because now they’re always barking. But I said it’s cute because it’s like 101 Dalmatians and they’re doing the twilight bark. You know, when all the dogs talk before they go inside for bed? Anyway, Daddy is doing that thing with his finger that means ‘wrap it up’ so I have to go. Oh—wait, here’s Daddy, he wants to talk, too. Bye!”

My eyes were burning now. “I just walked in, I’m not sure how long she’s been talking or if it cut her off.” I heard Lily in the background saying she had just called me. “Anyway, we miss you and can’t wait until you come home. Love you, talk to you soon.”

And that was it. I used to hear every one of those voices every day, and took them completely for granted. I couldn’t even mentally utter the old saying about “knowing what you’ve got.” I just missed them, even after this short period of time. I was so incredibly nostalgic for a life I knew I’d never, ever have again. But at this moment, I wanted nothing more than to give up on this stupid place and go back home. I looked at the weather app on my phone. It had been eighty-three degrees back home. The next two days were sunny, and the third had thunderstorms. I loved thunderstorms.

As for Manderley, the weather was anticipated to be overall gloomy, with a temperature of sixty the next day, with cold rains and a low of forty-three. Cold rains are really, really different than warm thunderstorms.

I tried home once more. When there was no answer, I left my own voice mail. “Hey, everyone, um …” Here it was. My opportunity. If I told my parents I hated it, they would let me come home. I could be home in forty-eight hours, sitting in the living room with my mom. She’d listen to my woes sympathetically and without judgment. I could be back at my high school in time for Homecoming. “I miss you all so, so much. I—It’s …”

If I left, everyone would know why. If people talked about me, they’d say, Remember that new girl? No, not Becca, the short one with the stupid freckles.

Becca left here, alive or not, and left behind a legacy. I wasn’t as good as her, only because she was so … whatever she was. If I walked out now, I’d be telling everyone they were right. If I left now, I’d be a coward who runs scared from the ghost of a girl who haunts the halls.

“Manderley is amazing. I can’t wait until you can see it in person. The classes are pretty hard, but not worse than I thought they’d be. Love you all. Lily, give Jasper a paw-shake and a hug for me, okay?” I briefly envisioned how good it would feel just to scratch his ears and give him a squeeze. “Love you. Miss you. I have to go turn my phone back in now. I still love it by the way, thanks so much for getting it for me.” I was rambling. “Okay, bye now.”

I texted each of my friends, giving them a brief and respectively varied miss you, wish I was home, xoxo, and then turned the phone off. It felt like saying goodbye to my visitors and returning to my jail cell.

The only way I could think of to extend the visit would be to go to the library, to the one computer equipped with the ability to do anything but look up journal articles and other scholarly things, and log on to Facebook for the first time since I’d left home.

I really shouldn’t have. It was just more of the same torturous happiness from my old life. My friends wrote to say they missed me. It was really flattering and nice, but it just hurt. It hadn’t been long since I’d left, but it felt like it had been so much longer. Leah wrote, Already forgotten about us, huh? Ugh! Fine, go make your new friends … what do I care? Haha, just kidding. Miss you, come visit!

I looked at the pictures from the cookout, and everything else my friends had been up to lately. It was like digging into my own flesh to find a bullet. I couldn’t even get through the whole album of all of my friends wearing sweatshirts with shorts and flip-flops, still sporting sunburns at the cookout. Leah had tagged me in one picture as an extra marshmallow on a stick and her and Emma pouting.

I glanced at the other albums, of them just two days before, swimming in Lucy’s aunt’s pool in the afternoon and then in the hot tub at night.

Then I thought of something. I hesitantly typed her name into the search box. And then there she was.

Rebecca Normandy. Her profile was restricted so that I couldn’t see anything but her profile pictures and the comments on her wall. It was really kind of disturbing. She’d been missing for almost five months, and there were still comments from the past few days, from people whose names I didn’t recognize.

Miss you, beautiful.

I love you and miss you every day. Please come back soon.

XOXOOXO

Hey, remember that one time with the shoelaces and the Barbie? Oh, my God, the look on his face … Bahahaha come back, slut, I miss you!

They were all writing to her like she was checking her Facebook regularly. I wondered, with a pang, if she was. What had Dana suggested the other night? That she was off “handling” something.

I kept scrolling, and found Dana’s most recent post: I know you’re not gone. I know it. So stop. Come back. Or at least contact me.

There were tons more comments like those and like Dana’s. It was creepy. Spooky.

