New Girl

by Paige Harbison

  “Oh, and don’t sneak into the boys’ dorms again. If you want gossip started about you, that’s the fastest way to get it.”

  When I got to my hall, I saw that almost all the doors were open, and everyone was talking.

  “What happened?” I asked Madison when I saw her standing against a wall, her hand over her mouth.

  “We should have known this would happen eventually.” She was shaking her head and looking upset.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone else was watching the tapes.”

  Julia took over. “There’s this…slow guy who works with the security team, and he usually watches at night. Becca cut some deal with him last year. He usually points the cameras away for a little while or something. I guess he wasn’t the one watching tonight, or something. Or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.”

  Madison wiped the black tears from her cheeks. “At least last year he listened to Becca.”

  “Listened to her how?”

  Julia shrugged. “I don’t know, she talked to him one time and he agreed to keep quiet about seeing us walk down to the boathouse and everything on the other cameras. He works the overnight shifts on weekends. It was really convenient.”

  I’d had no idea I’d been risking so much by going down to the boathouse those few times. I thought it…well, I guess I never thought about it.

  “That sucks.” I tried to look sympathetic. “Anyway. I’m going to bed. I’m sorry you guys got in trouble.”

  I pushed open my door and went in, threw off my clothes without bothering to find pajamas, and crawled into my stiff bed. A few minutes later, Dana came in. She said nothing, but started laughing. I lay there, without acknowledging her, until she sighed and went silent.

  Welcome back to Manderley.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE DINING HALL THE NEXT DAY WAS AWASH with “FIND BECCA” T-shirts.

  I spotted my usual table easily in the sea of pink. I sat next to Blake, and ignored Max.

  “Does it ever stop being cold here?” I asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

  “Usually in April or May,” said Blake. “So did you hear about the bust last night? Cam and I almost went!”

  “Yeah, I heard a little bit.”

  “A bunch of people went down to the boathouse last night,” Blake explained to Max. “But apparently a bunch of people got caught. Professor Crawley came down with security guards, and then Crawley chased a bunch of people up to the school.”

  “It’s crazy, dude,” Cam said, his mouth full of waffle. “Like fifteen people got a week study hall, and it’s going on their record.”

  “I feel like it was more than fifteen.” Blake looked at Cam. “In any case, it’s a lot, and that so easily could have been us.”

  Cam’s eyes were wide with the thought of it. “On any other day, it would have been us. I mean—”

  Dana ran over before Cam could say whatever he’d been about to. She was wearing one of the pink shirts.

  “I have to talk to you, Max.” Her voice was higher than usual, and her words were running together. She looked pleased.

  “What?” Max asked.

  “Just come with me.”

  He followed her out of the dining hall, and the three of us sat watching the doorway until he came back in, looking green. None of us said anything.

  Whatever she said, he looked to be taking it very seriously.

  When they’d finished, Max came back to us.

  “What happened?” Blake asked him as soon as he found his way into the chair.

  He ignored her and looked at me. “Dana saw her last night.”

  All of us froze, and I felt like I’d been punched hard in the chest.

  “Becca.” Blake gasped her name. “She saw her? Where?”

  “At the boathouse, apparently. After everyone got caught, Dana stayed behind to hide. When she came out, she says she saw her. Becca told her she’d been about to come into the boathouse when she saw Professor Crawley, and hid.”

  Blake dropped her spoon and leaned back and away from her yogurt.

  “If she’s back, why won’t she just come out?” she asked. “What’s she doing, just creeping around the beach? Seriously?”

  “Come on,” said Max. “Can you not see how this would make perfect sense to Becca? She loves having people think about her. I can completely picture her just shrugging and saying it’s funny to watch everyone wonder.”

  Blake nodded. “Okay, yeah, that is true.”

  I stood and ran after Dana. I caught up to her in the rotunda, where she was sitting in one of the itchy chairs and writing in a notebook.

  “What’s up?” She looked at me with all kinds of smugness in her smile.

  “If this isn’t true, you know that it’s really wrong to lie, right? If she wasn’t here, and she’s somewhere else, then everyone will be looking in the wrong place.”

