She Was the Quiet One
She Was the Quiet One
Michele Campbell
The gripping new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Michele CampbellBecause murderers are never who you expect…She was the quiet one… but is she guilty?For twin sisters Rose and Bel, enrolling at the prestigious new boarding school should have been a fresh start. But with its sinister rituals and traditions, Odell soon brings out a deadly rivalry between the sisters.For Sarah and husband Heath, the chance to teach at Odell seems like the best thing that ever happened to their small family – a chance to rise through the ranks and put the past behind them.Until one dark night ends in murder.But who’s guilty and who’s telling the truth? And who’s been in on it all along..?From the Sunday Times bestselling author Michele Campbell comes the breathtaking new thriller SHE WAS THE QUIET ONE.PRAISE FOR MICHELE CAMBPELL:‘A gripping page-tuner…will suit fans of Liane Moriarty’ Hello‘A page-turning whodunnit that will speak to anyone who's ever had a frenemy.’Ruth Ware, bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin Ten‘A gripping, tangled web of a novel―it pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. I loved it!Shari Lapena, author of The Couple Next Door‘A cracking whodunit that will keep you guessing’ Woman’s Own‘Secrets and scandals in an ivy league setting. What could be more riveting?’Tess Gerritsen, Sunday Times bestselling author‘A skillful and addictive story of friendship, betrayal and ultimately love, IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND will keep you turning the pages until its dramatic end.’B A Paris, bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors‘A brilliantly layered, utterly compelling, clever mystery story that crackles with poisoned friendships and dirty secrets… Twisted, shocking and sharply observed. IT'S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND has blockbuster movie written all over it!’ Samantha King
MICHELE CAMPBELL is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School. She worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime in NYC as a federal prosecutor. Her debut novel It’s Always The Husband was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
Copyright (#ulink_fa6e4fda-224f-5920-8dda-ca0d1d1cfa8a)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Michele Rebecca Martinez Campbell 2019
Michele Campbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008301828
Praise for Michele Campbell (#ulink_fa67fe16-b70f-58fc-aad3-ebaaf0cd3e2d)
‘A page-turning whodunnit that will speak to anyone who’s ever had a frenemy.’
Ruth Ware
‘A gripping, tangled web of a novel – it pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. I loved it!
Shari Lapena
‘Secrets and scandals in an ivy league setting. What could be more riveting?’
Tess Gerritsen
‘A skillful and addictive story of friendship, betrayal and ultimately love, It’s Always The Husband will keep you turning the pages until its dramatic end.’
B A Paris
‘A brilliantly layered, utterly compelling, clever mystery story that crackles with poisoned friendships and dirty secrets… Twisted, shocking and sharply observed. It’s Always The Husband has blockbuster movie written all over it!’
Samantha King
‘A gripping page-turner…will suit fans of Liane Moriarty.’
Hello!
‘Readers will… be drawn in to the novel’s intricate exploration of divided loyalties and the brittleness of trust.’
Publishers Weekly
For Meg
The only quiet woman is a dead one.
—SYLVIA PLATH
Contents
Cover (#udb414420-df5b-5971-9f0f-1636a4337dd0)
About the Author (#ulink_8dc38c1c-d42f-5e0c-83d8-34f96ab8f241)
Title Page (#ub77d1d6b-ab1f-52a1-b265-f37ee498c1bc)
Copyright (#ulink_ccb9bc50-bdd9-5c2c-b5a2-438a83b54eb3)
Praise (#ulink_717c3fca-9133-5c02-98db-b921a14541f6)
Dedication (#u4a6e642d-2338-56a2-8023-511019d73069)
Epigraph (#u0d957223-a929-5034-ba2f-fd6cc8e79e8c)
part one (#ulink_2c65bbb7-7651-576d-991d-3777eea6a076)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_feb0124e-2344-5d12-94c1-f410da946caa)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3af74c87-81c9-5c1d-bec8-6e5d505dc16b)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_fd0f4c86-f8ce-5b05-b283-140d998f2707)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_133dc69d-54eb-5e6a-a3ab-53dab033808d)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_6f3a7a12-daa5-5c35-ac4c-5e792eda85a5)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_29cd0ac3-8579-5f40-a81b-9a1cb7e3b92b)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_9ec7187e-807b-50b8-83f6-bc27e2742ddd)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_fef27ec7-b43b-5850-949b-12b0c4bbe6ed)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_18928117-f874-53c3-9716-2c34c87d859c)
Chapter 10 (#ulink_31da9927-d4cf-558d-b361-68d0a8941d25)
Chapter 11 (#ulink_b9412401-f9a2-5837-b838-1c9f60c55373)
Chapter 12 (#ulink_4abd7360-50a8-5692-a1b7-ddf33c017804)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_591b77d4-73d2-556a-9472-798c8f5cf60e)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
part two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
part (#ulink_5f704c24-14a2-5071-9021-6c97dda7be0c)
one (#ulink_5f704c24-14a2-5071-9021-6c97dda7be0c)
1 (#ulink_51eca844-8e2f-5940-9348-50a6abdca683)
February
They locked her in the infirmary and took away her phone and anything she might use to harm herself—or someone else. The school didn’t tout this in its glossy brochures, but that’s how it handled kids suspected of breaking the rules. Lock them in the infirmary, isolate them, interrogate them until they crack. Usually you got locked up for cheating on a test or smoking weed in the woods. In the worst-case scenario, hazing. Not murder.
She lay on the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling. They’d given her sedatives at first, and then something for the pain. But her head still pounded, and her mind was restless and foggy all at once. A large lump protruded from the back of her skull. She explored it with her fingers, trying to remember what had caused it. At the edge of her consciousness, something terrible stirred, and she pushed it away. If she turned off the light, she would see it, that thing at the edge of the lake.
That thing. Her sister. Her twin.
All across campus on this cold, dead night, silence reigned. She was being accused of a terrible crime, and there was nobody to speak in her defense. They’d called her grandmother to come defend her. But her grandmother believed she was guilty. Even her closest friends suspected her, and she had to admit, they had reason to. She and her sister were close once, but this awful school had changed that. They’d come to doubt each other, to talk behind each other’s backs, to rat on each other for crimes large and small, to steal from one another. Mere days earlier, they’d gotten into a physical fight so intense that the girl who interceded wound up with a black eye. That girl hadn’t told—yet. But she would now.
It wasn’t fair. Just because they’d had a fight didn’t mean she would kill her sister. How could she? Her sister was the only family she had left. Everybody else had died, or abandoned her. Why would she hurt her only family, her only friend? But every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blood on her hands, the stab wounds, the long hair fanned out. Her sister’s face, white and still in the moonlight. She was there when it happened. Why? It couldn’t be because she was the killer. That wasn’t true. She was innocent. She knew it in her heart.
But nobody believed her.
2 (#ulink_59001a27-3005-5279-9ec0-dd05d4235559)
The September Before
Sarah Donovan was a bundle of nerves as she fed her kids a rushed breakfast of instant oatmeal and apple juice. Four-year-old Harper and two-year-old Scottie were still in their pajamas, their good clothes hidden away among half-unpacked boxes. Today was opening day at Odell Academy, the prestigious old boarding school in New Hampshire, and Sarah and her husband, Heath, had just been appointed the dorm heads of Moreland Hall. They’d been laboring in the trenches as teachers for the past five years, and this new job was a vote of confidence, a step up into the school’s administration. It came with a raise and faculty housing and the promise of more to come. Sarah ought to be thrilled. Heath certainly was. Yet she couldn’t shake a sneaking feeling of dread.
“Hurry up, sweetie, two more bites,” Sarah said to Scottie, who sat in his high chair playing with his food, a solemn expression on his funny little face. Scottie was like Sarah—quiet, observant, a worrier, with a lot going on behind his eyes—whereas Harper was an open book. She met life head-on, ready to dominate it, just like her dad.
“If you’re done, Harps, go brush your teeth.”
“Mommy, I’m gonna wear my party dress,” Harper announced as she climbed down from her booster seat. She was beautiful, and she knew it, with big blue eyes and wild mane of curls, and she loved to dress up and show off.
“You have to find it first. Look in the box next to your bed.”
Harper ran off, and Sarah glanced at the clock. They had a half hour till the students and their families began to arrive. Sarah had spent the afternoon yesterday preparing for the welcome reception, and as far as refreshments and party supplies were concerned, she was all set. Five large boxes from Dunkin’ Donuts sat on the kitchen counter, along with multiple half gallons of apple cider and lemonade, napkins and paper plates, party decorations and name tags. All that remained was to move everything to the Moreland common room and plaster a smile on her face. So why was she so nervous?
Maybe because the stakes were so high. Heath and Sarah had been brought in to clean up Moreland Hall’s unsavory reputation, and the task was daunting. Bad behavior happened all over Odell’s campus, but it happened most often in Moreland. Sarah thought it must have something to do with the fact that a disproportionate share of Moreland girls came from old Odell families. (Moreland had been the first dorm at Odell to house girls when the school went coed fifty years before, and alumni kids often requested to live in the same dorms their parents had.) Sarah had nothing against legacy students per se. She was one herself, having graduated from Odell following in the footsteps of her mother, her father, aunts, uncles and a motley array of cousins. But she couldn’t deny that some legacy kids were spoiled rotten, and Moreland legacies notorious among them.
At the end of the last school year, two Moreland seniors made national news when they got arrested for selling drugs. The ensuing scandal dirtied Odell Academy’s reputation enough that the board of trustees ordered the headmaster to fix the problem, once and for all. The previous dorm head was a French teacher from Montreal, a single guy, who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day—hardly the image the school was looking for. He got demoted, and Heath and Sarah—respected teachers, both Odell grads themselves—were brought in to replace him. A wholesome young couple with two adorable little kids to set a proper example. That was the plan, at least. But there was a problem. Neither Sarah nor Heath had a counseling background. They knew nothing about running a dorm, or providing guidance to messed-up girls. Sarah had spent her Odell years hiding from girls like that, and—to be honest—Heath had spent his chasing them. That was all in the past of course. The distant past. But it worried her.
When Sarah raised her concerns, Heath soothed them away and convinced her that this new job was their golden opportunity. How could they say no? Heath had big plans. He wanted to advance through the ranks and become headmaster one day. The dorm head position was his stepping-stone. He didn’t have to tell her how much he wanted it, or remind her how desperately he needed a win. She knew that, too well. Teaching high school English was not the life Heath wanted. There had been another life, but it crashed and burned, and they’d barely survived. With this new challenge, Heath was finally happy again. She couldn’t stand in his way.
And he was happy. He strode into the kitchen now looking like a million bucks, decked out in a blue blazer and a new tie, with a huge smile on his handsome face.
“Ready, babe?” he said, coming over and planting a kiss on Sarah’s lips.
“Just about. You look happy,” she said, lifting Scottie down from his high chair.
“You bet. I’ve got my speech memorized. I’ve got my new tie on for luck—the one you got me for my birthday. How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” she said.
It was true. The first time Sarah had laid eyes on Heath was here at Odell, fifteen years ago, when he showed up as a new transfer student their junior year. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen back then, and, despite the ups and downs, that hadn’t changed.
Heath checked his watch, frowning. “It’s after nine. You’d better get dressed.”
Sarah had thought she was dressed. She’d brushed her hair this morning, put on a skirt, a sweater and her favorite clogs, as she usually did on days when she had to teach class. But looking at Heath in his finery, she realized that her basic routine wouldn’t cut it in the new job. She’d have to try harder. That wasn’t comfortable, any more than it had felt natural earlier this week to give up their cozy condo in town and move into this faculty apartment. Moreland Hall was gorgeous, like something out of a fairy tale. Ivy-covered brick and stone, Gothic arches, ancient windows with panes of wavy glass. The apartment had a working fireplace, crown moldings, hardwood floors. But it didn’t feel like home. How could it? It didn’t belong to them; not even the furniture was theirs. Not to mention that the kitchen window looked directly onto the Quad. Anybody could look in and see her business. Life in a fishbowl. She hoped she could get used to it.
“Harper’s getting dressed,” Sarah said. “I’ll take care of Scottie. Can you move the refreshments to the common room and start setting up?”
“Sure thing. And, babe, don’t be afraid to do it up, okay? You look hot when you dress up.”
Heath grinned and winked at her, but Sarah couldn’t help completing the thought in her mind. Unlike the rest of the time, when you look like you just rolled out of bed. But Heath hadn’t said that, and didn’t think it. That was Sarah’s insecurity speaking.
It took fifteen minutes to clean up Scottie, coax him out of his pajamas and into some semblance of decent clothes. Five more minutes were spent swapping out Harper’s Elsa costume (which was what she’d meant by “party dress”) for an actual dress. That left Sarah ten minutes to dress herself. She dug through boxes, but couldn’t find her good fall clothes. She ended up throwing on a flowery sundress because it was the only pretty thing she could lay hands on, but topping it with a woolly cardigan against the September breeze. Not her most polished look, but it would have to do. She swiped on some bright lipstick, gathered the kids and the dog, and set out for the common room.
They were only a few minutes late, but when she got there, the room was empty, the tables and chairs were missing, and Heath was nowhere to be seen. She had a minor heart attack, until she caught the sound of Heath’s rich laugh floating in through the open window, and looked out onto the Quad. Her husband stood on the lush, green lawn, surrounded by the missing furniture, and a gaggle of leggy, giggling girls.
“Hey, what are you doing out there?” Sarah called, laughter in her voice as she stuck her head out the window. With Heath, you could always expect the unexpected.
He turned, flashing a movie-star grin.
“Here’s my lovely wife now. Girls, may I introduce your new dorm cohead, the amazing and brilliant Mrs. Sarah Donovan. Babe, come on out. It’s a beautiful day, I thought, why not party on the Quad?”
Party on the Quad? Girls whooped and high-fived at that. Did Heath understand who he was dealing with? Sarah had some of these girls in her math classes in years past. They were the worst offenders, the delinquents, the old-school Moreland girls, accustomed to bad behavior and few repercussions. She’d have to sit Heath down and have a talk about setting an example.
Sarah led her children and the dog down the hall and out the front door of Moreland Hall. They stepped into the sunshine of the perfect September day. Harper ran to her daddy, who hoisted her up onto his hip. Max, their German shepherd mix, ran circles on the lawn, as Scottie chased after him, squealing. Music filtered out from a dorm room farther down the Quad. And those Moreland girls—the same ones who surfed the Web in her classroom and snarked behind her back—made a fuss over her, and said how much they liked her dress. She didn’t buy the phony admiration. As they circled around her, long-legged and beautifully groomed, drawling away in their jaded voices, Sarah felt like they might eat her alive.
3 (#ulink_3cefa0c7-c803-5259-afcd-0b078370081b)
It was the first day at a new school for Bel Enright and her twin sister, Rose. Bel hated Odell Academy on sight. But she’d promised Rose to give it a real try, so she kept silent, and smiled, and pretended to be okay when she wasn’t.
It was early September. Their mother had died in May, and Bel was still reeling. The cancer took their mom so fast that Bel couldn’t believe she was gone. Mom had been Bel’s best friend, her inspiration. She’d worked in an insurance company to support her girls, but the rest of the time, she was an artist. She painted, and made jewelry from found objects. She wrote poetry and cooked wonderful food. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley with thin walls and dusty palm trees out front. But inside, their place was beautiful, furnished with flea-market finds, hung with Mom’s landscapes of the desert, lit with scented candles. Mom was beautiful—the raven hair and green eyes that Bel had inherited (where Rose was blond like their father), the graceful way Mom moved, her serene smile. And now she was gone.
Bel had this fantasy that the twins would go on living in the apartment, surrounded by Mom’s things, by her memory. But they were only fifteen, and it was impossible. Rose was the practical one, and she made Bel understand this. In the week after Mom died, Bel lay in bed and cried while Rose made funeral arrangements and phone calls. Mom was a dreamer, like Bel, and hadn’t provided particularly well for the twins’ future. Who expected to die at forty, anyway? She’d left no will and no guardian, only a modest insurance policy, which Rose insisted they save to pay for college. Bel didn’t know if she wanted to go to college. But she understood that they needed a place to live, or they’d wind up in foster care. Rose called all of Mom’s friends and relatives. Her brother in San Jose, her cousins in Encino, her BFF from childhood, her girlfriends from work. Rose also called Grandma—Martha Brooks Enright, their father’s mother, whom they hadn’t seen since Dad died when they were five. Bel objected to that. Why invite Grandma to the funeral when she hadn’t bothered to see them all these years? She wouldn’t even come. But Rose said they had to try because there was no telling who’d be willing to take them in.
All the people Rose contacted came to the funeral, including Grandma. Mom dying so young, leaving the twins orphaned, tugged at people’s heartstrings. Everybody cried, and said pretty things, but it was empty talk. The only person who actually offered to take them in was their grandmother—who was Rose’s first choice, and Bel’s absolute last. Grandma gave Bel a cold feeling. She was so remote, in her tailored black dress and pearls. She was also the only person who didn’t cry at the funeral. Bel noticed that. She noticed that Grandma didn’t seem to like Mom much, based on how she talked about her. Grandma, being such a blue blood, maybe hadn’t been happy about her son marrying a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Bel’s parents had met in college, at an event honoring the Enright family for endowing a major scholarship. Mom was one of the scholarship recipients. That’s how different their situations were. John Brooks Enright was there representing his rich family, and Eva Lopez was there to say a required thank-you. But opposites attract. They fell in love.
When Dad died, Mom moved the twins back to California, and they didn’t see Grandma again, or even talk to her on the phone. She sent checks on their birthday; that was it. After the funeral, when Grandma took them to a restaurant and offered to have the girls come live with her, Bel confronted her. Why hadn’t Grandma come to see them all those years? Wouldn’t you know, she claimed it was all Mom’s fault, that she’d tried to visit, but was told she wasn’t welcome. Bel didn’t believe it for a minute, and afterward, she told Rose so. But Rose thought maybe Grandma was telling the truth. And besides, what choice did they have? Grandma was the only one willing to take them in.
At the end of May, a week and a half after Mom died, the twins went east to live with their grandmother in her big house in Connecticut. Grandma let them keep one painting each to hang in their rooms, but everything else went to Goodwill. They got on the plane with just one suitcase. Grandma would buy them new clothes better suited to life in a cold climate. It turned out that Grandma was very, very rich; something their mother had never told them. Rose thought they’d won the lottery. But to Bel, it all felt wrong. The Mercedes, the big house with its echoing rooms and elaborate décor, the housekeeper who came every day but barely spoke. She tried to settle in, to get used to the strange new circumstances. Maybe eventually she would have succeeded. But then the rug got pulled out from under them all over again when Grandma announced that she was shipping the twins off to boarding school come September.
Boarding school was something rich people did, but to Bel, it just seemed cold. Not only would they go to some pretentious prep school, but they would live there, and come home only for holidays. The whole idea was the brainchild of Warren Adams, Grandma’s silver-haired, silver-tongued boyfriend. Warren was a lot like Grandma: good-looking, dressed fancy all the time, talked with an upper-crusty accent. Bel didn’t trust him. Warren claimed he was merely Grandma’s lawyer, but if that was true, why did he hang around her house so much? He said he’d been a close friend of Grandpa’s, but then why was he moving in on Grandpa’s wife? And he insisted that boarding school was the best place for the twins, but Bel suspected that Warren wanted them out of the way, so he could have Grandma and her money to himself. Rose didn’t care. She didn’t care if Warren wanted them gone, or even if Grandma did. Odell Academy was one of the top schools in the country, and Rose wanted to go there. She was ambitious like that, and Bel was too depressed to argue. They applied, they got in, and now the day of reckoning had arrived.
That morning, Grandma woke them early. They packed their fabulous new belongings into the Mercedes and drove the three hours from Connecticut to Odell Academy in New Hampshire, where they drove through imposing brick-andiron gates onto a lush, green campus. Beautiful as it was, Bel felt like she was going to prison.
“Isn’t it lovely?” her grandmother said with a sigh. “I remember bringing your father here.”
In the back seat, Bel fought tears. But she could see Rose sitting next to Grandma in the front, staring out the window, awestruck.
“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” Rose said reverently.
They drove past perfectly manicured lawns, following signs to registration at the Alumni Gym. The gym parking lot was full of luxury cars with plates from New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts. The gym itself was housed in a grand marble building that looked like a palace. It made Bel miss her humble high school gym back in California, with its scarred floor and grimy lockers. She missed her old friends, the beach, their little apartment. Most of all, she missed her mother. A tear escaped and ran down her cheek.
“I want to go home,” she blurted.
Grandma met her eyes in the rearview mirror, looking alarmed.
“Isabel, dear, we’ve been over this. Odell is one of the top schools in the country.”
“I know I can’t go back to California. Just let me come home with you, Grandma. I’ll go to the public school. You’ll save so much money. Please.”
“It’s not about the money, darling. Odell is a family tradition. Your father and grandfather went here.”
Why did Grandma think that would matter to her? She’d never met her grandfather, and barely remembered her father. It was Mom who raised them. Mom had gone to public school, and she was the most intelligent and wonderful person Bel had ever known.
Rose reached across the seat and squeezed Bel’s hand. “Belly, you’re just nervous,” Rose said, using her childhood nickname. “First-day jitters. It’ll be okay. I’m here. We’re in this together.”
Bel tried to take comfort in that. It was true, she had her twin. Even if they were different, and didn’t always see eye-to-eye, Rose was family. Bel nodded, and swiped a hand across her eyes.
“Okay.”
Bel took a deep breath, and the three of them got out of the car. Inside, the Alumni Gym wasn’t just a gym, but an entire athletic complex, complete with an Olympic-size swimming pool and indoor tennis courts. Registration tables had been set up on the basketball court, a cavernous space surrounded by bleachers and flooded with light from tall windows. Bright blue banners crowded the walls, trumpeting Odell’s many championships against other prep schools. The room vibrated with voices and laughter, as kids and their parents greeted and hugged. Rose and Bel were coming in as sophomores, which meant that most kids in their grade knew each other already, but Bel tried not to care. Look at them—all stuffy and preppy, in head-to-toe Vineyard Vines. Who needed them? There must be other, cooler kids here somewhere. Kids like her friends back home, who smoked weed and surfed and let their hair grow wild. She and Rose had moved in such different crowds. Rose was a good girl. She got perfect grades, and did Model UN and stocked shelves at the food pantry. Her friends were dweebs like her—Bel meant that in a kind way. She loved her sister. Still, she wouldn’t be surprised if Rose fit right in at this stuck-up school.
The twins picked up their registration packets, which included dorm assignments, class schedules, IDs, and a campus map. Bel and Rose had been assigned to the same dorm, Moreland Hall.
Grandma studied their placement forms, nodding approvingly. “They usually separate siblings, but I requested that they keep you together, because of your loss. I’m so glad they listened.”
They got back into the car and followed the map to Moreland Hall. As they drove up to the turnaround behind the dorm, a group of pretty girls, with long hair and long legs and wearing matching blue Odell T-shirts, waved signs that read: WELCOME HOME MORELAND GIRLS! Home. As if this place could ever be that for Bel. The dorm was vast and built of dark brick, with arches and turrets and mullioned windows. Like a haunted house. It gave Bel the creeps. But she’d promised to try, and she would.
The twins got out of the car. One of the T-shirted girls stepped forward. She was blond and perfect-looking, but when she flipped her hair, Bel caught the unmistakable tang of cigarette smoke, which piqued her interest. Smoking was against the rules here, supposedly. But maybe not everyone followed the stupid rules.
“Hey, I’m Darcy Madden,” the girl said. “We’re the senior welcome committee. So, welcome, I guess.”
“Hi, Darcy! I’m Rose Enright, and this is my twin sister, Bel,” Rose said, stepping forward and smiling eagerly.
Darcy rolled her eyes.
“Right, the orphan twins,” Darcy said. “I heard all about you. It’s a scam, right? You don’t even look like twins to me. Bel’s got black hair and Rose has, hmm, what would you call that? Dirty blond?”
“We’re definitely twins,” Rose said, coloring. “But we’re fraternal, not identical. I look like my dad’s family, Bel looks like our mom.”
“Twins, maybe, but orphans? Since when do orphans wear Lacoste?” Darcy said, looking at Rose’s pink polo with its tiny alligator, a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“I am so an orphan. The definition of that is your parents dying, and mine did,” Rose protested.
Darcy caught Bel’s eye, and they both laughed at Rose’s earnestness. Bel then immediately felt guilty for laughing at her sister. But come on, Rose was uptight. A little teasing would do her good.
“She’s just joking,” Bel said to Rose.
“Yeah, sorry, kidding,” Darcy said. “Come on, orphans, we’ll help unload your stuff.”
Darcy beckoned, and more welcome-committee girls ran over. The extra hands were useful given the mountain of suitcases and boxes stuffed into the trunk of Grandma’s car. The last couple of weeks had been one massive shopping spree, as Grandma got them properly outfitted—her word—for Odell. Rose loved the pastel polo shirts Grandma suggested, the wool sweaters and boat shoes and Bean boots, the formal dresses for dances and dinners. Bel thought they were frumpy and boring. She’d made a stink, and when that didn’t work, she’d begged and pleaded. In the end, Grandma relented and bought Bel some cute things—tops and leggings, jeans, a moto jacket, black suede boots, a couple of minidresses. Both girls also got new phones and laptops, bedding and desk lamps, shower caddies and under-bed storage bins. Grandma didn’t stint, and Bel liked the stuff so much that she got over her hesitation at blowing so much cash. If Grandma didn’t mind, why should she?
Rose and Bel grabbed suitcases. The welcome-committee girls took boxes and they all headed into the dorm, as one girl held the door open for the others. Manners were a thing here, apparently. Bel was surprised not only at how much help was offered, but how respectfully the girls treated her grandmother. Then again, her elegantly dressed, beautifully coiffed grandma fit right in at Odell, better than Bel did. The girls refused to let Grandma carry a thing, and a girl was deputized to take her in the elevator and show her the twins’ rooms so she wouldn’t have to hike up the steep, slippery marble steps.
Bel had hoped that she and Rose would be rooming together. But they were on different floors, Rose on two, Bel on three. Darcy ordered another girl to help Rose, while she hauled Bel’s box up the extra flight of stairs to show Bel to her room.
“Thanks for the help,” Bel said.
“No worries, we always do it,” Darcy said, huffing. “You’re in a double. All sophomores are. It can be grim or it can be fun, depending on who your roommate is.”
“Who’s my roommate?” Bel asked.
“Some dork, probably. C’mon, let’s go see.”
They walked down a long hallway, lined with closed doors on either side. It was dingier than Bel had expected given the beautifully manicured grounds, with old carpeting, dark wainscoting, and a stale, musty smell. Cards were pinned to each door with the occupants’ names carefully written in calligraphy. Darcy stopped in front of Room 305.
“This is you. Looks like you’re with Emma Kim,” Darcy said. She braced the box on her knee and flung the door open.
The room was empty, and extremely tidy. Light streamed through the enormous bay window opposite the door. Bunk beds were crammed in along the wall where they entered, so the open door smacked up against them. Emma had moved in already, claiming a bunk, a dresser and a desk. Her things were neatly laid out, and the bottom bunk was made up with a pretty duvet and pillows. A poster for a boy band hung over her desk.
“Emma’s probably out on the Quad. There’s a welcome reception you need to get to,” Darcy said.
“What’s Emma like?” Bel asked dubiously. From her stuff, she was a neat freak with awful taste in music.
“Kind of a nerd. Not much money. Plays the violin. But she’s pretty, and not a narc. Anyway, if you don’t like her, you’re welcome to hang with me and the seniors.”
The offer gave Bel a warm buzz. This cool, older girl liked her. Maybe it wasn’t so bad here.
“Really? I might take you up on that,” Bel said.
“People’ll tell you we’re a bad influence, but don’t get scared off.”
“It’s not true?” Bel asked.
“Oh, no. It is true.”
Bel laughed, and Darcy smiled at her approvingly.
“You know,” Darcy said, “when I heard we were getting twins from California, I thought, This could be cool. Then when I heard you were Enrights, I got really excited.”
“You know my family?”
“Oh, yeah. My mom and your dad practically grew up together. They belonged to the same country club in Connecticut, and were at Odell at the same time. They even dated. Your dad was a hottie, and something of a wild man, apparently. Then he ran off with this gorgeous Mexican girl he met in college, and my mom was devastated.”
“That ended up being my mom. She’s from California, but yeah, she was beautiful.”
“I can tell that by looking at you. Your sister, though? Kind of a dweeb, no?”
“Rose is all right. She’s just quiet,” Bel said, feeling defensive on her sister’s behalf. Though she couldn’t resist adding, “We’re pretty different.”
“Family. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em. My fam’s cool, though. Mom lived in Moreland back in the day, not long after the school went coed. This dorm always had the raddest girls. But now they’re trying to break our spirit.”
“Who is?”
“The brass. The headmaster and the trustees. They brought in these new dorm heads to straighten us out, which, trust me, is an impossible task. Besides—”
Darcy looked at Bel meaningfully, and laughed.
“What?” Bel asked.
“They screwed up royally, and they don’t even know it,” Darcy announced, stepping over to the bay window. “C’mere. See that guy in the blue blazer?”
