by Lucy Auburn
Rain pours down until the air is full of nothing but the storm and the darkness. I reach out towards Silas, but he steps back again, and I feel the snakes slither up my body. There are more and more of them, tightening around my knees and my ankles, stretching up to sink their fangs into my hands.
Still, I reach for Silas.
Still, he refuses me.
Back and back he moves, further and further from me until he disappears in the darkness, swallowed whole by it.
Leaving me with nothing but the thousands of cold, darkly gleaming snakes wrapping around my very heart and soul, their smooth scales like storm water on my skin.
Chapter 13
In the morning at breakfast, which is held at Rosalind Hall, Chrissy waves me down. "Brenna! There you are." She practically skips over to me, holding an apple in one hand. "I was looking for you. I saved you a seat."
She pulls me behind her enthusiastically, apparently not noticing that I'm not exactly a morning person. I feel like I've been yanked along in the wake of a particularly strong storm.
Chrissy shows me where the food is lined out. Other than a waffle station, which the carb-allergic girls of Rosalind have mostly ignored, there's fruit, pastries, oatmeal, bacon, and of course cold cereal. I grab the bacon and a blueberry muffin. I've never been much of a cereal kind of girl, and I hate coffee—it tastes terrible and does nothing worth dealing with the bitterness, as far as I'm concerned.
"We're over here." She leads me to a little table near the back windows, which look out towards the garden we share with Lovelace Hall. The way she practically shoves me down in one of the chairs, there's really no other option but to agree to sit with her. "I wanted you to meet someone. Brenna, this is my roommate Tricia. Her dad just moved her whole family here from Saudi Arabia. Can you believe it? I had so many questions last night that I kept her up late asking them."
Based on the expression on Tricia's face, she wasn't amused to have her sleep delayed by a curious blonde. Tricia is a petite girl with a rich dark brown complexion and hair that forms a perfect cloud of black ringlets around her head, making her one of few black girls I've seen on campus so far. She's wearing her button-up with the top two buttons undone and has rolled her skirt like a lot of the girls do. It's hard to imagine her living somewhere as conservative as Saudi Arabia.
"I won't ask any questions," I tell her, even though I'm curious. "It's too early to get into deep talk."
"There's not much to say, anyway." She shrugs, leaning back in her chair and playing with the spoon in her oatmeal. "Air conditioned house, air conditioned car, and a Western school for all the American and British kids. If you didn't look out the windows, it was pretty much... this."
The single word encapsulates everything about this place: the overstuffed antique seats wasted on teenage girls eating breakfast, beautifully detailed architecture, manicured gardens, and enough money in this room alone to fill Scrooge McDuck's money pit and dive right into it.
Chrissy says, "Tricia is so glad to be home, where she has freedom to wear what she wants and says what she wants. And now we all get to be friends!"
I'm glad that Tricia is the one who gets to live with Chrissy, and not me. I'm pretty sure I'd get worn down by her bubbly personality in just a day, and murder was one thing I didn't plan on doing once I got here.
"So, Brenna," Tricia says between bites of oatmeal, "where are you from? And how did you two meet?"
I glance over at Chrissy, who's staring studiously at her apple as she slices it up and smears almond butter on the slices. Maybe the reason why she asked Tricia all the questions was so she wouldn't have to answer any herself.
"I'm from a little town in Virginia you won't have heard of, called Wayborne. It barely even made it onto Google maps," I joke, which as far as I know is true. "Chrissy and I met yesterday in the line to get room assignments."
Leaning forward, Chrissy murmurs, "Brenna got stuck living with Holly Schneider because of how late she enrolled. Y'know—the head of the Rosalinds?" She shudders in exaggerated horror. "You couldn't pay me to live with that girl. It's one thing to care about the rules, but to enforce them? I mean c'mon, it's a high school away from home—live a little. No one will die if we smoke a damn cigarette or have a sip of boxed wine. You get it, Tricia, after living under an oppressive regime for so long."
