Poor Little Dead Girls

by Lizzie Friend

  “At Keating? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, people around here talk. It’s a pretty small-town atmosphere.” He glanced at Jeremy and shrugged a half-hearted apology.

  Jeremy started to speak, but Sadie cut him off. “Like what?”

  “Oh, you know, it’s not the first time a student has ended up … in trouble. There was that other girl too, back in the ’80s. Can’t remember her name, but she was one of those heiresses, you know? Family was always in the news.”

  Sadie frowned. The Keating curse. She wondered exactly what “getting into trouble” was a euphemism for.

  “What happened to her?”

  He shrugged. “They never found her. But don’t you worry about that. All the schools are having problems these days — kids getting into drugs and sex and vampires and stuff. I’m sure what happened to the Ralleigh girl was just a sad accident.”

  He waved a meaty hand to dismiss the subject, but Sadie’s throat had instantly gone dry.

  “What Ralleigh girl?”

  “Oh — Anna Ralleigh. That was the girl who died last year.”

  Sadie’s tongue felt thick and clumsy, and she was starting to feel dizzy. “Her last name was Ralleigh?”

  “Listen, I should never have brought it up.” He put a hand on each of their shoulders and smiled. “Have a great time on your date. Come back and get some pizza soon, all right? Just don’t bring any of your snooty friends — those rich brats never tip.” He grinned, then turned and ambled back toward the kitchen.

  Sadie sat back heavily in her seat. She told herself it was a coincidence — that Ralleigh could be a common name. But something about it made her stomach turn. “Have you ever heard any of that before?”

  Jeremy was busy pulling another slice out of the pan. “Not really. I mean, I heard about Anna. Everyone was still talking about it when I got here. But I’ve never really heard about anyone else. It’s sad, but that shit happens, right? The other thing was probably just some tragic accident, too.”

  Sadie thought about the moss-covered cross on the side of the road near Keating’s main gate. “Or another suicide.”

  Jeremy took a bite and chewed. “Actually now that I think about it, they do talk about girls not being able to handle the pressure and losing it during finals. They joke about it, the Keating Curse or something dumb like that, but it’s just people talking. I didn’t think they meant, you know, really losing it.”

  She frowned, and Jeremy looked surprised. “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s probably nothing. I’ve only even heard that once or twice. Besides, Lou probably just means students who drop out or cause a huge scandal by going to UC Santa Barbara instead of Princeton.” He smiled. “Besides, no talking about Keating and Graff tonight, right?”

  Her head was spinning now, and part of her wanted to sprint to the kitchen to ask Lou more questions. Instead, she forced herself to give him a convincing smile.

  “You’re right. No Keating, no Graff, just jeans, pizza, and slumming it with the other common folk.”

  He laughed, and she grabbed another slice. They ate the last two pieces, then walked the few short blocks down the street to the movie theater. Foxburg had an old-fashioned theater with velvet seats, a big, red curtain, and an organ pit that dated back to the days when the theater showed silent films. Now, it mostly showed indie movies and slightly older releases for five bucks a ticket. When they were about a block away, he nonchalantly took her hand. He didn’t let go until the credits rolled.

  She got another e-mail from the Sullas a few weeks later. It was a Thursday, and she was in the lobby with Grace and Jessica, slumped in an armchair with her laptop propped open on her lap. She was 2,000 words into a 2,500-word essay on Nabokov, and she was debating trying to get away with using 500 words’ worth of quotes from the book to fill out the rest. She leaned her head back and sighed, rubbing her temples with both hands.

  “You know, maybe a creepy pervert who’s obsessed with a teenager is just a creepy pervert? Why do we have to write papers about him?” she said aloud.

  “Tell me about it,” Jessica muttered, her hands still moving along her keyboard.

  Sadie was about to shut her laptop when an e-mail notification popped up on her screen. It was another e-mail from Z — whoever that was.

  The salon

  2 P.M.

  Saturday

  -Z

  She looked up and glanced around the room. Instinctively she hunched over the screen, as if someone would see right through it and discover her secret, but nothing had changed. She spent the next hour staring at her essay and wondering what Saturday would bring.