Bel looked down onto a wide, rectangular lawn, surrounded on all sides by graceful brick buildings. Tables and chairs had been set out in the shade cast by Moreland’s walls. Students and their families were gathered around, listening to an extravagantly good-looking man, who stood a little apart, talking to the crowd, gesturing gracefully with his hands. Bel couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Who is he?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Heath Donovan, the new dorm head, well, cohead, along with his mousy math teacher wife,” Darcy said. “He teaches English, too. Is he the bangin’est thing you ever laid eyes on? All the girls want him. I swear I get tongue-tied around him, and normally I don’t shut up.”
“He’s gorgeous. Why do you say it was a screwup to make him the dorm head?”
“A guy like that, in a dorm like this? Come on. By tradition, the Moreland seniors like to cause trouble. It’s practically a graduation requirement. We’re like the biggest beasts, and we have the best pranks planned. Want to hear our crazy idea, inspired by Heath the Hottie?”
“Of course.”
“You have to promise not to tell.”
“I would never,” Bel said.
“It’s a contest. Which senior girl can bed Donovan first.”
It took a second for Darcy’s meaning to sink in. A contest to hook up with the dorm head? Bel hoped she wasn’t serious. Yet, when Darcy laughed uproariously, Bel joined in. Who was she to judge? She’d made a cool, new friend. She ought to go with the flow.
4 (#ulink_a39fc2fa-cc51-5fd8-8684-e3cac468a3a0)
Classes didn’t start until tomorrow, and they already had homework. How was that even possible? Rose only found out because her roommate came back from dinner and started FaceTiming with some boy on her laptop, complaining about the reading for English.
“Wait, what? There’s homework already?” Rose said, panicking mildly.
Rose’s roommate was Skyler Stone from New Jersey. Skyler had long brown hair and wore a lot of makeup to cover her iffy complexion. Other than her skin, she was pretty and well-dressed enough to make Rose feel like a frump by comparison. Then again, most of the Odell girls made Rose feel like a frump. Skyler had been a freshman last year, and acted put-upon to be rooming with a newbie.
“If you want to see your homework,” Skyler said, in a snippy tone, “log on to campus net. It’s posted there in your academic module.”
Rose had no idea what any of that meant, but she was hesitant to annoy Skyler by asking another question. Instead, she grabbed her laptop and headed up the stairs to the third floor to find her sister. There was virtually no chance that Bel knew how to look up homework assignments on campus net already. But Skyler’s sharp tone had stung, and made Rose homesick for her sister.
Rose was the older twin by twenty minutes, and she tried to look out for Bel, though Bel didn’t always appreciate it. Bel had poor judgment sometimes. Mom had worked full time. To make extra money, she taught landscape painting in the evenings and sold jewelry at craft shows on the weekends. When Mom was too busy to look out for Bel, Rose took that responsibility on herself. She could handle it. Rose was intelligent and levelheaded. She got good grades, and was careful in her choice of friends. Bel was moody and immature and ran with a bad crowd. She’d cut class and go hang out on the beach to get high. Rose knew it for a fact. She’d even had words with Bel about it, more than once. When Bel told her to mind her own business, Rose went to Mom. But Mom was sick by then, and had other things on her mind. Besides, Mom wouldn’t hear a word against Bel, even if it was true. Bel was her pet. So, for the six months that their mother was sick before she died, Bel ran wild. Rose was disgusted by it, frankly. If there was a silver lining to the tragedy of her mother’s death, it was getting Bel away from bad influences, and into a situation with stricter supervision.
Rose knocked on the door of 305.
“Come in.”
Bel’s roommate, Emma, was alone in the room. They’d met earlier at the welcome reception. Emma was beautiful and cool, and had been so nice to Rose at dinner tonight. Bel’s room was great, too—the only sophomore double with one of the huge bay windows that Moreland was famous for. Rose was jealous that Bel wound up with the better room and the better roommate. But if having such prime stuff helped her sister settle in here, then Rose didn’t mind.
“Hey, Rose. Bel’s out at the moment,” Emma said.
“Do you know where she is? Apparently, there’s homework already.”
“Yeah, welcome to Odell. There’s always homework.”
“I just wanted to make sure she knows.”
Emma smiled. “You’re such a good sister.”
She wore leggings and an Odell sweatshirt, which seemed to be the uniform for hanging around the dorm at night. Her shiny black hair hung over one shoulder in a long braid. Rose made careful mental notes of these details so she could copy them later. The new clothes she’d been so excited about seemed wrong once she got here. No surprise really, since they’d been picked mainly by Grandma. Bel had pushed back on what Grandma chose for her, but Rose had been afraid to rock the boat. Why make Grandma mad over a few pieces of clothing? But now Rose realized that she’d ended up with a prissy wardrobe. Bel’s clothes were way cooler. Maybe her sister knew best sometimes, after all.
“I wanted to ask Bel if she knows how to log on to campus net to see the assignments, and also borrow a few of her things. Which dresser is hers?” Rose asked.
“That one,” Emma said, pointing.
Rose rummaged quickly in Bel’s dresser and took a couple of pairs of leggings, a flowy top and a cardigan sweater with leather trim on the front. Bel had so much stuff. She wouldn’t miss this.
“I don’t know when Bel’s coming back, but I can show you how to log on to campus net if you like,” Emma said.
“That would be great, thank you.”
Rose handed Emma her laptop. Emma proceeded to demonstrate how to log on to the school-wide network and navigate it. Rose was surprised to find that she had not only homework assignments, but e-mails.
“Wow, I got an invitation to tea with Mrs. Donovan,” Rose said. “Did you get it, too?”
Emma read the e-mail over Rose’s shoulder. “No, it’s just for you,” she said. “The e-mail says she’s your advisor. You’re lucky. Mrs. Donovan is so nice. I had her for Algebra last year. The Donovans are a huge improvement over the last dorm head. Thank God they fired him.”
“Did he do something wrong?”
“He let Moreland get totally out of control. This dorm has a rep, you know. It’s the slut dorm.”
“Seriously?”
“I hate to use that word, since it shames girls for behavior boys get high-fived for. But, yeah. Which brings me to a rather awkward subject.”
“What’s that?” Rose asked, alarmed.
“You may have noticed that Bel and I haven’t exactly hit it off. At dinner, I invited her to sit with me, and she went and sat with those seniors instead. You know. Darcy and Tessa?”
“I’m so sorry. I apologize for her rudeness.”
“Oh, I don’t care about that. I have more friends than I know what to do with. But I feel it’s my responsibility to warn you that Bel’s hanging with a bad crowd.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Darcy Madden and her cohorts are notorious. Trust me, you don’t want your sister messed up with them. You need to say something.”
“I’ll try,” Rose said, shaking her head. Just when she’d been feeling like they’d dodged a bullet by coming to Odell, history started repeating itself. “I don’t know if it’ll do any good, though. This has come up before.”
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“Oh, well—”
Rose realized she was on the verge of saying too much. She liked Emma immensely, but she didn’t know yet whether she could trust her. If Rose blabbed, Bel might get in trouble.
“Nothing,” Rose said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“No, really, Rose. You should tell me. I live with Bel. You don’t. If I know there’s something to watch out for, I can help keep her on the straight and narrow.”
Emma had a point there. Rose was on a completely different floor, and wouldn’t be able to look out for Bel as much as she would like.
“Okay, well, back home, when our mother was sick, Bel got . . . a bit wild.”
“Wild, how? Drugs? Boys?”
“I’m not entirely sure. She would cut class, though. You shouldn’t hold it against her. It wasn’t her fault. She had no guidance.”
“You didn’t cut class, did you?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that.”
“You can’t cut class at Odell. You get a demerit every time, along with early check-in for a week. Two demerits and you can’t compete for the school in sports or other activities. Four demerits is a suspension.”
“I’ll let Bel know,” Rose said.
“You should. I will, too. Word is the Donovans are planning a big crackdown. If Bel doesn’t get her act together, she could get DC’d.”
“‘DC’d’?”
“Sent to the Disciplinary Committee. That happens for serious infractions, and then it goes on your record for college applications. You can even get expelled.”
“That would be awful. You’re right. I need to say something to her.”
“You seem very loyal,” Emma said. “I wish I had you for a roommate instead of her. She strikes me as a real flake, but I bet you and I would be a great fit.”
Rose flushed with pleasure, though she felt guilty for talking about her sister like that with Emma. Then again, Bel was flaky. You couldn’t deny it. Rose shouldn’t feel bad if Emma had figured it out for herself.
5 (#ulink_29b4c662-e3d1-51ee-a478-5d52da77d4a9)
Rose woke up on the first day of classes to find that a perfect ray of sunlight was streaming through a crack in the window blinds. It felt like an omen. Life started fresh today. She jumped out of bed and hurried to get dressed, humming under her breath. Skyler groaned and pulled the covers over her head.
“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?” Skyler said. “I can’t handle it.”
“I’m just excited to go to class.”
Rose had stayed up late last night doing her introductory assignments, but she didn’t feel tired in the least. On the contrary, she was energized. Every word she’d read was emblazoned on her brain, and she couldn’t wait to get into the classroom to talk about the material. Like all the great boarding schools, Odell used the Harkness Method. Rose had read up on the Harkness Method before starting here, and it sounded like the perfect fit for her. Small classes, discussion-based learning. At her old school, she’d hated the big, chaotic rooms. The teachers turned their backs and talked to the chalkboard while kids surfed the Web or goofed around. If Rose spoke up in class, kids rolled their eyes. Odell was different. She could be herself here. She could be smart, and learn a lot, and people would like her for it.
It was a perfectly cool September morning. Delicate light filtered through towering elm trees as Rose walked to her first-ever Odell class. She couldn’t get over the beauty of the campus, its vast expanse. She’d walked five minutes from her dorm to get to breakfast, and then ten minutes back in the opposite direction to get to Founders’ Hall for class, all on brick paths that crisscrossed dew-covered lawns. When she stepped into Founders’ Hall, she felt the weight of centuries in the air of its dark paneled hallways, redolent of books and dust. Yet kids rushed by her on the stairs, laughing and goofing around as if the grandeur was old news. Rose couldn’t imagine getting to the point where she took this place for granted, and yet, she wished for it to happen, because that would mean she belonged.
The walls of the social studies classroom were lined with framed maps from another century. A marble bust of George Washington watched her from a pedestal in the corner. The teacher was eloquent and thoughtful, and the discussion lively from the start. Rose made her first comment about ten minutes in—something about how the Constitution was the result of compromise—and Mr. Mendez liked it so much that he wrote it on the board. For the rest of the class, kids kept referring to “Rose’s point,” and she was so proud of herself that she had to take care not to act cocky. English class second period was amazing, too. Mrs. Sunderland went around the room and asked each of them to name a favorite book and say how it had influenced them. Rose talked about the Little House books, which she’d read obsessively between the ages of ten and fourteen. Not only did nobody roll their eyes at her, but two other girls piped up to say they’d read those books over and over, too, and loved them just as much.
French was the best of all. Mademoiselle LeBlanc was a native speaker who insisted that the students speak only French in the classroom. (She also had a chic haircut and beautiful suede boots.) Rose was terrified at first. She’d been studying French since middle school, and had never been asked to do more than conjugate verbs on paper. Miraculously, when her turn came, her tongue knew what to do. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Rose said, the words flowing out almost effortlessly. “Je m’appelle Rose Enright. Je viens de Californie.” The teacher nodded approvingly, and Rose suddenly had a new ambition. She would become fluent in French, speak with a perfect accent, live in Paris. Odell had a study-abroad program where you could live with a French family for a summer. She would convince Grandma to send her. Oh, life was exciting.
Emma Kim was in Rose’s French class, and when the period ended, she fell into step beside Rose, as if it was perfectly natural for them to walk to lunch together. The cool morning had become a bright, sunny day, and the Quad smelled of warm earth. Rose chatted and laughed with her new friend as they headed to the dining hall. Emma was a returning sophomore like Skyler, but didn’t seem to mind that Rose was new. Rose cherished the hope that they would become close friends. The girls she sat with at lunch in her old school had never been much more than acquaintances. They didn’t hang out, didn’t text, didn’t invite her shopping or to the movies. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried. She didn’t really understand why they didn’t want to be closer; maybe they didn’t consider her fun. Here at Odell, she hoped, the definition of fun would be different. Rose herself would be different here. If this morning was any indication, she would fit in, have friends, be liked and admired.
The new part of the dining hall, known simply as the New, was a soaring, modern space, all glass and white walls, with brightly colored flags hanging from the high ceilings (Odell had students from thirty countries). Giant photos of local flora decorated the walls. To Rose, the New looked like some space-age art gallery with tables. As they walked in, a warm buzz of conversation washed over Rose, and her heart lifted. Bel was here somewhere in the crowd. Rose wanted to find her, to gush to her twin about this amazing place. She searched the crowd as she followed Emma to the food line, but didn’t see Bel.
She noticed something else interesting, however.
“What’s that writing on the walls?” Rose asked Emma.
“The names of every graduating senior are carved on the panels.”
“Since when?”
“Going back, like, to the beginning of time. This is the new part of the dining hall, but if you go to the Commons, where they have the formal dinners, you’ll see names dating back to the early 1800s.”
“Seriously? My father and grandfather went here. Do you think I could find their names?”
Emma looked impressed. “Of course, you just need to know their class year. I had no idea you and Bel were legacies. She never mentioned it.”
“Oh, Bel doesn’t care about that sort of thing.”
“Not care? That’s crazy. My parents grew up in Korea, and even they knew Odell. Once my name gets carved on the wall, I’m not letting anybody forget it.”
They got their food, and made a beeline for a table where some other sophomore girls from Moreland were sitting. Apparently, students sat by class year. Seniors rated the best tables, farthest from the glass doors that admitted cold blasts of air during the bitter New Hampshire winters, closest to the food line. Emma told Rose to never, ever try to sit there. They would chase you away, your name would be mud. Freshmen were relegated to the outskirts, to an area they called Siberia. The other grades filled in the middle. Kids in the fast, popular crowd tended to sit at coed tables, whereas your normals were more likely to sit single-sex, like the Moreland table they were at now.
Skyler was at the Moreland table, sitting next to a girl named Lucy Ogunwe, who ran track and sang in the choir, and was in Rose’s civics class. There were girls Rose recognized, and others she hadn’t met yet. Emma introduced her around, but the glow of welcome was diminished by a flicker of worry when it hit home that Bel wasn’t here. Bel was nowhere to be seen, in fact. At their old school, when Bel didn’t show up to lunch, it usually meant she was ditching.
Toward the end of lunch period, a loud whoop went up from the tables where the seniors sat, and Rose turned to look. A muscular boy with a prominent forehead was wiping a gob of whipped cream from his face while kids around him laughed.
“You’re gonna regret that,” he said, his loud voice carrying in the sudden quiet.
Darcy Madden, identifiable by her bright blond hair, stood beside him, doubled over laughing. The boy grabbed Darcy and smeared the gob of whipped cream on her face. Darcy squealed, then struggled and broke loose, and the two of them ran from the room.
“That’s like something that would happen in my school in L.A.,” Rose said. “Lunch was out of control there.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not normal here. That was Darcy, the one I warned you about, and her boyfriend, Brandon. Those two really push the envelope. Disruptive behavior can get you demerits, you know. The teachers don’t look happy.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Do you see your sister?”
“What? Where?”
“She’s sitting right there,” Emma said, nodding toward the table Darcy had fled from.
Rose following Emma’s gaze and saw Bel, who was fully ensconced, chatting and smiling like she’d known those people forever.
“Oh. That’s where she went.”
Rose was actually relieved to see Bel in the lunchroom. At least she wasn’t off in the woods somewhere, ditching school. But Emma apparently didn’t see it that way.
“Like I was telling you last night,” Emma said, “those seniors are bad news. You need to do something.”
“What should I do?”
“Go over there, talk to her.”
“Now? Really?”
“Yes, really. She’s your twin sister, right? It’s on you to look out for her reputation. If Bel gets in trouble, it’ll reflect badly on you.”
That was a new concept to Rose. Back home, the school was big and impersonal, and nobody cared who your family was, unless they were rich or famous. But what Emma said made sense. At Odell, everybody knew everybody. Heck, her ancestors’ names were carved on the wall. And she didn’t want Bel to get in trouble. She wanted to be a good sister, and help her find her way here.
“You’re right. I’m going to say something,” Rose said.
Rose got up and marched across the dining hall toward the senior tables. Bel saw her coming, and narrowed her eyes, shaking her head slightly to tell Rose to keep away. Rose hesitated. She didn’t want to embarrass her sister in front of the seniors, but she was also conscious of Emma and the other Morelanders watching to see what she would do. She had to do something, right? Emma had said so. She strode up to the senior table.
“What are you doing?” Bel asked, looking alarmed.
“What are you doing?” Rose replied.
“What does it look like? I’m eating lunch.”
“Come sit with the sophomores.”
“Why? I’m happy here.”
“You shouldn’t sit at a senior table. It’s not done.”
A tough-looking girl with wavy red hair looked at Rose with a bemused expression. “Who is this chick?” she asked Bel.
“My sister,” Bel said.
The redhead reached over and patted Bel on the head playfully. “It’s cool, sis. Darcy said Bel could sit with us. She’s like our new mascot.”
Mascot? That sounded a bit condescending, and yet, Rose felt a tentacle of jealousy stir. She met her twin’s eyes pleadingly.
“Bel, come sit with me, please. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Get lost, Rose. I’m busy.”
In front of strangers, no less. Bel was probably just showing off for her new friends, but still, that really hurt. Rose was only trying to help. Couldn’t Bel see that? Why didn’t she just come along, instead of turning this into a scene?
“You don’t have to be so nasty,” Rose said.
“Hey, is that my sweater you’re wearing?” Bel said.
“Yeah, it’s cute. I borrowed it.”
“Without asking?”
“Since when do I have to ask?”
“Since when do we share clothes? We don’t like the same things. We’re not the same size. Give it back.”
“Fine, I’ll give it back tonight,” Rose said.
“She means now,” the redhead said, in a snarky tone. “You are big, sis. You’ll stretch it out.”
Rose’s cheeks burned. This nasty girl had just called her fat in front of a table full of seniors. Not only did Bel not rise to her defense. She actually smirked.
“Screw you, Bel. I don’t want your skeevy clothes anyway.”
Rose tore the sweater off and threw it in her sister’s face. The look of shock in Bel’s eyes gave Rose a sick thrill as she turned on her heel and fled back to the Moreland table. Rose had always been the loving sister, had always looked out for Bel. Come to think of it, she didn’t get much in return, did she? Bel never repaid the favor, never invited Rose to hang out with her cool friends. To the contrary. She’d been willing to humiliate Rose in front of the seniors.
The Moreland girls had left already, which came as a relief. Hopefully they’d missed the conclusion of that awful scene. Rose’s tray sat alone on the table, the half-eaten taco swimming in a pool of congealing orange grease. She bused her tray, worrying kids would gossip about her now. Her fabulous first day of classes had been ruined; and her self-confidence, which had been soaring this morning, was now in tatters. All because of Bel. As much as Rose loved her sister, she would struggle to forgive her for this.
6 (#ulink_09d8d74c-214a-5f99-b677-0321de93b443)
Transcript of Witness Interview conducted by Lieutenant Robert Kriscunas, State Police—Major Crime Unit, and Detective Melissa Howard, Odell, NH, PD, with Miss Emma Kim.
Kriscunas: Miss Kim, I’m confirming for the record that your parents have given us permission to speak with you, and that you’re being interviewed solely as a witness. You’re not a suspect, target or person of interest in this case.
Kim: I should hope not.
Kriscunas: That’s just something we say for the record. Okay, let’s get started. Can you tell us, how well did you know the Enright sisters?
Kim: Pretty well. We were in the same grade. Bel was my roommate, although we weren’t exactly friends. Rose, I was quite friendly with.
Kriscunas: When you say you weren’t friends with Bel, do you mean that you didn’t get along with her?
Kim: I get along with everybody, Detective. But with Bel, we moved in different crowds, and to be honest, I didn’t always approve of her behavior. I kept my distance.
Kriscunas: Yes, and we want to go into detail about Bel’s bad behavior. But for now, let’s stick to the state of the sisters’ relationship. What can you tell us about that?
Kim: Once they came to Odell?
Kriscunas: Anything you can tell us about their relationship would be helpful, as far back as you know.
Howard: For instance, if you know, were Rose and Bel close growing up?
Kim: From what Rose said, I think they were friends to each other. But my sense is, they weren’t close, because they’re so different—were so different.
Kriscunas: In what way were they different?
Kim: In every way. I mean, here at Odell, kids couldn’t believe they were actually twins. First of all, they look nothing alike. Bel was this sultry brunette and Rose was fair, but beyond that—I mean, Bel was drop-dead gorgeous. And Rose was, well, normal. Pleasant-looking. Some might say plain.
Kriscunas: Did that cause problems between them?
Kim: Problems, how?
Kriscunas: Jealousy?
Kim: Oh, so girls are all catty and jealous if one is pretty and the other isn’t? I’m sorry, but that narrative is so trite.
Howard: I don’t think the lieutenant meant it that way, Emma. We’re interested in specific instances of bad feelings between the Enright sisters, that you were aware of.
Kim: If they were jealous, then they were each jealous of the other. I think they both wanted to be more like the other. Rose was really into school, and she was very successful at Odell from the start. Teachers liked her. She was especially close to her advisor, Mrs. Donovan.
Howard: Yes, we’re going to be speaking with Mrs. Donovan.
Kim: Rose studied really hard, did lots of extracurriculars. Her grades were good. Where Bel struggled academically, and I think it bothered Bel that Rose was so into school.
Howard: Bothered her, how?
Kim: Like, she found it annoying and prissy, but she was also jealous. Bel, on the other hand, immediately got accepted into this fast, popular clique. Rose didn’t like that. She worried Bel would get in trouble. But deep down, she was jealous of Bel’s social life. On a Saturday night, Bel would be of partying, but you could always find Rose in the library.
Kriscunas: Rose was quiet, Bel was wild?
Kim: Mmm, that’s too simplistic. In some ways, Bel was the quiet one. She hung out with the older kids, but she was a follower, not a leader. Like with the attack—you know, the slipper incident?
Kriscunas: Yes, we’re going to go over that in some detail in a moment.
Kim: Okay, that was all Darcy Madden’s doing. Bel was just along for the ride. Like I said, a follower. Also, Bel barely ever talked in class, which is somewhat unusual here, and part of the reason she didn’t do well academically. Bel and I didn’t have any classes together, because I’m on the Honors track, and she was definitely not on the Honors track. But I heard from other kids that she’d sit there like a bump on a log, terrified to open her mouth. Except in English.
Kriscunas: You say that like it was important.
Kim: Well. Let’s just say that Mr. Donovan was her English teacher. I can talk about that if you want to. Uh—but Rose was very self-confident. Honestly, even though you could say she wasn’t as popular as Bel, Rose fit in better here.
Kriscunas: When you say Bel was popular, you’re talking about with those seniors she hung out with?
Kim: Yes, exactly.
Kriscunas: You say they were a fast crowd.
Kim: Yes, I mean, come on. Darcy Madden and Tessa Romano—you know what they did, right?
Kriscunas: Absolutely, and that’s on the agenda. We think that incident could be quite important in terms of motive. Tell us more about Bel and the seniors. How did Bel come to hang out with them? And did it cause the tension with Rose?
Kim: How they started hanging out, I don’t know. It was just like that from Day One. I remember the very first day of classes, Bel was already sitting with the seniors, which was pretty unheard of. My guess is, Darcy took a shine to Bel, and since Darcy was the queen bee, that meant Bel was in. Anyway, I told Rose that Bel was headed for trouble, hanging out with that crew. Those girls were notorious for doing drugs, smuggling boys in, pulling pranks, that sort of thing. Rose tried to talk sense into Bel, but Bel wasn’t having it.
Howard: Were there specific incidents you recall where they argued over it?
Kim: Oh, they fought about it all the time. Rose felt like her sweet sister was taken over by pod people, you know? But nothing she said made any diference. You have to understand, showing up here as a newbie sophomore is not easy. To have Darcy Madden favor you with her attention–Bel’s head was turned. It made her feel special. Those weren’t just any friends. They were the most powerful friends you could have at this school, socially speaking. Until it all went wrong, with the attack.
Kriscunas: We understand that the sisters were on opposite sides of that incident. Do you think it’s what caused the rift between them?
Kim: The rift had been developing for a while. And not just over Bel hanging with Darcy’s crew. There were other reasons, too. Fighting over clothes, over boys—over a particular boy. But yeah, it was the attack that caused the most serious breach between them.
Howard: Serious enough to lead to murder?
Kim: You’re the police. You tell me.
Kriscunas: Miss Kim, you were the student who had the best access to both sisters. We’re interested in hearing what you think.
Kim: Honestly? I think there are several possible explanations. There was more going on here than you realize.
Kriscunas: Like what?
Kim: Well . . . you say you’re going to talk to Mrs. Donovan?
7 (#ulink_3a6fb9f6-04fe-5ca7-bd1a-bd465d8e63ae)
“To sweet, beautiful Sarah,” Heath said, raising his champagne glass. “‘One half of me is yours, the other half yours, and so all yours.’ Happy thirty, darling, I love you more than ever.”
“I love you, too. So much,” Sarah said, her eyes sparkling with happy tears.
They clinked glasses, took sips, then leaned across the table and kissed lingeringly. His lips were cool and delicious from the champagne. It was the Saturday night after the first week of classes, and the dining room at Le Jardin glowed with flowers and candlelight. Soft music played in the background, and Sarah felt lucky. She would have settled for putting the kids to bed, making a pot of spaghetti and opening a bottle of red wine. But this was a milestone birthday, and Heath had surprised her with dinner at her favorite restaurant, expense be damned. Life with him had its ups and downs, but it was never less than exciting.
“What you said just now, was that Shakespeare?” Sarah asked.
“Yep. The Bard of Avon never fails to impress. There are some benefits to being married to an English teacher, you know.”
He ducked his head sheepishly, and she read his thoughts. Heath loved his work, but he was ashamed of the size of his paycheck. He’d never intended to spend his life as an English teacher. There had been a more fabulous, lucrative goal once, and he’d come achingly close to achieving it. Heath was supposed to be a famous novelist by now. On the bestseller list, winning literary prizes, opening fat royalty checks at a house on Martha’s Vineyard. But things had gone terribly wrong, and they’d fled back to Odell in disgrace. (A private disgrace, with a confidentiality agreement to ensure it stayed that way.) Back to a safe place, where they’d first met. Now, a fancy dinner out was a rare treat. Sarah wasn’t disappointed with their lot in life. They had each other, the two babies she’d always dreamed of, the dog, jobs that were rewarding if not glamorous. But Heath was disappointed, and he didn’t hide it.
“There are many wonderful benefits to being married to Heath Donovan,” she said, lifting his hand and kissing it.
His smile reached his eyes, and she was grateful for it. In the past few weeks, since they’d gotten the promotion to dorm head, Heath had found his way again after years in the wilderness. An ambitious man of a literary bent and few practical skills could do worse than rising through the ranks at a prestigious boarding school like Odell. Heath had a plan. Dorm head today, but tomorrow, head of the English department. Then dean of faculty, and eventually, headmaster. It would take time, but at least he was dreaming again. Heath wasn’t Heath when he didn’t dream. Sarah was starting to believe that the demons were banished, but she wouldn’t say it out loud, for fear of jinxing it.
They sipped champagne, and chatted about their week. There were a couple of new girls in Moreland, twins, who’d been orphaned. Heath and Sarah had taken them on as advisees, and would keep a close watch. They both remembered their early days as students at Odell. How tough the place could be, how hard it was to get your feet under you. Sarah hadn’t been thrilled about the dorm head job. She took it for Heath’s sake. But if this job gave her the chance to help girls like the girl she’d been once—shy, insecure, daunted by the school and everyone in it—then something good could come of it.
Heath opened his menu and studied it, an adorable wrinkle forming between his brows. Sarah paused to appreciate his face—the elegant bone structure, the intense blue-green eyes. Even his ears were perfect—small and neat and dignified.
He looked up and caught her staring. “What?”
“Just thinking how lucky I am.”
“Me, too, always, love,” he said. “Hey, what do you say we split the seafood tower for the first course?”
She looked at the price and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on, we just got raises,” he said. “YOLO, am I right?”
She laughed. “You sound like a Moreland girl.”
“Uh-oh, it’s starting to rub off. Seriously, it’s your birthday, so I’m making an executive decision. We split the seafood tower. You get the Dover sole because I know you want it. I get the filet mignon. Then we order the chocolate lava cake with a candle and two spoons.”
“Mmm, you always know what I like,” she said.
“That’s why you married me. So, what do you say?”
“You’ve got a deal.”
They placed their orders, and Sarah pushed the thought of money from her mind. It wasn’t something she’d worried about much, before the setbacks of the past few years. Sarah came from a tight-lipped, old-money, old-Odellian family. She grew up in a stately house in a wealthy town in Massachusetts, where life was comfortable, but cold and restrained. Nobody showed off, nobody cried or danced or displayed much emotion of any kind. Her mother wore sensible shoes and tweed skirts, and belonged to the Junior League. Her father commuted into Boston, to a law firm that his own father had worked at before him, and that he would work at till he retired, or died in the harness, whichever came first. They went to dinner at the country club and to church on Sundays, and talked about trimming the hydrangeas and how the neighbors’ house needed painting. Money was never discussed—which was possible only because they had plenty of it, of course.
