by Dana Mele
I pulled myself to a sitting position. “Where’s Brie?”
“Probably in a dark corner with some other poor loser,” Cori said and giggled.
My stomach turned. She wouldn’t do that to Justine. And if she did, it would be with me. I would be the one. She would be winding her arms around me, twisting her fingers into my hair, our lips pressed together as we pulled each other close and up and around over the crunching leaves, laughing the cold away. It should be me. It should always have been me. I suddenly felt dark and bothered and like the night had been a waste.
And then she was there, towering above us, breathless, disheveled, her eyes bright and wild with alcohol. “Change of plan. Let’s split up now and meet in thirty minutes. Back to our dorms, ditch valuables, do what has to be done, meet at the edge of the green. I have a surprise.”
A mischievous grin played on the corner of Tai’s lips, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore. “What kind of a surprise?”
“It’ll be worth it.” Brie started running toward the dorms and glanced back over her shoulder. “Thirty minutes.”
“Oh yeah,” Tricia said. “She’s definitely been in a dark corner somewhere.”
“Looks like she’s off to finish whatever she started,” Cori whispered, and the others roared with laughter.
I glared at them. “You guys are like frat boys.”
“We’re the ones frat guys prey on, Kay.” Tai took a long drink and burped into the back of her hand, and the others laughed uncontrollably. “Innocent little us.”
* * *
• • •
I SKIP MY afternoon classes to go for a half-marathon run around the lake and attempt to cool down with a yoga session in one of the private meditation rooms at the athletic center, but I can’t slow my pulse or stop my mind from racing. Dinner is no better. Mealtimes have become increasingly surreal since Jessica’s death. On the first night, I sat by myself across the cavernous hall from my friends as Tai tried to poison them against me. The next day, Tai was gone and Tricia sat with the rugby team after the memorial. Tonight, there’s no sign of Tricia. Cori and Maddy sit at our usual table, and I drag Brie to a deserted corner in the back. I decide to keep Tricia’s secret. It’s not for me to tell, even to Brie.
“Have you seen Tricia?” Brie asks as I elbow a first-year out of the way to block the table off for ourselves. She gives me a shocked look and Brie shakes her head at me, frowning, and apologizes to the girl, who looks like she’s about to cry.
“Sorry,” I say, distracted. “I totally didn’t see you.”
“She’s not answering her phone.”
“Who?”
“Tricia.” Brie feels my forehead. “Are you sick?”
“They suspect me,” I say. My whole body feels ice cold. “Me.”
“They can’t. You have alibis.”
“Not for the entire night. Not for that window between the dance and the lake.”
Brie places her fork down slowly. “I told you not to tell them about that.”
“She cornered me. That woman is like one of those sharks that clamps down and doesn’t let go.”
Brie closes her eyes and her expression turns serene, but I can tell she’s beginning to panic. She gets strangely calm when things are going wrong. “She’s going to know we all lied. We could be arrested for obstructing justice.”
“Relax. I only told her that I was alone. Not the rest of you. I said I went to my room to change. Which happens to be directly below Jessica’s room. Then the detective asked specifically if I was in there, and it seemed like she was implying that she thought I was. No one can prove I didn’t kill her and then meet up with you.”
“No one can prove you were in her room because you weren’t. And you have no motive.”
“Jealousy is the oldest motive in the book.”
She scoffs. “Over Spencer? If they knew him, they wouldn’t even consider it.” She takes a bite of spaghetti.
I think for a moment. “You were already wrong once, Brie. The detective said it wasn’t a suicide.”
Brie frowns. “Yeah. It seems like public opinion is swinging that way, too.”
I glance across the dining hall and see Nola gliding out of the kitchen with her tray and I wave her over. She hesitates for a moment and then approaches and sits. “Nola, do you know Brie?”
She rises and curtsies elaborately. Her hair is arranged in a meticulous mass of curls held back by a blue silk ribbon that matches her eyes. “Miss Matthews, I know you by reputation of course.”
