by Lisa Roecker
She raised her chin, and her eyes were puffy and red, but despite everything in our history, despite the fact that she was the only other person in the entire world who could even come close to understanding what it was like to lose Grace, I couldn’t go to her. It was as though she’d turned invisible, and I could see Bradley straight through her, his rich skin ashy and his golden eyes vacant.
“That’s it?” Maddie whispered as I moved around her.
I had no idea why I was doing what I was doing or why I couldn’t see her standing there, but she was right. That was it. Maddie’s eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head and rushed away. I don’t know if I was still angry or if there was something inherently wrong with me, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow. She fell into Seth’s arms at the end of the hallway, lowered her head on his shoulder, and I caught a flash of disappointment in his green eyes. Everyone hated me. I was losing them, letting the only people who truly cared about me go, and powerless to stop any of it. There was just something about Bradley Farrow.
A year ago, Bradley had been my first crush. A year ago, I would have given anything to see him standing in front of my locker. But things had changed since then. I didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust me. I wanted him. He pretended to want me. The whole thing was kind of a mess, but right now, none of it seemed to matter because Bradley Farrow was broken, and looking at him felt like looking in a mirror. His face had been rearranged by grief. He was still beautiful, but now he was more Picasso than Rembrandt, and I wanted nothing more than to slide his features back into place. To change him back into the Bradley he was before Alistair died.
“This was no accident.” His voice was hoarse, urgent. “Someone killed him, Kate.” He looked around the halls, ran his hand over his closely cropped hair.
“I know.” My words came out soft, soothing, and I didn’t recognize my own voice. “I can help.” My fingers reached instinctively toward my neck and I tugged the pearls out from under my uniform shirt.
And I knew it was true. I could help. His face crumbled into something that looked like relief before rearranging itself back into the stark grief I’d seen when my eyes first landed on him, and I knew Bradley Farrow was the reason I came to school today. Maybe if I could fix him, I’d finally be able to fix myself.
Chapter 5
“He called me thirty-two times.” Bradley’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Thirty-two times and I didn’t answer one of them.” He turned away from me and swiped the backs of his hands over his eyes. “They’re saying it was a suicide. The truck driver said Alistair was speeding and he just blew right through the stop sign.”
I knew Alistair had died in a car accident, but I hadn’t heard any of the details until now. The truth was, I didn’t want to know the details. I didn’t want any of this to be real. But it only took one look at Bradley’s red, swollen eyes to remind me that no matter how much I tried to wish that this was all a huge mistake, Alistair’s death was very, very real.
“He called me too.”
Bradley didn’t move his head. It was like he didn’t hear me. I reached over and touched his shoulder, lightly, remembering how I felt in the after-Grace. Remembering how my mother’s fingertips burned my skin when she reached out to hold my hand at Grace’s funeral. Remembering the way I had recoiled when Seth tried to hug me when he found me sitting on my porch swing hours after we’d gotten the official phone call.
I told myself not to be hurt when Bradley’s muscles tensed at my touch. I promised myself that I’d never invade his space again if he pushed my arm away. But Bradley let himself sink into me until his arms were wrapped around me like I was the only piece of driftwood in the middle of a tsunami.
“Twenty-one times. He called me twenty-one times.” I said the words into his neck, and I felt his shoulders shudder and heave in a silent sob as tears from my own eyes wet his uniform shirt.
People were staring at us. I could feel their eyes on me. On Bradley. On the two of us clinging to each other, barely afloat in the sea of students. I shot daggers at the kids who dared to meet my eye. I gently pushed Bradley away and took a small step back from him. This moment was too personal for the hallway.
“You wanna get out of here?” I remembered my dad’s words this morning, how my mom called in an absence, how we could escape without consequence. It didn’t matter; I’d take the fifteen demerits, but it’d be easier this way.
He nodded once, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him out the nearest exit of the school. The earthy, wet spring air greeted us the second we left the building. I took a deep breath and steered Bradley toward the gardens.
The small stone bench sat in the middle of a riot of daffodils and irises that were just beginning to poke tentative buds above ground. As usual, the seat was cool in spite of the bright sunshine, and the moment I sat down, I got goose bumps. I used to tell myself that the constant chill of the bench must mean Grace haunted it, that she could see the flowers and hear my voice. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Bradley sat next to me and cradled his head in his hands, palms rubbing his eye sockets.
“The funeral’s tomorrow… I wasn’t supposed to come to school today, but sitting at home… I just, I had to leave.” He let his voice trail off.
“I know.” And then I remembered how much I’d hated it when people pretended to understand what I was feeling about Grace. “I mean, I don’t know. Not really. But I remember what it felt like for me. After Grace.” I paused and ran my fingers over her name engraved on the back of the bench. “It’s going to be awful.”
I remembered Grace’s funeral in smells, tastes, and sounds. It was like I had gone blind for the day. Or maybe I’d blocked out her tiny casket and the hordes of students who had been there pretending to know her. Pretending to care. Instead I remembered the bitter taste of the cough drops my mother had dug out of her purse for me to chew on. I remembered the constant wet heat of tears on my cheeks. I remembered the grotesque, medicinal smell of the funeral home. I remembered wishing I was dead.