Heath arrived at Odell like a whirlwind in junior year, on a tennis scholarship. Most kids who came late in the game never made it to the golden circle, but Heath was different. Kids were bored with each other by then, and Heath—so good-looking, so athletic, so charming—was a sensation. Sarah got assigned to be his peer tutor in math, or she never would’ve gotten near him. They had no classes together, and Sarah didn’t run with the popular crowd. Not that she wanted to; they were a rotten bunch. The same beautiful mean girls Heath sat with at lunch had tormented Sarah since freshman year. Yet Heath took a shine to Sarah, despite the disdain of his friends. Maybe he took a shine to her because his friends didn’t like her, because she was different from them—low-key and nonjudgmental. Heath found refuge in talking to Sarah. He was confident on the surface, but that was an act. His parents were going through a brutal divorce. His father had left his mother for another woman, and Heath’s mother—who’d doted on him and raised him to believe in his own greatness—tried to kill herself. There were lawyers involved, involuntary commitment to a mental institution, money problems. Nobody at school knew except Sarah. She kept Heath’s secrets, and loved that he trusted her. Once he kissed her, that was it, she was done. Though they didn’t get engaged till the end of college. Her parents were none too happy. They thought Heath was beneath her.
Their first few years as newlyweds were bliss. They lived in the city. She worked in a consulting firm, he freelanced for magazines and wrote his novel on the side. Sarah thought Heath was a literary genius, even if his novel hit a bit too close to home for comfort. It was the story of a relationship between a wealthy young woman and a penniless young man that began at an East Coast boarding school. The boarding school details were lifted straight from their Odell years. The couple was even named Henry and Sophia—H and S, Heath and Sarah. But the resemblance ended there, and the latter half of the book—in which Henry and Sophia move to France and get caught up in a decadent, expat social scene that ends in murder—was searingly brilliant. Sarah wasn’t the only one who thought so. Heath got a book deal, a major one, and had a famous director interested in the film rights. They were on the way to realizing their dreams—well, his dreams. Heath’s big break was well deserved. He was a rare talent, a genius. They’d both known it since high school. The world had now caught on, and was giving him the recognition he deserved.
They were so happy.
Then the accusation of plagiarism surfaced. An early reviewer caught it. Whole passages lifted directly from Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, not the revised edition, but the first, convoluted one, that wasn’t widely read. Heath denied it, and Sarah believed him with all her heart. It was only when the publisher pulled the book, prior to publication, that she went out and bought a copy of Tender Is the Night and compared for herself. Heath must’ve thought that nobody would check, because when you put the pages side by side, the plagiarism was obvious. She was almost as angry about his carelessness as his lies. How could he have been so cavalier about something so important to their future? He was used to being admired and adored; that was why. Heath was confident that his transgressions would be overlooked, or forgiven. And she tried to forgive. But it was hard.
Heath was asked to pay back the advance, which was a problem since they’d already spent it. That hadn’t been Sarah’s doing. She was frugal by nature, but Heath wanted things. A lot of things. New clothes, a car, a better apartment, restaurants, parties. Who was she to say no, when he’d felt so deprived, growing up? Her parents stepped in and lent them the money to pay back the publisher—and never let them forget it.
Her father had thankfully managed to hush up the scandal, or else Heath would’ve been unemployable in teaching at any reputable school. If it came out, even now, a school like Odell would have no choice but to fire him. Some nights Sarah lay awake, worrying. About the past coming back to haunt them. About Heath’s mental stability, how despondent he’d become when things went wrong, and whether he was susceptible to falling into that deep, dark pit again. She didn’t think so. She prayed not. She was grateful that, with the dorm head job, he’d found something to feel excited about again. She wanted him to be happy. Heath wasn’t a dishonest person. He’d just wanted to succeed so badly—to impress Sarah, to impress her parents—that he’d taken a shortcut to get there. Then he got caught, and felt ashamed, which was why he’d lied. It was a unique situation, far in the past, and unlikely to repeat itself. Besides, they had the children to think about now, and Heath adored his children. He wouldn’t let himself get out of control emotionally again, she was certain.
Maybe not certain. But hopeful.
The waitress headed for their table, carrying the seafood tower. Heads turned to admire the dramatic presentation, just as they’d turned when her handsome husband walked in the door a half hour before. People were naturally drawn to Heath. The Moreland girls were crazy about him already. A colleague had said to her that very afternoon: Whenever I see your husband, he’s trailing a gaggle of pretty girls. Sarah didn’t let it bother her. She trusted Heath, and besides, it wasn’t his fault. If she was a student here, she’d follow him around, too. Just look at that incredible smile, as the waitress presented the seafood tower. It was wonderful to see. Heath’s happiness was the only gift Sarah needed.
8 (#ulink_0077faa7-42ad-573a-a13b-343cc2eee782)
Bel sat in Mr. Donovan’s classroom in Benchley Hall, watching the hands on the old wall clock creep toward two-twenty, when English class would end. She had a meeting scheduled with Mr. Donovan then, and the thought of it made her queasy. Though she’d been feeling off all day anyway in this awful, sticky heat. Everyone said that the heat wave was unusual, but that didn’t help her sleep at night or eat anything more substantial than a piece of fruit. Heat in L.A. had never bothered her, but the climate here was just evil.
The fan buzzing in the corner lulled her, and her eyelids drooped. But then Mr. Donovan spoke, and she bolted upright, her eyes flying open. Heath Donovan was the one thing in this new life that made Bel feel wide awake. He stood at the whiteboard, writing out a line from Shelley and explaining the concept of synecdoche. English was her favorite class just because she liked watching him and listening to his voice. Every day, Bel noticed new details about him. A small scar above his eyebrow, a beauty mark on his cheek, how his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the whiteness of his teeth. She paid attention not only to what he said, but how he moved, when he laughed, what he wore. Today he was wearing khaki pants and a blue-check dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The outfit looked amazing on his tennis player’s body. He wasn’t overly jacked like so many of the jock boys. He was lean and elegant. She didn’t try to notice these things. He just made an impression on her, whether she liked it or not.
Mr. Donovan turned to recite the line to the class.
“‘Its sculptor well those passions read,’” he quoted, in his deep, rich voice, “‘which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked him.’”
He asked for a volunteer to identify the synecdoche in that line, and Bel averted her eyes. If she tried to speak, she’d stutter and blush and generally make a fool of herself. Not because she hadn’t done the reading—this was the one class she always prepared for. But because she was shy in front of these hyper-verbal Odell kids, and because Mr. Donovan unnerved her. That part was Darcy Madden’s fault. Normally Bel would never stoop so low as to get a crush on a teacher, but Darcy and her posse of Moreland seniors were obsessed with Mr. Donovan and talked about him nonstop. Naturally their obsession had rubbed off on her. Bel listened to Darcy, and followed her lead in all things. Darcy was older, sophisticated. She understood how things worked around here. Bel felt fortunate to have been taken under her wing.
Yet, she had to laugh, because the seniors’ contest to seduce Mr. Donovan had gone nowhere. Girls went to his office hours or cornered him in the dining hall. They flirted shamelessly, made heavy eye contact. The bold ones flashed some cleavage or bared a thigh in a short skirt. And they got no response. Zero. Donovan didn’t seem to notice at all. He was apparently loyal to his wife, though nobody understood why. Darcy said the wife was a total mouse, a real loser. That she must have some unnatural hold over him. Maybe it was money, or some secret she was using to blackmail him. Otherwise, he’d be susceptible to the seniors’ charms, like any man would be. To Darcy’s own charms, anyway. Bel had to agree—Darcy was killer. She had those perfectly regular features: the long, swinging blond hair; a sharp tongue hidden behind a wide smile. Everybody danced to her tune. To Bel, she was the Oracle of Moreland, not to be contradicted. Yet, Bel thought Darcy was wrong about Mr. Donovan. His love for his wife was pure, and Mr. Donovan was chivalrous. Honorable, like a knight of old. He would see Darcy’s sharp edges, and keep his distance. Which made him all the more attractive in Bel’s book.
The bell rang. Class ended, and Bel gathered her things, hesitating. Was she supposed to go up to him, or wait for him to speak to her? Would their meeting happen here in this room, or should she go to his office? Talking to teachers wasn’t Bel’s thing to begin with, and him, well, she couldn’t imagine speaking to him alone. Well, she could imagine it, but the things she imagined were unlikely to happen.
A couple of kids went up to the front of the room to talk to him, and Bel breathed a sigh of relief. Kids at Odell loved to hang around after class and suck up to teacher. Back home, being smart made you uncool, but here it was the opposite. Everybody spoke up in class, and competed to get noticed. Everyone except Bel, who kept her mouth firmly shut unless a teacher called on her, and then struggled to get a word out. Back home, teachers hadn’t cared what she thought, not enough to put her on the spot anyway, and she preferred it that way.
With Mr. Donovan distracted, Bel took the opportunity to slink toward the door, hoping to escape before he noticed. She could claim she forgot, or that something suddenly came up, or—
“Bel,” Mr. Donovan called. “Hold on. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Crap. Bel waited, palms sweaty, heartbeat skittering. Once they were alone, she’d be struck dumb, she knew it.
After a few minutes, the students left to go to their sixth-period classes, and he came over to her.
“Were you going to my office?” he asked, with a puzzled smile. Up this close, his teeth were so white, his eyes so blue, and he smelled so good that she felt dizzy.
“Um. Sorry?”
“I saw you leaving. You remember we have our first advisory meeting now, right?” he asked.
“Oh. Right. Yes. No, I didn’t forget, I just wasn’t sure, uh, where to, or—what to do,” Bel said, her cheeks burning. She sounded like the biggest idiot.
“It’s so warm today. I thought we could grab an iced coffee and sit outside. My office is like an oven, but there should be some breeze if we go over to the Art Café. Come on.”
Coffee? With Mr. Donovan? Alone? The Moreland girls would be pea-green with envy.
They went to the snack bar in the basement of the Art Studio, which was empty at this hour, since most kids were in class. (Bel had scheduled the meeting for her free period.) Mr. Donovan bought two iced coffees, which he carried to the patio out back. They sat down facing each other at a small iron table in the shade of a tall tree. (The trees in this place were insane. All that chlorophyll, she could gag on it.)
“Since this is our first advisory meeting, I thought I’d start by explaining the role of advisor here at Odell, which is not exactly the same as a guidance counselor in a public school,” Mr. Donovan said.
Bel was relieved that he was talking about official-sounding stuff. If she was lucky, she could sit here and enjoy listening to him and never have to say a word.
“At Odell, we’re fortunate to have professionals for every function,” Mr. Donovan continued. “There are counseling services at the health center if you’re having emotional or mental health issues. You’ll be assigned a college counselor starting next year. My job is to advise you about academics, and more generally . . .”
She got distracted by the color of his eyes. They were such an intense shade of aqua-blue that they almost seemed fake. Was it possible that he wore colored lenses? But they went beautifully with the long, sooty lashes, and the rich, dark color of his hair, so maybe they were real after all.
“Bel, are you listening?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. I just—” She blushed furiously and shook her head.
“No. You know what? It’s my fault, droning on like a page out of the handbook. No wonder you zoned out. Let’s start over. I’m Heath, and I’m your advisor, nice to meet you.”
He reached across the table, and she realized he intended to shake her hand. Had he just given her permission to call him by his first name? Their eyes met, and she put her hand in his. The warmth of his grip jolted her.
“And you are—?” he asked.
“Isabel Enright. Bel. Call me Bel. I’m your, um, your student. Nice to meet you, too.”
The exchange was so silly that she laughed, and felt less awkward after that. Maybe he wouldn’t prove impossible to talk to after all. She simply had to concentrate on what he said, not how he looked.
Easier said than done.
“Think of me as your guide to Odell,” Heath said, releasing her hand. “You come to me with a question or a problem, and it’s my job to help you. Maybe you have an academic issue, or a personal problem, or maybe you just don’t know which extracurricular activity to try. If I can help you, I will. If it’s out of my wheelhouse, I’ll find the right person for you to speak to. Odell can be so confusing at first, and the point of the advisor is to help you feel comfortable right away. Odell is your home now, and we’re your family, your school family, that is. I want you to know, Bel, that you have a support system in me. I’m here for you.”
Such kind words would have reached her no matter who said them. But to have Mr. Donovan say them—wow. His sympathy hit her hard; it released something. She’d been holding her feelings in for weeks now. Acting like she didn’t care that her grandmother sent them away. Hanging out with a fast crowd because she’d fallen in with them at the beginning, acting the role of wild child to keep up, but having big doubts about it. Fighting with Rose—God, she hated to fight with her sister, but ever since they’d gotten here, things between them felt so wrong. Suddenly it was all too much. Bel’s lower lip started to quiver. She looked at Heath for one long, terrible second, and burst into tears.
“Oh,” Heath said, flushing. “Jesus, I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry. I know you lost your mother. I should have been more careful. I was only trying to make you feel better, but I put my foot in it.”
“No, it’s okay,” she whispered, but her shoulders were heaving, and she couldn’t stop crying.
Heath handed her a napkin from the table, and she blotted at her eyes, her body wracked with sobs. He looked at her with such concern that Bel saw the tragedy of her plight reflected in his beautiful eyes, and the worst moments flooded back. Her mother’s face when she told them the diagnosis. Seeing her mother get thinner, lose her hair. The day her mother died. Hearing her grandmother tell them they had to go away to school. Being mean to Rose in the dining hall, feeling terrible about it, and having Rose refuse to speak to her afterward. Now she really couldn’t stop crying. Heath dragged his chair around the small table, until he sat beside her, an inch away.
“Bel,” he said softly.
She looked up at him, and she realized she wasn’t afraid of him anymore, or nervous around him. He felt like a friend.
“I’m sorry,” she said, through tears. “I’m embarrassed to flake out on you like this. But my life is just—It’s so fucking dark.”
He glanced around at the empty patio, then reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You can tell me. Nobody’s here. You can say anything.”
“Why did both my parents have to die?” she said. “Why me? Like, who does that happen to? First my dad when I was little. Then my mom. It’s so unfair.”
“I agree. Very unfair.”
“I’m being punished.”
“That’s not true. How could it be? You’re a child. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’m ungrateful. That’s what Rose says. I ought to be glad our grandmother took us in, and sent us here, but I’m not. I’m angry.”
“There’s nothing wrong with how you feel,” he said. “It’s completely normal.”
“What I’m really saying is, I don’t like Odell. I actually kind of hate it.”
“I understand. This place can grind you down. Make you feel like you’re not good enough. It did that to me, at first.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It took me a long time to prove myself here. To find my place.”
“Wait. You went to school here?”
“You didn’t know? I was actually very happy at Odell—not right away, but eventually. Right? I mean, I came back to teach, though sometimes I think I’m still trying to show them. Maybe that’s why I came back. I could tell you stories about what it was like, what I went through. I’ve been low, myself. I’ve been so low. You can’t imagine.”
She looked up into his eyes, holding her breath, afraid he would stop confiding in her.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“I shouldn’t. I can’t—well, maybe I’ll tell you another time. But believe me when I say that bad things have happened in my life. Here at Odell, and elsewhere. Things that almost pulled me under, that I thought I would never recover from. But I did. I got past it. And you can, too. You remind me of myself, you know.”
“I do? How?”
“Maybe I’m projecting. But the way you’re so quiet in class, and yet, I can tell how deeply you’re feeling things. You’re a dreamer. So am I.”
“Yes. You see. You understand me.” Her eyes filled with tears again.
“That gives me some insight into how to help you, Bel. You need something to dream about. A focus, something special to work toward. If you could find that, I think you could be successful here. I think you could even be happy. Will you try?”
“I want to, Heath. I worry that I’m not up to it,” Bel said.
There, she’d used his name. Was he going to rebuke her? But no, he took her hand, and she held on, like he could save her from the flood.
“Don’t sell yourself short. If you could see the girl I see, I know you’d believe in yourself. You are up to it,” he said, and there was so much sympathy in his voice that she nearly melted.
“But I’m not as smart as the kids here,” she said.
“It’s not true. I’ve seen your file. I admit, your grades aren’t anything to write home about. But your scores are off the charts. You’re very smart, Bel. You just have to do the work, and you’ll succeed.”
“That’s not the only problem,” she said. “People are mean here. Everyone’s a poser. I feel so lost.”
“You have your twin sister to fall back on, don’t you?”
“Not really. Rose and I used to be good friends, but this place is driving us apart. She doesn’t like who I hang out with. She doesn’t approve of my behavior. We fight all the time. I hate it.”
“Odell can put pressure on relationships, it’s true. You have to ignore the noise. Find some time when it’s just the two of you, and hash things out. Will you try?”
“I want to make up with her. I do. I’ve been feeling so alone.”
“You’re not alone, Bel. You have your sister. You also have me.”
Bel wiped her eyes, and gazed at him. “You mean that?”
“I do mean it. I’m your advisor, and it’s my job to help you be happy here. As a matter of fact, I have a suggestion.”
Bel was hoping for something intimate and personal, like the two of them having dinner together. Now that would give her something to live for. Instead Heath suggested that Bel join the cross-country team, which he coached. It would get her out in nature, and the endorphins generated by long-distance running would improve her outlook. Yada yada yada, she thought. But then she realized that he couldn’t ask her to dinner even if he wanted to. It would look weird, and it was probably against the rules. But if she joined the team he coached, she could spend more time with him, and not just time, but time in the woods on the running trails, maybe even alone.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“Good, it’s settled. Come to the field house this afternoon at three forty-five, and we’ll get you squared away with a uniform.”
He glanced at his watch, which made her sad. She didn’t want their meeting to end.
“I have to get going,” he said. “It’s later than I thought. I’m glad we had this talk, Bel. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to be happy here, I promise. Okay?”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” He stood up and glanced around quickly, making sure that nobody would see. “C’mere, you seem like you could use a hug,” he said, holding out his arms.
Bel didn’t hesitate. She stepped into his embrace and gloried there, letting herself bask in the warmth of his body, his breath against her hair. She drank in the scent of his shampoo, which made her think of the ocean, of sandalwood. She would’ve stayed like that forever, but he released her, and stepped away.
“Okay, see you at the field house later,” he said.
Then he was gone.
The air felt cooler now—fresher, sweeter, and it smelled of flowers and grass. Somewhere somebody mowed a lawn, and the buzz of the lawn mower was cheerful to her ears. Bel started walking toward Moreland, and the deep green of the trees and the grass was pleasing to her now. There would always be a before and an after. A before and an after their talk. A before and an after their embrace. Before, she was lost, but now, a light shined on everything she saw. Bel could go tell Darcy and the seniors what happened, and bask in their envy. But she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to share this. Her friendship with Heath Donovan was her secret, hers alone.
9 (#ulink_af6b3636-ae03-5fd8-8551-31e68db2703b)
“He just got glasses yesterday, poor thing, and doesn’t quite know what to make of them,” Mrs. Donovan said. Rose sat at the Donovans’ kitchen table, holding little Scottie in her lap. The air was fragrant with the scent of the chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the oven. The child fidgeted with the bright-green eyeglasses attached to his head with a strap, so Rose held him away from her and made funny faces to distract him. He watched her solemnly, his eyes behind the lenses wide as saucers.
“You’re so good with him,” Mrs. Donovan said. “Do you babysit?”
“I’d babysit for this guy anytime. He’s the sweetest,” Rose said, lowering her nose and drinking in the scent of the child’s flaxen hair.
Mrs. Donovan laughed. “I’ll take you up on that. He is a sweetie. He was a preemie, you know. He doesn’t talk much yet. He’s a little delayed. Watch out, though. His sister is a holy terror, and it’s a package deal.”
“She seems so fun. Is she here?”
“Harper is fun. She’s a handful, though. She’s in her room playing Goat Simulator on the laptop, so we can have some peace and quiet.”
“Playing what?”
“Goat Simulator. It’s this video game where the kid pretends to be a goat running wild in a town. It’s actually a pretty good metaphor for Harper’s life, come to think of it. Anyway, she’s obsessed with it.”
Mrs. Donovan placed a plate of cookies on the table in front of Rose. Max lounged at Rose’s feet, his tail thumping back and forth with the rhythm of a metronome. This afternoon tête-à-tête was like a dream come true. To be invited into a teacher’s home, and to have it be so cozy and adorable. The kitchen had an old-fashioned gas stove, a tile backsplash and pretty curtains. Mrs. Donovan had the nicest smile, and was so easy to talk to. In Rose’s old school, the teachers barely knew her name. Rose couldn’t believe her luck in getting Mrs. Donovan as her advisor.
“Tea?” Mrs. Donovan asked.
“I’d love to, but I’m holding the baby,” Rose said.
“Oh, I’ll take him, so you can enjoy your refreshments.”
Mrs. Donovan brought mugs of tea over to the table. Why did people say she wasn’t good-looking? She might not be flashy or blingy, but she had a fresh, wholesome prettiness—like a mother should. Rose’s mother had been glamorous, yet Rose had never felt comfortable with her eccentric, arty style. Done up in thrift-shop finds, with a big tattoo of angel wings on her arm for their dad. She cooked up pots of organic quinoa for dinner, but never baked cookies. Rose had secretly wished for a normal mom, someone more like Mrs. Donovan. She felt guilty thinking that, yet, if Rose was honest, here in this delightful kitchen with Mrs. Donovan, she didn’t miss her mother much at all.
Scottie went to Mrs. Donovan happily. Rose took a bite of a cookie. It was warm and gooey inside. Bliss.
“These are divine. Thank you so much for baking for me. You didn’t have to!” Rose exclaimed.
“Oh, it was no trouble. Harper helped. She loves baking—today, anyway. Five minutes from now, she’ll be on to something else.”
“It must be so special for them, growing up at Odell,” Rose said.
“People think that,” Mrs. Donovan replied, frowning. “But being a faculty kid makes for a strange childhood. We eat most of our meals in the dining hall, with a million people all around. Scottie gets overwhelmed by the excitement, and Harper eats it up. Literally. Yesterday I found three brownies in her pockets. Students sneak her extra dessert.”
Rose laughed. “That’s adorable.”
“Not when she’s bouncing off the walls at bedtime from all the sugar. Besides, it’s a control thing. How can I teach her no when there are so many teenagers around who say yes?”
“Yes, but—it’s so wonderful here, with beautiful grounds to play in. I grew up in an apartment complex in the city. Everything was concrete. We couldn’t have pets. To me, Odell feels like paradise.”
“You’re not alone in thinking that. Some people see the campus, and it’s love at first sight. My husband was like that. He lived and breathed Odell when we were students, and that’s still true. Even if he wasn’t sure about being a teacher, he knew he wanted to be here,” Mrs. Donovan said, and laughed sheepishly.
“He doesn’t like being a teacher?”
“Oh, I, uh, didn’t mean it that way,” Mrs. Donovan said, coloring slightly, as if she’d said too much. “Heath loves his work. Especially now that we’re dorm heads, and truly immersed in the community. He finds it very fulfilling.”
There was a false note in Mrs. Donovan’s voice that made Rose wonder how she herself felt about Odell.
“And you? Do you like your work?” Rose asked.
“Thank you for asking. I love teaching math. But I’m a bit of an introvert, so the dorm head job, living here on campus, doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does my husband. But I think it’s important work, so it’s satisfying in that sense. Historically, Moreland has had challenges. I had run-ins with girls from this dorm when I was a student here. It just seems to attract the mean girls.”
“There are mean girls here now,” Rose said.
“I realize that. And I want to be part of fixing the culture. Heath and I are trying to foster a healthy atmosphere in Moreland. But it’s tricky. We have to identify the girls causing the trouble, hopefully before they do anything too disruptive, and get them to change their ways, if possible.”
Rose wondered if Mrs. Donovan had heard the gossip. There was a rumor going around that the Moreland seniors—the same girls Bel hung out with—were engaged in a competition to seduce Mr. Donovan. Rose was so outraged when she heard that that she wanted to hit somebody. If it was true, they ought to be expelled. She had half a mind to tell Mrs. Donovan about it right now, and put a stop to it. But how awkward was that—telling Mrs. Donovan other girls wanted to sleep with her husband? It was too embarrassing, and would spoil their cozy tea date.
“Enough about me,” Mrs. Donovan said. “How are you doing, Rose? You’ve been through so much with your mom’s passing. Odell can be a tough transition in the best of times. Are you settling in all right?”
“Yes. I love it here. I couldn’t be happier.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at her skeptically. “I’m very glad to hear that, but you don’t have to say it if it isn’t true. I know you’re off to a great start academically. You’re doing excellent work in math class. I’ve also heard from some of your other teachers that you’re a confident speaker at the Harkness Table, which is a big indicator of success at Odell.”
Her teachers said good things about her. Rose nodded, arranging her features so she wouldn’t look too pleased with herself.
“I adore my classes, Mrs. Donovan. I feel so engaged, like I’m really learning.”
“What about outside of class? Are you feeling comfortable socially?” Mrs. Donovan asked.
“I’m doing so much fun stuff,” Rose said cheerily, grabbing her backpack, and pulling out her notebook. “Here’s my list so far. Auditioning for the fall play. I joined the debate team. I’m working on the literary magazine. Joined Model UN and French Club. Oh, and I might audition for the chorus. I’ve never sung in front of people except for karaoke, but I was pretty good at that.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at her in astonishment. “Rose, that’s a wonderful list. I’m very impressed. But you have be careful not to take on too much.”
Rose felt it should be obvious that she could handle anything she took on. Was Mrs. Donovan selling her short because of her background? Odell was a clubby place, and though Rose’s father’s family were old Odellians, and Grandma had money, Rose and Bel had been raised by a single mom in modest circumstances. Compared to her classmates, with their summers filled with golf and tennis, their vacations abroad and tutors for every subject, Rose had grown up underprivileged. But she intended to keep up with the Joneses in every way, and she didn’t want Mrs. Donovan doubting her.
“Don’t worry, I’m very organized. When my mother was sick, I bought the groceries, I did the laundry and the cooking. I dealt with the doctors. I even paid the bills, with help from my grandmother. And I still got straight A’s, although admittedly, my old school was easy compared to Odell.”
Mrs. Donovan’s face softened with sympathy. “You poor thing. To be burdened like that, at your age. No wonder you’re trying to be superwoman. We have excellent therapists in the health center. You should talk to someone.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It can help you process your grief over losing your mom.”
“I try not to dwell on things that make me sad. I put them out of my mind, and go on the best I can.”
“Everybody needs to talk things out, Rose. That reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask about your sister.”
“My sister?”
“Yes. Is everything all right between you and Bel?”
“Everything’s fine. Why?” Rose asked, alarmed.
“I heard through the grapevine that the two of you had a falling-out.”
Damnit! Kids had been gossiping about that incident in the dining hall, and it must’ve gotten back to Mrs. Donovan. Rose had been livid about the whole incident, to the point that she hadn’t spoken to Bel since, despite Bel’s multiple attempts to apologize. This whole mess was Bel’s fault, and Mrs. Donovan needed to know that.
“There was an incident in the dining hall the first day of classes,” Rose began.
“Go on.”
“Bel . . . Well, she can be immature, and she doesn’t always have the best judgment. We were talking a minute ago about mean girls in Moreland. I’m afraid Bel’s fallen in with that crowd. Darcy Madden, and her friend Tessa, that redheaded girl. She was sitting with them at lunch, and I tried to get her to move tables. I’m worried they’ll get her into trouble.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at Rose with concern in her eyes.
“I can’t comment specifically on other students’ disciplinary history. But you’re right about that group being a problem. So that caused trouble between the two of you.”
“We haven’t spoken since,” Rose said, conveniently omitting the fact that she was the one refusing to speak to Bel, not the other way around.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Donovan said.
“Is there anything you can do?” Rose asked.
“Do?”
“To get Bel to stop hanging out with them.”
“Well. I suppose I could ask Heath to mention it to her. He’s her advisor.”
“That would be great. I’ll be honest, if Bel gets in trouble, I’m afraid it’ll reflect badly on me.”
“Rose, you keep mentioning Bel getting in trouble. Is she doing something she shouldn’t? Something specific, not just socializing with the wrong crowd. If you’re aware that other students are breaking the rules, you’re supposed to report them. Even if it’s your sister. The Honor Code requires it. Do you understand?”
Rose thought again about the contest to seduce Mr. Donovan. Bel’s new best friend was behind it. She hoped that didn’t mean her sister was involved with it. But she didn’t have proof, and she was afraid to say anything. Not only would it be terribly awkward to bring this up with Mrs. Donovan, but Rose could wind up with a reputation as a rat. That was social suicide at Odell.
“I haven’t heard anything specific,” Rose insisted. “Nobody tells me anything because I’m known as a girl who follows the rules. I just worry about my sister.”
“I understand. I’ll ask Heath to speak to her about the company she keeps. But there’s something I need to ask of you in return.”
“Okay.”
“Make up with Bel. Talk through your differences. You two are both new here. You’ve been through a lot. You need each other. Can you do that, Rose? Please? For me?”
Rose hesitated. She was hurt and pissed off enough that she really didn’t feel like making up with her sister. Not yet. Still, she couldn’t refuse Mrs. Donovan’s request, when Mrs. Donovan represented everything that was good and kind in the world.
“I’ll try,” she said, taking another cookie. “Promise.”
10 (#ulink_4ce039f2-e306-552f-9061-030cdef4c85d)
Bel had a stalker. Zachary Cuddy from her Spanish class wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d hooked up with him the second week of school, on the night of the opening dance, and immediately realized her mistake. She’d been trying to shake him ever since, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Zach seemed to think he owned her, even though they hadn’t done more than fool around briefly in the woods. Yet nearly every day, he’d claim the seat next to her at morning convocation, or wait for her after Spanish to escort her to her next class. Yesterday, she’d turned around in the lunch line to find Zach standing right behind her, literally breathing down her neck. She nearly screamed. She’d tried ignoring him, laughing at him, running in the opposite direction, telling him to knock it off or she’d tell a teacher—nothing worked. He’d just look at her with puppy-dog eyes and beg her to tell him what he’d done wrong, so he could fix it.