Brie takes her in and shoots me a wary look. Even in uniform, Brie and Nola are total opposites. Nola is a different dramatic incarnation of herself every day, while Brie is classic and traditional. Nola is makeup and theater and effect. Brie is lip gloss and natural light; she seems to glow from the fact of existing. Nola is always moving; Brie moves with intention. Brie’s shirts are pressed and buttoned, casually accessorized with a simple silver chain; Nola wears shirts unbuttoned down to the vest, clunky bracelets, and large rings that overwhelm her tiny hands.
“Nola, maybe you should call off your date with Greg.”
She shakes her head and her curls bounce. “No way. We’re going to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror. I’m dressing as Magenta.”
“Okay, but Jessica’s death is being investigated as a murder now, and he’s almost definitely a suspect. It wouldn’t be safe.” More to the point, it wouldn’t look good if Detective Morgan somehow drew a line between Nola, Greg, and me. She did not seem to like the fact that I was in contact with Greg.
Nola raises her eyebrows. “Intrigant. Do you think he did it?”
“No,” I admit. “But you can’t risk that.”
“You could,” Brie says mildly. She crunches a piece of ice and smiles at Nola sweetly.
“Funny.” Nola takes a bite of garlic bread. “I heard you were on the suspect list, Kay. Maybe I shouldn’t risk talking to you.”
“Who told you that?”
She shrugs. “People talk.”
I give Brie a told-you-so look and then turn back to Nola.
“You can do what you want. I’m just trying to look out for you.”
She studies me. “Really?”
I nod with effort. My head feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. I need coffee. I feel my phone buzz under the table and I look down to see a message from Brie.
Third wheel?
She looks at me expectantly, but I shake my head.
All good, I write back.
“Fine. I won’t go.” Nola texts something into her phone. “He’s not my type, anyway. Too decorative. A little ink is okay. Less is more.” She looks at me and Brie. “So what are we up to tonight?”
“We study on weeknights,” Brie says. She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to give my own excuse.
I really should study. But I need to take a look at the next recipe on Jessica’s blog, and it should be unlocked by now. I can’t mention that to Brie, though. “I have nothing going on.”
Nola nods. “My room or yours?”
“Yours, I guess. Mine’s a bit of a wreck.”
Brie stares at me with a look I don’t understand. She rises without another word, gives me a hard kiss on the cheek, and storms out of the dining hall.
8
Nola’s room is nothing like I expect. I thought the walls would be covered in Tim Burton posters, Vampire Diaries, goth drawings, that sort of thing. Instead, it’s full of light and life. There are plants everywhere. I recognize cacti, aloe, sunflowers, tiger lilies, and amaryllises, but the rest look exotic to me, the kinds of plants you would see in desert and tropical climates. It occurs to me that I don’t know anything about Nola, including where she’s from.
“You’re a gardener?” I ask pointlessly.
“Well, it’s not exactly a garden. But I do lik
e plants. These were all cuttings from home. Homes.” She tilts a watering can into a cactus pot, and I survey the rest of the room. Her desk is covered in neat stacks of books and vintage writing instruments, jars of ink, reed pens, sharpening stones, pen cutters, and the like. The walls are completely covered with brown butcher paper, with neat columns of calligraphy stretching from floor to ceiling. I stand on tiptoes to reach the top of a column.
“‘How happy some o’er other some can be! / Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.’” I turn to her. “Why does that sound so familiar?”
“Because A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Shakespeare’s most-performed play. We read it last year in European Lit, and it was also the spring play. I was Helena.”
“Oh.” I don’t usually bother with the school theater productions. Plays aren’t really my thing. I only go to Justine’s shows to support her, and I’ve fallen asleep or texted my way through most of them.
Nola gestures to the wall with a thin hand and then stands by my side. She’s a full head shorter than I am. “You think memorizing a few equations for physics is hard. Try cramming all this into your brain.”