  She smiled toothily, and I noticed her canine teeth were sharp and looked threatening. “What’s wrong, new girl, you afraid of what’s going to happen to you and Max?”

  “Stop calling me that! And I’m not. But if you’re sure, don’t you think you should tell someone?”

  “I was just about to. Is that all right with you?”

  “I’m just saying it’s pitch-black out there, and I know you miss her. You were probably drunk, and maybe you just…saw what you wanted to see?”

  I didn’t know why I was saying it, or what I expected to gain. I felt my cheeks go hot with embarrassment. Dana’s face, on the other hand, went paler than usual. Her eyes narrowed, and I could hear her heavy breathing.

  “Why don’t you just back off? What is wrong with you? It’s like you’re obsessed with her or something!” All of a sudden she was screaming. “You’re just psycho! Aren’t you? You just want to be her! You don’t want her to come back because you want to be the new girl! You want to marry Max instead of her! You want to—”

  Johnny walked out of the dorm and came over to her, and I felt Max come up behind me. I suddenly felt okay. I wasn’t alone in this.

  “Dana, hey,” Johnny said as he grabbed her. “Chill out.”

  She shifted her gaze to him, looking crazed.

  “Calm down. It’s okay.” He was speaking to her like an overemotional child.

  But it was working. Her breathing slowed a little, and she collapsed into him. Johnny looked at Max and gave him a small shake of the head.

  We all stood there for a minute with a quiet dining hall behind us. I could feel eyes on me. Then, very suddenly, Dana covered her face and turned to run up the stairs.

  “What happened?” he asked Max.

  “Becca. She saw Becca.”

  Johnny looked steadily at Max and I saw the vein throb in his forearm as he clenched his fist. “Really.”

  “Apparently.”

  Johnny looked like he didn’t know what to do with the information. He was staring at the floor with wide eyes.

  I wondered, as I looked at him, if he’d had real feelings for her. He certainly looked as though he had. I remembered the way he’d talked about her in the study room. He had said that there was more to her. That not everyone had gotten to know her. He and Becca had hooked up—but had it been more than that for them?

  By the time I came back to reality, Max and I were alone.

  “I have to go study.” He didn’t look at me. “I’ll find you later.”

  I went back into the hall, and took my and Max’s barely touched trays to the kitchen.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore.

  The school was buzzing with gossip for the rest of the week. Everyone was whispering about how she had been seen again. She was back.

  For whatever reason, the increased theorizing of Becca’s imminent return made me a target of even more stares. Why this was the case was a mystery to me. It’s not like if she came back, we’d have a Godzilla versus Mothra fight and she’d take back her old bed and send me out onto the curb to wait for a cab. If she c
ame back, she wouldn’t even be able to finish out the year, surely. I didn’t know what her return would mean. Still, people looked at me as if that was exactly what would happen.

  When Friday night came and there was no boathouse to sneak down to, every girl on the hallway had to scream and shout in their dorms. It was nearly impossible to sleep. Eventually I drifted into unconsciousness, my head killing me and my blankets wrapped tightly around me to ward off the chill coming through the shut window.

  Time passed, and finally everything was quiet and dark. In the hall, in my room, in my head. But then something was stealing me from my nothing-dreams.

  It was a small voice, practically a musical whisper in the blackness. My eyes snapped open like a baby doll’s as I realized first that I was awake, and then that the sound I heard was real. I couldn’t make it out at first. But finally I realized this was Dana’s voice. Singing “You Are My Sunshine.” To herself.

  I felt paralyzed.

  “…you make me happy when skies are gray…”

  I felt a little panicky, and fully awake.

  “…please don’t take my sunshine away…”

  And she finished singing, and went silent. As if it had never happened.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE PINK BECCA SHIRTS WOULDN'T GO AWAY. Particularly when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I just wore my uniform, making me stand out even more than usual. I kind of wished the administration would ban those shirts, but apparently they didn’t mind.

  Everyone’s minds were on love, and so that’s most of what people were talking about. Every time I heard the words love, perfect or romantic I wanted to punch something. Perhaps because every time I heard those words I, and everyone else, thought of Becca and Max.

  I’d heard so much about how “perfect,” “in love” and “romantic” they were. I knew they were “adorable together.” So when the words were flying around like cupid’s arrows, I felt like all I could do was duck for cover.