Zach was one of several mistakes in Bel’s brief Odell career that could be laid at Darcy Madden’s door. Bel did whatever it took to please Darcy, and unfortunately the things that pleased Darcy had a certain twisted quality. Yet, Darcy’s friendship cast a circle of light so bright that Bel ignored the consequences. To be inside Darcy’s circle was to be among the chosen. Most Odell kids were earnest and square, but Darcy’s friends were different. They laughed, and did wild things—bad things even—but they were bulletproof, and never suffered. Darcy and her crew hailed from old Odellian families with gobs of money. If they misbehaved, or broke rules, Mom and Dad met with the headmaster, and the kid got sentenced to counseling or, at worst, rehab. Bel had already seen this, with a girl named Mia who got suspended for alcohol the first week of school. She went home for three days, and came back smiling, with a tan, a new pair of Saint Laurent boots, and a fifth of bourbon that they drank the same night in Darcy’s room. Life in Darcy’s circle was a big joke. The terrible pressures of Odell—the crushing workload, the college-admissions race, the insane three-hundred-page code of conduct manual—vanished at the flick of Darcy’s shiny, blond hair. Bel needed to be part of that. It wasn’t the money that turned her head, or the privilege. It was the freedom from fear.
Bel didn’t stop to calculate the cost of doing Darcy’s bidding, but in the back of her mind, she knew it was adding up. Under Darcy’s influence, she’d turned her back on her sophomore classmates (a bunch of uptight bores), allowed her sister to be insulted in front of the entire dining hall (Rose was too sensitive, anyway), worn pajamas to class on a dare (so hilarious, even though she’d gotten two demerits, and four meant suspension), and snuck out of the dorm to smoke weed out at Lost Lake (so chill, though getting caught could mean expulsion). Bel felt bad about those things, and yet, she also felt good—carefree, young, and most of all, flattered to be included. Being Darcy’s pet made her somebody important, where otherwise, Odell would grind her down.
The Zach hookup happened because Darcy decreed it. Darcy worried that her boyfriend, Brandon Flynn, was paying too much attention to Bel. You’re like the new toy, Darcy had said threateningly, better watch you don’t get chewed. Bel had done nothing to encourage Brandon’s attention. She found him repugnant, actually. Husky build, sandy hair, a Frankenstein forehead, Brandon was a mouth-breathing delinquent. He was also very, very rich, his dad being a real-estate billionaire, and Darcy was very possessive of her Mr. Moneybags. She refused to believe that Bel wasn’t interested in Brandon, or that Bel was only nice to Brandon because he was Darcy’s boyfriend. That couldn’t be true, Darcy said, because Brandon was the only guy Bel gave the time of day to.
That’s when Bel let slip that there was someone else she pined for. It slipped out, and then it was too late to take it back. Bel couldn’t tell Darcy about her Mr. Donovan obsession without getting roped into their awful contest. She had to make up another boyfriend. That’s where Zach came in, in a major miscalculation.
On the night of the opening dance, the Alumni Gym was dark, stuffy and jammed wall-to-wall with kids swaying to Rihanna. Bel was milling about with Darcy and Tessa, waiting for Brandon to text them that he’d scored weed, so they could all meet up at the lake. From the corner of her eye, Bel saw Zach Cuddy heading her way, and immediately knew that he was going to ask her to dance. He’d been harassing since the first day of class. Her first instinct was to turn away and pretend not to see him, but she saw her opportunity, and caught herself.
“Hey, here comes my crush,” Bel said to Darcy.
Darcy followed Bel’s gaze. “Him? He looks like a loser.”
Zach was tall and thin, with a shock of dark hair and mild blue eyes behind professorial-looking eyeglasses. Some people might call Zach handsome, but Bel and Darcy were not among those people.
“I think he’s cute,” Bel insisted.
“Whatever, girl. It’s your coochie. Invite him to the lake if you want.”
“Uh—”
Bel didn’t want to go as far as inviting Zach to the lake. But Darcy shot her a skeptical look, and she knew she had no choice. She stepped onto the dance floor and intercepted him.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, I’m Zach from your Spanish class.”
“Duh, I know. Why do you think I’m talking to you?”
“Oh. Excellent. Would you do me the honor of dancing with me?”
“No.”
His face fell.
“I don’t want to dance right now,” Bel said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Darcy was watching. “I need some air. My friends are going down to the lake. Why don’t you come?”
Zach looked over at Darcy nervously. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
Zach hesitated, lowering his voice. “Um, when you say friends, you’re talking about Darcy Madden, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I’d love to hang out with you. But I’m not looking to get wasted or anything.”
“Who said anything about getting wasted?”
“It’s just, from what I hear—”
“What you hear. Do you judge people based on gossip?”
Zach looked taken aback. “No.”
“Don’t judge her, then. People just say stuff about her because they’re jealous. It’s a pretty night. Come outside with me. Please?”
Bel took Zach’s hand and gave him her sweetest smile. His eyes lit up.
The loudspeakers started making an awful screeching noise, which distracted the chaperones. Darcy and Tessa slipped out the back door, and Bel pulled Zach along, hurrying to keep up. Outside, the night was warm, lit by a fat harvest moon hanging low in the velvety sky. There was a loud sound of crickets chirping, and the smell of mulch and wet leaves, as they headed for the path into the woods. Zach’s hand trembled in hers.
“Are we seriously going to the lake? I’ve never been there at night,” he said.
“I have,” she said. “It’s gorgeous. Come on, hurry.”
Darcy and Tessa had been swallowed by the trees. Bel raced to keep up, flicking on the flashlight on her phone to light the way.
The Odell campus bordered a thousand-acre nature preserve—pristine land made up of dense forest, open fields, hilltops, valleys and babbling streams, all crisscrossed by a network of hiking trails. Lost Lake sat about a mile into the nature preserve from the border of campus. The path that led there was dark and mysterious, but with her friends in front of her and a boy by her side, Bel felt safe. More than safe, she felt happy to be alive. It was a beautiful night, and she was on a crazy adventure, with a slight edge of hysteria, as if she was high already even though she hadn’t smoked anything. That was the effect Darcy’s shenanigans had on her.
Bel stumbled on a root, giggling as Zach caught her.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine. Relax, Zach. You’re too uptight,” she said.
They didn’t talk again until they reached the wide meadow that bordered the lake. Zach caught the view across the open water, sparkling in the moonlight, and drew a sharp breath.
“See?” Bel said. “It’s worth it. C’mon.”
They headed for the wooden hikers’ lean-to that faced the lake. It had been the favorite rendezvous point for Odell kids looking to sin since time immemorial. Zach seemed to know that as well as Bel did. Or else he just smelled the pot.
“Uh, no, I can’t,” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“You don’t smoke weed?”
“Not on campus I don’t. Surest way to get caught.”
“This isn’t campus.”
“Not technically. But if you think the faculty doesn’t know about the lean-to, you’re mistaken. They raid it regularly.”
Darcy had never told Bel that, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. “Are you sure?” Bel asked.
“Positive. A bunch of guys from my dorm got caught drinking here last spring. They all got kicked out.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, although, they were nobodies. And two of them were black. I’m not saying the school excessively punishes poor, black kids. It’s the opposite. If you’re somebody important, you get away with stuff that normal kids get punished for. Those friends of yours—I know who they are. They’re connected. Maybe you are, too. But I’m not, so I should probably go.”
Bel felt sorry for Zach. Plus, she hadn’t come this far just to turn around and leave without putting Darcy’s Brandon concerns to rest.
“We don’t have to get high,” Bel said. “Let’s just go in the woods and hook up. You can’t get expelled for that, right?”
He smiled. “I don’t know, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Hold on. I’m just gonna let Darcy know that we’re going someplace more private.”
She did. And they did. Their make-out session, which stopped well short of actual sex and was so forgettable to Bel, was now imprinted on Zach’s brain forever, to the point where he was making her life unbearable. She had to do something to get rid of him.
11 (#ulink_4d1d5969-fa1a-5ea3-be04-11abd80a9543)
Rose had promised Mrs. Donovan that she would make up with her sister. But as the days passed, she couldn’t bring herself to fulfill that promise. She was still smarting from that incident in the dining hall on the first day of class, when Bel allowed one of her new best friends to humiliate Rose, and didn’t speak up in her defense. It was on Bel to apologize to Rose for that first, and then Rose would meet her halfway. Okay, Bel had tried to apologize the day after it happened. But that was too early. Anybody could see that. The wound was too fresh; Rose had cut her off and walked away. Now that more time had passed, Bel ought to understand that it was time to apologize again. This time, Rose would graciously accept her apology, and they could make up. But Bel kept her distance, and things between the sisters remained icy.
As angry as Rose was with her twin, she also missed her very much. Odell was a tough place, for all its glory. The pressure was intense, and the competition was crushing enough to pierce Rose’s healthy self-confidence. At Odell, one needed allies, and Rose didn’t make friends easily. Her pleasant rapport with Emma Kim was moving slowly toward friendship, but it would never match the history she shared with her sister. Bel wasn’t a natural soulmate for Rose; they were too different. But she was family, and nothing could change that.
On a chilly evening in early October, Rose walked back to the dorm alone. She’d left dinner early, overwhelmed by the feeling of being alone in a crowd. Emma had disappeared from the dining hall lately because she was rehearsing nonstop for the fall orchestra recital. That left Rose to navigate the Moreland sophomore table on her own. She knew she ought to try harder to make other friends, but she was too proud to put herself out there. So tonight, and too often lately, she’d ended up sitting quietly while conversation swirled around her, feeling left out.
The sharp chill in the air as she walked toward Moreland, the deep shadows cast by the setting sun, the empty paths, pressed on Rose’s heart. When she caught a glimpse of Bel in the distance, climbing the steps to Weston Library, suddenly that incident in the dining hall seemed frivolous. She couldn’t let it destroy her relationship with her only sister. If she and Bel could be friends again, Rose wouldn’t feel so lonely.
Rose hurried up the steps and onto the dramatic main floor of Weston Library, with its three-story atrium and enormous windows. Bel stood by the reference desk, talking to a boy named Zach who was in Rose’s biology class. As Rose approached, Bel actually smiled at her.
“Hey,” Bel said.
“Hey,” Rose replied, surprised at the warmth of her sister’s greeting. Bel had barely acknowledged her in weeks.
“Look, I have to go. I have plans with my sister,” Bel said to Zach.
“Rose is your sister?” he asked.
It made Rose stupid happy to realize that Zach Cuddy knew her name. He was worlds above your average Odell prepster dude, and the only boy she’d met so far who piqued her interest.
“That’s okay, I can wait,” Rose said. “Or maybe the three of us should—”
“No,” Bel said. “I need to talk to you. Now. Come on.”
She grabbed Rose by the arm and yanked her toward the front door. Rose glanced back at Zach helplessly as they exited the library.
“I’m so glad you want to talk,” Rose said, falling into step beside Bel out on the path. “I feel like we’ve been mad at each other long enough.”
The sky was nearly dark, and the yellow glow of the lampposts illuminated the paths. Bel sighed with irritation, her entire demeanor changed from how she’d been a moment earlier.
“So, you’re finally gonna forgive me? I apologized weeks ago, by the way,” Bel said, shaking her head irritably.
Her sister’s tone annoyed Rose. Bel still didn’t get how hurtful her action—or her inaction—had been.
“Put yourself in my shoes. Getting called fat on my first day of school in front of the entire dining hall. It was awful.”
“Come on, she didn’t call you fat, and practically nobody heard her.”
“Don’t minimize.”
“Look, I said I was sorry, and I am sorry. Tessa’s a bitch, but that’s not my fault.”
“If she’s such a bitch, why do you hang out with her?”
“Because she’s Darcy’s friend.”
“Why are you friends with Darcy?”
Bel whirled to face Rose. “If this is going to turn into a rant about my poor choice of friends, then we’re never gonna make up. I miss you, Rose. I want us to be closer. But you have to back off with the judgment stuff.”
“I miss you, too. I’m just worried about you. Those are, like, the most reckless kids in the school, and they’re bound to get you in trouble.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“How can that be? I don’t understand that.”
“We’re different, okay?” Bel said, her eyes in the lamplight sparkling with unshed tears. “You have everything figured out. I’m just trying to get through my days. Darcy makes me feel like there’s some fun left in the world, since Mom died. Can’t you understand that?”
Bel’s words hit home. Bel had been much closer to their mother than Rose had. Rose had resented their bond, and had felt left out. But Rose shouldn’t let that lingering resentment blind her to Bel’s real grief. Bel had taken their mother’s death much harder than Rose had. Rose reacted by trying to think about Mom as little as possible, and being grateful for her new life, where she could have a substitute mom like Mrs. Donovan. A better mom, really. Whereas Bel thought about their mother constantly. Rose had to admit, Bel’s reaction was the more normal one. It worried Rose sometimes, how little grief she felt. It was almost like there was something wrong with her.
“You’re right,” Rose said. “You and I experience Mom’s death differently. I take all my sadness and put it into succeeding here.”
“Is that the explanation? Because you seem so fine with everything that, sometimes, I wonder if you really loved Mom.”
Sometimes, Rose wondered that herself. But she would never admit to such a socially unacceptable emotion as not loving her own mother.
“God, what a mean thing to say,” Rose said. “That hurts. Don’t you get it? We can both feel grief, but show it differently. I’m doing my best to understand your way, and that you’re acting out—misbehaving—because of sadness. Meanwhile, instead of trying to understand me, you accuse me of not loving Mom? That’s low, Bel.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I need to try harder to see your perspective.”
“Thank you. I would appreciate that.”
“Let’s be friends again, okay?” Bel said.
“Yes. That’s all I want. I’ll get off your back about Darcy, too, promise.”
Bel smiled tearily. “Okay. Deal,” she said, and held her arms out.
They hugged for a long time, right there in the middle of the path. Rose had to swallow hard in order not to cry, which made her feel relieved. At least when it came to Bel, Rose still had a heart.
“Hey,” Rose said, disentangling herself. “I have Oreos in my room. Want some?”
“You know I do.”
They linked arms, and walked back to Moreland together.
12 (#ulink_d5ca3198-9952-5d43-98ef-a42fc699d3d4)
By mid-October, Bel’s schoolgirl crush on Heath Donovan had morphed into something more powerful, and more dangerous. After their iced-coffee date at the Art Café, she just couldn’t shake the memory of their embrace. She still felt his arms around her, and wanted to experience that again. But how? She’d sit in English class and stare, letting his voice wash over her. Bel worried that kids in her English class would notice, and tease her. Or worse, that Darcy and the Moreland seniors would find out. If the seniors realized she was mad for Heath, not only would they mock her relentlessly, but they’d force her to play their tawdry game, which she absolutely refused to do. She didn’t even like hearing about it anymore. What they were doing was childish and degrading. What Bel felt for Heath was real. Bel now understood that Heath knew how she felt, and was glad of it. This amazing realization dawned on her in English class, on a stormy afternoon in late October, as they discussed one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Rain sluiced against the mullioned windows as Heath read aloud to the class from a poem about summer, and love.
“‘If happiness were like the flowers of June,’” Heath quoted, in his beautiful, resonant voice, “‘then I would take the best of them, roses and columbine, the lilies, and bind them in your hair . . . I think of you as the day wanes, and as the sun sinks deep into the ocean, and as the stars turn round above.’”
And just then, as the clock on the wall ticked to the beat of Bel’s heart, Heath looked up and caught her eyes. He’d been gazing down at the page, then those incredible blue-green eyes flicked up and settled on Bel, at the precise moment he spoke of binding flowers in her hair. Their gazes met, and held. Everything else faded away, and she was transported with him to a field on a perfect June day. She could smell the grass, as she had that afternoon they sat together on the patio, when she told him her troubles, and he comforted her. She could feel the breeze, and feel his arms around her again, his breath on her hair. And she finally understood that Heath Donovan wanted her to love him. Otherwise, why—out of fifteen students in the room, seven boys, eight girls—why would he look directly at her at the very moment he said those words? This wasn’t just a foolish crush. It wasn’t a one-way street. She meant something to him, too.
There were other signs.
Bel had joined the cross-country team at Heath’s urging, and he was teaching her how to run. (Okay, he was teaching all the girls on the team, but he paid special attention to Bel. She wasn’t imagining it.) There was so much more to running than she’d known. Form, pacing, strategy. Appreciation for the terrain. The sprawling Odell campus was situated in a valley ringed by rugged hills. The nature preserve, and its hiking trails, were their own private wilderness to train in. After a brutally hot Indian summer, the weather had turned wet and raw, and Bel’s afternoons were spent slogging through the muck on the trails with twenty other girls. They had practice five days a week, rain or shine, and meets on Saturdays. At first, it was torture, and she did it only to be near Heath. But as the weeks went by, calluses formed on her feet, muscles hardened in her legs, and she got faster, until she was keeping pace with the best girls on the team, and with Heath himself.
Heath ran alongside them on practice days. He was that kind of coach: He didn’t spare himself, even in the worst weather. He’d start at the front of the pack and slowly drop back, checking on each runner or group of runners in turn, giving them pointers, boosting their spirits. Bel made sure to run alone. She wanted to be certain that, whenever Heath caught up with her, they would have privacy. She’d get ten or fifteen minutes alone with him on a long run—more than he gave any other girl. They’d set a pace where they could comfortably maintain a conversation. The gray skies and whistling wind would drop a cloak of intimacy over them as they ran. Other girls might be in sight, but they were out of earshot, and Bel could say anything. She looked forward to these runs as if they could save her life, and in a way, they did. Bel told Heath all her troubles. He was the only person on earth she could talk to; with everyone else, Bel put on an act, full of snark and bravado. None of her friends or even her own sister suspected how lost she felt inside. But Heath knew the true her.
Out there in the woods, just the two of them and the wind, Heath listened like he really cared. He told her things about himself, too, personal things. As successful as Heath Donovan had been during his student days at Odell, he’d felt like an outsider then, as Bel did now. Heath got into Odell on a tennis scholarship, and he came late, not till junior year. As soon as he got there, his parents split, and money was tight. He couldn’t keep up with the rich kids—not even with Mrs. Donovan, who was his girlfriend then, and later became his wife.
That was the only time he mentioned his marriage. He didn’t speak of his children to Bel, either, even though she could see him with them in the dining hall on any given night. She understood this to mean that he was being sensitive to her feelings. She couldn’t bear that he belonged to these other people and not to her. Heath understood that, so he didn’t shove it in her face, and for that, she was grateful.
If there was a doubt in Bel’s mind that Heath knew her feelings, and maybe even felt something in return, it was put to rest the day she blew out her knee during practice. It happened just a couple of days after the moment that their eyes met in class. (Bel was still floating from that.) They were out for a six-mile run, the trails slick from days of rain. The weather had turned dramatically colder. Bel was running by herself, wondering when Heath would catch up with her, when her foot flew out from under her on a steep, icy stretch of trail. She hurtled downward, trying desperately to arrest her fall, and landed hard against a granite outcropping with her leg twisted underneath her. A bolt of pain shot through her right knee, so bad that it took her breath away.
Lucy Ogunwe, one of the faster girls on the team, came up to Bel from behind, and bent over her, panting.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.
Tears flooded Bel’s eyes. She was too stunned to reply.
“No worries, Donovan’s right behind,” Lucy said, nodding toward the trail above. “Hey, Coach, Enright fell,” Lucy called out to him. “I think she’s hurt.”
Heath ran up to them, taking in Bel, crumpled on the ground, clutching her knee, the sheen of ice all around her.
“Do me a favor,” he said to Lucy. “Go back and tell the girls behind you that there’s an ice patch here. Tell them to slow it down to a walk. Stay safe.”
“Got it,” Lucy said, and set off in the direction Bel had come from.
Through a scrim of pain, Bel realized that Heath had just sent Lucy away. They were alone now. He knelt down beside her.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked, tenderness in his voice.
“My knee.”
“Can you sit up and lean back against the rock? Here, let me help you,” he said.
Heath put his hands on her waist and gently lifted her to a sitting position. The motion tweaked her knee, and she cried out.
“Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said.
The endearment was too much for Bel. Something came loose inside her. As Heath bent over her, his face mere inches from hers, his eyelashes wet with rain, she reached out and laid her hand on his cheek.
“I love you,” she said.
He stopped dead, looking at her so intently that she felt like he must see straight into her soul.
“Are you part of that ridiculous game? I know about it, you know. I’d be very disappointed in you, Bel.”
Despite his words, Heath didn’t move away, or shake off her hand. The warmth of his cheek under her cold fingers spurred her on.
“Never,” she said, her words tumbling out in a rush. “I hate those girls. They’re childish. What I feel for you is real, Heath. It’s not a game. I know you feel it, too. Please, tell me you do.”
His eyes, as they locked on hers, were troubled. “I’m married. You’re a kid. You’re my student. It can’t be,” he said.
That wasn’t a denial. He wanted her. She could see it in his eyes. Bel’s lips parted, and she leaned in, desperate to feel his mouth on hers.
“Tessa,” Heath said, snapping back abruptly.
Tessa Romano had just come over the top of the hill. Tessa was the sturdy redhead with freckles and a potty mouth who’d caused so much trouble in Bel’s relationship with Rose. Bel couldn’t think of a worse girl to discover them like this. Tessa didn’t really like Bel. Of all the Moreland seniors, Tessa was most likely to spill her guts to Darcy the second she got back to the dorm.
“What have we here?” Tessa asked, her eyes lighting up luridly.
“Bel took a fall and hurt her knee,” Heath said, his face going stony, as if a mask had dropped over it. “Come here, please, and give me a hand. Let’s see if we can get her to her feet without her putting weight on the right leg.”
They got on either side, and Bel draped her arms over their shoulders. Leaning on them, she managed to stand up and hobble down the steep slope. Every step was a blur of pain and anxiety. What must Heath think of her now, that she’d been so undisciplined, in such a risky situation? Would Tessa tell people? Could Heath get in trouble? He must hate her now.
Thirty awful minutes later, they reached the bottom of the hill. Heath had called ahead, and they emerged from the woods to see a security department car waiting on the road to whisk Bel to the infirmary.
Heath helped her into the back seat. “I’ll call the infirmary later to check with the doctors. You’ll probably need to go on the injured list. Would you like Tessa to stay with you?”
I want you to stay with me, she thought. But she couldn’t speak the thought aloud. If people started to talk, he might never spend time with her alone again.
“I’m fine,” Bel said curtly.
Heath closed the door with a sharp click, and the car drove away.
At five-thirty, Bel was alone in her room back in Moreland, lying on Emma’s bunk, because she couldn’t climb up to her own. She could hear girls passing by in the hallway, on their way to family dinner in the Commons, the old part of the dining hall. Family dinner was this awful thing that happened once a week, where kids had to dress up and sit at tables with faculty members. If Bel’s injury had an upside, it was that she’d gotten excused from attending tonight. She was supposed to keep her leg elevated and a cold pack on her knee for the rest of the evening. The pain pills the doctor had given her dulled the ache in her knee, but not the sick feeling in her heart. He’d almost kissed her; they’d been that close. But now, their bond was shattered, their great love affair over before it started.
Suddenly the door banged open, and Darcy stormed in, blond hair flying, her pretty cheerleader’s face red with pique.
“What the fuck, Enright. When were you planning to tell me you have something going on with Donovan?”
Shit. Tessa must have told Darcy what she saw, and Darcy had a big mouth. This story would be all over school the second Darcy walked into the dining hall. If Bel wanted to protect Heath from the fallout, she needed to convince Darcy that nothing had happened out on the trail this afternoon.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested, widening her eyes innocently.
“Don’t give me that BS. Tessa saw you with him in the nature preserve this afternoon. She said you were practically in a lip-lock.”
Bel pointed to the bandage and ice pack on her knee. “Uh, hello, you see my injury? I fell and blew my knee out. Mr. Donovan helped me up. That’s all Tessa saw. He had to put his arms around me to lift me. He’s the coach. He’s not gonna leave a runner lying on the ground.”
Darcy looked at Bel’s knee and frowned. “That’s not what she said. She said he pays all sorts of attention to you. The other girls are jealous.”
“Well, she’s lying then—exaggerating anyway.”
“Tessa’s been loyal as a dog for three years at this school. You, I’ve known for like five minutes, and you expect me to believe you over her? Sorry.”
“I swear, Darcy, nothing’s going on. I would never horn in on your contest. Not without your permission.”
“I should hope not. I don’t need anybody cock-blocking me, especially not you, after all I’ve done for you. If I thought you were trying to steal my prize—”
“I would never. Tessa has a wild imagination, and she misinterpreted, that’s all. Swear to God.”
Darcy put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know who to believe. What you’re saying makes sense on the surface, but I get the feeling you’re holding out on me.”
Bel placed her hand over her heart. For a skeptic and a liar herself, Darcy was surprisingly susceptible to flattery. Bel laid it on thick. “Believe that I’m your true friend, Darcy. There’s nothing but love and gratitude in my heart for you.”
“Okay, then prove it.”
“How?”
“It’s almost November, and the Moreland seniors haven’t pulled any good pranks yet. We need to keep up our reputation, and I have something radical in mind for tonight. A revival of a prank my mom’s gang used to pull back in the day. You’ll see.”
“You want me to help with that tonight? You see the shape I’m in. I’m not mobile.”
“Aww, your widdle boo-boo huwts? Tough titties, Enright. Take a Vicodin or smoke some weed, whatever you need to do, but you’re not getting out of this one. Time to earn your keep. If you want the benefits of hanging out with me, you have to do some dirty work.”
That gave Bel a chill. Darcy at her worst could be savage.
“What exactly is this prank?” Bel asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Darcy said, snarkily. “Be at my room at midnight, and you’ll find out.”
She turned on her heel, and was gone.
Bel laid her head on the pillow and wished she’d never come to this damn school. The two things that had kept her going had both fallen to shit today. Her friendship with Darcy was supposed to be easy and fun, but now it just seemed sick and twisted. And her love for Heath—which just a couple of hours ago she believed was reciprocated—would never amount to anything now that her conduct had exposed him to gossip and ridicule. Everything was ruined, and she couldn’t face it.
Her glance fell on the bottle of pain pills on the dresser.
13 (#ulink_49d2bb63-a07c-5ea1-947f-861c12a4838c)
Transcript of Witness Interview conducted by Lieutenant Robert Kriscunas, State Police—Major Crime Unit, and Detective Melissa Howard, Odell NH, PD, with Mrs. Sarah Donovan.
Kriscunas: Mrs. Donovan, you and your husband were the dorm parents for Moreland Hall, so that meant you were in charge of supervising these girls, correct?
Donovan: Uh, sure, yes. We ran the dorm. We did curfew check, room check, ran dorm meetings, that sort of thing. We did milk-and-cookies socials in the common room two nights a week. But there were forty girls in Moreland. Or—thirty-nine, after the, the—My point is, we couldn’t possibly know everything that was going on with each girl. If you’re suggesting—
Kriscunas: This isn’t about your job performance, ma’am. We’re investigating a murder. I’m trying to get the background on these two sisters, and how closely you monitored them. This is standard procedure. Just tell the truth, and it’ll all be fine.
Donovan: Yes, of course I’ll tell the truth.
Howard: Now, Rose Enright—she was your advisee, correct? You must’ve known what was going on with her.
Donovan: Yes, I knew Rose quite well, much better than I knew Bel. I have only the most wonderful things to say about Rose.
Kriscunas: What can you tell us about Rose’s relationship with her sister? Conflicts they might have had with one another? Or other people who got drawn into their conflict, who might wish harm to one of them because of a relationship with the other, if you see what I’m getting at?
Donovan: All I can say is, Rose told me from when I first met her that she and Bel were very different. But those diferences were not enough, in my view, to explain this murder. Rose was very responsible, and believed in following the rules. Bel’s judgment was not as good. She made friends with some questionable elements in the dorm, and that got her into trouble. Those people ought to be looked at. This is not necessarily about the relationship between the sisters. If you focus too much on that, you may miss other important aspects of the Enright girls’ lives.
Kriscunas: Don’t worry. We’ll get to the other stuf. This is just background right now, so we can understand the relationship between Bel and Rose.
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Michele Campbell
The gripping new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Michele CampbellBecause murderers are never who you expect…She was the quiet one… but is she guilty?For twin sisters Rose and Bel, enrolling at the prestigious new boarding school should have been a fresh start. But with its sinister rituals and traditions, Odell soon brings out a deadly rivalry between the sisters.For Sarah and husband Heath, the chance to teach at Odell seems like the best thing that ever happened to their small family – a chance to rise through the ranks and put the past behind them.Until one dark night ends in murder.But who’s guilty and who’s telling the truth? And who’s been in on it all along..?From the Sunday Times bestselling author Michele Campbell comes the breathtaking new thriller SHE WAS THE QUIET ONE.PRAISE FOR MICHELE CAMBPELL:‘A gripping page-tuner…will suit fans of Liane Moriarty’ Hello‘A page-turning whodunnit that will speak to anyone who's ever had a frenemy.’Ruth Ware, bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin Ten‘A gripping, tangled web of a novel―it pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. I loved it!Shari Lapena, author of The Couple Next Door‘A cracking whodunit that will keep you guessing’ Woman’s Own‘Secrets and scandals in an ivy league setting. What could be more riveting?’Tess Gerritsen, Sunday Times bestselling author‘A skillful and addictive story of friendship, betrayal and ultimately love, IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND will keep you turning the pages until its dramatic end.’B A Paris, bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors‘A brilliantly layered, utterly compelling, clever mystery story that crackles with poisoned friendships and dirty secrets… Twisted, shocking and sharply observed. IT'S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND has blockbuster movie written all over it!’ Samantha King
MICHELE CAMPBELL is a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School. She worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime in NYC as a federal prosecutor. Her debut novel It’s Always The Husband was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.
