“Chapel,” says Duffy, dry lips and faking it. “So they can tell us about Connor.”
Right as he says it, a cluster of baby-bird freshmen flitters past with a banner bigger than they are, carved with Connor’s name.
Piper’s eyes narrow. “Fucking shitshow.”
Duncan measures out a look. “We’re going.”
They leave the way they came in: united. Blood-bound. Strides almost matched.
But Mack looks over his shoulder—
—at me.
Only me.
Piper scoffs. I don’t care.
Bells toll from the chapel, the same as yesterday, but today there’s something better about them. Deeper and darker and weighted, warning-heavy. The rest of them—all the St Andrew’s Preppers who won’t ever be as good as Duncan and his wolves—fall in line behind them. Filing past us until it’s only Lilia and Piper and me with two spent cigarettes on the floor.
“God,” Lilia sighs, and she starts for the chapel.
Piper stops me from following: a half-step in front of me with her hip jutting out so her sabre catches against my skirt.
Lilia looks back. “Coming?”
“Just need a minute with the new girl, sweetie.”
She shrugs and drifts around the corner.
Piper waits, like maybe I’ll break. Like I’ll spill my darkest secrets to her right here with Mary gazing down at us and Lilia’s first cigarette still pluming smoke.
I wait right back. The hall stretches bigger, all shining planks and perfect arches. Sister María de los Dolores slips out of the shadows and crosses the hollow space corner-to-corner, almost gliding, eyes cast down the same as the statue’s.
When she’s gone Piper pushes too close and says, “Why are you here?”
“Ask my parents.”
She laughs. “I’m not Lili. You can’t bullshit me like that.” She shifts even closer. “You’re nowhere. You don’t even exist.”
I spin my phone between my fingers. “You followed me yesterday.” And she did, with her thousands of sunbleached selfies she never captions and her thousands of followers she never follows back. Piper Morello, the better version, angled just right and filtered into the queen she thinks she’ll be when Lilia stumbles one time too many.
Her lips pinch and unpinch. She doesn’t say, You made that account yesterday, too. She says, “Jade Khanjara. Is that even your real name?”
I keep my voice exactly as light as it needs to be. “Of course.”
“Where were you before St Andrew’s?” she asks. “Exeter? St Paul’s?”
I don’t answer. My heart skips faster, but I’m glad. I want her to fight. I want her to know I’m lying, and not to be able to prove it.
“You’re not on anybody’s records,” she says. “So where was it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why won’t you tell?”
“Non-disclosure agreement,” I say. “From the settlement.”
“There’s no case anywhere.”
I tip my chin just the slightest bit. “I was fifteen.”
“There’s nothing from this year about a fifteen-year-old-girl and a teacher at any of the boarding schools in New Hampshire,” she says, all her gloss gone now. Closing in.
So I laugh. “Stalk much?”
“Like you don’t,” she tosses back, and I don’t deny it. “You’re hiding something.”
“Everyone’s hiding something.”
She goes still when I say that. In her eyes I can see her thoughts spinning fast. “What did Mack tell you?” she asks.
“Nothing I didn’t already know.” I pause. “Not yet.”
She steps back, straighter. Her filtered sunbleached good-citizenship self is back in place. “You’re not getting away with it. Whatever it is.”
I tap my phone open and flip to the front camera. Check my lipstick—for her, not for me. “Neither are you.”
We leave it like that. A draw.
But she walks away first.
In Memoriam
I’m the very last St Andrew’s Prepper through the door.
Piper is just ahead of me, passing the freshman girls’ banner and Connor’s team portrait without looking. The same portrait Mads circled in scarlet on Saturday.
The chapel doors swing shut behind us. The air is hot and hazy and every pew is full, blazer shoulders lined up tight. Sister María de los Dolores stares heavy-eyed at Piper. I smile innocent and she softens just enough and waves us toward the space behind the last pew. We slip in and stand with our backs to the stone. Piper elbows me and nods past the sister: a man stands against the wall, in plainclothes but with a gun on his belt. His eyes rove to Piper and me.
Sister María de los Dolores turns, stern, and puts him back in his place.
At the front of the chapel the dean tells Duncan’s lies. The good-king and his wolves sit in the very first row, four together, and the second-rank boys fill in the row behind them. Malcolm glances over his shoulder and meets my gaze for one stilted instant. He chews his lip again, nagging forgotten and familiar.
It’s not a funeral. It’s not even a memorial. Even the dean isn’t captive enough to try to turn Connor into anyone we should miss. Everything he says is cut and dry and courtroom-perfect.
The dean’s words bleed together and swirl up like smoke to the rafters. I don’t listen. I don’t care. I don’t want to stand still, caught here between Piper and Sister María de los Dolores and the detective, not checking my phone and not watching Duncan and not next to Mack.
I don’t want to wait.
Every second Duncan stays king is too long.
When the dean finishes reading the lawyers’ speech everyone stands to file out. The whispers start. First the freshman banner-girls and then the ugly boys who stand at the farthest side of the commons and stare at Lilia and Piper and their flock with bitter jealous hate.
Piper and I don’t cut in front of them. We wait for our boys.
Outside the doors, somebody gasps and the whispers weave tighter.
“Fucking freshmen,” Piper mutters.
Sister María de los Dolores pretends she doesn’t hear.
The voices get louder. The line surges forward and bunches up at the doors.
Piper slips a sideways glance at me. I keep my eyes on Duncan and Duffy and Banks and Mack, at the very end of the line, not talking.
“It’s not okay!” comes a banner-girl’s voice, whining up. “It’s nasty and lies and—it’s vandalism anyway—”
“You just think Lilia’s going to blame you. No more prom princess.” It’s one of the edge-of-the-commons boys, his words glee-greased and simmering.
And the voices swell loud again.
Sister María de los Dolores pushes into the crowd and out through the doors. Her words cut ruler-quick: “Move along! Get to class!”
Piper shifts closer to me, eyes darting across the crowd. She wants to cut in, I can tell. But Duncan is watching. She hisses, “You brought the storm with you, new girl.”
Then Malcolm’s boys pass us, and the starlings, hovering off-balance without their queen.