“How did you do it?” He picked his head up and looked me in the eyes for the first time that day.
“Do what?” I stared back. Willing myself not to cry. Remembering how much I hated it when other people cried for Grace when it was obvious they barely knew her, that their pain was nothing compared to my own.
“How did you…I mean, survive? I guess I want to know how you keep waking up. How did you get out of bed?” The palms were back in his eyes, rubbing and swiping the constant stream of tears away. “How do you even walk around with all of these people staring at you? All of this…”
I could have filled in about a million different feelings where Bradley trailed off. Anger, sadness, hurt, disgust, grief, depression. Loss.
“It gets lighter.” I answered with the truth and regretted the glib taste on my tongue. “I mean, it never goes away. The feelings. They never stop, but it gets…I don’t know…livable, I guess. Like when you break a leg, at first it’s excruciating and you think you’re going to die. But eventually after you’ve had time to heal, it kind of fades into this constant, dull ache.” A faint breeze whistled through the leaves of the trees and plants surrounding us and tickled the back of my neck like cold fingers. “You never walk the same again, but eventually you do walk.”
I needed him to know that he could survive this, to understand that eventually he’d see a pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel, and it would open up.
“He didn’t even leave me a message. Thirty-two calls and no messages. If he was going to kill himself, wouldn’t he tell me why? I was his best friend. He wouldn’t…he couldn’t…he would have told me something. I know it.”
I looked at my feet, not knowing how to tell him that Alistair had left me a message, that I might have his last words on a tinny recording on my cell phone. “I…wait…” I unearthed my phone from the bottom of my bag. “Y
ou need to listen to this.”
I pressed Play and pretended not to notice the way Bradley looked like he’d been punched in the stomach when he heard Alistair’s voice.
“I’m at the Heart of Brown and I know exactly what I have to do. I won’t let them hurt him.”
Bradley was off and running toward the old buildings that lined the fringes of Pemberly Brown’s campus before I even had time to switch off my phone. Back in the old days, Pemberly Brown was two schools. Pemberly Academy was an all-girls school and the Brown School for Boys was all boys. When they merged in the ’50s, an architect redesigned and expanded Pemberly’s campus to work as a coed institution, and the old Brown buildings had sat unused ever since. There was one building called “the Heart of Brown” that the Brotherhood had used as their meeting place.
I raced to keep up with Bradley’s long strides, but his legs were trained, his muscles taut after years of lacrosse practice, and were no match for me and my riding boots. By the time I got to the building, the front door was already ajar and Bradley had disappeared inside.
I yanked up the collar of my uniform shirt to protect myself against the dust, and I followed him into the darkened hallways. At first it wasn’t bad because I had the light from the door to guide me, but when I saw that the trail of footsteps made a right at the first hallway, I knew it would be nothing but darkness from this point forward, dust covering any visible windows, classroom doors shut tight.
I put one foot tentatively in front of the other, willing myself not to panic in the dark. My hand shook as I reached into the pocket of my uniform skirt for my phone. God bless the flashlight app. The light of the screen momentarily blinded me, and I felt something graze my ankle.
“Oh my God!” Something scurried off in the other direction, too fast for the glow of my phone. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back to the safety of the bright April morning.
But then I heard Bradley’s voice echo through the halls. “Kate! You gotta come see this. I think I found something.”
I followed the sound of his voice and the thin stream of light from my phone into a large, cavernous room down one of the winding hallways. When I finally made it to the door, I saw Bradley kneeling on the ground with his own phone blazing.
“Here, take a look,” he said without looking up.
Bradley handed me a piece of card stock. The texture of the paper was butter soft. Scrawling calligraphy in bright red ink covered the front of the card.
My Brother,
Alistair, your bravery will be tested. You must perform a Factum Virtus, a feat of strength to prove your worthiness. Each act of bravery is a test as our Brothers taught us. Should you decline to participate, another Brother will be sacrificed in accordance with tradition.
We’ll be watching. Tenetur per sanguinem, Bound by blood.
A Friend
“I don’t understand,” I said, handing the card back with shaking hands.
Bradley narrowed his eyes at me, which reduced me to three inches tall. “It’s a Sacramentum.” As soon as his eyes began glistening, he turned his head. “They used to use it back when they first formed the Brotherhood. Whenever a Brother was threatened, you had to be willing to lay down your life for him. You had to be willing to sacrifice yourself. They stopped doing it when some kid died on the railroad tracks trying to save one of his friends from getting kicked out after he was found with a Sister.”
I had no choice but to tell him.
“The night Alistair died was the night of my initiation.”
“So you’re one of them now, is that it?” Bradley stuffed the card in his pocket and started back toward the winding hallway.
“No, God no. I’m doing this for Grace, to make them pay.” I rushed to keep up with Bradley.
“Whatever, Kate.” His narrowed eyes flashed. “You really think you’ll keep that up? Just ask my sister. No one can resist the call of the Sisterhood. Not for long anyway.”