Copyright (#ulink_fa6e4fda-224f-5920-8dda-ca0d1d1cfa8a)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Michele Rebecca Martinez Campbell 2019
Michele Campbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008301828
Praise for Michele Campbell (#ulink_fa67fe16-b70f-58fc-aad3-ebaaf0cd3e2d)
‘A page-turning whodunnit that will speak to anyone who’s ever had a frenemy.’
Ruth Ware
‘A gripping, tangled web of a novel – it pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. I loved it!
Shari Lapena
‘Secrets and scandals in an ivy league setting. What could be more riveting?’
Tess Gerritsen
‘A skillful and addictive story of friendship, betrayal and ultimately love, It’s Always The Husband will keep you turning the pages until its dramatic end.’
B A Paris
‘A brilliantly layered, utterly compelling, clever mystery story that crackles with poisoned friendships and dirty secrets… Twisted, shocking and sharply observed. It’s Always The Husband has blockbuster movie written all over it!’
Samantha King
‘A gripping page-turner…will suit fans of Liane Moriarty.’
Hello!
‘Readers will… be drawn in to the novel’s intricate exploration of divided loyalties and the brittleness of trust.’
Publishers Weekly
For Meg
The only quiet woman is a dead one.
—SYLVIA PLATH
Contents
Cover (#udb414420-df5b-5971-9f0f-1636a4337dd0)
About the Author (#ulink_8dc38c1c-d42f-5e0c-83d8-34f96ab8f241)
Title Page (#ub77d1d6b-ab1f-52a1-b265-f37ee498c1bc)
Copyright (#ulink_ccb9bc50-bdd9-5c2c-b5a2-438a83b54eb3)
Praise (#ulink_717c3fca-9133-5c02-98db-b921a14541f6)
Dedication (#u4a6e642d-2338-56a2-8023-511019d73069)
Epigraph (#u0d957223-a929-5034-ba2f-fd6cc8e79e8c)
part one (#ulink_2c65bbb7-7651-576d-991d-3777eea6a076)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_feb0124e-2344-5d12-94c1-f410da946caa)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3af74c87-81c9-5c1d-bec8-6e5d505dc16b)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_fd0f4c86-f8ce-5b05-b283-140d998f2707)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_133dc69d-54eb-5e6a-a3ab-53dab033808d)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_6f3a7a12-daa5-5c35-ac4c-5e792eda85a5)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_29cd0ac3-8579-5f40-a81b-9a1cb7e3b92b)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_9ec7187e-807b-50b8-83f6-bc27e2742ddd)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_fef27ec7-b43b-5850-949b-12b0c4bbe6ed)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_18928117-f874-53c3-9716-2c34c87d859c)
Chapter 10 (#ulink_31da9927-d4cf-558d-b361-68d0a8941d25)
Chapter 11 (#ulink_b9412401-f9a2-5837-b838-1c9f60c55373)
Chapter 12 (#ulink_4abd7360-50a8-5692-a1b7-ddf33c017804)
Chapter 13 (#ulink_591b77d4-73d2-556a-9472-798c8f5cf60e)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
part two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
part (#ulink_5f704c24-14a2-5071-9021-6c97dda7be0c)
one (#ulink_5f704c24-14a2-5071-9021-6c97dda7be0c)
1 (#ulink_51eca844-8e2f-5940-9348-50a6abdca683)
February
They locked her in the infirmary and took away her phone and anything she might use to harm herself—or someone else. The school didn’t tout this in its glossy brochures, but that’s how it handled kids suspected of breaking the rules. Lock them in the infirmary, isolate them, interrogate them until they crack. Usually you got locked up for cheating on a test or smoking weed in the woods. In the worst-case scenario, hazing. Not murder.
She lay on the narrow bed and stared at the ceiling. They’d given her sedatives at first, and then something for the pain. But her head still pounded, and her mind was restless and foggy all at once. A large lump protruded from the back of her skull. She explored it with her fingers, trying to remember what had caused it. At the edge of her consciousness, something terrible stirred, and she pushed it away. If she turned off the light, she would see it, that thing at the edge of the lake.
That thing. Her sister. Her twin.
All across campus on this cold, dead night, silence reigned. She was being accused of a terrible crime, and there was nobody to speak in her defense. They’d called her grandmother to come defend her. But her grandmother believed she was guilty. Even her closest friends suspected her, and she had to admit, they had reason to. She and her sister were close once, but this awful school had changed that. They’d come to doubt each other, to talk behind each other’s backs, to rat on each other for crimes large and small, to steal from one another. Mere days earlier, they’d gotten into a physical fight so intense that the girl who interceded wound up with a black eye. That girl hadn’t told—yet. But she would now.
It wasn’t fair. Just because they’d had a fight didn’t mean she would kill her sister. How could she? Her sister was the only family she had left. Everybody else had died, or abandoned her. Why would she hurt her only family, her only friend? But every time she closed her eyes, she saw the blood on her hands, the stab wounds, the long hair fanned out. Her sister’s face, white and still in the moonlight. She was there when it happened. Why? It couldn’t be because she was the killer. That wasn’t true. She was innocent. She knew it in her heart.
But nobody believed her.
2 (#ulink_59001a27-3005-5279-9ec0-dd05d4235559)
The September Before
Sarah Donovan was a bundle of nerves as she fed her kids a rushed breakfast of instant oatmeal and apple juice. Four-year-old Harper and two-year-old Scottie were still in their pajamas, their good clothes hidden away among half-unpacked boxes. Today was opening day at Odell Academy, the prestigious old boarding school in New Hampshire, and Sarah and her husband, Heath, had just been appointed the dorm heads of Moreland Hall. They’d been laboring in the trenches as teachers for the past five years, and this new job was a vote of confidence, a step up into the school’s administration. It came with a raise and faculty housing and the promise of more to come. Sarah ought to be thrilled. Heath certainly was. Yet she couldn’t shake a sneaking feeling of dread.
“Hurry up, sweetie, two more bites,” Sarah said to Scottie, who sat in his high chair playing with his food, a solemn expression on his funny little face. Scottie was like Sarah—quiet, observant, a worrier, with a lot going on behind his eyes—whereas Harper was an open book. She met life head-on, ready to dominate it, just like her dad.
“If you’re done, Harps, go brush your teeth.”
“Mommy, I’m gonna wear my party dress,” Harper announced as she climbed down from her booster seat. She was beautiful, and she knew it, with big blue eyes and wild mane of curls, and she loved to dress up and show off.
“You have to find it first. Look in the box next to your bed.”
Harper ran off, and Sarah glanced at the clock. They had a half hour till the students and their families began to arrive. Sarah had spent the afternoon yesterday preparing for the welcome reception, and as far as refreshments and party supplies were concerned, she was all set. Five large boxes from Dunkin’ Donuts sat on the kitchen counter, along with multiple half gallons of apple cider and lemonade, napkins and paper plates, party decorations and name tags. All that remained was to move everything to the Moreland common room and plaster a smile on her face. So why was she so nervous?
Maybe because the stakes were so high. Heath and Sarah had been brought in to clean up Moreland Hall’s unsavory reputation, and the task was daunting. Bad behavior happened all over Odell’s campus, but it happened most often in Moreland. Sarah thought it must have something to do with the fact that a disproportionate share of Moreland girls came from old Odell families. (Moreland had been the first dorm at Odell to house girls when the school went coed fifty years before, and alumni kids often requested to live in the same dorms their parents had.) Sarah had nothing against legacy students per se. She was one herself, having graduated from Odell following in the footsteps of her mother, her father, aunts, uncles and a motley array of cousins. But she couldn’t deny that some legacy kids were spoiled rotten, and Moreland legacies notorious among them.
At the end of the last school year, two Moreland seniors made national news when they got arrested for selling drugs. The ensuing scandal dirtied Odell Academy’s reputation enough that the board of trustees ordered the headmaster to fix the problem, once and for all. The previous dorm head was a French teacher from Montreal, a single guy, who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day—hardly the image the school was looking for. He got demoted, and Heath and Sarah—respected teachers, both Odell grads themselves—were brought in to replace him. A wholesome young couple with two adorable little kids to set a proper example. That was the plan, at least. But there was a problem. Neither Sarah nor Heath had a counseling background. They knew nothing about running a dorm, or providing guidance to messed-up girls. Sarah had spent her Odell years hiding from girls like that, and—to be honest—Heath had spent his chasing them. That was all in the past of course. The distant past. But it worried her.
When Sarah raised her concerns, Heath soothed them away and convinced her that this new job was their golden opportunity. How could they say no? Heath had big plans. He wanted to advance through the ranks and become headmaster one day. The dorm head position was his stepping-stone. He didn’t have to tell her how much he wanted it, or remind her how desperately he needed a win. She knew that, too well. Teaching high school English was not the life Heath wanted. There had been another life, but it crashed and burned, and they’d barely survived. With this new challenge, Heath was finally happy again. She couldn’t stand in his way.
And he was happy. He strode into the kitchen now looking like a million bucks, decked out in a blue blazer and a new tie, with a huge smile on his handsome face.
“Ready, babe?” he said, coming over and planting a kiss on Sarah’s lips.
“Just about. You look happy,” she said, lifting Scottie down from his high chair.
“You bet. I’ve got my speech memorized. I’ve got my new tie on for luck—the one you got me for my birthday. How do I look?”
“Gorgeous,” she said.
It was true. The first time Sarah had laid eyes on Heath was here at Odell, fifteen years ago, when he showed up as a new transfer student their junior year. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen back then, and, despite the ups and downs, that hadn’t changed.
Heath checked his watch, frowning. “It’s after nine. You’d better get dressed.”
Sarah had thought she was dressed. She’d brushed her hair this morning, put on a skirt, a sweater and her favorite clogs, as she usually did on days when she had to teach class. But looking at Heath in his finery, she realized that her basic routine wouldn’t cut it in the new job. She’d have to try harder. That wasn’t comfortable, any more than it had felt natural earlier this week to give up their cozy condo in town and move into this faculty apartment. Moreland Hall was gorgeous, like something out of a fairy tale. Ivy-covered brick and stone, Gothic arches, ancient windows with panes of wavy glass. The apartment had a working fireplace, crown moldings, hardwood floors. But it didn’t feel like home. How could it? It didn’t belong to them; not even the furniture was theirs. Not to mention that the kitchen window looked directly onto the Quad. Anybody could look in and see her business. Life in a fishbowl. She hoped she could get used to it.
“Harper’s getting dressed,” Sarah said. “I’ll take care of Scottie. Can you move the refreshments to the common room and start setting up?”
“Sure thing. And, babe, don’t be afraid to do it up, okay? You look hot when you dress up.”
Heath grinned and winked at her, but Sarah couldn’t help completing the thought in her mind. Unlike the rest of the time, when you look like you just rolled out of bed. But Heath hadn’t said that, and didn’t think it. That was Sarah’s insecurity speaking.
It took fifteen minutes to clean up Scottie, coax him out of his pajamas and into some semblance of decent clothes. Five more minutes were spent swapping out Harper’s Elsa costume (which was what she’d meant by “party dress”) for an actual dress. That left Sarah ten minutes to dress herself. She dug through boxes, but couldn’t find her good fall clothes. She ended up throwing on a flowery sundress because it was the only pretty thing she could lay hands on, but topping it with a woolly cardigan against the September breeze. Not her most polished look, but it would have to do. She swiped on some bright lipstick, gathered the kids and the dog, and set out for the common room.
They were only a few minutes late, but when she got there, the room was empty, the tables and chairs were missing, and Heath was nowhere to be seen. She had a minor heart attack, until she caught the sound of Heath’s rich laugh floating in through the open window, and looked out onto the Quad. Her husband stood on the lush, green lawn, surrounded by the missing furniture, and a gaggle of leggy, giggling girls.
“Hey, what are you doing out there?” Sarah called, laughter in her voice as she stuck her head out the window. With Heath, you could always expect the unexpected.
He turned, flashing a movie-star grin.
“Here’s my lovely wife now. Girls, may I introduce your new dorm cohead, the amazing and brilliant Mrs. Sarah Donovan. Babe, come on out. It’s a beautiful day, I thought, why not party on the Quad?”
Party on the Quad? Girls whooped and high-fived at that. Did Heath understand who he was dealing with? Sarah had some of these girls in her math classes in years past. They were the worst offenders, the delinquents, the old-school Moreland girls, accustomed to bad behavior and few repercussions. She’d have to sit Heath down and have a talk about setting an example.
Sarah led her children and the dog down the hall and out the front door of Moreland Hall. They stepped into the sunshine of the perfect September day. Harper ran to her daddy, who hoisted her up onto his hip. Max, their German shepherd mix, ran circles on the lawn, as Scottie chased after him, squealing. Music filtered out from a dorm room farther down the Quad. And those Moreland girls—the same ones who surfed the Web in her classroom and snarked behind her back—made a fuss over her, and said how much they liked her dress. She didn’t buy the phony admiration. As they circled around her, long-legged and beautifully groomed, drawling away in their jaded voices, Sarah felt like they might eat her alive.
3 (#ulink_3cefa0c7-c803-5259-afcd-0b078370081b)
It was the first day at a new school for Bel Enright and her twin sister, Rose. Bel hated Odell Academy on sight. But she’d promised Rose to give it a real try, so she kept silent, and smiled, and pretended to be okay when she wasn’t.
It was early September. Their mother had died in May, and Bel was still reeling. The cancer took their mom so fast that Bel couldn’t believe she was gone. Mom had been Bel’s best friend, her inspiration. She’d worked in an insurance company to support her girls, but the rest of the time, she was an artist. She painted, and made jewelry from found objects. She wrote poetry and cooked wonderful food. They lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the Valley with thin walls and dusty palm trees out front. But inside, their place was beautiful, furnished with flea-market finds, hung with Mom’s landscapes of the desert, lit with scented candles. Mom was beautiful—the raven hair and green eyes that Bel had inherited (where Rose was blond like their father), the graceful way Mom moved, her serene smile. And now she was gone.
Bel had this fantasy that the twins would go on living in the apartment, surrounded by Mom’s things, by her memory. But they were only fifteen, and it was impossible. Rose was the practical one, and she made Bel understand this. In the week after Mom died, Bel lay in bed and cried while Rose made funeral arrangements and phone calls. Mom was a dreamer, like Bel, and hadn’t provided particularly well for the twins’ future. Who expected to die at forty, anyway? She’d left no will and no guardian, only a modest insurance policy, which Rose insisted they save to pay for college. Bel didn’t know if she wanted to go to college. But she understood that they needed a place to live, or they’d wind up in foster care. Rose called all of Mom’s friends and relatives. Her brother in San Jose, her cousins in Encino, her BFF from childhood, her girlfriends from work. Rose also called Grandma—Martha Brooks Enright, their father’s mother, whom they hadn’t seen since Dad died when they were five. Bel objected to that. Why invite Grandma to the funeral when she hadn’t bothered to see them all these years? She wouldn’t even come. But Rose said they had to try because there was no telling who’d be willing to take them in.
All the people Rose contacted came to the funeral, including Grandma. Mom dying so young, leaving the twins orphaned, tugged at people’s heartstrings. Everybody cried, and said pretty things, but it was empty talk. The only person who actually offered to take them in was their grandmother—who was Rose’s first choice, and Bel’s absolute last. Grandma gave Bel a cold feeling. She was so remote, in her tailored black dress and pearls. She was also the only person who didn’t cry at the funeral. Bel noticed that. She noticed that Grandma didn’t seem to like Mom much, based on how she talked about her. Grandma, being such a blue blood, maybe hadn’t been happy about her son marrying a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Bel’s parents had met in college, at an event honoring the Enright family for endowing a major scholarship. Mom was one of the scholarship recipients. That’s how different their situations were. John Brooks Enright was there representing his rich family, and Eva Lopez was there to say a required thank-you. But opposites attract. They fell in love.
When Dad died, Mom moved the twins back to California, and they didn’t see Grandma again, or even talk to her on the phone. She sent checks on their birthday; that was it. After the funeral, when Grandma took them to a restaurant and offered to have the girls come live with her, Bel confronted her. Why hadn’t Grandma come to see them all those years? Wouldn’t you know, she claimed it was all Mom’s fault, that she’d tried to visit, but was told she wasn’t welcome. Bel didn’t believe it for a minute, and afterward, she told Rose so. But Rose thought maybe Grandma was telling the truth. And besides, what choice did they have? Grandma was the only one willing to take them in.
At the end of May, a week and a half after Mom died, the twins went east to live with their grandmother in her big house in Connecticut. Grandma let them keep one painting each to hang in their rooms, but everything else went to Goodwill. They got on the plane with just one suitcase. Grandma would buy them new clothes better suited to life in a cold climate. It turned out that Grandma was very, very rich; something their mother had never told them. Rose thought they’d won the lottery. But to Bel, it all felt wrong. The Mercedes, the big house with its echoing rooms and elaborate décor, the housekeeper who came every day but barely spoke. She tried to settle in, to get used to the strange new circumstances. Maybe eventually she would have succeeded. But then the rug got pulled out from under them all over again when Grandma announced that she was shipping the twins off to boarding school come September.
Boarding school was something rich people did, but to Bel, it just seemed cold. Not only would they go to some pretentious prep school, but they would live there, and come home only for holidays. The whole idea was the brainchild of Warren Adams, Grandma’s silver-haired, silver-tongued boyfriend. Warren was a lot like Grandma: good-looking, dressed fancy all the time, talked with an upper-crusty accent. Bel didn’t trust him. Warren claimed he was merely Grandma’s lawyer, but if that was true, why did he hang around her house so much? He said he’d been a close friend of Grandpa’s, but then why was he moving in on Grandpa’s wife? And he insisted that boarding school was the best place for the twins, but Bel suspected that Warren wanted them out of the way, so he could have Grandma and her money to himself. Rose didn’t care. She didn’t care if Warren wanted them gone, or even if Grandma did. Odell Academy was one of the top schools in the country, and Rose wanted to go there. She was ambitious like that, and Bel was too depressed to argue. They applied, they got in, and now the day of reckoning had arrived.
That morning, Grandma woke them early. They packed their fabulous new belongings into the Mercedes and drove the three hours from Connecticut to Odell Academy in New Hampshire, where they drove through imposing brick-andiron gates onto a lush, green campus. Beautiful as it was, Bel felt like she was going to prison.
“Isn’t it lovely?” her grandmother said with a sigh. “I remember bringing your father here.”
In the back seat, Bel fought tears. But she could see Rose sitting next to Grandma in the front, staring out the window, awestruck.
“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” Rose said reverently.
They drove past perfectly manicured lawns, following signs to registration at the Alumni Gym. The gym parking lot was full of luxury cars with plates from New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts. The gym itself was housed in a grand marble building that looked like a palace. It made Bel miss her humble high school gym back in California, with its scarred floor and grimy lockers. She missed her old friends, the beach, their little apartment. Most of all, she missed her mother. A tear escaped and ran down her cheek.
“I want to go home,” she blurted.
Grandma met her eyes in the rearview mirror, looking alarmed.
“Isabel, dear, we’ve been over this. Odell is one of the top schools in the country.”
“I know I can’t go back to California. Just let me come home with you, Grandma. I’ll go to the public school. You’ll save so much money. Please.”
“It’s not about the money, darling. Odell is a family tradition. Your father and grandfather went here.”
Why did Grandma think that would matter to her? She’d never met her grandfather, and barely remembered her father. It was Mom who raised them. Mom had gone to public school, and she was the most intelligent and wonderful person Bel had ever known.
Rose reached across the seat and squeezed Bel’s hand. “Belly, you’re just nervous,” Rose said, using her childhood nickname. “First-day jitters. It’ll be okay. I’m here. We’re in this together.”
Bel tried to take comfort in that. It was true, she had her twin. Even if they were different, and didn’t always see eye-to-eye, Rose was family. Bel nodded, and swiped a hand across her eyes.
“Okay.”
Bel took a deep breath, and the three of them got out of the car. Inside, the Alumni Gym wasn’t just a gym, but an entire athletic complex, complete with an Olympic-size swimming pool and indoor tennis courts. Registration tables had been set up on the basketball court, a cavernous space surrounded by bleachers and flooded with light from tall windows. Bright blue banners crowded the walls, trumpeting Odell’s many championships against other prep schools. The room vibrated with voices and laughter, as kids and their parents greeted and hugged. Rose and Bel were coming in as sophomores, which meant that most kids in their grade knew each other already, but Bel tried not to care. Look at them—all stuffy and preppy, in head-to-toe Vineyard Vines. Who needed them? There must be other, cooler kids here somewhere. Kids like her friends back home, who smoked weed and surfed and let their hair grow wild. She and Rose had moved in such different crowds. Rose was a good girl. She got perfect grades, and did Model UN and stocked shelves at the food pantry. Her friends were dweebs like her—Bel meant that in a kind way. She loved her sister. Still, she wouldn’t be surprised if Rose fit right in at this stuck-up school.
The twins picked up their registration packets, which included dorm assignments, class schedules, IDs, and a campus map. Bel and Rose had been assigned to the same dorm, Moreland Hall.
Grandma studied their placement forms, nodding approvingly. “They usually separate siblings, but I requested that they keep you together, because of your loss. I’m so glad they listened.”
They got back into the car and followed the map to Moreland Hall. As they drove up to the turnaround behind the dorm, a group of pretty girls, with long hair and long legs and wearing matching blue Odell T-shirts, waved signs that read: WELCOME HOME MORELAND GIRLS! Home. As if this place could ever be that for Bel. The dorm was vast and built of dark brick, with arches and turrets and mullioned windows. Like a haunted house. It gave Bel the creeps. But she’d promised to try, and she would.
The twins got out of the car. One of the T-shirted girls stepped forward. She was blond and perfect-looking, but when she flipped her hair, Bel caught the unmistakable tang of cigarette smoke, which piqued her interest. Smoking was against the rules here, supposedly. But maybe not everyone followed the stupid rules.
“Hey, I’m Darcy Madden,” the girl said. “We’re the senior welcome committee. So, welcome, I guess.”
“Hi, Darcy! I’m Rose Enright, and this is my twin sister, Bel,” Rose said, stepping forward and smiling eagerly.
Darcy rolled her eyes.
“Right, the orphan twins,” Darcy said. “I heard all about you. It’s a scam, right? You don’t even look like twins to me. Bel’s got black hair and Rose has, hmm, what would you call that? Dirty blond?”
“We’re definitely twins,” Rose said, coloring. “But we’re fraternal, not identical. I look like my dad’s family, Bel looks like our mom.”
“Twins, maybe, but orphans? Since when do orphans wear Lacoste?” Darcy said, looking at Rose’s pink polo with its tiny alligator, a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“I am so an orphan. The definition of that is your parents dying, and mine did,” Rose protested.
Darcy caught Bel’s eye, and they both laughed at Rose’s earnestness. Bel then immediately felt guilty for laughing at her sister. But come on, Rose was uptight. A little teasing would do her good.
“She’s just joking,” Bel said to Rose.
“Yeah, sorry, kidding,” Darcy said. “Come on, orphans, we’ll help unload your stuff.”
Darcy beckoned, and more welcome-committee girls ran over. The extra hands were useful given the mountain of suitcases and boxes stuffed into the trunk of Grandma’s car. The last couple of weeks had been one massive shopping spree, as Grandma got them properly outfitted—her word—for Odell. Rose loved the pastel polo shirts Grandma suggested, the wool sweaters and boat shoes and Bean boots, the formal dresses for dances and dinners. Bel thought they were frumpy and boring. She’d made a stink, and when that didn’t work, she’d begged and pleaded. In the end, Grandma relented and bought Bel some cute things—tops and leggings, jeans, a moto jacket, black suede boots, a couple of minidresses. Both girls also got new phones and laptops, bedding and desk lamps, shower caddies and under-bed storage bins. Grandma didn’t stint, and Bel liked the stuff so much that she got over her hesitation at blowing so much cash. If Grandma didn’t mind, why should she?
Rose and Bel grabbed suitcases. The welcome-committee girls took boxes and they all headed into the dorm, as one girl held the door open for the others. Manners were a thing here, apparently. Bel was surprised not only at how much help was offered, but how respectfully the girls treated her grandmother. Then again, her elegantly dressed, beautifully coiffed grandma fit right in at Odell, better than Bel did. The girls refused to let Grandma carry a thing, and a girl was deputized to take her in the elevator and show her the twins’ rooms so she wouldn’t have to hike up the steep, slippery marble steps.
Bel had hoped that she and Rose would be rooming together. But they were on different floors, Rose on two, Bel on three. Darcy ordered another girl to help Rose, while she hauled Bel’s box up the extra flight of stairs to show Bel to her room.
“Thanks for the help,” Bel said.
“No worries, we always do it,” Darcy said, huffing. “You’re in a double. All sophomores are. It can be grim or it can be fun, depending on who your roommate is.”
“Who’s my roommate?” Bel asked.
“Some dork, probably. C’mon, let’s go see.”
They walked down a long hallway, lined with closed doors on either side. It was dingier than Bel had expected given the beautifully manicured grounds, with old carpeting, dark wainscoting, and a stale, musty smell. Cards were pinned to each door with the occupants’ names carefully written in calligraphy. Darcy stopped in front of Room 305.
“This is you. Looks like you’re with Emma Kim,” Darcy said. She braced the box on her knee and flung the door open.
The room was empty, and extremely tidy. Light streamed through the enormous bay window opposite the door. Bunk beds were crammed in along the wall where they entered, so the open door smacked up against them. Emma had moved in already, claiming a bunk, a dresser and a desk. Her things were neatly laid out, and the bottom bunk was made up with a pretty duvet and pillows. A poster for a boy band hung over her desk.
“Emma’s probably out on the Quad. There’s a welcome reception you need to get to,” Darcy said.
“What’s Emma like?” Bel asked dubiously. From her stuff, she was a neat freak with awful taste in music.
“Kind of a nerd. Not much money. Plays the violin. But she’s pretty, and not a narc. Anyway, if you don’t like her, you’re welcome to hang with me and the seniors.”
The offer gave Bel a warm buzz. This cool, older girl liked her. Maybe it wasn’t so bad here.
“Really? I might take you up on that,” Bel said.
“People’ll tell you we’re a bad influence, but don’t get scared off.”
“It’s not true?” Bel asked.
“Oh, no. It is true.”
Bel laughed, and Darcy smiled at her approvingly.
“You know,” Darcy said, “when I heard we were getting twins from California, I thought, This could be cool. Then when I heard you were Enrights, I got really excited.”
“You know my family?”
“Oh, yeah. My mom and your dad practically grew up together. They belonged to the same country club in Connecticut, and were at Odell at the same time. They even dated. Your dad was a hottie, and something of a wild man, apparently. Then he ran off with this gorgeous Mexican girl he met in college, and my mom was devastated.”
“That ended up being my mom. She’s from California, but yeah, she was beautiful.”
“I can tell that by looking at you. Your sister, though? Kind of a dweeb, no?”
“Rose is all right. She’s just quiet,” Bel said, feeling defensive on her sister’s behalf. Though she couldn’t resist adding, “We’re pretty different.”
“Family. Can’t live with ’em, can’t kill ’em. My fam’s cool, though. Mom lived in Moreland back in the day, not long after the school went coed. This dorm always had the raddest girls. But now they’re trying to break our spirit.”
“Who is?”
“The brass. The headmaster and the trustees. They brought in these new dorm heads to straighten us out, which, trust me, is an impossible task. Besides—”
Darcy looked at Bel meaningfully, and laughed.
“What?” Bel asked.
“They screwed up royally, and they don’t even know it,” Darcy announced, stepping over to the bay window. “C’mere. See that guy in the blue blazer?”
Bel looked down onto a wide, rectangular lawn, surrounded on all sides by graceful brick buildings. Tables and chairs had been set out in the shade cast by Moreland’s walls. Students and their families were gathered around, listening to an extravagantly good-looking man, who stood a little apart, talking to the crowd, gesturing gracefully with his hands. Bel couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Who is he?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Heath Donovan, the new dorm head, well, cohead, along with his mousy math teacher wife,” Darcy said. “He teaches English, too. Is he the bangin’est thing you ever laid eyes on? All the girls want him. I swear I get tongue-tied around him, and normally I don’t shut up.”
“He’s gorgeous. Why do you say it was a screwup to make him the dorm head?”
“A guy like that, in a dorm like this? Come on. By tradition, the Moreland seniors like to cause trouble. It’s practically a graduation requirement. We’re like the biggest beasts, and we have the best pranks planned. Want to hear our crazy idea, inspired by Heath the Hottie?”
“Of course.”
“You have to promise not to tell.”
“I would never,” Bel said.
“It’s a contest. Which senior girl can bed Donovan first.”