And it made me really wonder what had happened. Maybe she wasn’t even missing. Maybe everyone knew where she was, and she was just … hiding for some reason. That would be crazy … but maybe that’s what it was.

But if she wasn’t … what had happened? Blake had said something about a boat that went missing that night in the storm. Had Becca taken it out? She couldn’t have. It was pitch-black down there at night, and in a storm? She could have just called a cab, like Blake had said, on the payphone in the lobby and … left.

To make my brain strain more, I clicked on her pictures. I could only see a few, but they were enough. In the one she had set as her default, Max was kissing her on the cheek, and she was smiling. In the next few, she just looked pretty. She looked like she was trying to look pretty, but she was undeniably succeeding. All the comments on her pictures confirmed it.

A sudden jab of uncharacteristic jealousy struck me. She’d been new at Manderley last year. How had she managed to make so many friends here, made such an impact, while I was greeted with only hesitance quickly followed by disinterest? Madison and Julia made some kind of an effort with me, and Johnny was nice. Max was … something. Blake was nice, too, I guessed. But Dana …

There was only a handful of people I’d even talked to, and all of them—except maybe for Cam, who rarely spoke—seemed morbidly and irreversibly affected by Becca. They all knew her. It’s not like each of them talked only about her, but somehow that seemed more significant.

I don’t know what happened to me, then. I was depressed about being away from home and jealous of Becca one moment, and then the next, something shifted in me. It was as if my skeleton turned to iron—I was strong, and I would not have my happiness and fate decided by some popular girl who had reigned before I got there.

It wasn’t up to Becca or Dana how I lived my life.

chapter 9 becca

BECCA LEANED ON MAX, WITH HER DRINK IN hand. His arm was around her, tightened a little to keep her steady. He laughed at something Johnny said. Becca wasn’t really paying attention. She was watching the way Johnny’s muscles flexed when he moved his arms. He was too hot. But she couldn’t go for him. She’d already gotten the ungettable.

Well. Almost gotten him. Tonight was the night to seal the deal. Madison and Julia had given her sympathy and said “not to feel too badly about him not wanting to get together officially, because really he just never does that.”

Fuck that.

Becca’s eyes slid involuntarily up Johnny’s body and she flinched when she realized he was looking at her, too. She smiled and bit her bottom lip. Quickly she glanced up at Max, who had been taking a swig of his drink and didn’t notice.

“Max,” she said, readjusting her attention to him. “Let’s go outside.”

“Okay.”

Johnny had already turned away when Becca looked back.

She grabbed his hand. “Lead the way.”

Max guided her through the crowd, smiling and shaking his head at all of the “ooh’s” and “get it, Holloway!” as they passed by.

Once they were outside, she gave him the look that always made boys kiss her.

It worked. He laid a hand on her jawbone and pulled her toward him. He was a good kisser. She should want this. But she felt like something was missing with him. She kissed him harder, hoping she could forget the thoughts in her mind.

She pulled away and smiled slyly. Then she yanked his arm and guided him away from the door and into the darkness behind the boathouse.

He silently allowed her to take him there. Then, in the darkness where she could pretend he was anyone, she kissed him hard. He kissed her back. So he was capable of not kissing just like a Nice Guy. She scratched his back, and all the way around the waistband of his boxers, which were a little higher than his slightly loose pants. She unbuttoned his top button. She could feel that he wanted it. And she was going to give it.

His grip on her waist tightened. She bit his lip and unzipped his pants, slowly dropping to her knees. She ran her hands up and down his legs, and kissed the sharp muscles of his hip. Then she did it.

A few minutes later, her lips were pink and so were Max’s cheeks. She’d finished and then zipped and buttoned him back up.

“Becca …” Max said. He pulled her in toward him, and kissed her from her raw lips to her collarbone. Then he saw the look on her face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, as unconvincingly as she could.

“You’re obviously not … what’s wrong?”

She sighed, a tad theatrically. “Nothing …”

He looked her in the eyes and silently demanded an answer.

“I just … never do that sort of thing. And—” she intentionally let her breath quiver “—I just don’t want you to think I’m a slut.”

She’d used her sex appeal to get her anywhere she’d ever been in life so far. And this was not the first time she’d had this conversation.

“I don’t.”

“How could you not? I mean I’m not even your girlfriend …”

“I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She was worried about exactly that. She wanted him to spread around how fantastically talented she was at … stuff.

“I appreciate that. But I don’t care about what other people think. I care about what you think. And I want you to think I’m respectable. God … first we did it on my first night here, and now this? I’m so stupid.”

Becca ran a hand through her long hair, swooping it to one side.