"I actually think the Rosalinds are pretty cool." Tricia glances over at me curiously. "After all, they set up the social events and stuff. Think your roommate could get us the deets on the Blind Ball? I've heard it's the campus dating event. No one knows who they'll get set up with, even the paired-off couples."
"Uh, well." I glance over at Chrissy, already cringing in anticipation of the no-doubt overwrought way she'll react to my news. "About that. I have no idea when it comes to the Blind Ball, but as far as the Rosalinds go, I asked Holly if I could take the open position. And she said yes. My training starts tomorrow."
Chrissy makes a sour expression, even as she exclaims, "Congrats!"
Tricia stares at the blonde in bemusement. "I thought you said last night that the Rosalinds were basically narcs."
"Yeah, well, Brenna won't be one. We're friends. Right Brenna?"
"Uh, right."
"Besides, it's not like she'll narc on us. She's just getting in with the Rosalinds so she can go to all the social events and make some pocket change." Leaning forward, Chrissy excitedly asks, "Do you know anything yet about the rock climbing trip this weekend? It's the first outing. I'm hoping that Lukas DuPont is going—he's a total dream boat."
Tricia perks up. "The boy with the blond hair and that to-die-for European accent?"
"Yeah. He grew up in Paris and London. He's trilingual, so y'know," she lowers her voice suggestively, "good with his tongue."
The thought of Lukas DuPont's tongue anywhere near me sends shudders down my spine and sets my teeth on edge. Sure, he's attractive—all the Elites are—but he's a complete fake. At least Tanner lets everyone see him for what he really is. Lukas hides his rough center behind a veneer of genteel bullshit.
"I honestly don't know any of the details yet about the social parties, but as soon as I know something, I'll be sure to mention it."
"Great!" Chrissy beams. "I'm so glad we get the inside scoop."
"Speaking of..." Biting her lower lip, Tricia asks, "Did you hear about what happened with that girl who left the Rosalinds to move off campus?"
I shake my head. "No one told me why she moved or anything. Like Chrissy said, I registered late. I wasn't even here for orientation week."
"Oh, so you won't have heard. Maybe I shouldn't mention it..."
"If there's some way to move off campus, you have to tell us." Chrissy's eyes are bright, and I have the feeling it has more to do with her thirst for gossip than anything. "The Rosalind Hall is great and all, but I've heard Lovelace Hall has plumbing issues. If I can convince the administration to let me get my own apartment senior year, Daddy will pay for it, and you can live with me." She flicks her eyes to me, and adds as an afterthought, "You too, Brenna."
"Well, I don't know about living off campus. What I heard was from this girl who was supposed to be her roommate. Apparently they bunked together during orientation week. But she said it was a secret."
Tricia looks torn, and I'm not normally one to push people, but if there are secrets here at Coleridge I have to know. Especially if they might help me take down the Elites. "Whatever it is, we won't spread it around. Right, Chrissy?"
"Ab-so-lute-ly. You have my pinkiest of pinky swears, Tricia."
For a moment, her expression vacillates between one choice and another. But finally, she spills. "Well, you know about that girl who was assaulted during orientation week, right?"
My heart kicks up speed like a big brass band, thumping in my chest so hard that I'm sure the others will hear it. I can't seem to form words to respond to Tricia's question, so it's a relief when Chrissy says, "There were rumors, but most of it was social me
dia stuff. I don't even really have accounts on most of the websites where I saw it being spread—and it's a good thing, too, because it looked dreadful. Daddy almost pulled me out until he heard the guy who did it wasn't coming back to school."
I wait for her to complete the sentence with, because he committed suicide, but of course that's the part of the story these rich privileged kids don't know. Wayborne is a small town, and my parents were respected members of the community, at least before Daddy got in his truck and drove away from his own family forever. When the coroner came to pick up Silas's body, he took the rope with him, and in his report he ruled it an accident.