I turn a slow circle. The entire wall is covered, top to bottom. “There’s no way you memorized it all.”
“Well, not for one show,” she admits. “But I never forget. I could recite Hamlet for you right now.”
“You didn’t play Hamlet.”
She looks at me with her freaky globe eyes. “I was the first in Bates’s history to play Hamlet. Last winter, as a junior.”
I knew the drama club liked to put on Shakespeare productions, and since we have no male students, they cast girls in the men’s roles. But for some reason I never envisioned someone I actually knew playing an iconic theatrical part. Hamlet. The salesman, whatever his name is. I imagine Nola dressed in classic Elizabethan garb with a mustache drawn on with eyeliner and a smile cracks my lips. I can’t help it.
Her eyes narrow. “Like hacking away at a soccer ball is such an achievement.”
I bite my lip. “I wasn’t laughing. It sounds really hard.”
“Monkeys can do what you do. They can’t do what I do. That’s all I’m saying.”
I nod. “Agreed. Can we look at the website, please?”
She flounces down on the bed and gazes up at the ceiling. “Have you thought this through, Kay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the website is going after your friends. First Tai, then Tricia. Do you really want to tempt fate?”
“I have to.”
She lifts her head and props herself up on her elbows, her hair falling over her shoulders like a dark curtain. “Why?”
Because Jessica knew what I did, and if I don’t follow her rules, so will everyone else. “Because I might be next on Jessica’s list.”
She leans toward me conspiratorially. “What did she have on you?”
I shrug. “Maybe nothing.”
“She had something on everyone on the list. Maybe one of them is the killer.”
“Or maybe the simplest explanation is the true one. She killed herself and wanted revenge on everyone who wronged her.”
“The police don’t think so.”
“The police don’t know about the revenge blog. And they can’t find out.”
“You told me you needed my help getting into the website because Jessica left a message for you there.”
“The website is the message. She wanted revenge.”
“Why ask you to do it? It’s a huge favor to ask someone you never met.”
“That’s the question.”
Nola’s eyes cut right through me. “Is there something you did to her? Maybe something you’ve forgotten? Something you didn’t even think twice about? Anything?”
I shake my head and tell what feels like my hundredth lie of the day. “None of us ever spoke to her before she turned up dead. She was a nobody.”
Nola shrugs. “Maybe that’s what you did. No one wants to be a nobody.” She opens her laptop and I sit next to her as she pulls up the website and the software to decode the password for the next recipe.
As she rests on her elbow, her hair falls over one shoulder and her dress slides down a little. I notice a blooming of black ink on her right shoulder blade.
I kneel on the side of her bed. “Do you have a tattoo?”
She glances at me over her shoulder. “No. I draw the same picture on my own back every morning, let it fade over the course of the day, scrub off the remnants in the shower, and painstakingly re-create it ad nauseam. I make a game of it.”
“Obviously.”
She pulls her dress slightly farther down her shoulder so I can get a better look. It’s an intricate drawing of an old clock face with no hands.
“What does it mean?”
“It’s art. If I explain it, the point is lost. You don’t ask a painter to explain . . . Never mind.” She pulls her dress back up hurriedly and her face looks flushed.
“I’m sorry. To hear Ms. Koeppler talk, art always means something.”
She smiles and brushes my hair out of my face almost the way Brie would when I say something that reveals my ignorance about something she considers herself an expert on. “It does. But the work of art itself is the artist’s statement. The rest is up to the viewer.” She drops her hand suddenly, as if remembering that I’m off limits or something. It takes me a moment to remember that I’m technically not. I still feel guilty, though, and check my phone to see if Brie has texted after her stormy exit from the dining hall. Nothing.
The password appears and Nola enters it and clicks on the link for the palate cleanser course.
New Orleans, LA Blood Orange Sorbet
Had an orange, squeezed it pale
Beat it bloody, left no trail
Led it in the woods for lost
Left it in the snow to frost
Thought no one would ever know?