“No, you’re not.”

“Why would you like me?” She put on her cute voice.

He shrugged. “I just do.”

That was not a good answer. She was used to guys falling at her feet and giving her laundry lists of reasons why they loved her.

She paused, and then tried to look sullen. “We just can’t do this again. We can’t do this until—I mean, unless we’re official. I just can’t live with myself.”

Becca watched him decide what his next move was.

“If that’s how you feel about it, I understand.”

She nodded. Dammit. He wasn’t going in for this.

Later that night, after Max had been too understanding and left her alone the rest of the night, Becca went up to her room to stumble out of her clothes and into a slip.

“You okay?” Dana asked from her bed.

Shut. Up. That was all Becca wanted to say. But instead she held up a hand and gave thumbs-up, her other hand putting pressure on her throbbing head.

“Should I get you some water? I have some Excedrin.”

“Two.” She held out a hand again, without looking. She heard Dana scrambling up and out of her bed to get the bottle.

“Here,” said Dana, handing her a bottle of water and the pills.

“You don’t have any cold water?”

“No, sorry.”

Becca took the Excedrin. “Gimme another one.”

“Another what?”

“Pill.”

“You’re really only supposed to take two, I think.”

“Just give it to me, Jesus. You’re not my mother, so don’t baby me.”

“Fine, I’m sorry.” She put another pill in Becca’s extended palm.

Becca downed that one, too. “What are you, mad now?”

“No …?”

“Okay, then.”

“When was the last time you ate?” Dana asked sheepishly.

“Like … five hours ago.”

“What did you have?”

“A salad. Why are you—?”

“Because you’re not supposed to take that stuff on an empty stomach.”

That was probably true. She didn’t need to feel even sicker in the morning than she was already bound to.

“Fine.”

Becca threw on a sweatshirt and then walked down to the always-open dining hall in bare feet and no bra. She looked like hell, and really hoped she wouldn’t see anyone.

But of course, Johnny was sitting at a table in the middle of the hall, eating a sandwich.

He spotted her and smiled. “C’mere.”

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. So where’d you and Max go off to earlier?”

“We were just talking.” She eyed him, and ran a finger through her hair. “Where were you? You were gone when we came back in.”

“Yeah, I mean the hottest girl at the party left, so I didn’t see why I should be there anymore.”

“Oh, yeah?” She smiled.

He nodded and took a sip of his Sprite.

“So are you and Max …”

“I’d have to be really stupid to go out with a guy already, wouldn’t I?” She didn’t want to think about how Max had rejected her earlier.

He shrugged. “Maybe. I think he likes you. He never talks about that kind of thing though.”

“I don’t care if he does.”

One bagel and the rest of Johnny’s Sprite later, he was walking her out of the dining hall. She suddenly didn’t want to go up to sleep yet. Her headache was already gone, and she had a second wind of energy gusting through her.

“Hey, what’s down that hallway?”

Johnny looked where she pointed. “Oh, that’s … the staff room and a bunch of the teachers’ offices.”

She smiled and marched down the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Come on! I wanna see this ‘staff room.’”

He followed her. “You’re a crazy little girl, aren’t you?”

She pulled open the heavy wooden doors that led to the darkened hallway. He closed them after they walked through.

Becca turned and could feel she was inches from him. She felt the light that slipped through the crack in the doors hit her face. She narrowed her eyes at him and whispered, “I’m not a little girl.”

He gave a small moan as she looked up at him. She could see his eyes now. He made the tiniest movement toward her and she turned to run down the hallway, her bare feet tapping against the hardwood floors. She stopped in front of the double doors that had Staff Only written in gold.

He strode after her and pushed down on the handle to open one of the doors.

“I can’t believe it’s not locked.” He held it open for her and then shut it behind them.

This room was also dark. There were flags around its perimeter and a long, darkly wooded meeting table in the middle, surrounded by chairs. There was an unlit fireplace, and a mantel beneath a large oil painting of the dean.

She took off her sweatshirt, aware that her slip rose a little as she did so. She tossed it on the ground.

“Well, if you’ll please take your seat at the end of the table—” she gestured at the biggest chair “—this meeting can begin.”

Johnny smiled and sat down where she’d indicated. She slid onto the table in front of him. Maybe it was the alcohol left in her system, but he was a lot more attractive than she’d noticed before.

“I think we both know why we’re here.” Johnny spoke smoothly.

Becca’s heart leaped a little, but she remained composed. “I think I need reminding.”