It took a second for Darcy’s meaning to sink in. A contest to hook up with the dorm head? Bel hoped she wasn’t serious. Yet, when Darcy laughed uproariously, Bel joined in. Who was she to judge? She’d made a cool, new friend. She ought to go with the flow.
4 (#ulink_a39fc2fa-cc51-5fd8-8684-e3cac468a3a0)
Classes didn’t start until tomorrow, and they already had homework. How was that even possible? Rose only found out because her roommate came back from dinner and started FaceTiming with some boy on her laptop, complaining about the reading for English.
“Wait, what? There’s homework already?” Rose said, panicking mildly.
Rose’s roommate was Skyler Stone from New Jersey. Skyler had long brown hair and wore a lot of makeup to cover her iffy complexion. Other than her skin, she was pretty and well-dressed enough to make Rose feel like a frump by comparison. Then again, most of the Odell girls made Rose feel like a frump. Skyler had been a freshman last year, and acted put-upon to be rooming with a newbie.
“If you want to see your homework,” Skyler said, in a snippy tone, “log on to campus net. It’s posted there in your academic module.”
Rose had no idea what any of that meant, but she was hesitant to annoy Skyler by asking another question. Instead, she grabbed her laptop and headed up the stairs to the third floor to find her sister. There was virtually no chance that Bel knew how to look up homework assignments on campus net already. But Skyler’s sharp tone had stung, and made Rose homesick for her sister.
Rose was the older twin by twenty minutes, and she tried to look out for Bel, though Bel didn’t always appreciate it. Bel had poor judgment sometimes. Mom had worked full time. To make extra money, she taught landscape painting in the evenings and sold jewelry at craft shows on the weekends. When Mom was too busy to look out for Bel, Rose took that responsibility on herself. She could handle it. Rose was intelligent and levelheaded. She got good grades, and was careful in her choice of friends. Bel was moody and immature and ran with a bad crowd. She’d cut class and go hang out on the beach to get high. Rose knew it for a fact. She’d even had words with Bel about it, more than once. When Bel told her to mind her own business, Rose went to Mom. But Mom was sick by then, and had other things on her mind. Besides, Mom wouldn’t hear a word against Bel, even if it was true. Bel was her pet. So, for the six months that their mother was sick before she died, Bel ran wild. Rose was disgusted by it, frankly. If there was a silver lining to the tragedy of her mother’s death, it was getting Bel away from bad influences, and into a situation with stricter supervision.
Rose knocked on the door of 305.
“Come in.”
Bel’s roommate, Emma, was alone in the room. They’d met earlier at the welcome reception. Emma was beautiful and cool, and had been so nice to Rose at dinner tonight. Bel’s room was great, too—the only sophomore double with one of the huge bay windows that Moreland was famous for. Rose was jealous that Bel wound up with the better room and the better roommate. But if having such prime stuff helped her sister settle in here, then Rose didn’t mind.
“Hey, Rose. Bel’s out at the moment,” Emma said.
“Do you know where she is? Apparently, there’s homework already.”
“Yeah, welcome to Odell. There’s always homework.”
“I just wanted to make sure she knows.”
Emma smiled. “You’re such a good sister.”
She wore leggings and an Odell sweatshirt, which seemed to be the uniform for hanging around the dorm at night. Her shiny black hair hung over one shoulder in a long braid. Rose made careful mental notes of these details so she could copy them later. The new clothes she’d been so excited about seemed wrong once she got here. No surprise really, since they’d been picked mainly by Grandma. Bel had pushed back on what Grandma chose for her, but Rose had been afraid to rock the boat. Why make Grandma mad over a few pieces of clothing? But now Rose realized that she’d ended up with a prissy wardrobe. Bel’s clothes were way cooler. Maybe her sister knew best sometimes, after all.
“I wanted to ask Bel if she knows how to log on to campus net to see the assignments, and also borrow a few of her things. Which dresser is hers?” Rose asked.
“That one,” Emma said, pointing.
Rose rummaged quickly in Bel’s dresser and took a couple of pairs of leggings, a flowy top and a cardigan sweater with leather trim on the front. Bel had so much stuff. She wouldn’t miss this.
“I don’t know when Bel’s coming back, but I can show you how to log on to campus net if you like,” Emma said.
“That would be great, thank you.”
Rose handed Emma her laptop. Emma proceeded to demonstrate how to log on to the school-wide network and navigate it. Rose was surprised to find that she had not only homework assignments, but e-mails.
“Wow, I got an invitation to tea with Mrs. Donovan,” Rose said. “Did you get it, too?”
Emma read the e-mail over Rose’s shoulder. “No, it’s just for you,” she said. “The e-mail says she’s your advisor. You’re lucky. Mrs. Donovan is so nice. I had her for Algebra last year. The Donovans are a huge improvement over the last dorm head. Thank God they fired him.”
“Did he do something wrong?”
“He let Moreland get totally out of control. This dorm has a rep, you know. It’s the slut dorm.”
“Seriously?”
“I hate to use that word, since it shames girls for behavior boys get high-fived for. But, yeah. Which brings me to a rather awkward subject.”
“What’s that?” Rose asked, alarmed.
“You may have noticed that Bel and I haven’t exactly hit it off. At dinner, I invited her to sit with me, and she went and sat with those seniors instead. You know. Darcy and Tessa?”
“I’m so sorry. I apologize for her rudeness.”
“Oh, I don’t care about that. I have more friends than I know what to do with. But I feel it’s my responsibility to warn you that Bel’s hanging with a bad crowd.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Darcy Madden and her cohorts are notorious. Trust me, you don’t want your sister messed up with them. You need to say something.”
“I’ll try,” Rose said, shaking her head. Just when she’d been feeling like they’d dodged a bullet by coming to Odell, history started repeating itself. “I don’t know if it’ll do any good, though. This has come up before.”
“What do you mean?” Emma said.
“Oh, well—”
Rose realized she was on the verge of saying too much. She liked Emma immensely, but she didn’t know yet whether she could trust her. If Rose blabbed, Bel might get in trouble.
“Nothing,” Rose said. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“No, really, Rose. You should tell me. I live with Bel. You don’t. If I know there’s something to watch out for, I can help keep her on the straight and narrow.”
Emma had a point there. Rose was on a completely different floor, and wouldn’t be able to look out for Bel as much as she would like.
“Okay, well, back home, when our mother was sick, Bel got . . . a bit wild.”
“Wild, how? Drugs? Boys?”
“I’m not entirely sure. She would cut class, though. You shouldn’t hold it against her. It wasn’t her fault. She had no guidance.”
“You didn’t cut class, did you?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn’t do that.”
“You can’t cut class at Odell. You get a demerit every time, along with early check-in for a week. Two demerits and you can’t compete for the school in sports or other activities. Four demerits is a suspension.”
“I’ll let Bel know,” Rose said.
“You should. I will, too. Word is the Donovans are planning a big crackdown. If Bel doesn’t get her act together, she could get DC’d.”
“‘DC’d’?”
“Sent to the Disciplinary Committee. That happens for serious infractions, and then it goes on your record for college applications. You can even get expelled.”
“That would be awful. You’re right. I need to say something to her.”
“You seem very loyal,” Emma said. “I wish I had you for a roommate instead of her. She strikes me as a real flake, but I bet you and I would be a great fit.”
Rose flushed with pleasure, though she felt guilty for talking about her sister like that with Emma. Then again, Bel was flaky. You couldn’t deny it. Rose shouldn’t feel bad if Emma had figured it out for herself.
5 (#ulink_29b4c662-e3d1-51ee-a478-5d52da77d4a9)
Rose woke up on the first day of classes to find that a perfect ray of sunlight was streaming through a crack in the window blinds. It felt like an omen. Life started fresh today. She jumped out of bed and hurried to get dressed, humming under her breath. Skyler groaned and pulled the covers over her head.
“Are you always this cheerful in the morning?” Skyler said. “I can’t handle it.”
“I’m just excited to go to class.”
Rose had stayed up late last night doing her introductory assignments, but she didn’t feel tired in the least. On the contrary, she was energized. Every word she’d read was emblazoned on her brain, and she couldn’t wait to get into the classroom to talk about the material. Like all the great boarding schools, Odell used the Harkness Method. Rose had read up on the Harkness Method before starting here, and it sounded like the perfect fit for her. Small classes, discussion-based learning. At her old school, she’d hated the big, chaotic rooms. The teachers turned their backs and talked to the chalkboard while kids surfed the Web or goofed around. If Rose spoke up in class, kids rolled their eyes. Odell was different. She could be herself here. She could be smart, and learn a lot, and people would like her for it.
It was a perfectly cool September morning. Delicate light filtered through towering elm trees as Rose walked to her first-ever Odell class. She couldn’t get over the beauty of the campus, its vast expanse. She’d walked five minutes from her dorm to get to breakfast, and then ten minutes back in the opposite direction to get to Founders’ Hall for class, all on brick paths that crisscrossed dew-covered lawns. When she stepped into Founders’ Hall, she felt the weight of centuries in the air of its dark paneled hallways, redolent of books and dust. Yet kids rushed by her on the stairs, laughing and goofing around as if the grandeur was old news. Rose couldn’t imagine getting to the point where she took this place for granted, and yet, she wished for it to happen, because that would mean she belonged.
The walls of the social studies classroom were lined with framed maps from another century. A marble bust of George Washington watched her from a pedestal in the corner. The teacher was eloquent and thoughtful, and the discussion lively from the start. Rose made her first comment about ten minutes in—something about how the Constitution was the result of compromise—and Mr. Mendez liked it so much that he wrote it on the board. For the rest of the class, kids kept referring to “Rose’s point,” and she was so proud of herself that she had to take care not to act cocky. English class second period was amazing, too. Mrs. Sunderland went around the room and asked each of them to name a favorite book and say how it had influenced them. Rose talked about the Little House books, which she’d read obsessively between the ages of ten and fourteen. Not only did nobody roll their eyes at her, but two other girls piped up to say they’d read those books over and over, too, and loved them just as much.
French was the best of all. Mademoiselle LeBlanc was a native speaker who insisted that the students speak only French in the classroom. (She also had a chic haircut and beautiful suede boots.) Rose was terrified at first. She’d been studying French since middle school, and had never been asked to do more than conjugate verbs on paper. Miraculously, when her turn came, her tongue knew what to do. “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Rose said, the words flowing out almost effortlessly. “Je m’appelle Rose Enright. Je viens de Californie.” The teacher nodded approvingly, and Rose suddenly had a new ambition. She would become fluent in French, speak with a perfect accent, live in Paris. Odell had a study-abroad program where you could live with a French family for a summer. She would convince Grandma to send her. Oh, life was exciting.
Emma Kim was in Rose’s French class, and when the period ended, she fell into step beside Rose, as if it was perfectly natural for them to walk to lunch together. The cool morning had become a bright, sunny day, and the Quad smelled of warm earth. Rose chatted and laughed with her new friend as they headed to the dining hall. Emma was a returning sophomore like Skyler, but didn’t seem to mind that Rose was new. Rose cherished the hope that they would become close friends. The girls she sat with at lunch in her old school had never been much more than acquaintances. They didn’t hang out, didn’t text, didn’t invite her shopping or to the movies. It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried. She didn’t really understand why they didn’t want to be closer; maybe they didn’t consider her fun. Here at Odell, she hoped, the definition of fun would be different. Rose herself would be different here. If this morning was any indication, she would fit in, have friends, be liked and admired.
The new part of the dining hall, known simply as the New, was a soaring, modern space, all glass and white walls, with brightly colored flags hanging from the high ceilings (Odell had students from thirty countries). Giant photos of local flora decorated the walls. To Rose, the New looked like some space-age art gallery with tables. As they walked in, a warm buzz of conversation washed over Rose, and her heart lifted. Bel was here somewhere in the crowd. Rose wanted to find her, to gush to her twin about this amazing place. She searched the crowd as she followed Emma to the food line, but didn’t see Bel.
She noticed something else interesting, however.
“What’s that writing on the walls?” Rose asked Emma.
“The names of every graduating senior are carved on the panels.”
“Since when?”
“Going back, like, to the beginning of time. This is the new part of the dining hall, but if you go to the Commons, where they have the formal dinners, you’ll see names dating back to the early 1800s.”
“Seriously? My father and grandfather went here. Do you think I could find their names?”
Emma looked impressed. “Of course, you just need to know their class year. I had no idea you and Bel were legacies. She never mentioned it.”
“Oh, Bel doesn’t care about that sort of thing.”
“Not care? That’s crazy. My parents grew up in Korea, and even they knew Odell. Once my name gets carved on the wall, I’m not letting anybody forget it.”
They got their food, and made a beeline for a table where some other sophomore girls from Moreland were sitting. Apparently, students sat by class year. Seniors rated the best tables, farthest from the glass doors that admitted cold blasts of air during the bitter New Hampshire winters, closest to the food line. Emma told Rose to never, ever try to sit there. They would chase you away, your name would be mud. Freshmen were relegated to the outskirts, to an area they called Siberia. The other grades filled in the middle. Kids in the fast, popular crowd tended to sit at coed tables, whereas your normals were more likely to sit single-sex, like the Moreland table they were at now.
Skyler was at the Moreland table, sitting next to a girl named Lucy Ogunwe, who ran track and sang in the choir, and was in Rose’s civics class. There were girls Rose recognized, and others she hadn’t met yet. Emma introduced her around, but the glow of welcome was diminished by a flicker of worry when it hit home that Bel wasn’t here. Bel was nowhere to be seen, in fact. At their old school, when Bel didn’t show up to lunch, it usually meant she was ditching.
Toward the end of lunch period, a loud whoop went up from the tables where the seniors sat, and Rose turned to look. A muscular boy with a prominent forehead was wiping a gob of whipped cream from his face while kids around him laughed.
“You’re gonna regret that,” he said, his loud voice carrying in the sudden quiet.
Darcy Madden, identifiable by her bright blond hair, stood beside him, doubled over laughing. The boy grabbed Darcy and smeared the gob of whipped cream on her face. Darcy squealed, then struggled and broke loose, and the two of them ran from the room.
“That’s like something that would happen in my school in L.A.,” Rose said. “Lunch was out of control there.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not normal here. That was Darcy, the one I warned you about, and her boyfriend, Brandon. Those two really push the envelope. Disruptive behavior can get you demerits, you know. The teachers don’t look happy.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Do you see your sister?”
“What? Where?”
“She’s sitting right there,” Emma said, nodding toward the table Darcy had fled from.
Rose following Emma’s gaze and saw Bel, who was fully ensconced, chatting and smiling like she’d known those people forever.
“Oh. That’s where she went.”
Rose was actually relieved to see Bel in the lunchroom. At least she wasn’t off in the woods somewhere, ditching school. But Emma apparently didn’t see it that way.
“Like I was telling you last night,” Emma said, “those seniors are bad news. You need to do something.”
“What should I do?”
“Go over there, talk to her.”
“Now? Really?”
“Yes, really. She’s your twin sister, right? It’s on you to look out for her reputation. If Bel gets in trouble, it’ll reflect badly on you.”
That was a new concept to Rose. Back home, the school was big and impersonal, and nobody cared who your family was, unless they were rich or famous. But what Emma said made sense. At Odell, everybody knew everybody. Heck, her ancestors’ names were carved on the wall. And she didn’t want Bel to get in trouble. She wanted to be a good sister, and help her find her way here.
“You’re right. I’m going to say something,” Rose said.
Rose got up and marched across the dining hall toward the senior tables. Bel saw her coming, and narrowed her eyes, shaking her head slightly to tell Rose to keep away. Rose hesitated. She didn’t want to embarrass her sister in front of the seniors, but she was also conscious of Emma and the other Morelanders watching to see what she would do. She had to do something, right? Emma had said so. She strode up to the senior table.
“What are you doing?” Bel asked, looking alarmed.
“What are you doing?” Rose replied.
“What does it look like? I’m eating lunch.”
“Come sit with the sophomores.”
“Why? I’m happy here.”
“You shouldn’t sit at a senior table. It’s not done.”
A tough-looking girl with wavy red hair looked at Rose with a bemused expression. “Who is this chick?” she asked Bel.
“My sister,” Bel said.
The redhead reached over and patted Bel on the head playfully. “It’s cool, sis. Darcy said Bel could sit with us. She’s like our new mascot.”
Mascot? That sounded a bit condescending, and yet, Rose felt a tentacle of jealousy stir. She met her twin’s eyes pleadingly.
“Bel, come sit with me, please. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Get lost, Rose. I’m busy.”
In front of strangers, no less. Bel was probably just showing off for her new friends, but still, that really hurt. Rose was only trying to help. Couldn’t Bel see that? Why didn’t she just come along, instead of turning this into a scene?
“You don’t have to be so nasty,” Rose said.
“Hey, is that my sweater you’re wearing?” Bel said.
“Yeah, it’s cute. I borrowed it.”
“Without asking?”
“Since when do I have to ask?”
“Since when do we share clothes? We don’t like the same things. We’re not the same size. Give it back.”
“Fine, I’ll give it back tonight,” Rose said.
“She means now,” the redhead said, in a snarky tone. “You are big, sis. You’ll stretch it out.”
Rose’s cheeks burned. This nasty girl had just called her fat in front of a table full of seniors. Not only did Bel not rise to her defense. She actually smirked.
“Screw you, Bel. I don’t want your skeevy clothes anyway.”
Rose tore the sweater off and threw it in her sister’s face. The look of shock in Bel’s eyes gave Rose a sick thrill as she turned on her heel and fled back to the Moreland table. Rose had always been the loving sister, had always looked out for Bel. Come to think of it, she didn’t get much in return, did she? Bel never repaid the favor, never invited Rose to hang out with her cool friends. To the contrary. She’d been willing to humiliate Rose in front of the seniors.
The Moreland girls had left already, which came as a relief. Hopefully they’d missed the conclusion of that awful scene. Rose’s tray sat alone on the table, the half-eaten taco swimming in a pool of congealing orange grease. She bused her tray, worrying kids would gossip about her now. Her fabulous first day of classes had been ruined; and her self-confidence, which had been soaring this morning, was now in tatters. All because of Bel. As much as Rose loved her sister, she would struggle to forgive her for this.
6 (#ulink_09d8d74c-214a-5f99-b677-0321de93b443)
Transcript of Witness Interview conducted by Lieutenant Robert Kriscunas, State Police—Major Crime Unit, and Detective Melissa Howard, Odell, NH, PD, with Miss Emma Kim.
Kriscunas: Miss Kim, I’m confirming for the record that your parents have given us permission to speak with you, and that you’re being interviewed solely as a witness. You’re not a suspect, target or person of interest in this case.
Kim: I should hope not.
Kriscunas: That’s just something we say for the record. Okay, let’s get started. Can you tell us, how well did you know the Enright sisters?
Kim: Pretty well. We were in the same grade. Bel was my roommate, although we weren’t exactly friends. Rose, I was quite friendly with.
Kriscunas: When you say you weren’t friends with Bel, do you mean that you didn’t get along with her?
Kim: I get along with everybody, Detective. But with Bel, we moved in different crowds, and to be honest, I didn’t always approve of her behavior. I kept my distance.
Kriscunas: Yes, and we want to go into detail about Bel’s bad behavior. But for now, let’s stick to the state of the sisters’ relationship. What can you tell us about that?
Kim: Once they came to Odell?
Kriscunas: Anything you can tell us about their relationship would be helpful, as far back as you know.
Howard: For instance, if you know, were Rose and Bel close growing up?
Kim: From what Rose said, I think they were friends to each other. But my sense is, they weren’t close, because they’re so different—were so different.
Kriscunas: In what way were they different?
Kim: In every way. I mean, here at Odell, kids couldn’t believe they were actually twins. First of all, they look nothing alike. Bel was this sultry brunette and Rose was fair, but beyond that—I mean, Bel was drop-dead gorgeous. And Rose was, well, normal. Pleasant-looking. Some might say plain.
Kriscunas: Did that cause problems between them?
Kim: Problems, how?
Kriscunas: Jealousy?
Kim: Oh, so girls are all catty and jealous if one is pretty and the other isn’t? I’m sorry, but that narrative is so trite.
Howard: I don’t think the lieutenant meant it that way, Emma. We’re interested in specific instances of bad feelings between the Enright sisters, that you were aware of.
Kim: If they were jealous, then they were each jealous of the other. I think they both wanted to be more like the other. Rose was really into school, and she was very successful at Odell from the start. Teachers liked her. She was especially close to her advisor, Mrs. Donovan.
Howard: Yes, we’re going to be speaking with Mrs. Donovan.
Kim: Rose studied really hard, did lots of extracurriculars. Her grades were good. Where Bel struggled academically, and I think it bothered Bel that Rose was so into school.
Howard: Bothered her, how?
Kim: Like, she found it annoying and prissy, but she was also jealous. Bel, on the other hand, immediately got accepted into this fast, popular clique. Rose didn’t like that. She worried Bel would get in trouble. But deep down, she was jealous of Bel’s social life. On a Saturday night, Bel would be of partying, but you could always find Rose in the library.
Kriscunas: Rose was quiet, Bel was wild?
Kim: Mmm, that’s too simplistic. In some ways, Bel was the quiet one. She hung out with the older kids, but she was a follower, not a leader. Like with the attack—you know, the slipper incident?
Kriscunas: Yes, we’re going to go over that in some detail in a moment.
Kim: Okay, that was all Darcy Madden’s doing. Bel was just along for the ride. Like I said, a follower. Also, Bel barely ever talked in class, which is somewhat unusual here, and part of the reason she didn’t do well academically. Bel and I didn’t have any classes together, because I’m on the Honors track, and she was definitely not on the Honors track. But I heard from other kids that she’d sit there like a bump on a log, terrified to open her mouth. Except in English.
Kriscunas: You say that like it was important.
Kim: Well. Let’s just say that Mr. Donovan was her English teacher. I can talk about that if you want to. Uh—but Rose was very self-confident. Honestly, even though you could say she wasn’t as popular as Bel, Rose fit in better here.
Kriscunas: When you say Bel was popular, you’re talking about with those seniors she hung out with?
Kim: Yes, exactly.
Kriscunas: You say they were a fast crowd.
Kim: Yes, I mean, come on. Darcy Madden and Tessa Romano—you know what they did, right?
Kriscunas: Absolutely, and that’s on the agenda. We think that incident could be quite important in terms of motive. Tell us more about Bel and the seniors. How did Bel come to hang out with them? And did it cause the tension with Rose?
Kim: How they started hanging out, I don’t know. It was just like that from Day One. I remember the very first day of classes, Bel was already sitting with the seniors, which was pretty unheard of. My guess is, Darcy took a shine to Bel, and since Darcy was the queen bee, that meant Bel was in. Anyway, I told Rose that Bel was headed for trouble, hanging out with that crew. Those girls were notorious for doing drugs, smuggling boys in, pulling pranks, that sort of thing. Rose tried to talk sense into Bel, but Bel wasn’t having it.
Howard: Were there specific incidents you recall where they argued over it?
Kim: Oh, they fought about it all the time. Rose felt like her sweet sister was taken over by pod people, you know? But nothing she said made any diference. You have to understand, showing up here as a newbie sophomore is not easy. To have Darcy Madden favor you with her attention–Bel’s head was turned. It made her feel special. Those weren’t just any friends. They were the most powerful friends you could have at this school, socially speaking. Until it all went wrong, with the attack.
Kriscunas: We understand that the sisters were on opposite sides of that incident. Do you think it’s what caused the rift between them?
Kim: The rift had been developing for a while. And not just over Bel hanging with Darcy’s crew. There were other reasons, too. Fighting over clothes, over boys—over a particular boy. But yeah, it was the attack that caused the most serious breach between them.
Howard: Serious enough to lead to murder?
Kim: You’re the police. You tell me.
Kriscunas: Miss Kim, you were the student who had the best access to both sisters. We’re interested in hearing what you think.
Kim: Honestly? I think there are several possible explanations. There was more going on here than you realize.
Kriscunas: Like what?
Kim: Well . . . you say you’re going to talk to Mrs. Donovan?
7 (#ulink_3a6fb9f6-04fe-5ca7-bd1a-bd465d8e63ae)
“To sweet, beautiful Sarah,” Heath said, raising his champagne glass. “‘One half of me is yours, the other half yours, and so all yours.’ Happy thirty, darling, I love you more than ever.”
“I love you, too. So much,” Sarah said, her eyes sparkling with happy tears.
They clinked glasses, took sips, then leaned across the table and kissed lingeringly. His lips were cool and delicious from the champagne. It was the Saturday night after the first week of classes, and the dining room at Le Jardin glowed with flowers and candlelight. Soft music played in the background, and Sarah felt lucky. She would have settled for putting the kids to bed, making a pot of spaghetti and opening a bottle of red wine. But this was a milestone birthday, and Heath had surprised her with dinner at her favorite restaurant, expense be damned. Life with him had its ups and downs, but it was never less than exciting.
“What you said just now, was that Shakespeare?” Sarah asked.
“Yep. The Bard of Avon never fails to impress. There are some benefits to being married to an English teacher, you know.”
He ducked his head sheepishly, and she read his thoughts. Heath loved his work, but he was ashamed of the size of his paycheck. He’d never intended to spend his life as an English teacher. There had been a more fabulous, lucrative goal once, and he’d come achingly close to achieving it. Heath was supposed to be a famous novelist by now. On the bestseller list, winning literary prizes, opening fat royalty checks at a house on Martha’s Vineyard. But things had gone terribly wrong, and they’d fled back to Odell in disgrace. (A private disgrace, with a confidentiality agreement to ensure it stayed that way.) Back to a safe place, where they’d first met. Now, a fancy dinner out was a rare treat. Sarah wasn’t disappointed with their lot in life. They had each other, the two babies she’d always dreamed of, the dog, jobs that were rewarding if not glamorous. But Heath was disappointed, and he didn’t hide it.
“There are many wonderful benefits to being married to Heath Donovan,” she said, lifting his hand and kissing it.
His smile reached his eyes, and she was grateful for it. In the past few weeks, since they’d gotten the promotion to dorm head, Heath had found his way again after years in the wilderness. An ambitious man of a literary bent and few practical skills could do worse than rising through the ranks at a prestigious boarding school like Odell. Heath had a plan. Dorm head today, but tomorrow, head of the English department. Then dean of faculty, and eventually, headmaster. It would take time, but at least he was dreaming again. Heath wasn’t Heath when he didn’t dream. Sarah was starting to believe that the demons were banished, but she wouldn’t say it out loud, for fear of jinxing it.
They sipped champagne, and chatted about their week. There were a couple of new girls in Moreland, twins, who’d been orphaned. Heath and Sarah had taken them on as advisees, and would keep a close watch. They both remembered their early days as students at Odell. How tough the place could be, how hard it was to get your feet under you. Sarah hadn’t been thrilled about the dorm head job. She took it for Heath’s sake. But if this job gave her the chance to help girls like the girl she’d been once—shy, insecure, daunted by the school and everyone in it—then something good could come of it.
Heath opened his menu and studied it, an adorable wrinkle forming between his brows. Sarah paused to appreciate his face—the elegant bone structure, the intense blue-green eyes. Even his ears were perfect—small and neat and dignified.
He looked up and caught her staring. “What?”
“Just thinking how lucky I am.”
“Me, too, always, love,” he said. “Hey, what do you say we split the seafood tower for the first course?”
She looked at the price and raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, come on, we just got raises,” he said. “YOLO, am I right?”
She laughed. “You sound like a Moreland girl.”
“Uh-oh, it’s starting to rub off. Seriously, it’s your birthday, so I’m making an executive decision. We split the seafood tower. You get the Dover sole because I know you want it. I get the filet mignon. Then we order the chocolate lava cake with a candle and two spoons.”
“Mmm, you always know what I like,” she said.
“That’s why you married me. So, what do you say?”
“You’ve got a deal.”
They placed their orders, and Sarah pushed the thought of money from her mind. It wasn’t something she’d worried about much, before the setbacks of the past few years. Sarah came from a tight-lipped, old-money, old-Odellian family. She grew up in a stately house in a wealthy town in Massachusetts, where life was comfortable, but cold and restrained. Nobody showed off, nobody cried or danced or displayed much emotion of any kind. Her mother wore sensible shoes and tweed skirts, and belonged to the Junior League. Her father commuted into Boston, to a law firm that his own father had worked at before him, and that he would work at till he retired, or died in the harness, whichever came first. They went to dinner at the country club and to church on Sundays, and talked about trimming the hydrangeas and how the neighbors’ house needed painting. Money was never discussed—which was possible only because they had plenty of it, of course.
Heath arrived at Odell like a whirlwind in junior year, on a tennis scholarship. Most kids who came late in the game never made it to the golden circle, but Heath was different. Kids were bored with each other by then, and Heath—so good-looking, so athletic, so charming—was a sensation. Sarah got assigned to be his peer tutor in math, or she never would’ve gotten near him. They had no classes together, and Sarah didn’t run with the popular crowd. Not that she wanted to; they were a rotten bunch. The same beautiful mean girls Heath sat with at lunch had tormented Sarah since freshman year. Yet Heath took a shine to Sarah, despite the disdain of his friends. Maybe he took a shine to her because his friends didn’t like her, because she was different from them—low-key and nonjudgmental. Heath found refuge in talking to Sarah. He was confident on the surface, but that was an act. His parents were going through a brutal divorce. His father had left his mother for another woman, and Heath’s mother—who’d doted on him and raised him to believe in his own greatness—tried to kill herself. There were lawyers involved, involuntary commitment to a mental institution, money problems. Nobody at school knew except Sarah. She kept Heath’s secrets, and loved that he trusted her. Once he kissed her, that was it, she was done. Though they didn’t get engaged till the end of college. Her parents were none too happy. They thought Heath was beneath her.
