Lola laughs.
“I know everything,” she says. “It’s plain as day. You’re the only one who can’t see it.”
With that, she shoves past me, heading for her room.
I cross campus alone, her words still ringing in my ears.
I do think Lola is jealous. With the exception, perhaps, of the Paris Bratva, Leo Gallo’s group is the most popular at our school. Lola resents my place at their table.
But that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.
Dean’s and my relationship started in a highly unorthodox way. How can I be sure how much of our connection is sexual chemistry, and how much is something more?
Dean said he loved me. But he had just heard the news of what happened to his father.
He might only be attached to me because he has no one else.
I climb the cracked stone steps of the Bell Tower, a host of unpleasant thoughts swirling around in my head.
Dean is already waiting for me at the top. He seizes me and kisses me wildly, like it’s been weeks since we saw each other.
Even the kiss fails to comfort me. I don’t know how to discern between passion and love.
I feel low all the following week.
I shouldn’t let Lola get to me, but the more I’m falling for Dean, the more I realize how miserable I’ll be if this thing between us ends.
I’ve put myself in a precarious position.
After being with him, how could I care about anyone else?
Who else could seem handsome, compared to Dean? Who else has a voice that sounds like sandpaper and silk, that vibrates on just the right frequency to make my whole body thrum?
Who could love or hate with his level of passion?
I’m in way over my head.
I’m crazy about Dean, and it terrifies me.
I don’t know how to tell him how I feel, or better yet, how to show him. These are uncharted waters. I’ve never even had a boyfriend before—I skipped the training wheels and went straight to the Harley.
Until I figure it out, I’m trying to avoid Lola so she doesn’t fuck with my head any further.
I’m heading down the stairs of the Keep to our Security Systems class when I hear her coming up from the opposite direction, talking loudly with Dixie Davis. Their derisive laughter rings off the stone walls.
Not wanting to convene with them in the hall, I make an about-face and run up instead, all the way to the top floor.
I had planned to run down the long, carpeted hallway outside the Chancellor’s office, then descend the opposite staircase. Instead, the Chancellor’s door cracks open, and I dart into the nearest niche in the wall, crouching down behind a large and rather ugly Grecian urn.
The move is instinctive, driven by a desire to avoid being seen by Luther Hugo. I don’t realize that he’s accompanied by someone else until I hear a low female voice saying, “You’re the one who let him come here.”
“I had no choice,” Hugo hisses. “It would have looked stranger if I didn’t.”
Peeking around the edge of the urn, I see Miss Robin’s brilliant red hair trailing down the hallway alongside the Chancellor’s broad back.
There’s nothing unusual about the librarian visiting her uncle. Except for the complete lack of affection in either of their voices.
“He doesn’t know anything,” Miss Robin says, haughty and dismissive.
“You’d better hope he doesn’t,” the Chancellor snaps back at her.
“If you honestly think—”
They’re getting too far away for me to hear. I lean out a little further, trying to get a better angle.
The urn wobbles, drowning out whatever the Chancellor replies.
I frantically grip its handles, preventing it from toppling over, but grimacing at the noise.
There’s a slight pause, as if Miss Robin and the Chancellor glanced back over their shoulders.
I hold my breath, worried that they might hear even an exhale.
After a moment, their motion resumes.
“Well, that’s your problem,” Miss Robin says coldly.
Then I hear the light patter of her feet descending the stairs.
Luther Hugo comes stomping back down the hallway.
I shrink behind the urn, praying that he won’t look in my direction. I’m only partly concealed by the oversized pottery.
Born along in a cloud of irritation, he sweeps into his office and slams the door.
I stay exactly where I am, too scared to move.
I only heard a fragment of the conversation.
But I can’t help thinking they must be talking about Snow.
Finally Saturday rolls around again. I prefer the weekend—it’s much easier to avoid Lola.
Rakel and I spend the morning as we’ve been spending all our weekends lately—searching for my missing person.
We have to take the laptop up to ground level, because there’s no connection down in the Undercroft. We’re holed up in the ice house on the west side of campus, Rakel tapping away on Ozzy’s laptop and me keeping watch by the door so we’re not caught with technological contraband.
Rakel has become even more obsessed with this task than I am. She’s been neglecting her homework in favor of chasing up obscure leads that inevitably conclude in more dead ends.
“People can’t really disappear,” Rakel says grimly, her eyes fixed on the glowing screen. “There’s always some trace . . .”
“Unless they’re dead,” I reply.
“She’s not dead.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
I don’t share Rakel’s confidence. I told her from the beginning this might be a fool’s errand.
“I found her sister easy enough,” Rakel says. “She’s a nurse, too. Works at Evanston Women’s Hospital in Chicago. Which is a little weird ‘cause the address on her tax return is Madison. That’s a long commute.”
“Could be an old address,” I say, drawing idly in my sketchbook with a piece of charcoal.
“No, it’s from January.”
“Is that her only family?”
“Yeah, her parents are dead.”
I’m drawing two sisters, both blonde and dressed in nurse’s uniforms.
Two sisters that look alike, not like me and Zoe.
The charcoal smudges on the page as my hand jerks involuntarily.
“Rakel . . .” I say.
“What?”
“Pull up the hospital directory.”
Rakel finds the right page, scrolling until she sees the nurse in question: Lida Copeland.
“Look at that,” Rakel says. “They could be twins.”
I join her at the laptop, my eyes fixed on the blonde woman facing the camera with only the ghost of a smile. Her face is angular and elegant, the austere lines of her jaw and her wide, full mouth offset by the heavy frames of her glasses.
The glasses can’t disguise her beauty, or the sadness in her eyes that is all too familiar to me.
“Not twins . . .” I breathe. “That’s her. That’s Dean’s mother.”
We found Rose Copeland.
21
Dean
Cat comes running up the stairs of the Bell Tower, filled with a nervous energy I’ve never seen before.