  At nine, the lights dimmed, and she closed her computer and made her way up to her room. As she put a hand on the doorknob, it opened from the inside and Trix came stumbling out. Judging from her outfit, she was just leaving.

  “Oh, hey Sadie,” she said as she brushed by her in the doorway. Sadie smelled pungent smoke mingling with her perfume. “I’m just headed to brush my teeth.” She jerked a thumb toward the bathroom down the hall and smiled widely. “I’ll see you later.”

  Sadie just waved and shut the door behind her. With the twins, Sadie had realized the best way to deal with them was to just pretend she believed them, no matter how ridiculous their stories were. Lately, she was pretty sure they were both spending every night in the dorms at Georgetown, but they still gave her a convenient excuse every time they ran into each other in their room. They would say: “Oh, hey, Sadie. I haven’t seen you in days — I feel like I haven’t left the library in ages,” even as they changed out of the minidress and heels they had clearly been wearing since the night before.

  She dropped her laptop on her desk, then peeled off her sweatshirt. As she collapsed on the bed, she winced as the old springs gave way with a loud whine. She thought for a moment, then flipped open her phone.

  “Get the e-mail about Saturday? Any idea what’s going on?”

  She sent the text and settled down to wait, curling up under the covers with her phone inches from her nose. It buzzed a moment later.

  “No clue. Some kind of event? Josh said they get invited to lots of stuff in the city. Have you heard anything?”

  “Not really. Haven’t gotten the chance to ask yet, though. What are you up to?”

  “Just got in bed. About to start watching a movie.”

  “Oh, sounds fun … What movie?”

  “Probably Rocky. Hulu’s streaming the whole series for free this month.”

  “Nice. Never seen it — supposed to be good, right?”

  “You’ve never seen Rocky? We might have a problem.”

  “Haha, I’m not really into boxing. Or sweaty guys with weird accents … ”

  “Okay, now you’re just trying to piss me off. Rocky is the ultimate sports movie. And you call yourself an athlete … Check your e-mail.”

  She pulled her laptop off of her desk and opened it, navigating back to her e-mail inbox. A few moments later an e-mail from jwood@degraffenreid.edu popped up. It was a link to a Hulu page with the movie embedded in it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Watch the movie with me?”

  “Uh, I wish. There’s no way I can get out of here right now.”

  “Ha, that’d be nice. But I just meant with me, at the same time, on your laptop. It’ll be like a date, and you won’t even have to worry about me trying to get to second base.”

  I’m an idiot, she thought.

  “Sounds good to me. Should I start it now?”

  “Yeah. And prepare to have your mind blown. Just don’t judge Rocky by his tight ’80s sweatpants — I think they were considered manly back then.”

  She plugged in her headphones, turned off the lights, and settled back against the pillows to watch. Halfway through the movie and about two dozen texts later, she made a mental note to ask her dad about her cell phone plan. If she didn’t have unlimited texts already, she was definitely going to need them.

 
; Chapter 19

  At 1:30 that Saturday, she stood in front of her closet and stared at the rack of Tshirts, sweatpants, and rumpled jeans. She was wondering what, exactly, one was expected to wear to one’s first official secret society meeting if such a meeting took place in the afternoon. She couldn’t exactly Google that one like she did every other social occasion at Keating that required a nonsensical dress-code label like “cocktail casual” or “white tie.” She finally settled on some jeans, a navy blue sweater, and some brown leather boots Gwen had casually discarded a few weeks before.

  “Want these? I’m sick of wearing them,” she had said, before unceremoniously dumping them at Sadie’s feet. They were $400 riding boots that looked like they had barely been tried on, much less worn enough to be given away. Sadie had simply nodded, wide-eyed, and Gwen had walked away like she had just given Sadie something as worthless as a spare square of toilet paper.

  She threw the outfit on, brushed her hair, and pulled on a wool hat. She glanced out the window and saw rain falling fast and heavy. She sighed — the walk to the tower was not going to be fun.

