Motherfucker.
I slide Emma’s duplicate into the secure tech room door and feel the heavy door give. Any guilt I felt about hacking Emma’s personal files dissolves. I want to know why the hell she copied my key. I slip inside and close the door behind me.
First, I fish out Emma’s phone from the laptop bag’s front zip pocket. Cataldo said the police cracked Emma’s phone password easily, so all I have to do is try her birthday—European style, because she was sophisticated—and her home screen appears. I find the Ivies group text and wince reading back our messages. All caps intensity, carefully chosen emojis, vicious words about peers, each other, exchanged in an endless thread that scrolls back and back and back. Did the cops read every single one of these?
Reading through it, I see the signs I missed. Where I chimed in on something or brought up a new topic, and everyone else just…ghosted the convo until one of them, almost always Avery or Emma, changed the subject. So many times, it’s like I was texting into the ether.
I swallow bile and switch to Emma’s thread with Tyler. It’s lots of nauseatingly cute back-and-forth, also some choice emojis—lots of eggplants and peaches, vom—but nothing suspicious. No accusations Emma was cheating on him. Tyler seems like a perfectly good boyfriend.
What I don’t find is a text chain from the Ivies, the group text they must have had, minus me. I’m sure it exists. They texted her that night.
I put the phone back where I found it and finally slide her sleek MacBook Pro from the case. I scoot with my back against the door and settle the laptop on my thighs. I open it up, flex my fingers until my knuckles crack. It’s stupidly simple, typing the same passcode from Emma’s secret iPhone into the prompt box. But it works. There are only so many passcodes a person can remember. The cops had no way of guessing this one without knowing her. Or, at least, the surface of her.
The missing text chain is bugging me. I have to know if I’m right.
I’ve watched my friends fiddle with their iPhones and Macs over the years, so I know exactly what to do: check Emma’s iCloud backup. If I’m unlucky, everything was perfectly synced, and if a group text existed but was deleted, it would have been deleted everywhere. But if I’m lucky, Emma may have turned off iCloud backup on her Mac, preserving any messages sent on this device. Or there will be a backup I can restore.
I have to try. And then I’ll dive into her Google Drive. All of Emma’s secrets are at my fingertips now.
Power, warm and electric, fills my body, wars with the sticky goo of self-loathing that pricks underneath my skin. I’m losing sight of myself, of the me I pretend I am most of the time—my best self—while the other Olivia settles in. The version of me who is not simply an Ivy but a damn good one. This is where I excel. At suspicion and hypothesis and investigation. Connecting dots and forming a picture and enacting my vengeance. I don’t like liars. I don’t like false friends.
It takes a while. Several false starts and stops. I’m not Mac-native. But then there it is. I restore the last backup and find a text thread that wasn’t on Emma’s phone. It’s months old, not up to date, the messages exchanged in the lead-up to Emma’s death lost forever. But it’s proof: Emma, Avery, Margot, and Sierra had a separate group text. It’s titled Rich Bitches.
With friends like these, indeed.
Emma’s Google Drive is easier to navigate. I find a spreadsheet labeled Move for Good. I have no clue what that is, but it’s at the top of the page when I sort by last modified, so it must be important.
First, I skim the column headers: donor name, pledge amount, date to pledge, pledge request, location. Then the names and donations. It’s a who’s who of Claflin Academy. Several jump out: Raj Jain, Chase Masters, Eden Hannon, Chris Hardin, Margot Kim, Avery Montfort. Avery’s name is highlighted yellow; I don’t know what that means. In total there are twenty names and donations in amounts that make my eyes water. Not one donation comes in under 10K. The highest one is 18K. I know Claflin kids are rich, but no way these students are making those sorts of donations for…what? A charity I know Emma wasn’t involved in?
The strangest data point is the “pledge request” column. I run my finger over the numbers. 1360. 1420. 1570. 1550. 31. 34. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My eyes rake over the date-to-pledge values. I know some of these dates. Too well. October 5. November 2. The dates I took the SAT to try to raise my score. February 8. The only spring testing date that wasn’t canceled because of COVID-19—the ACT when Jason Wang got poisoned.
SAT and ACT dates and scores. A laundry list of Claflin seniors. And a fuck-ton of money.
Emma was running a goddamn SAT scam.
Sound rushes in my ears as I push Emma’s laptop away from me like it’s poison. Breathe in, breathe out. I try to steady my racing thoughts.
I think back to all those times Emma kept me company at work. I’d leave her out in the bullpen while I made copies, stuffed faculty mailboxes, brewed coffee. Clues slam into me: Emma had a duplicate of my key. Chris Hardin said he needed to thank Emma for something on ED day. Tyler needed a new ID when he’d just had a replacement made in September. In time for the October test date, perhaps? Though, no—I pull Emma’s MacBook back into my lap and check—he’s not on the list. But I bet if I look up every one of the students on this list, I’ll find they had duplicate IDs printed shortly before their test date.
All you need to take the SAT or ACT is a valid school ID. And I handed Emma the keys to the castle.
Is this why Emma became my friend? Why she suggested we move in together? To keep an eye on me, her mark?
And she took the test for Avery and Margot. They both knew. Laughed at me behind my back, I’m sure. Rich bitches, indeed.
I scan the list three times just to be sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me. But no. Sierra’s not there. Thank god. I need one of my friends not to be a total garbage human. But Avery and Margot. And Emma, of course. I fucking hate them. The whole time I was struggling, Emma was handing our fellow Ivies scores in the mid-1500s. For the sweet price, friend discount, of 10K and 15K, respectively.
I can’t believe my friends sank so low.
I piece together how she must have done it. There are Claflin-specific SAT and ACT days on campus. So she couldn’t possibly take the test for someone else at school, not with faculty as proctors. Thus, all the national test dates. I scan the location column, town names from all over Massachusetts jumping out at me. She must have driven to places where she wouldn’t be recognized.
But that only explains the girls on the list. Since there are boys, too, Emma didn’t pull this scam off alone. She had to have a male test-taker. I check the spreadsheet again for any indication of a co-conspirator. What if he killed her? With the amount of money the scheme raked in, it would be a good motive. Off Emma, keep all the proceeds. I tally the money column. Over two hundred THOUSAND dollars. What. The. Fuck.