Nothing in Silas's obituary in the local paper mentioned anything about suicide. People knew—or guessed—what had really happened, especially because Wally had to tell his mom, and she's the biggest gossip in town. And of course I told Jade and her mother Grace, because they were the only people I trusted to understand the devastation.
But it's not the kind of information you can find online from miles away. What really happened to Silas that day, from the fight in the storm to the rope and how we cut him down, is for few of us to know and none of us to share. As far as Coleridge is concerned, he withdrew from school before the semester started, and a girl named Brenna Cooke enrolled instead—anything else is for the ghosts and the dead.
I know my brother didn't assault that girl. It's something that I feel in my bones, no matter what anonymous people said on the internet. Despite Cole's declaration online that "a girl was assaulted during orientation week, and a student named Silas Wilder bears responsibility for what happened," I know he's not to blame.
So I force my face into a neutral expression and buckle in to listen to his name get dragged through the mud.
"I guess you didn't hear about the assault, Brenna, but it was this whole deal," Tricia says. "The girl who it happened to didn't want to come forward, but she had this video evidence that she handed over to the Elites—that's these four boys on campus. Anyway, she never filed charges, so there was never a police investigation. But I heard from the girl who was supposed to bunk with her that it was Mariana Marks who came forward, and because of how it was handled, she moved off campus. That's why she doesn't live in Rosalind Hall anymore."
Chrissy deflates. "Ah, drat. So I guess there'll be no moving to a swanky apartment for me, then. Not that I envy her or anything," she clarifies, no doubt realizing belatedly how terrible she sounds, "it's just that I thought it was something innocent, like her family gave the school an extra donation to grease the wheels."
My mind is stuck on an earlier detail. Heart doing a too-fast rhythm, I ask Tricia, "What do you mean when you say she didn't like how it was handled? Did her former roommate give any details?"
The girls give me a funny look for being curious, but Tricia answers readily enough. "Apparently they never caught the actual guy who did it. He wasn't caught with evidence. But she told her roommate that she eventually remembered who it was, even though the night was fuzzy, and it seems he still goes here."
Chapter 14
My stomach is churning with so much nausea that I can feel bile rise in my throat, but at the same time, I'm filled with triumph.
Because I've been vindicated.
If the victim herself says the guy who assaulted her is still on campus, then there's no greater proof that it wasn't my brother. He's in a coffin in the ground, nowhere near campus.
Before I came here, there was a promise I made to myself, one I swore I wouldn't break, unlike the promise to stay quiet and hidden. I swore that I would go after the Elites, and any other rich privileged students who attacked my brother without proof, but I would never go after her.
The girl. The one who was raped. Who never made a public statement or put her name out there.
I swore I would elevate her story, no matter what it turns out to be, instead of trashing her or attacking her. She's not the one who lied and started rumors about my brother, after all. Whatever is on that video they didn't share, the one Wally says he saw Silas confront some girl about, no one knows the truth but her.
And I won't take down a rape victim to vindicate my brother. Especially now that I know she can come forward with a side of the story that clears his name.
All I have to do is convince her it's worthwhile to publicly spill all the sordid, horrifying, and triggering details. That, or—more preferably—I can stick to just taking down the four boys who set fire to the flame that destroyed my twin, and let the girl go on to live in quiet peace.
I don't know which I'll choose. It all depends on what the truth is—and why Mariana Marks hasn't come forward with it, even after all this time.
"I'm surprised she still goes here at all," I admit, re-inserting myself in the conversation. "I mean, if her attacker is still on campus."
Tricia shrugs, looking uneasy. "Apparently she was certain he wouldn't come for her again. I don't know why—my friend wasn't in that talkative of a mood. But if you ask me, it sounds like she has something on the guy that can take him down, so she decided to opt for mutually assured destruction."