  Max and I were not speaking. He asked to talk to me a few times, but I couldn’t bear to be told again that he just couldn’t be with me. I’d heard that enough. I also resisted the urge to ask him what he and Becca had done last year. Probably flown off to Paris and fed each other chocolate croissants while getting silly and light-headed off mimosas.

  I headed to the Black Box Theater in the art department, where they were airing a movie about romance in Paris.

  I passed by Susan Tobias, who said nothing to me. She tossed her long, straight blond hair over her shoulder. It did look a lot like Becca’s hair.

  No one was in the theater, but the lights were down, and the movie had just started to flicker on. I could hardly see around me. I sighed, feeling more lonely and pitiful than ever, and sat down in one of the seats.

  The movie was slow, overacted and impossible to pay attention to. I hadn’t even been tired, but I found myself falling asleep. At a certain point, I realized I didn’t even know what the plot was. I was just watching this woman have emotions about something or other.

  Then, quite suddenly, the lonely woman in her flat vanished and was quickly replaced by—what looked like—burning paper, and then a white screen. It stayed that way.

  I looked around. I got up and looked in the projector box. The guy running the projector was gone.

  My Valentine’s Day date with myself even sucked. I trudged sadly up the stairs and into my hall.

  It was filled with people, going in and out of rooms, laughing and dancing, looking woozy, making out, and/or fighting. Like any good party. Almost all of these things came to a halt as I rounded the corner.

  Like any Manderley party.

  Madison and Julia, never to be seen far from each other, came over to greet me.

  “Hey, where have you been? All the guys snuck over while they changed the tapes in the security office.” Madison smiled genuinely.

  “I didn’t know anything was going on. I was just downstairs.”

  “Oh, well, yeah it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment…thing.”

  Right. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Anyway…Max seems a little down,” Madison whispered to me.

  “Does he?”

  Julia nodded. “Yeah, he probably feels guilty, because he knows he shouldn’t have…you know.”

  “Shouldn’t have what?”

  “You guys…everyone said you were in his room…he probably just feels guilty ’cuz he did that.”

  “What am I doing, Madison?” It was Max.

  She cowered under his glare. It was obvious she regretted saying anything. She shook her head, looking sorry.

  “No, go ahead,” Max went on. “What am I doing? Furthermore, what horrible thing could I do that she didn’t?”

  It was quiet around us as people listened. We all knew who she was.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry.” Madison was struggling to keep her words and voice steady.

  Dana crept, as always, from some unseen corner. “She can make up for it when she comes back. Especially after everything she’s done in the past… Oh, how long has it been now?”

  “Shut up, Dana.”

  I saw Johnny coming through the crowd. Good. He was always good at calming Dana down.

  “I mean I’m just saying, things will change when she’s back, won’t they? It won’t matter what she did last year or what you’ve…chosen to do in the interim.” She looked at me.

  “Maybe he actually likes me,” I said. “Have you ever thought of that?”

  I was hot in the cheeks, and I just wanted to yell at Dana. This desire heightened when she started to laugh. Everyone was listening now. Johnny put a hand on her shoulder, but she swatted him away.

  “You are kidding me, right?” She looked gleeful.

  “No, I mean he is choosing to spend time with me, isn’t he? If he was just moping around he could do that alone. He doesn’t need me for that.”

  “Is he with you?” she asked, looking skyward as if puzzling it out. “Because I thought you weren’t actually his girlfriend. Couldn’t give you that label, isn’t that right? Why do you think that is?”

  No, he hadn’t. And she knew it. We never were actually together. I said nothing, but felt my cheeks go redder.

  “Dana, cool it, okay?” Johnny’s voice was low and personal. “You can’t keep attacking her.”

  “You really can’t.” This came from someone I didn’t expect. Julia.

  Dana looked as surprised as I felt for a second, but collected herself.

  “Oh, see, there it is. I always said you weren’t her best friend. You and Madison always thought you were, but when it comes down to it, you really aren’t, are you?”

  Johnny took hold of Dana’s shoulders. “Come on, that’s enough.”

  He took her back to our room, a place I really didn’t want to go back to.