  She slipped down the stairs and padded across the thick carpet. She had a hand on the front door, when she heard Jessica’s voice.

  “Hey, Sadie! Wait up.” She was standing in the doorway to the TV room in sweats and a giant fuzzy pair of slippers. “Where are you going? I just texted you earlier — Madison’s screening her entire collection of Fever Stephens movies. There’s so much unintentional comedy, I can’t even stand it. Come watch?”

  Sadie shook her head. “Sorry, Jess, I really have to get to the library to finish that paper.” She grinned. “It does sound tempting, though.”

  Jessica pouted. “Okay, fine. But want to do pizza and a movie tonight? There’s a double feature at the Foxburg Theater, and I really need to eat something way greasier than all that gourmet crap they serve in the dining room. You in?”

  Sadie thought for a moment. She had no idea how long this meeting would last, but she figured she would at least be back within a few hours. “Meet you in your room at six?”

  “Deal! Good luck with your paper, you big nerd.” Jessica smiled and spun around on one slipper, disappearing back into the room.

  Sadie exhaled. She felt terrible lying to Jess, but she was glad they would get to spend some time together tonight. With everything that had been going on lately, they had barely had time to hang out. She waited until she heard the sounds of the TV starting up again, then slipped out the door.

  It was cold and wet along the path, and by the time she reached the tower her hair hung in ragged clumps beneath her hat. She had wondered how she was going to make the long walk between Keating and the tower without anyone wondering where she was going, but the weather took care of that for her. The fog rolling off the ocean was so thick she could barely see more than ten yards ahead.

  When she got to the tower, she stood dumbly in front of it for a few moments, realizing she had no idea how to get in. She thought back to last Saturday. She had been blindfolded, but she remembered walking down some steps and through a door.

  She wandered around the building until she found a small staircase carved into its side. At its base was a heavy wooden door with a rusty iron knocker in the center. She frowned. It looked about a million years old, and if she didn’t know any better, she would have thought the whole thing had probably been rusted shut for decades. With one mittened hand, she tried the handle. It didn’t budge.

  She tried the knocker next, but it barely moved. She took a deep breath, then grabbed the knocker with both hands and pulled as hard as she could. A little trickle of dust rewarded her for her efforts, but nothing else moved. She put her hands on her hips and sighed.

  For a moment, she indulged in a crazy fantasy that last weekend had all been one really long, vivid dream, and now she was just some psycho crawling around an abandoned old army fort like a schizophrenic who had stopped taking her meds.

  She pulled out her phone to text Brett or Jeremy, but she didn’t have any service. She stepped back up to the door and pounded on it with one fist. It made a low, dull thumping sound.

  She stepped back again and waited. Nothing. She took off her mittens, took a deep breath, and pounded again with both fists.

  “Uh, what are you doing, crazypants?”

  She turned around, a smile frozen on her face. Thayer, Olivia, and Lillian stood at the top of the stairs, looking at her like her fantasy might actually be coming true. They were all perfectly dressed in wool coats and cashmere scarves, and somehow they were totally dry.

  Sadie tried to run a hand through her hair, but all she succeeded in doing was tangling it further and soaking her mitten with slush.

  “I, uh, forgot how to get in.” She gestured lamely toward the locked door with one dripping paw.

  Olivia stepped forward. “Actually, hon, I don’t think you ever learned.”

  She knelt down to the right of the door. At about knee height, there was one stone that looked cleaner than the rest. She pulled what turned out to be a thin metal facade, and it swung open like a tiny kitchen cabinet. In the hollow behind it was a black metal box with a single blinking red light. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her wallet.

  Confused, Sadie watched her fish out a silver credit card and wave it in front of the box. The light turned green, and Sadie heard a sequence of low beeps followed by the soft scraping of metal against metal. Olivia swung the little door shut and stood up. She nodded toward the door.

  “Go ahead.”

  Sadie tried the handle, and the door swung open easily. She looked at Olivia in surprise.

