I was alone and cold, and since the food was nothing like my mother’s or what I was used to, I was hungry. Even the salad, usually a safe go-to, tasted like nail polish remover.
It was really hard to stay positive. And that’s normally a talent of mine.
Unable to simply quit school or even tell my thrilled parents about the mild disappointments of the past week, I sat by myself and read or did homework during meals, went to class alone, and then headed to my room where Dana would look disappointed to see me and then ignore me. Sometimes I wanted to just kick her in the shins and tell her to stop being such an unpleasant cloud of gloom, but then I’d remember Becca—it was hard not to, when my side of the room still displayed a wallpaper of her pictures—and feel guilty again.
So that put me in the dining hall at nine at night on my first Friday evening. I was filling my travel mug with hot chocolate. I’d decided I wasn’t ready for bed and that I didn’t want to spend time in the same room as Dana quite yet. I figured I’d read To Kill a Mockingbird and try to find the deeper motifs in the rotunda until I got tired.
It was meant to be a social place, but the chairs were clearly not built with comfort or extended sitting in mind. They were all stiff, and some of them were mysteriously itchy. The rotunda itself was pretty noisy, what with the entrance hall directly beneath us, but it was better than my room.
My hot chocolate looked thin and watery, but it was deceptively delicious. I turned to see Blake putting a piece of bread in the toaster.
I summoned the nerve and then said, “Hey, Blake.”
She looked up, and took a second to register. “Oh, hey! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”
“That’s okay, I just walked up.”
She smiled kindly. “I’m just taking this up to my room or I’d sit with you.”
“Oh, me, too,” I said, not wanting her to think I was desperate. “I’m just getting some of this and then reading a little for English.”
“I suggest reading on the second floor of the library. Have you been up there yet?”
“Not yet.”
“There are some spiral stairs near the back of the library that lead up to a bunch of study rooms. Go into the room right across from the landing.”
“What is it? Am I allowed?”
She giggled. “Yes, it’s the senior study room. There’s a gas fire in there, and a bunch of armchairs. It’s really nice. It’s empty a lot at night. Most of these kids do their homework right after classes.”
“I’ll go check it out, thanks.” I brought my hot chocolate to my lips.
“Oh, and hey,” she added quickly, “we’re going down to the boathouse tonight, you want to come?”
“Um …” I scrunched up my face in consideration.
“I know you can. Harper Lee can wait until tomorrow.” She looked knowingly at me. “You just don’t want to go. Well, look, it’ll be better this time. Last time you went, it was just a little weird. The last party we had last year was the one when … Becca went missing. Not only that, but she was the one who kind of … started the parties down there.”
“Oh …” Then the question I’d been waiting to ask all week fell from my lips like an anvil. “What … what happened to her?”
Blake’s toast popped up in the toaster. She removed it and concentrated on smothering it in butter and jelly. “She and Max got into a fight about something to do with Johnny … and it was right after Dana and she’d had a fight … and then the next thing we knew she was just gone. So was the training sailboat.” Her hand slowed on the knife. “It was really strange. There was a horrible storm brewing, so it doesn’t make sense for her to think she could go out in the boat … that would be suicide. But maybe that’s what it was … or maybe she was pushed out onto the boat. Or maybe she just left, and the boat thing was a coincidence. It’s really not clear what happened.”
Blake went silent, and it was clear to me that she’d spent a lot of energy trying to figure this out.
“That’s awful.”
“It was also the last night though, so she might have just called a cab and left for the summer. She had her purse on her. And her family is incredibly rich. I don’t know … It just doesn’t make sense. I’m sure you’ve heard all of the talk about it. All the theories.”
I shook my head. “No, not really. People talk about her a lot, but … what do you mean by theories?”
She sighed and took a bite of her toast. “She’s been missing for so many months now that it’s kind of … the longer she’s missing, the more likely it is she won’t come back.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“So I guess …” Blake went on, “I guess people are starting to wonder if she was killed.”
“Killed? Really? By someone—by a student?”
She nodded somberly. “Yeah. It’s hard to believe, but the whole thing is so surreal.”
“Who do they think did it?”
“You know how it is—everyone became a suspect at one time or another, really. Rumors are like that. Since she and Max were a thing, he became the most consistent rumor….”
I felt like my blood had frozen. I pictured Johnny, asking me to play beer pong, and smiling at me with blond hair almost touching his bright eyes. I thought of Dana, so deep in mourning she couldn’t seem to see straight.
And of Max. Max looking into my eyes. I’d looked into his, too. He wasn’t capable of murder; surely I would have seen it. I knew that wasn’t true—I didn’t even know him. But still, I couldn’t imagine it.
“But she’s not even necessarily dead,” she added quickly. “A lot of people think she’s alive. That’s just as likely.” She looked at her toast for a quiet moment. “So you’ll come?”
“Come?”
“To the party tonight.”
No. No. Say no. “Sure.”
“Great! Any time after eleven.” She gave a small smile and then walked back out of the hall.
I set off for the library a moment later, and as I walked, my mind reeled as I thought about the missing girl. No one knew what had happened to her, and yet this time last year she’d been walking the same halls as me. It had been her first year, too. Had everyone been as chilly toward her? Probably not. She was probably why they were like that toward me. They all hated me for coming along.
I was like the new baby sibling that everyone resented.
The study room was empty when I arrived. The lights were off, and I had to feel around the walls until I found a switch. But rather than turning on a fluorescent overhead as I’d expected, it turned on a floor lamp in each corner of the room. They illuminated a smallish, cozy room paneled in dark wood, with comfy-looking armchairs and couches filling the place. Along one wall, there were desks with those old-fashioned green bankers’ lights with the gold, beaded pull string. Right in the middle was a huge ornate mantel, with a modern electric fireplace. I flicked on a light switch and fire burst into life.
This, I supposed, was the charm of Northern states and cold places. It was a different type of charm and warmth than I was used to, but as I read for the next few hours with the fire warming my bare feet and I drank my hot chocolate, I could see that this wasn’t bad, either.
I fell asleep and into another strange dream, as I had on my first night.
I was standing on the beach again. Someone was yelling at me. It was a male voice. I