Chrissy says, "I didn't know the girl was Mariana Marks, but if it is her, going here makes sense. Dean Simmons is her uncle, and her parents are well-off, but not Coleridge rich. She probably gets free tuition here and can't afford to go anywhere else this nice." She sighs, shaking her head. "I guess it was too much to hope for that it was some Miriam or Mary Anne or whoever that got to live off campus. It would be the dean's niece. The rest of us are stuck here, two to a room."
Never in my life has anyone ever sounded as spoiled as Chrissy Lakewood does right now, but for some reason she's still starting to grow on me. She may be a gossip with too much money and not enough tact, but unlike Georgia, Veronica, and Heather, she's not mean.
And her tendency to get information out of people has given me something: I know now the name of the girl who went to the Elites with a story about being assaulted during orientation week.
I just have to figure out what to do with that information—and where the line is when it comes to doing anything at all.
8:00 AM: Calculus I
Everyone here has a nice laptop or an even nicer tablet. I feel conspicuous with Silas’s old computer under one arm, its heavy weight and beat-up plastic practically screaming how cheap it is. But I need the laptop. Most of the classes at Coleridge use online textbooks, available as ebooks via an app or through a website, which students can read using an account associated with our Coleridge.edu email addresses. My phone doesn’t have the latest OS, so I can’t use the ebook app. It’s the laptop or nothing.
I choose a desk in the back of the classroom, near an outlet in case I need to plug in for power. The second benefit of being in the last row is that I can observe all the other students. I came here to watch, not be seen, after all.
So when Blake Lee comes into the room, I see him right away. He’s wearing his Coleridge button-up, dark slacks, and a Coleridge blazer, making him the first of the Elites I’ve seen to actually stick to the full uniform. His black hair is pushed back from his face and slightly tousled, and he’s wearing sleek fashionable black-framed glasses that accentuate his best features.
I watch in disbelief as he walks to the desk at the front of the class, grabs a chair, and pulls it up to the edge of the L-shape. He even takes his thin, cutting-edge laptop out of his bag and parks it right there, next to the teacher’s desktop.
Mind flashing back to my class schedule, I pull it out of my laptop bag and spot a little detail under the description of Calculus I that I missed the first time around: “Teacher’s Assistant Mr. Lee.” I didn’t put two and two together before. The TA is Blake himself.
The teacher shows up shortly, a Ms. Saint, and she leads the class. But from time to time she mentions Blake—telling us we should turn our first assignment in to him, that he’ll have office hours, and even that he’ll teach one class in the middle of the semester. Apparently he’s finished all his math
credit hours and is doing extra work in order to prepare for college—either a surprising work ethic from the son of a Hollywood star, or yet another sign of how privileged he and his friends are. Somehow I doubt he’ll be applying to the local community college.
Keep my head down, I remind myself that I'm the one here to take him down, not the other way around, no matter what Cole Masterson says about "marking" me. He needs to be worried about me.
Easier said than done. If I’m going to really pull this off, I need dirt on him, fast. The tip line has had a few more tidbits sent it way, but none about this school or the Elites—not yet.
Maybe I should make a post encouraging people to submit information about this particular school, claiming there are "rumors" that need to be substantiated. That should get the right people's attention. Blake has been running in Hollywood circles for years—he has to have done something worthy of humiliation or expulsion at some point.
I’m tinkering around on my computer, about to do just that, when the teacher’s voice gets my attention. “Brenna Cooke. I’ve called your name three times, Ms. Cooke. You’re not breaking school rules on social media in class, are you?”
I look up towards the front of the classroom, cheeks burning. I didn’t hear her because I’m so used to answering to the Wilder name; it’ll take time to get used to going by my mother’s maiden name. “Sorry, Ms. Saint. I didn’t hear you.”
The teacher, a pale blonde white woman in her late forties with plump cheeks, ice blue eyes, and commanding height, gives me a scorching look. I can feel the attention of the class on me, and it doesn’t feel good—especially Blake’s disinterested, cold gaze.
“Well Ms. Cooke, pay better attention next time. Students who drift off in class get their screen privileges taken from them and replaced with print textbooks.”