  “Your Visa opens the door?”

  Olivia snorted and walked into the building with Lillian a few steps behind her.

  Thayer walked down the last few stairs and handed an identical silver credit card to Sadie. “It’s not real, see?” Sadie flipped it over, and the back was blank. “It’s a smart card — all the members get them. You’ll get yours today. You wave it in front of the sensor, and it unlocks the door.”

  Sadie handed the card back and followed Thayer inside. When she pulled the door shut, she heard the same soft scraping sound. A chill went through her as she realized that the mechanism was locking them all in, too.

  Thayer pointed to a small black box on the wall to the right of the door. “Usually I wouldn’t bother pointing this out, but since I can totally picture you standing here for hours trying to figure out how to get out, here’s how you unlock the door from the inside. You use the card the same way, just on this little box right here.” She looked at Sadie and raised her eyebrows. “Just make sure you’re never the last one in here if you don’t have your key. There’s no other way out except the door that leads to the roof, and it’s not like there’s a fire escape.”

  Olivia giggled. “One time sophomore year Rob Nicholas and I got locked in here overnight.”

  Thayer tossed a sheet of blonde hair over her shoulder and pursed her lips. “From what Finn says, you and Rob sure made the most of that.”

  Olivia sniffed and Sadie saw her jaw tighten, but she just hooked an arm through Lillian’s and turned and walked away.

  “So what if we did?” she called over her shoulder. As they continued down the hallway, Sadie watched their shadows stretch, distorted, along the curved stone wall, then finally disappear.

  “You should really take a car next time you have to get here,” Thayer said, wrinkling her nose. “Just have it drop you off at the gate and then just walk around the edge of the grounds.”

  Sadie groaned inwardly as she tried to wring out the ends of her hair.

  “Plus, you look completely ridiculous.” Thayer took a step forward and Sadie flinched, but her face had softened. “Look, I know why you’re here. Legacies almost always get in — keeping the right families in power is one of the most basic principles the Order is built on. But there are still some people who don’t think you’re Sulla material. So just try to fit in, ok
ay? Fake it ’til it starts to come naturally.”

  Sadie nodded, and Thayer seemed satisfied.

  “All right Portland, let’s go. If we leave the guys in there alone too long without some supervision they’ll be hammered before we can even get anything done.”

  The start of the meeting felt suspiciously like Sadie’s tenure as secretary of her sixth-grade student council. Thayer and Finn sat on two cushy armchairs that they turned to face the rest of the group, while the others sat on couches and the floor. Thayer even took roll, and there was something hilarious about watching her hunch over a plastic clipboard while entrenched in a century-old secret lair. Then they issued Sadie and Jeremy their credit card keys.

  As Finn handed her the card, he met her eyes. “If you lose this, I’ll kill you,” he deadpanned. Sadie laughed, but he just stared. She watched as his eyes panned down her neck and settled on her chest, and she adjusted her sweater awkwardly as she walked back to her seat, trying to keep the disgust from showing on her face.

  Thayer tossed the clipboard aside. She stood up, put her hands on her hips, and scanned the group. Her eyes hovered on Sadie’s for a moment, and she pursed her lips. Sadie self-consciously sat up straighter.

  “Okay, guys, here’s the real reason we called this meeting. The White House’s Holiday Gala is tonight, and we’re all going.”

  The last sentence ended in a shriek, and the other girls bounced up to join her, jumping up and down and squealing like hungry seals jostling for fish. The Graff members all tried to keep it dignified by just lazily slapping each other on the back and hiding their excitement behind clenched jaws and upturned chins. Finn and Brent went immediately to the large liquor cabinet and started pulling out bottle after bottle of whiskey, lining them up on a table like bowling pins.

  After about a minute, Sadie realized she was the only one still sitting. She looked around nervously, and for the first time that day she noticed Brett. She was curled up on the corner of a couch near the back of the room, her legs drawn up tightly beneath her. She was staring into space, and her arms lay limp on the couch at her sides.