I captured the orange snow.
There are several files attached of what looks like drops of bright-red blood on snow.
Nola’s face turns chalk white. “It’s me,” she whispers. “Jessica was after me, too.”
I read the words again. “I don’t see it.” Then the title hits me. New Orleans, LA. NOLA. “What did you do?”
“She couldn’t know. She couldn’t.” Nola is breathing so hard, she’s practically hyperventilating, so I hand her a pillow.
“Hug this. Deep, slow breaths.” I read the poem again. “I thought Jessica was only going after my friends.”
Nola clutches the pillow to her chest, breathing slower. “Apparently not.”
“But it’s a revenge blog. Tai and Tricia make sense. Even if they don’t remember her, all of my friends have said and done things to other students that we regret. And if we didn’t regret it then, we sure as hell do it now.” I avoid Nola’s eyes. “You don’t fit that pattern.”
“I might.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “I may not have agreed to help you out of pure benevolence. After seeing the first recipe, that is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There is one thing that ties me to you, Tai, and Tricia. And Jessica.”
I search my memory. I can’t think of a single link between the four of us. “I don’t think so.”
“Do the words Dear Valentine ring a bell?”
They hit me like a knockout punch. I take a moment to steady myself. “What do you know about Dear Valentine?”
“I know that my first year I had no friends and I was desperate to make some. So I signed up to be delivery girl. I was assigned to third floor, Henderson. So Jessica was on my delivery list. And on Valentine’s Day, she didn’t get any flowers. No big deal, she wasn’t the only sophomore. I didn’t either. But then Tricia tracked me down and begged me to deliver
a letter back to Jessica. We’re not really allowed to do that. Dear Valentine is a one-day thing. But she was just so nice, and I needed nice so badly . . . So I said okay. Then the next day, same thing. And the next. By the third day, Jessica begged me to stop. But when I tried to tell Tricia no, she told me how awesome I was and how I was everyone’s hero. You and Tai and Brie and even the seniors. I’m such an idiot. None of you actually spoke to me. But I guess I imagined all these looks of admiration in class and started showing up at sports games, and oh my God, I was such a loser. Anyway. I don’t know what was in those letters Tricia wrote. But every day I could hear Jessica crying when I knocked on her door. And I kept bringing them. For almost two weeks until Tricia finally stopped writing them. Then she went back to pretending I didn’t exist. So yeah. I’d say Jessica had a reason to get back at me, too. That’s why I really wanted to help you. I’ve been waiting to see if my name was going to come up. I was just hoping what someone else did to her was worse. Whatever was in those letters was bad. So bad that Jessica’s last wish was to ruin the lives of everyone involved in sending them. You were Tricia’s friend, and Jessica entrusted you with carrying out her revenge. That means either you were involved, or you were the only one of your friends who wasn’t. So I’m asking again. Is there something you did to Jessica?”
I try to speak, but my throat is too dry. Dear Valentine is a very good reason for Jessica to be upset with me and my friends. And Nola only knows part of the story. Her version just scratches the surface.
She turns the laptop around to show me the poem again and draws a deep, shaky breath. “Do you remember that whole big freak-out a couple of years ago when Dr. Klein’s cat went missing? Maybe a week or so after that year’s Valentine’s Day?”
The memory sends a jolt of electricity down my spine. It was a big deal. Hunter had been a fixture around campus, practically a mascot. He was always trotting across the green, chasing chipmunks, batting leaves around, or basking in the sun. Then he disappeared from inside Dr. Klein’s mansion on the fringe of campus. The doors and windows had been closed, but not bolted. She was positive about that. His collar had been left behind. It was ominous as hell. Posters went up everywhere. There were multiple assemblies. The campus police spoke to the student body; the school psychologist had us all come in for interviews. It was huge. But Hunter never turned up. Adorable, fluffy, orange-striped Hunter.