Their first few years as newlyweds were bliss. They lived in the city. She worked in a consulting firm, he freelanced for magazines and wrote his novel on the side. Sarah thought Heath was a literary genius, even if his novel hit a bit too close to home for comfort. It was the story of a relationship between a wealthy young woman and a penniless young man that began at an East Coast boarding school. The boarding school details were lifted straight from their Odell years. The couple was even named Henry and Sophia—H and S, Heath and Sarah. But the resemblance ended there, and the latter half of the book—in which Henry and Sophia move to France and get caught up in a decadent, expat social scene that ends in murder—was searingly brilliant. Sarah wasn’t the only one who thought so. Heath got a book deal, a major one, and had a famous director interested in the film rights. They were on the way to realizing their dreams—well, his dreams. Heath’s big break was well deserved. He was a rare talent, a genius. They’d both known it since high school. The world had now caught on, and was giving him the recognition he deserved.
They were so happy.
Then the accusation of plagiarism surfaced. An early reviewer caught it. Whole passages lifted directly from Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, not the revised edition, but the first, convoluted one, that wasn’t widely read. Heath denied it, and Sarah believed him with all her heart. It was only when the publisher pulled the book, prior to publication, that she went out and bought a copy of Tender Is the Night and compared for herself. Heath must’ve thought that nobody would check, because when you put the pages side by side, the plagiarism was obvious. She was almost as angry about his carelessness as his lies. How could he have been so cavalier about something so important to their future? He was used to being admired and adored; that was why. Heath was confident that his transgressions would be overlooked, or forgiven. And she tried to forgive. But it was hard.
Heath was asked to pay back the advance, which was a problem since they’d already spent it. That hadn’t been Sarah’s doing. She was frugal by nature, but Heath wanted things. A lot of things. New clothes, a car, a better apartment, restaurants, parties. Who was she to say no, when he’d felt so deprived, growing up? Her parents stepped in and lent them the money to pay back the publisher—and never let them forget it.
Her father had thankfully managed to hush up the scandal, or else Heath would’ve been unemployable in teaching at any reputable school. If it came out, even now, a school like Odell would have no choice but to fire him. Some nights Sarah lay awake, worrying. About the past coming back to haunt them. About Heath’s mental stability, how despondent he’d become when things went wrong, and whether he was susceptible to falling into that deep, dark pit again. She didn’t think so. She prayed not. She was grateful that, with the dorm head job, he’d found something to feel excited about again. She wanted him to be happy. Heath wasn’t a dishonest person. He’d just wanted to succeed so badly—to impress Sarah, to impress her parents—that he’d taken a shortcut to get there. Then he got caught, and felt ashamed, which was why he’d lied. It was a unique situation, far in the past, and unlikely to repeat itself. Besides, they had the children to think about now, and Heath adored his children. He wouldn’t let himself get out of control emotionally again, she was certain.
Maybe not certain. But hopeful.
The waitress headed for their table, carrying the seafood tower. Heads turned to admire the dramatic presentation, just as they’d turned when her handsome husband walked in the door a half hour before. People were naturally drawn to Heath. The Moreland girls were crazy about him already. A colleague had said to her that very afternoon: Whenever I see your husband, he’s trailing a gaggle of pretty girls. Sarah didn’t let it bother her. She trusted Heath, and besides, it wasn’t his fault. If she was a student here, she’d follow him around, too. Just look at that incredible smile, as the waitress presented the seafood tower. It was wonderful to see. Heath’s happiness was the only gift Sarah needed.
8 (#ulink_0077faa7-42ad-573a-a13b-343cc2eee782)
Bel sat in Mr. Donovan’s classroom in Benchley Hall, watching the hands on the old wall clock creep toward two-twenty, when English class would end. She had a meeting scheduled with Mr. Donovan then, and the thought of it made her queasy. Though she’d been feeling off all day anyway in this awful, sticky heat. Everyone said that the heat wave was unusual, but that didn’t help her sleep at night or eat anything more substantial than a piece of fruit. Heat in L.A. had never bothered her, but the climate here was just evil.
The fan buzzing in the corner lulled her, and her eyelids drooped. But then Mr. Donovan spoke, and she bolted upright, her eyes flying open. Heath Donovan was the one thing in this new life that made Bel feel wide awake. He stood at the whiteboard, writing out a line from Shelley and explaining the concept of synecdoche. English was her favorite class just because she liked watching him and listening to his voice. Every day, Bel noticed new details about him. A small scar above his eyebrow, a beauty mark on his cheek, how his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the whiteness of his teeth. She paid attention not only to what he said, but how he moved, when he laughed, what he wore. Today he was wearing khaki pants and a blue-check dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The outfit looked amazing on his tennis player’s body. He wasn’t overly jacked like so many of the jock boys. He was lean and elegant. She didn’t try to notice these things. He just made an impression on her, whether she liked it or not.
Mr. Donovan turned to recite the line to the class.
“‘Its sculptor well those passions read,’” he quoted, in his deep, rich voice, “‘which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked him.’”
He asked for a volunteer to identify the synecdoche in that line, and Bel averted her eyes. If she tried to speak, she’d stutter and blush and generally make a fool of herself. Not because she hadn’t done the reading—this was the one class she always prepared for. But because she was shy in front of these hyper-verbal Odell kids, and because Mr. Donovan unnerved her. That part was Darcy Madden’s fault. Normally Bel would never stoop so low as to get a crush on a teacher, but Darcy and her posse of Moreland seniors were obsessed with Mr. Donovan and talked about him nonstop. Naturally their obsession had rubbed off on her. Bel listened to Darcy, and followed her lead in all things. Darcy was older, sophisticated. She understood how things worked around here. Bel felt fortunate to have been taken under her wing.
Yet, she had to laugh, because the seniors’ contest to seduce Mr. Donovan had gone nowhere. Girls went to his office hours or cornered him in the dining hall. They flirted shamelessly, made heavy eye contact. The bold ones flashed some cleavage or bared a thigh in a short skirt. And they got no response. Zero. Donovan didn’t seem to notice at all. He was apparently loyal to his wife, though nobody understood why. Darcy said the wife was a total mouse, a real loser. That she must have some unnatural hold over him. Maybe it was money, or some secret she was using to blackmail him. Otherwise, he’d be susceptible to the seniors’ charms, like any man would be. To Darcy’s own charms, anyway. Bel had to agree—Darcy was killer. She had those perfectly regular features: the long, swinging blond hair; a sharp tongue hidden behind a wide smile. Everybody danced to her tune. To Bel, she was the Oracle of Moreland, not to be contradicted. Yet, Bel thought Darcy was wrong about Mr. Donovan. His love for his wife was pure, and Mr. Donovan was chivalrous. Honorable, like a knight of old. He would see Darcy’s sharp edges, and keep his distance. Which made him all the more attractive in Bel’s book.
The bell rang. Class ended, and Bel gathered her things, hesitating. Was she supposed to go up to him, or wait for him to speak to her? Would their meeting happen here in this room, or should she go to his office? Talking to teachers wasn’t Bel’s thing to begin with, and him, well, she couldn’t imagine speaking to him alone. Well, she could imagine it, but the things she imagined were unlikely to happen.
A couple of kids went up to the front of the room to talk to him, and Bel breathed a sigh of relief. Kids at Odell loved to hang around after class and suck up to teacher. Back home, being smart made you uncool, but here it was the opposite. Everybody spoke up in class, and competed to get noticed. Everyone except Bel, who kept her mouth firmly shut unless a teacher called on her, and then struggled to get a word out. Back home, teachers hadn’t cared what she thought, not enough to put her on the spot anyway, and she preferred it that way.
With Mr. Donovan distracted, Bel took the opportunity to slink toward the door, hoping to escape before he noticed. She could claim she forgot, or that something suddenly came up, or—
“Bel,” Mr. Donovan called. “Hold on. I’ll be done in a minute.”
Crap. Bel waited, palms sweaty, heartbeat skittering. Once they were alone, she’d be struck dumb, she knew it.
After a few minutes, the students left to go to their sixth-period classes, and he came over to her.
“Were you going to my office?” he asked, with a puzzled smile. Up this close, his teeth were so white, his eyes so blue, and he smelled so good that she felt dizzy.
“Um. Sorry?”
“I saw you leaving. You remember we have our first advisory meeting now, right?” he asked.
“Oh. Right. Yes. No, I didn’t forget, I just wasn’t sure, uh, where to, or—what to do,” Bel said, her cheeks burning. She sounded like the biggest idiot.
“It’s so warm today. I thought we could grab an iced coffee and sit outside. My office is like an oven, but there should be some breeze if we go over to the Art Café. Come on.”
Coffee? With Mr. Donovan? Alone? The Moreland girls would be pea-green with envy.
They went to the snack bar in the basement of the Art Studio, which was empty at this hour, since most kids were in class. (Bel had scheduled the meeting for her free period.) Mr. Donovan bought two iced coffees, which he carried to the patio out back. They sat down facing each other at a small iron table in the shade of a tall tree. (The trees in this place were insane. All that chlorophyll, she could gag on it.)
“Since this is our first advisory meeting, I thought I’d start by explaining the role of advisor here at Odell, which is not exactly the same as a guidance counselor in a public school,” Mr. Donovan said.
Bel was relieved that he was talking about official-sounding stuff. If she was lucky, she could sit here and enjoy listening to him and never have to say a word.
“At Odell, we’re fortunate to have professionals for every function,” Mr. Donovan continued. “There are counseling services at the health center if you’re having emotional or mental health issues. You’ll be assigned a college counselor starting next year. My job is to advise you about academics, and more generally . . .”
She got distracted by the color of his eyes. They were such an intense shade of aqua-blue that they almost seemed fake. Was it possible that he wore colored lenses? But they went beautifully with the long, sooty lashes, and the rich, dark color of his hair, so maybe they were real after all.
“Bel, are you listening?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I apologize. I just—” She blushed furiously and shook her head.
“No. You know what? It’s my fault, droning on like a page out of the handbook. No wonder you zoned out. Let’s start over. I’m Heath, and I’m your advisor, nice to meet you.”
He reached across the table, and she realized he intended to shake her hand. Had he just given her permission to call him by his first name? Their eyes met, and she put her hand in his. The warmth of his grip jolted her.
“And you are—?” he asked.
“Isabel Enright. Bel. Call me Bel. I’m your, um, your student. Nice to meet you, too.”
The exchange was so silly that she laughed, and felt less awkward after that. Maybe he wouldn’t prove impossible to talk to after all. She simply had to concentrate on what he said, not how he looked.
Easier said than done.
“Think of me as your guide to Odell,” Heath said, releasing her hand. “You come to me with a question or a problem, and it’s my job to help you. Maybe you have an academic issue, or a personal problem, or maybe you just don’t know which extracurricular activity to try. If I can help you, I will. If it’s out of my wheelhouse, I’ll find the right person for you to speak to. Odell can be so confusing at first, and the point of the advisor is to help you feel comfortable right away. Odell is your home now, and we’re your family, your school family, that is. I want you to know, Bel, that you have a support system in me. I’m here for you.”
Such kind words would have reached her no matter who said them. But to have Mr. Donovan say them—wow. His sympathy hit her hard; it released something. She’d been holding her feelings in for weeks now. Acting like she didn’t care that her grandmother sent them away. Hanging out with a fast crowd because she’d fallen in with them at the beginning, acting the role of wild child to keep up, but having big doubts about it. Fighting with Rose—God, she hated to fight with her sister, but ever since they’d gotten here, things between them felt so wrong. Suddenly it was all too much. Bel’s lower lip started to quiver. She looked at Heath for one long, terrible second, and burst into tears.
“Oh,” Heath said, flushing. “Jesus, I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry. I know you lost your mother. I should have been more careful. I was only trying to make you feel better, but I put my foot in it.”
“No, it’s okay,” she whispered, but her shoulders were heaving, and she couldn’t stop crying.
Heath handed her a napkin from the table, and she blotted at her eyes, her body wracked with sobs. He looked at her with such concern that Bel saw the tragedy of her plight reflected in his beautiful eyes, and the worst moments flooded back. Her mother’s face when she told them the diagnosis. Seeing her mother get thinner, lose her hair. The day her mother died. Hearing her grandmother tell them they had to go away to school. Being mean to Rose in the dining hall, feeling terrible about it, and having Rose refuse to speak to her afterward. Now she really couldn’t stop crying. Heath dragged his chair around the small table, until he sat beside her, an inch away.
“Bel,” he said softly.
She looked up at him, and she realized she wasn’t afraid of him anymore, or nervous around him. He felt like a friend.
“I’m sorry,” she said, through tears. “I’m embarrassed to flake out on you like this. But my life is just—It’s so fucking dark.”
He glanced around at the empty patio, then reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “You can tell me. Nobody’s here. You can say anything.”
“Why did both my parents have to die?” she said. “Why me? Like, who does that happen to? First my dad when I was little. Then my mom. It’s so unfair.”
“I agree. Very unfair.”
“I’m being punished.”
“That’s not true. How could it be? You’re a child. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I’m ungrateful. That’s what Rose says. I ought to be glad our grandmother took us in, and sent us here, but I’m not. I’m angry.”
“There’s nothing wrong with how you feel,” he said. “It’s completely normal.”
“What I’m really saying is, I don’t like Odell. I actually kind of hate it.”
“I understand. This place can grind you down. Make you feel like you’re not good enough. It did that to me, at first.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It took me a long time to prove myself here. To find my place.”
“Wait. You went to school here?”
“You didn’t know? I was actually very happy at Odell—not right away, but eventually. Right? I mean, I came back to teach, though sometimes I think I’m still trying to show them. Maybe that’s why I came back. I could tell you stories about what it was like, what I went through. I’ve been low, myself. I’ve been so low. You can’t imagine.”
She looked up into his eyes, holding her breath, afraid he would stop confiding in her.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“I shouldn’t. I can’t—well, maybe I’ll tell you another time. But believe me when I say that bad things have happened in my life. Here at Odell, and elsewhere. Things that almost pulled me under, that I thought I would never recover from. But I did. I got past it. And you can, too. You remind me of myself, you know.”
“I do? How?”
“Maybe I’m projecting. But the way you’re so quiet in class, and yet, I can tell how deeply you’re feeling things. You’re a dreamer. So am I.”
“Yes. You see. You understand me.” Her eyes filled with tears again.
“That gives me some insight into how to help you, Bel. You need something to dream about. A focus, something special to work toward. If you could find that, I think you could be successful here. I think you could even be happy. Will you try?”
“I want to, Heath. I worry that I’m not up to it,” Bel said.
There, she’d used his name. Was he going to rebuke her? But no, he took her hand, and she held on, like he could save her from the flood.
“Don’t sell yourself short. If you could see the girl I see, I know you’d believe in yourself. You are up to it,” he said, and there was so much sympathy in his voice that she nearly melted.
“But I’m not as smart as the kids here,” she said.
“It’s not true. I’ve seen your file. I admit, your grades aren’t anything to write home about. But your scores are off the charts. You’re very smart, Bel. You just have to do the work, and you’ll succeed.”
“That’s not the only problem,” she said. “People are mean here. Everyone’s a poser. I feel so lost.”
“You have your twin sister to fall back on, don’t you?”
“Not really. Rose and I used to be good friends, but this place is driving us apart. She doesn’t like who I hang out with. She doesn’t approve of my behavior. We fight all the time. I hate it.”
“Odell can put pressure on relationships, it’s true. You have to ignore the noise. Find some time when it’s just the two of you, and hash things out. Will you try?”
“I want to make up with her. I do. I’ve been feeling so alone.”
“You’re not alone, Bel. You have your sister. You also have me.”
Bel wiped her eyes, and gazed at him. “You mean that?”
“I do mean it. I’m your advisor, and it’s my job to help you be happy here. As a matter of fact, I have a suggestion.”
Bel was hoping for something intimate and personal, like the two of them having dinner together. Now that would give her something to live for. Instead Heath suggested that Bel join the cross-country team, which he coached. It would get her out in nature, and the endorphins generated by long-distance running would improve her outlook. Yada yada yada, she thought. But then she realized that he couldn’t ask her to dinner even if he wanted to. It would look weird, and it was probably against the rules. But if she joined the team he coached, she could spend more time with him, and not just time, but time in the woods on the running trails, maybe even alone.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“Good, it’s settled. Come to the field house this afternoon at three forty-five, and we’ll get you squared away with a uniform.”
He glanced at his watch, which made her sad. She didn’t want their meeting to end.
“I have to get going,” he said. “It’s later than I thought. I’m glad we had this talk, Bel. Everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to be happy here, I promise. Okay?”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.” He stood up and glanced around quickly, making sure that nobody would see. “C’mere, you seem like you could use a hug,” he said, holding out his arms.
Bel didn’t hesitate. She stepped into his embrace and gloried there, letting herself bask in the warmth of his body, his breath against her hair. She drank in the scent of his shampoo, which made her think of the ocean, of sandalwood. She would’ve stayed like that forever, but he released her, and stepped away.
“Okay, see you at the field house later,” he said.
Then he was gone.
The air felt cooler now—fresher, sweeter, and it smelled of flowers and grass. Somewhere somebody mowed a lawn, and the buzz of the lawn mower was cheerful to her ears. Bel started walking toward Moreland, and the deep green of the trees and the grass was pleasing to her now. There would always be a before and an after. A before and an after their talk. A before and an after their embrace. Before, she was lost, but now, a light shined on everything she saw. Bel could go tell Darcy and the seniors what happened, and bask in their envy. But she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to share this. Her friendship with Heath Donovan was her secret, hers alone.
9 (#ulink_af6b3636-ae03-5fd8-8551-31e68db2703b)
“He just got glasses yesterday, poor thing, and doesn’t quite know what to make of them,” Mrs. Donovan said. Rose sat at the Donovans’ kitchen table, holding little Scottie in her lap. The air was fragrant with the scent of the chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the oven. The child fidgeted with the bright-green eyeglasses attached to his head with a strap, so Rose held him away from her and made funny faces to distract him. He watched her solemnly, his eyes behind the lenses wide as saucers.
“You’re so good with him,” Mrs. Donovan said. “Do you babysit?”
“I’d babysit for this guy anytime. He’s the sweetest,” Rose said, lowering her nose and drinking in the scent of the child’s flaxen hair.
Mrs. Donovan laughed. “I’ll take you up on that. He is a sweetie. He was a preemie, you know. He doesn’t talk much yet. He’s a little delayed. Watch out, though. His sister is a holy terror, and it’s a package deal.”
“She seems so fun. Is she here?”
“Harper is fun. She’s a handful, though. She’s in her room playing Goat Simulator on the laptop, so we can have some peace and quiet.”
“Playing what?”
“Goat Simulator. It’s this video game where the kid pretends to be a goat running wild in a town. It’s actually a pretty good metaphor for Harper’s life, come to think of it. Anyway, she’s obsessed with it.”
Mrs. Donovan placed a plate of cookies on the table in front of Rose. Max lounged at Rose’s feet, his tail thumping back and forth with the rhythm of a metronome. This afternoon tête-à-tête was like a dream come true. To be invited into a teacher’s home, and to have it be so cozy and adorable. The kitchen had an old-fashioned gas stove, a tile backsplash and pretty curtains. Mrs. Donovan had the nicest smile, and was so easy to talk to. In Rose’s old school, the teachers barely knew her name. Rose couldn’t believe her luck in getting Mrs. Donovan as her advisor.
“Tea?” Mrs. Donovan asked.
“I’d love to, but I’m holding the baby,” Rose said.
“Oh, I’ll take him, so you can enjoy your refreshments.”
Mrs. Donovan brought mugs of tea over to the table. Why did people say she wasn’t good-looking? She might not be flashy or blingy, but she had a fresh, wholesome prettiness—like a mother should. Rose’s mother had been glamorous, yet Rose had never felt comfortable with her eccentric, arty style. Done up in thrift-shop finds, with a big tattoo of angel wings on her arm for their dad. She cooked up pots of organic quinoa for dinner, but never baked cookies. Rose had secretly wished for a normal mom, someone more like Mrs. Donovan. She felt guilty thinking that, yet, if Rose was honest, here in this delightful kitchen with Mrs. Donovan, she didn’t miss her mother much at all.
Scottie went to Mrs. Donovan happily. Rose took a bite of a cookie. It was warm and gooey inside. Bliss.
“These are divine. Thank you so much for baking for me. You didn’t have to!” Rose exclaimed.
“Oh, it was no trouble. Harper helped. She loves baking—today, anyway. Five minutes from now, she’ll be on to something else.”
“It must be so special for them, growing up at Odell,” Rose said.
“People think that,” Mrs. Donovan replied, frowning. “But being a faculty kid makes for a strange childhood. We eat most of our meals in the dining hall, with a million people all around. Scottie gets overwhelmed by the excitement, and Harper eats it up. Literally. Yesterday I found three brownies in her pockets. Students sneak her extra dessert.”
Rose laughed. “That’s adorable.”
“Not when she’s bouncing off the walls at bedtime from all the sugar. Besides, it’s a control thing. How can I teach her no when there are so many teenagers around who say yes?”
“Yes, but—it’s so wonderful here, with beautiful grounds to play in. I grew up in an apartment complex in the city. Everything was concrete. We couldn’t have pets. To me, Odell feels like paradise.”
“You’re not alone in thinking that. Some people see the campus, and it’s love at first sight. My husband was like that. He lived and breathed Odell when we were students, and that’s still true. Even if he wasn’t sure about being a teacher, he knew he wanted to be here,” Mrs. Donovan said, and laughed sheepishly.
“He doesn’t like being a teacher?”
“Oh, I, uh, didn’t mean it that way,” Mrs. Donovan said, coloring slightly, as if she’d said too much. “Heath loves his work. Especially now that we’re dorm heads, and truly immersed in the community. He finds it very fulfilling.”
There was a false note in Mrs. Donovan’s voice that made Rose wonder how she herself felt about Odell.
“And you? Do you like your work?” Rose asked.
“Thank you for asking. I love teaching math. But I’m a bit of an introvert, so the dorm head job, living here on campus, doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does my husband. But I think it’s important work, so it’s satisfying in that sense. Historically, Moreland has had challenges. I had run-ins with girls from this dorm when I was a student here. It just seems to attract the mean girls.”
“There are mean girls here now,” Rose said.
“I realize that. And I want to be part of fixing the culture. Heath and I are trying to foster a healthy atmosphere in Moreland. But it’s tricky. We have to identify the girls causing the trouble, hopefully before they do anything too disruptive, and get them to change their ways, if possible.”
Rose wondered if Mrs. Donovan had heard the gossip. There was a rumor going around that the Moreland seniors—the same girls Bel hung out with—were engaged in a competition to seduce Mr. Donovan. Rose was so outraged when she heard that that she wanted to hit somebody. If it was true, they ought to be expelled. She had half a mind to tell Mrs. Donovan about it right now, and put a stop to it. But how awkward was that—telling Mrs. Donovan other girls wanted to sleep with her husband? It was too embarrassing, and would spoil their cozy tea date.
“Enough about me,” Mrs. Donovan said. “How are you doing, Rose? You’ve been through so much with your mom’s passing. Odell can be a tough transition in the best of times. Are you settling in all right?”
“Yes. I love it here. I couldn’t be happier.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at her skeptically. “I’m very glad to hear that, but you don’t have to say it if it isn’t true. I know you’re off to a great start academically. You’re doing excellent work in math class. I’ve also heard from some of your other teachers that you’re a confident speaker at the Harkness Table, which is a big indicator of success at Odell.”
Her teachers said good things about her. Rose nodded, arranging her features so she wouldn’t look too pleased with herself.
“I adore my classes, Mrs. Donovan. I feel so engaged, like I’m really learning.”
“What about outside of class? Are you feeling comfortable socially?” Mrs. Donovan asked.
“I’m doing so much fun stuff,” Rose said cheerily, grabbing her backpack, and pulling out her notebook. “Here’s my list so far. Auditioning for the fall play. I joined the debate team. I’m working on the literary magazine. Joined Model UN and French Club. Oh, and I might audition for the chorus. I’ve never sung in front of people except for karaoke, but I was pretty good at that.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at her in astonishment. “Rose, that’s a wonderful list. I’m very impressed. But you have be careful not to take on too much.”
Rose felt it should be obvious that she could handle anything she took on. Was Mrs. Donovan selling her short because of her background? Odell was a clubby place, and though Rose’s father’s family were old Odellians, and Grandma had money, Rose and Bel had been raised by a single mom in modest circumstances. Compared to her classmates, with their summers filled with golf and tennis, their vacations abroad and tutors for every subject, Rose had grown up underprivileged. But she intended to keep up with the Joneses in every way, and she didn’t want Mrs. Donovan doubting her.
“Don’t worry, I’m very organized. When my mother was sick, I bought the groceries, I did the laundry and the cooking. I dealt with the doctors. I even paid the bills, with help from my grandmother. And I still got straight A’s, although admittedly, my old school was easy compared to Odell.”
Mrs. Donovan’s face softened with sympathy. “You poor thing. To be burdened like that, at your age. No wonder you’re trying to be superwoman. We have excellent therapists in the health center. You should talk to someone.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It can help you process your grief over losing your mom.”
“I try not to dwell on things that make me sad. I put them out of my mind, and go on the best I can.”
“Everybody needs to talk things out, Rose. That reminds me. I’ve been meaning to ask about your sister.”
“My sister?”
“Yes. Is everything all right between you and Bel?”
“Everything’s fine. Why?” Rose asked, alarmed.
“I heard through the grapevine that the two of you had a falling-out.”
Damnit! Kids had been gossiping about that incident in the dining hall, and it must’ve gotten back to Mrs. Donovan. Rose had been livid about the whole incident, to the point that she hadn’t spoken to Bel since, despite Bel’s multiple attempts to apologize. This whole mess was Bel’s fault, and Mrs. Donovan needed to know that.
“There was an incident in the dining hall the first day of classes,” Rose began.
“Go on.”
“Bel . . . Well, she can be immature, and she doesn’t always have the best judgment. We were talking a minute ago about mean girls in Moreland. I’m afraid Bel’s fallen in with that crowd. Darcy Madden, and her friend Tessa, that redheaded girl. She was sitting with them at lunch, and I tried to get her to move tables. I’m worried they’ll get her into trouble.”
Mrs. Donovan looked at Rose with concern in her eyes.
“I can’t comment specifically on other students’ disciplinary history. But you’re right about that group being a problem. So that caused trouble between the two of you.”
“We haven’t spoken since,” Rose said, conveniently omitting the fact that she was the one refusing to speak to Bel, not the other way around.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Donovan said.
“Is there anything you can do?” Rose asked.
“Do?”
“To get Bel to stop hanging out with them.”
“Well. I suppose I could ask Heath to mention it to her. He’s her advisor.”
“That would be great. I’ll be honest, if Bel gets in trouble, I’m afraid it’ll reflect badly on me.”
“Rose, you keep mentioning Bel getting in trouble. Is she doing something she shouldn’t? Something specific, not just socializing with the wrong crowd. If you’re aware that other students are breaking the rules, you’re supposed to report them. Even if it’s your sister. The Honor Code requires it. Do you understand?”
Rose thought again about the contest to seduce Mr. Donovan. Bel’s new best friend was behind it. She hoped that didn’t mean her sister was involved with it. But she didn’t have proof, and she was afraid to say anything. Not only would it be terribly awkward to bring this up with Mrs. Donovan, but Rose could wind up with a reputation as a rat. That was social suicide at Odell.
“I haven’t heard anything specific,” Rose insisted. “Nobody tells me anything because I’m known as a girl who follows the rules. I just worry about my sister.”
“I understand. I’ll ask Heath to speak to her about the company she keeps. But there’s something I need to ask of you in return.”
“Okay.”
“Make up with Bel. Talk through your differences. You two are both new here. You’ve been through a lot. You need each other. Can you do that, Rose? Please? For me?”
Rose hesitated. She was hurt and pissed off enough that she really didn’t feel like making up with her sister. Not yet. Still, she couldn’t refuse Mrs. Donovan’s request, when Mrs. Donovan represented everything that was good and kind in the world.
“I’ll try,” she said, taking another cookie. “Promise.”
10 (#ulink_4ce039f2-e306-552f-9061-030cdef4c85d)
Bel had a stalker. Zachary Cuddy from her Spanish class wouldn’t leave her alone. She’d hooked up with him the second week of school, on the night of the opening dance, and immediately realized her mistake. She’d been trying to shake him ever since, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Zach seemed to think he owned her, even though they hadn’t done more than fool around briefly in the woods. Yet nearly every day, he’d claim the seat next to her at morning convocation, or wait for her after Spanish to escort her to her next class. Yesterday, she’d turned around in the lunch line to find Zach standing right behind her, literally breathing down her neck. She nearly screamed. She’d tried ignoring him, laughing at him, running in the opposite direction, telling him to knock it off or she’d tell a teacher—nothing worked. He’d just look at her with puppy-dog eyes and beg her to tell him what he’d done wrong, so he could fix it.