“Because,” he said, slouched in his seat, “we’ve got a student here at Manderley who is just not behaving.”

“I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“The miscreant who led poor Johnny Parker into the break-in of this—” he pounded on the desk and moved toward her “—very room.”

“Really? Because as I see it, poor little Miss Normandy was influenced by this Mr. Parker.”

He stood up, in between her legs. She leaned back, looking at him with all the sexy she could conjure.

Johnny effortlessly pulled her toward the edge of the table. She planted her feet on the armrests of the chair he’d vacated. He lifted the silky fabric and ran his hands along her skin, wrapping his touch around her hips and up her back. He sharpened his grip as he moved down to her thigh.

Becca’s smile faded as want filled her chest and made it clench. It ran through her legs and made them close to shaking. It was in her head, making her dizzy and light-headed. She could hear her own breath in the still, dark room. She could hear his, too, and she saw that he was no longer looking clever.

His hands were gentle, and her muscles tensed as he ran his fingers farther up her leg. He came closer and kissed her neck, as Max had done earlier. It felt so different when Johnny did it. All Becca wanted now was for him to come even closer. And he did. He moved in and put his lips to her ear. His breath blew her hair just enough to send a tingle down her spine.

“What do you want, new girl?” His whisper was slow and deep.

“You,” she said desperately. She wasn’t in control. She was uninhibited and desperate for him.

With one hand still on her upper thigh, taunting her, he moved his other to her hair. He pulled it slightly, exposing more of her neck. She surrendered, leaning back with her eyes shut. Her breath came faster now. His hand moved just enough higher, and his lips moved down to her chest. He gently dropped her straps.

Less than two weeks since she’d lost her virginity, and her number had already doubled.

The following Monday, as Becca dawdled her way to English class, Johnny pulled on her arm and dragged her out the side door.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What are you doing?” Johnny looked livid. “You told me you weren’t with Max!”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you—” He paused, looking like he was trying to remember her exact wording. “But you’re hooking up with him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He told me, Becca. In the locker room after practice.”

A small thrill of satisfaction rolled through her. Finally, Max was bragging about her. “What did he say?”

“I asked him if you guys were a thing, and he shrugged and said, and I quote, ‘we hooked up a few times.’”

That was not quite as flattering. But whatever.

She smiled. “So are you jealous?”

There was a flicker of movement in the corners of his mouth. “I’m not saying that. It’s just not right. He’s my best friend.”

“Okay, sure, and if he’s too stupid to snap me up …” She narrowed her eyes playfully.

“Stop that, Becca, come on.”

“Stop what?”

“We had …” He looked around and lowered his voice even more. “We had sex and now this is just not right, I can’t be—”

She rolled her eyes and leaned against the wall. “Oh, Johnny, you stop it. You’re thinking way too hard. We’re young. We only have two years left. Just go with it. No one’s getting hurt. No one’s going to get arrested or die. It’s all good.”

She could tell she was winning him over. But he still looked like he might argue.

“Look,” she said, “is all this to say that you don’t want to do it again?” Becca ran a hand through her hair and pushed herself off the wall. “Because I’m not going to stand here all day and beg for you.”

She would not be rejected by both of them. If she walked away it would be her choice, not because he denied her.

He was silent for a moment, thinking. Her heart jumped as she realized he really might say no. She shook her head irritably and pushed past him. She got a few steps before he called her name. She hesitated and then kept walking.

“Becca … Becca!” He jogged up behind her. His hands on her shoulders stopped her.

He glanced around, and when he saw no one, he kissed her. It sent a shock through her. She hadn’t felt anything like it. It was like no one had ever kissed her and meant it before. When he finally pulled away, she looked up at him. When she spoke, her voice wasn’t strong or vital and controlling as it usually was. Her words weren’t calculated and meant to get her to an end. Her voice was small and hopeful, and her words were nervous. “Can we go … somewhere?”

Later that night, Max came to Becca’s door in the girls’ hall. She opened the door to see Max looking hot, and the girls along the hallway looking out of their doors.

“I thought about what you said. And you’re right.”

Was he about to ask her out? She was practically still sweating from her rendezvous with Johnny. She gave a nervous flatten of her hair, and said, “Oh, yeah?”

He nodded. “So if you’ll still do it, then … we can do it.”

She felt everyone’s eyes on her. “You want to be with me, is this what you’re saying?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled and pulled him into her room. “Dana, do you think you could … make yourself scarce for a little while?”

Dana hurried up and out the door. Becca shut it, and the flurry of chatter outside told her that what she was about to do was exactly what she had to.