Chapter 6
“Wait!” My lungs burned as I tried to keep up with Bradley, whose pace doubled my own. It was no use. He’d either have to slow down or shout back directions to wherever it was we were going. I was about to lose him. “Bradley. Wait!” I stopped, my toes throbbing where my boots pinched them, my head still cloudy from the dust and the note and the shock of it all. I swallowed hard and choked back ridiculous tears.
Bradley slowed and finally stopped too, his shoulders slouching forward under the weight of Alistair’s death and my confession. I shouldn’t have even followed; I should have turned back to school and suffered through my classes the way I’d planned. If Bradley was anything like me, he’d want to do this alone. But I couldn’t just abandon him. Not when I remembered so clearly what losing your best friend felt like. I at least needed to say good-bye.
I finally caught up. “Look, I’m going back. You need time alone…”
He cut me off. “I’m sorry.” Oranges and yellows and browns normally swirled in Bradley’s eyes, but today they were muddied and dull. “Don’t. I need, I mean I can’t do this alone. I know things have been weird after everything that happened.” He ran his hand over his shaved head.
By everything I had to assume he meant the time he kissed me in the middle of the hall. And the fact that I’d kissed him back. The thing about Bradley Farrow and his lips was that they really didn’t give you much of a choice. Especially when you’d fantasized about those lips since you were a first-year.
I wasn’t really sure how to respond. “Okay?” It didn’t even make sense, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. This didn’t really seem like the time or place to rehash my crush on Bradley Farrow. Particularly since I’d spent the past couple of months avoiding him like the plague. “So, um, where are we going?” I stretched my neck toward the road. It was quiet during the day, everyone settled into work or school or whatever everyone else settled into on Monday morning.
“Porter. We have to find Porter.”
It was a terrible idea. Porter was Alistair’s cheeseball younger brother, and the Reynolds family was one of the oldest and the richest at Pemberly Brown. They were also one of the most private. It was hard to get into the Reynolds family compound on a good day. A few days after they’d lost their eldest son, it was damn near impossible. Even for Bradley.
But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t try. We’d rung the doorbell an hour earlier only to be shooed away by some well-meaning relative, so now we were stuck stalking the Reynolds house from behind a bush in a bed beside the house.
“What if he never comes out?” I whispered, narrowing my eyes at Porter’s front door. We’d watched lines of puffy-eyed people trail in, ill-behaved children bringing up the rear, stooped grandparents being helped out of cars and up the front steps. It didn’t look like the kind of house you could slip away from.
“We wait.” A bit of Bradley’s rich color had returned to his skin, and his eyes had the smallest hint of gold back in their muddy depths. Never underestimate the value of a good plan.
So we settled in for the long haul. We saw fourteen squirrels, one random cat, way too many ants to count, got pooped on once by a bird, and shared a granola bar. And Bradley was right. Porter wandered out sometime after lunch.
“Psst.” Under different circumstances, I would have made fun of Bradley for the “psst” but I let it slide.
Porter turned stone-faced toward the sound.
“Porter. It’s Bradley.” He still whispered, but this time he pushed up on his knees, emerging from the shrub and brushing leaves from his blazer. “And Kate.” He pulled me up too, and I offered a hesitant wave. I had no idea what to say to Porter. I could lose a friend every day to tragic circumstances, and I still wouldn’t have any idea what to say to a kid who’d lost his brother.
To say Porter looked pissed would be an understatement. “What the hell are you guys doing her
e?” Porter looked back at his house, through the windows at the groups of people in black smudged together like ink blots. “My family…Alistair. It’s not a good time.”
“I’m sorry.” Bradley’s voice cracked over the word, and he clenched his fingers around the now crumpled card stock. Lines of red ink showed through between his fingers.
“Yeah…I know.” Porter looked back at his house again, a silent excuse, and I knew he wanted us to leave.
“It’s just that…” Bradley unfurled his fingers and raised his hand out to Porter. “I have this. You need to see it.”
Porter smoothed the card and read the words, the wrinkles on his forehead deeper than ever. He handed the card back, his eyes filled with sadness, and asked us to wait. Only a minute after he disappeared into the house, Porter burst back through the front door, not even bothering to close it behind him.
He held an envelope of the same material as the paper. There was no return address or stamp, just one word in red. Frater. Brother. Bradley took the envelope and placed the card on top of it. The two were a perfect fit.
“Someone dropped it off Friday just as we got home from school. It was a black car, dark windows. Totally sketchy. I’ve seen it before. Parked at the end of the street or driving by slowly without lights.”
“Did Alistair say anything about it?” Bradley asked, tucking the envelope and letter into his blazer pocket. “Did you even ask him?”
I’m sure he hadn’t meant for his question to sound accusatory, but I could tell Porter was offended. His jaw tightened.
“Not sure if you remember, Farrow,” he spat Bradley’s last name, “but my brother and I weren’t exactly friends. I asked him a lot of questions. None of them were ever answered.”