Zach was one of several mistakes in Bel’s brief Odell career that could be laid at Darcy Madden’s door. Bel did whatever it took to please Darcy, and unfortunately the things that pleased Darcy had a certain twisted quality. Yet, Darcy’s friendship cast a circle of light so bright that Bel ignored the consequences. To be inside Darcy’s circle was to be among the chosen. Most Odell kids were earnest and square, but Darcy’s friends were different. They laughed, and did wild things—bad things even—but they were bulletproof, and never suffered. Darcy and her crew hailed from old Odellian families with gobs of money. If they misbehaved, or broke rules, Mom and Dad met with the headmaster, and the kid got sentenced to counseling or, at worst, rehab. Bel had already seen this, with a girl named Mia who got suspended for alcohol the first week of school. She went home for three days, and came back smiling, with a tan, a new pair of Saint Laurent boots, and a fifth of bourbon that they drank the same night in Darcy’s room. Life in Darcy’s circle was a big joke. The terrible pressures of Odell—the crushing workload, the college-admissions race, the insane three-hundred-page code of conduct manual—vanished at the flick of Darcy’s shiny, blond hair. Bel needed to be part of that. It wasn’t the money that turned her head, or the privilege. It was the freedom from fear.
Bel didn’t stop to calculate the cost of doing Darcy’s bidding, but in the back of her mind, she knew it was adding up. Under Darcy’s influence, she’d turned her back on her sophomore classmates (a bunch of uptight bores), allowed her sister to be insulted in front of the entire dining hall (Rose was too sensitive, anyway), worn pajamas to class on a dare (so hilarious, even though she’d gotten two demerits, and four meant suspension), and snuck out of the dorm to smoke weed out at Lost Lake (so chill, though getting caught could mean expulsion). Bel felt bad about those things, and yet, she also felt good—carefree, young, and most of all, flattered to be included. Being Darcy’s pet made her somebody important, where otherwise, Odell would grind her down.
The Zach hookup happened because Darcy decreed it. Darcy worried that her boyfriend, Brandon Flynn, was paying too much attention to Bel. You’re like the new toy, Darcy had said threateningly, better watch you don’t get chewed. Bel had done nothing to encourage Brandon’s attention. She found him repugnant, actually. Husky build, sandy hair, a Frankenstein forehead, Brandon was a mouth-breathing delinquent. He was also very, very rich, his dad being a real-estate billionaire, and Darcy was very possessive of her Mr. Moneybags. She refused to believe that Bel wasn’t interested in Brandon, or that Bel was only nice to Brandon because he was Darcy’s boyfriend. That couldn’t be true, Darcy said, because Brandon was the only guy Bel gave the time of day to.
That’s when Bel let slip that there was someone else she pined for. It slipped out, and then it was too late to take it back. Bel couldn’t tell Darcy about her Mr. Donovan obsession without getting roped into their awful contest. She had to make up another boyfriend. That’s where Zach came in, in a major miscalculation.
On the night of the opening dance, the Alumni Gym was dark, stuffy and jammed wall-to-wall with kids swaying to Rihanna. Bel was milling about with Darcy and Tessa, waiting for Brandon to text them that he’d scored weed, so they could all meet up at the lake. From the corner of her eye, Bel saw Zach Cuddy heading her way, and immediately knew that he was going to ask her to dance. He’d been harassing since the first day of class. Her first instinct was to turn away and pretend not to see him, but she saw her opportunity, and caught herself.
“Hey, here comes my crush,” Bel said to Darcy.
Darcy followed Bel’s gaze. “Him? He looks like a loser.”
Zach was tall and thin, with a shock of dark hair and mild blue eyes behind professorial-looking eyeglasses. Some people might call Zach handsome, but Bel and Darcy were not among those people.
“I think he’s cute,” Bel insisted.
“Whatever, girl. It’s your coochie. Invite him to the lake if you want.”
“Uh—”
Bel didn’t want to go as far as inviting Zach to the lake. But Darcy shot her a skeptical look, and she knew she had no choice. She stepped onto the dance floor and intercepted him.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey, I’m Zach from your Spanish class.”
“Duh, I know. Why do you think I’m talking to you?”
“Oh. Excellent. Would you do me the honor of dancing with me?”
“No.”
His face fell.
“I don’t want to dance right now,” Bel said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Darcy was watching. “I need some air. My friends are going down to the lake. Why don’t you come?”
Zach looked over at Darcy nervously. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why?”
Zach hesitated, lowering his voice. “Um, when you say friends, you’re talking about Darcy Madden, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I’d love to hang out with you. But I’m not looking to get wasted or anything.”
“Who said anything about getting wasted?”
“It’s just, from what I hear—”
“What you hear. Do you judge people based on gossip?”
Zach looked taken aback. “No.”
“Don’t judge her, then. People just say stuff about her because they’re jealous. It’s a pretty night. Come outside with me. Please?”
Bel took Zach’s hand and gave him her sweetest smile. His eyes lit up.
The loudspeakers started making an awful screeching noise, which distracted the chaperones. Darcy and Tessa slipped out the back door, and Bel pulled Zach along, hurrying to keep up. Outside, the night was warm, lit by a fat harvest moon hanging low in the velvety sky. There was a loud sound of crickets chirping, and the smell of mulch and wet leaves, as they headed for the path into the woods. Zach’s hand trembled in hers.
“Are we seriously going to the lake? I’ve never been there at night,” he said.
“I have,” she said. “It’s gorgeous. Come on, hurry.”
Darcy and Tessa had been swallowed by the trees. Bel raced to keep up, flicking on the flashlight on her phone to light the way.
The Odell campus bordered a thousand-acre nature preserve—pristine land made up of dense forest, open fields, hilltops, valleys and babbling streams, all crisscrossed by a network of hiking trails. Lost Lake sat about a mile into the nature preserve from the border of campus. The path that led there was dark and mysterious, but with her friends in front of her and a boy by her side, Bel felt safe. More than safe, she felt happy to be alive. It was a beautiful night, and she was on a crazy adventure, with a slight edge of hysteria, as if she was high already even though she hadn’t smoked anything. That was the effect Darcy’s shenanigans had on her.
Bel stumbled on a root, giggling as Zach caught her.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine. Relax, Zach. You’re too uptight,” she said.
They didn’t talk again until they reached the wide meadow that bordered the lake. Zach caught the view across the open water, sparkling in the moonlight, and drew a sharp breath.
“See?” Bel said. “It’s worth it. C’mon.”
They headed for the wooden hikers’ lean-to that faced the lake. It had been the favorite rendezvous point for Odell kids looking to sin since time immemorial. Zach seemed to know that as well as Bel did. Or else he just smelled the pot.
“Uh, no, I can’t,” he said, stopping in his tracks.
“You don’t smoke weed?”
“Not on campus I don’t. Surest way to get caught.”
“This isn’t campus.”
“Not technically. But if you think the faculty doesn’t know about the lean-to, you’re mistaken. They raid it regularly.”
Darcy had never told Bel that, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. “Are you sure?” Bel asked.
“Positive. A bunch of guys from my dorm got caught drinking here last spring. They all got kicked out.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, although, they were nobodies. And two of them were black. I’m not saying the school excessively punishes poor, black kids. It’s the opposite. If you’re somebody important, you get away with stuff that normal kids get punished for. Those friends of yours—I know who they are. They’re connected. Maybe you are, too. But I’m not, so I should probably go.”
Bel felt sorry for Zach. Plus, she hadn’t come this far just to turn around and leave without putting Darcy’s Brandon concerns to rest.
“We don’t have to get high,” Bel said. “Let’s just go in the woods and hook up. You can’t get expelled for that, right?”
He smiled. “I don’t know, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Hold on. I’m just gonna let Darcy know that we’re going someplace more private.”
She did. And they did. Their make-out session, which stopped well short of actual sex and was so forgettable to Bel, was now imprinted on Zach’s brain forever, to the point where he was making her life unbearable. She had to do something to get rid of him.
11 (#ulink_4d1d5969-fa1a-5ea3-be04-11abd80a9543)
Rose had promised Mrs. Donovan that she would make up with her sister. But as the days passed, she couldn’t bring herself to fulfill that promise. She was still smarting from that incident in the dining hall on the first day of class, when Bel allowed one of her new best friends to humiliate Rose, and didn’t speak up in her defense. It was on Bel to apologize to Rose for that first, and then Rose would meet her halfway. Okay, Bel had tried to apologize the day after it happened. But that was too early. Anybody could see that. The wound was too fresh; Rose had cut her off and walked away. Now that more time had passed, Bel ought to understand that it was time to apologize again. This time, Rose would graciously accept her apology, and they could make up. But Bel kept her distance, and things between the sisters remained icy.
As angry as Rose was with her twin, she also missed her very much. Odell was a tough place, for all its glory. The pressure was intense, and the competition was crushing enough to pierce Rose’s healthy self-confidence. At Odell, one needed allies, and Rose didn’t make friends easily. Her pleasant rapport with Emma Kim was moving slowly toward friendship, but it would never match the history she shared with her sister. Bel wasn’t a natural soulmate for Rose; they were too different. But she was family, and nothing could change that.
On a chilly evening in early October, Rose walked back to the dorm alone. She’d left dinner early, overwhelmed by the feeling of being alone in a crowd. Emma had disappeared from the dining hall lately because she was rehearsing nonstop for the fall orchestra recital. That left Rose to navigate the Moreland sophomore table on her own. She knew she ought to try harder to make other friends, but she was too proud to put herself out there. So tonight, and too often lately, she’d ended up sitting quietly while conversation swirled around her, feeling left out.
The sharp chill in the air as she walked toward Moreland, the deep shadows cast by the setting sun, the empty paths, pressed on Rose’s heart. When she caught a glimpse of Bel in the distance, climbing the steps to Weston Library, suddenly that incident in the dining hall seemed frivolous. She couldn’t let it destroy her relationship with her only sister. If she and Bel could be friends again, Rose wouldn’t feel so lonely.
Rose hurried up the steps and onto the dramatic main floor of Weston Library, with its three-story atrium and enormous windows. Bel stood by the reference desk, talking to a boy named Zach who was in Rose’s biology class. As Rose approached, Bel actually smiled at her.
“Hey,” Bel said.
“Hey,” Rose replied, surprised at the warmth of her sister’s greeting. Bel had barely acknowledged her in weeks.
“Look, I have to go. I have plans with my sister,” Bel said to Zach.
“Rose is your sister?” he asked.
It made Rose stupid happy to realize that Zach Cuddy knew her name. He was worlds above your average Odell prepster dude, and the only boy she’d met so far who piqued her interest.
“That’s okay, I can wait,” Rose said. “Or maybe the three of us should—”
“No,” Bel said. “I need to talk to you. Now. Come on.”
She grabbed Rose by the arm and yanked her toward the front door. Rose glanced back at Zach helplessly as they exited the library.
“I’m so glad you want to talk,” Rose said, falling into step beside Bel out on the path. “I feel like we’ve been mad at each other long enough.”
The sky was nearly dark, and the yellow glow of the lampposts illuminated the paths. Bel sighed with irritation, her entire demeanor changed from how she’d been a moment earlier.
“So, you’re finally gonna forgive me? I apologized weeks ago, by the way,” Bel said, shaking her head irritably.
Her sister’s tone annoyed Rose. Bel still didn’t get how hurtful her action—or her inaction—had been.
“Put yourself in my shoes. Getting called fat on my first day of school in front of the entire dining hall. It was awful.”
“Come on, she didn’t call you fat, and practically nobody heard her.”
“Don’t minimize.”
“Look, I said I was sorry, and I am sorry. Tessa’s a bitch, but that’s not my fault.”
“If she’s such a bitch, why do you hang out with her?”
“Because she’s Darcy’s friend.”
“Why are you friends with Darcy?”
Bel whirled to face Rose. “If this is going to turn into a rant about my poor choice of friends, then we’re never gonna make up. I miss you, Rose. I want us to be closer. But you have to back off with the judgment stuff.”
“I miss you, too. I’m just worried about you. Those are, like, the most reckless kids in the school, and they’re bound to get you in trouble.”
“Maybe I don’t care.”
“How can that be? I don’t understand that.”
“We’re different, okay?” Bel said, her eyes in the lamplight sparkling with unshed tears. “You have everything figured out. I’m just trying to get through my days. Darcy makes me feel like there’s some fun left in the world, since Mom died. Can’t you understand that?”
Bel’s words hit home. Bel had been much closer to their mother than Rose had. Rose had resented their bond, and had felt left out. But Rose shouldn’t let that lingering resentment blind her to Bel’s real grief. Bel had taken their mother’s death much harder than Rose had. Rose reacted by trying to think about Mom as little as possible, and being grateful for her new life, where she could have a substitute mom like Mrs. Donovan. A better mom, really. Whereas Bel thought about their mother constantly. Rose had to admit, Bel’s reaction was the more normal one. It worried Rose sometimes, how little grief she felt. It was almost like there was something wrong with her.
“You’re right,” Rose said. “You and I experience Mom’s death differently. I take all my sadness and put it into succeeding here.”
“Is that the explanation? Because you seem so fine with everything that, sometimes, I wonder if you really loved Mom.”
Sometimes, Rose wondered that herself. But she would never admit to such a socially unacceptable emotion as not loving her own mother.
“God, what a mean thing to say,” Rose said. “That hurts. Don’t you get it? We can both feel grief, but show it differently. I’m doing my best to understand your way, and that you’re acting out—misbehaving—because of sadness. Meanwhile, instead of trying to understand me, you accuse me of not loving Mom? That’s low, Bel.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I need to try harder to see your perspective.”
“Thank you. I would appreciate that.”
“Let’s be friends again, okay?” Bel said.
“Yes. That’s all I want. I’ll get off your back about Darcy, too, promise.”
Bel smiled tearily. “Okay. Deal,” she said, and held her arms out.
They hugged for a long time, right there in the middle of the path. Rose had to swallow hard in order not to cry, which made her feel relieved. At least when it came to Bel, Rose still had a heart.
“Hey,” Rose said, disentangling herself. “I have Oreos in my room. Want some?”
“You know I do.”
They linked arms, and walked back to Moreland together.
12 (#ulink_d5ca3198-9952-5d43-98ef-a42fc699d3d4)
By mid-October, Bel’s schoolgirl crush on Heath Donovan had morphed into something more powerful, and more dangerous. After their iced-coffee date at the Art Café, she just couldn’t shake the memory of their embrace. She still felt his arms around her, and wanted to experience that again. But how? She’d sit in English class and stare, letting his voice wash over her. Bel worried that kids in her English class would notice, and tease her. Or worse, that Darcy and the Moreland seniors would find out. If the seniors realized she was mad for Heath, not only would they mock her relentlessly, but they’d force her to play their tawdry game, which she absolutely refused to do. She didn’t even like hearing about it anymore. What they were doing was childish and degrading. What Bel felt for Heath was real. Bel now understood that Heath knew how she felt, and was glad of it. This amazing realization dawned on her in English class, on a stormy afternoon in late October, as they discussed one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Rain sluiced against the mullioned windows as Heath read aloud to the class from a poem about summer, and love.
“‘If happiness were like the flowers of June,’” Heath quoted, in his beautiful, resonant voice, “‘then I would take the best of them, roses and columbine, the lilies, and bind them in your hair . . . I think of you as the day wanes, and as the sun sinks deep into the ocean, and as the stars turn round above.’”
And just then, as the clock on the wall ticked to the beat of Bel’s heart, Heath looked up and caught her eyes. He’d been gazing down at the page, then those incredible blue-green eyes flicked up and settled on Bel, at the precise moment he spoke of binding flowers in her hair. Their gazes met, and held. Everything else faded away, and she was transported with him to a field on a perfect June day. She could smell the grass, as she had that afternoon they sat together on the patio, when she told him her troubles, and he comforted her. She could feel the breeze, and feel his arms around her again, his breath on her hair. And she finally understood that Heath Donovan wanted her to love him. Otherwise, why—out of fifteen students in the room, seven boys, eight girls—why would he look directly at her at the very moment he said those words? This wasn’t just a foolish crush. It wasn’t a one-way street. She meant something to him, too.
There were other signs.
Bel had joined the cross-country team at Heath’s urging, and he was teaching her how to run. (Okay, he was teaching all the girls on the team, but he paid special attention to Bel. She wasn’t imagining it.) There was so much more to running than she’d known. Form, pacing, strategy. Appreciation for the terrain. The sprawling Odell campus was situated in a valley ringed by rugged hills. The nature preserve, and its hiking trails, were their own private wilderness to train in. After a brutally hot Indian summer, the weather had turned wet and raw, and Bel’s afternoons were spent slogging through the muck on the trails with twenty other girls. They had practice five days a week, rain or shine, and meets on Saturdays. At first, it was torture, and she did it only to be near Heath. But as the weeks went by, calluses formed on her feet, muscles hardened in her legs, and she got faster, until she was keeping pace with the best girls on the team, and with Heath himself.
Heath ran alongside them on practice days. He was that kind of coach: He didn’t spare himself, even in the worst weather. He’d start at the front of the pack and slowly drop back, checking on each runner or group of runners in turn, giving them pointers, boosting their spirits. Bel made sure to run alone. She wanted to be certain that, whenever Heath caught up with her, they would have privacy. She’d get ten or fifteen minutes alone with him on a long run—more than he gave any other girl. They’d set a pace where they could comfortably maintain a conversation. The gray skies and whistling wind would drop a cloak of intimacy over them as they ran. Other girls might be in sight, but they were out of earshot, and Bel could say anything. She looked forward to these runs as if they could save her life, and in a way, they did. Bel told Heath all her troubles. He was the only person on earth she could talk to; with everyone else, Bel put on an act, full of snark and bravado. None of her friends or even her own sister suspected how lost she felt inside. But Heath knew the true her.
Out there in the woods, just the two of them and the wind, Heath listened like he really cared. He told her things about himself, too, personal things. As successful as Heath Donovan had been during his student days at Odell, he’d felt like an outsider then, as Bel did now. Heath got into Odell on a tennis scholarship, and he came late, not till junior year. As soon as he got there, his parents split, and money was tight. He couldn’t keep up with the rich kids—not even with Mrs. Donovan, who was his girlfriend then, and later became his wife.
That was the only time he mentioned his marriage. He didn’t speak of his children to Bel, either, even though she could see him with them in the dining hall on any given night. She understood this to mean that he was being sensitive to her feelings. She couldn’t bear that he belonged to these other people and not to her. Heath understood that, so he didn’t shove it in her face, and for that, she was grateful.
If there was a doubt in Bel’s mind that Heath knew her feelings, and maybe even felt something in return, it was put to rest the day she blew out her knee during practice. It happened just a couple of days after the moment that their eyes met in class. (Bel was still floating from that.) They were out for a six-mile run, the trails slick from days of rain. The weather had turned dramatically colder. Bel was running by herself, wondering when Heath would catch up with her, when her foot flew out from under her on a steep, icy stretch of trail. She hurtled downward, trying desperately to arrest her fall, and landed hard against a granite outcropping with her leg twisted underneath her. A bolt of pain shot through her right knee, so bad that it took her breath away.
Lucy Ogunwe, one of the faster girls on the team, came up to Bel from behind, and bent over her, panting.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked.
Tears flooded Bel’s eyes. She was too stunned to reply.
“No worries, Donovan’s right behind,” Lucy said, nodding toward the trail above. “Hey, Coach, Enright fell,” Lucy called out to him. “I think she’s hurt.”
Heath ran up to them, taking in Bel, crumpled on the ground, clutching her knee, the sheen of ice all around her.
“Do me a favor,” he said to Lucy. “Go back and tell the girls behind you that there’s an ice patch here. Tell them to slow it down to a walk. Stay safe.”
“Got it,” Lucy said, and set off in the direction Bel had come from.
Through a scrim of pain, Bel realized that Heath had just sent Lucy away. They were alone now. He knelt down beside her.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked, tenderness in his voice.
“My knee.”
“Can you sit up and lean back against the rock? Here, let me help you,” he said.
Heath put his hands on her waist and gently lifted her to a sitting position. The motion tweaked her knee, and she cried out.
“Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said.
The endearment was too much for Bel. Something came loose inside her. As Heath bent over her, his face mere inches from hers, his eyelashes wet with rain, she reached out and laid her hand on his cheek.
“I love you,” she said.
He stopped dead, looking at her so intently that she felt like he must see straight into her soul.
“Are you part of that ridiculous game? I know about it, you know. I’d be very disappointed in you, Bel.”
Despite his words, Heath didn’t move away, or shake off her hand. The warmth of his cheek under her cold fingers spurred her on.
“Never,” she said, her words tumbling out in a rush. “I hate those girls. They’re childish. What I feel for you is real, Heath. It’s not a game. I know you feel it, too. Please, tell me you do.”
His eyes, as they locked on hers, were troubled. “I’m married. You’re a kid. You’re my student. It can’t be,” he said.
That wasn’t a denial. He wanted her. She could see it in his eyes. Bel’s lips parted, and she leaned in, desperate to feel his mouth on hers.
“Tessa,” Heath said, snapping back abruptly.
Tessa Romano had just come over the top of the hill. Tessa was the sturdy redhead with freckles and a potty mouth who’d caused so much trouble in Bel’s relationship with Rose. Bel couldn’t think of a worse girl to discover them like this. Tessa didn’t really like Bel. Of all the Moreland seniors, Tessa was most likely to spill her guts to Darcy the second she got back to the dorm.
“What have we here?” Tessa asked, her eyes lighting up luridly.
“Bel took a fall and hurt her knee,” Heath said, his face going stony, as if a mask had dropped over it. “Come here, please, and give me a hand. Let’s see if we can get her to her feet without her putting weight on the right leg.”
They got on either side, and Bel draped her arms over their shoulders. Leaning on them, she managed to stand up and hobble down the steep slope. Every step was a blur of pain and anxiety. What must Heath think of her now, that she’d been so undisciplined, in such a risky situation? Would Tessa tell people? Could Heath get in trouble? He must hate her now.
Thirty awful minutes later, they reached the bottom of the hill. Heath had called ahead, and they emerged from the woods to see a security department car waiting on the road to whisk Bel to the infirmary.
Heath helped her into the back seat. “I’ll call the infirmary later to check with the doctors. You’ll probably need to go on the injured list. Would you like Tessa to stay with you?”
I want you to stay with me, she thought. But she couldn’t speak the thought aloud. If people started to talk, he might never spend time with her alone again.
“I’m fine,” Bel said curtly.
Heath closed the door with a sharp click, and the car drove away.
At five-thirty, Bel was alone in her room back in Moreland, lying on Emma’s bunk, because she couldn’t climb up to her own. She could hear girls passing by in the hallway, on their way to family dinner in the Commons, the old part of the dining hall. Family dinner was this awful thing that happened once a week, where kids had to dress up and sit at tables with faculty members. If Bel’s injury had an upside, it was that she’d gotten excused from attending tonight. She was supposed to keep her leg elevated and a cold pack on her knee for the rest of the evening. The pain pills the doctor had given her dulled the ache in her knee, but not the sick feeling in her heart. He’d almost kissed her; they’d been that close. But now, their bond was shattered, their great love affair over before it started.
Suddenly the door banged open, and Darcy stormed in, blond hair flying, her pretty cheerleader’s face red with pique.
“What the fuck, Enright. When were you planning to tell me you have something going on with Donovan?”
Shit. Tessa must have told Darcy what she saw, and Darcy had a big mouth. This story would be all over school the second Darcy walked into the dining hall. If Bel wanted to protect Heath from the fallout, she needed to convince Darcy that nothing had happened out on the trail this afternoon.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested, widening her eyes innocently.
“Don’t give me that BS. Tessa saw you with him in the nature preserve this afternoon. She said you were practically in a lip-lock.”
Bel pointed to the bandage and ice pack on her knee. “Uh, hello, you see my injury? I fell and blew my knee out. Mr. Donovan helped me up. That’s all Tessa saw. He had to put his arms around me to lift me. He’s the coach. He’s not gonna leave a runner lying on the ground.”
Darcy looked at Bel’s knee and frowned. “That’s not what she said. She said he pays all sorts of attention to you. The other girls are jealous.”
“Well, she’s lying then—exaggerating anyway.”
“Tessa’s been loyal as a dog for three years at this school. You, I’ve known for like five minutes, and you expect me to believe you over her? Sorry.”
“I swear, Darcy, nothing’s going on. I would never horn in on your contest. Not without your permission.”
“I should hope not. I don’t need anybody cock-blocking me, especially not you, after all I’ve done for you. If I thought you were trying to steal my prize—”
“I would never. Tessa has a wild imagination, and she misinterpreted, that’s all. Swear to God.”
Darcy put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know who to believe. What you’re saying makes sense on the surface, but I get the feeling you’re holding out on me.”
Bel placed her hand over her heart. For a skeptic and a liar herself, Darcy was surprisingly susceptible to flattery. Bel laid it on thick. “Believe that I’m your true friend, Darcy. There’s nothing but love and gratitude in my heart for you.”
“Okay, then prove it.”
“How?”
“It’s almost November, and the Moreland seniors haven’t pulled any good pranks yet. We need to keep up our reputation, and I have something radical in mind for tonight. A revival of a prank my mom’s gang used to pull back in the day. You’ll see.”
“You want me to help with that tonight? You see the shape I’m in. I’m not mobile.”
“Aww, your widdle boo-boo huwts? Tough titties, Enright. Take a Vicodin or smoke some weed, whatever you need to do, but you’re not getting out of this one. Time to earn your keep. If you want the benefits of hanging out with me, you have to do some dirty work.”
That gave Bel a chill. Darcy at her worst could be savage.
“What exactly is this prank?” Bel asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Darcy said, snarkily. “Be at my room at midnight, and you’ll find out.”
She turned on her heel, and was gone.
Bel laid her head on the pillow and wished she’d never come to this damn school. The two things that had kept her going had both fallen to shit today. Her friendship with Darcy was supposed to be easy and fun, but now it just seemed sick and twisted. And her love for Heath—which just a couple of hours ago she believed was reciprocated—would never amount to anything now that her conduct had exposed him to gossip and ridicule. Everything was ruined, and she couldn’t face it.
Her glance fell on the bottle of pain pills on the dresser.
13 (#ulink_49d2bb63-a07c-5ea1-947f-861c12a4838c)
Transcript of Witness Interview conducted by Lieutenant Robert Kriscunas, State Police—Major Crime Unit, and Detective Melissa Howard, Odell NH, PD, with Mrs. Sarah Donovan.
Kriscunas: Mrs. Donovan, you and your husband were the dorm parents for Moreland Hall, so that meant you were in charge of supervising these girls, correct?
Donovan: Uh, sure, yes. We ran the dorm. We did curfew check, room check, ran dorm meetings, that sort of thing. We did milk-and-cookies socials in the common room two nights a week. But there were forty girls in Moreland. Or—thirty-nine, after the, the—My point is, we couldn’t possibly know everything that was going on with each girl. If you’re suggesting—
Kriscunas: This isn’t about your job performance, ma’am. We’re investigating a murder. I’m trying to get the background on these two sisters, and how closely you monitored them. This is standard procedure. Just tell the truth, and it’ll all be fine.
Donovan: Yes, of course I’ll tell the truth.
Howard: Now, Rose Enright—she was your advisee, correct? You must’ve known what was going on with her.
Donovan: Yes, I knew Rose quite well, much better than I knew Bel. I have only the most wonderful things to say about Rose.
Kriscunas: What can you tell us about Rose’s relationship with her sister? Conflicts they might have had with one another? Or other people who got drawn into their conflict, who might wish harm to one of them because of a relationship with the other, if you see what I’m getting at?
Donovan: All I can say is, Rose told me from when I first met her that she and Bel were very different. But those diferences were not enough, in my view, to explain this murder. Rose was very responsible, and believed in following the rules. Bel’s judgment was not as good. She made friends with some questionable elements in the dorm, and that got her into trouble. Those people ought to be looked at. This is not necessarily about the relationship between the sisters. If you focus too much on that, you may miss other important aspects of the Enright girls’ lives.
Kriscunas: Don’t worry. We’ll get to the other stuf. This is just background right now, so we can understand the relationship between Bel and Rose.
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Michele Campbell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The gripping new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Michele CampbellBecause murderers are never who you expect…She was the quiet one… but is she guilty?For twin sisters Rose and Bel, enrolling at the prestigious new boarding school should have been a fresh start. But with its sinister rituals and traditions, Odell soon brings out a deadly rivalry between the sisters.For Sarah and husband Heath, the chance to teach at Odell seems like the best thing that ever happened to their small family – a chance to rise through the ranks and put the past behind them.Until one dark night ends in murder.But who’s guilty and who’s telling the truth? And who’s been in on it all along..?From the Sunday Times bestselling author Michele Campbell comes the breathtaking new thriller SHE WAS THE QUIET ONE.PRAISE FOR MICHELE CAMBPELL:‘A gripping page-tuner…will suit fans of Liane Moriarty’ Hello‘A page-turning whodunnit that will speak to anyone who′s ever had a frenemy.’Ruth Ware, bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin Ten‘A gripping, tangled web of a novel―it pulls you in and doesn’t let you go. I loved it!Shari Lapena, author of The Couple Next Door‘A cracking whodunit that will keep you guessing’ Woman’s Own‘Secrets and scandals in an ivy league setting. What could be more riveting?’Tess Gerritsen, Sunday Times bestselling author‘A skillful and addictive story of friendship, betrayal and ultimately love, IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND will keep you turning the pages until its dramatic end.’B A Paris, bestselling author of Behind Closed Doors‘A brilliantly layered, utterly compelling, clever mystery story that crackles with poisoned friendships and dirty secrets… Twisted, shocking and sharply observed. IT′S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND has blockbuster movie written all over it!’ Samantha King