The Third Lie's the Charm

by Lisa Roecker

  “Kate, you have my word that I knew nothing about these attacks against our students. In fact, it pains me to think that you might have considered otherwise.”

  “But…” I started to ask the obvious question. How the hell were we supposed to trust her?

  “I was here tonight laying out an investigation of my own. And it just now occurred to me that we may be of use to each other.”

  I clenched my hands into fists to keep from biting my nails.

  “Kate, I would like you to head up the investigation for me. As a student, you’ll be able to access information that I couldn’t possibly get to, even as the headmistress. You can infiltrate, my dear!” Oh God, if she only knew. I thought of the Sisterhood. I was already infiltrated up to my eyeballs.

  “I don’t know…” I started to protest.

  “You’ll have my full support, of course. And you and your little gang,” her eyes moved dismissively toward Maddie and the boys, “will have full access to the tunnels and whatever other resources you might require.”

  “It’s just that…” I tried to figure out the right way to tell her that I’d sooner believe that Seth was wearing Bubby’s scarf than that she wasn’t somehow involved in this thing.

  But she played her trump card before I had the chance.

  “I’d hate to have to take disciplinary action against you or your little friends for this unfortunate break-in.” She smiled coolly. “After all, you were just trying to help.”

  If I had balls, she would have had me by them.

  “Okay.” Even as I uttered the word, I already knew it was a lie. I could still investigate without trusting her. Keeping my enemies close and all that crap.

  “Wonderful. I’ll expect daily updates. We can meet here after school every afternoon.” She stood, which seemed to be our cue to leave. “I’m so pleased this worked out. You and I are going to do great things together, Kate.”

  But my only response was to step back into the darkness of the tunnels. Two steps forward, five steps back. I felt like I was back in ballroom dancing lessons with Grace as my partner. There weren’t enough boys in our gym class so we had to pair up. She was always stepping on my toes and laughing. But tonight, there were no muffled giggles as we made our way back onto campus. Tonight, there was nothing but silence and the sharp sting of defeat.

  Chapter 23

  By the time Seth dropped me back off at my house, it was past 1 a.m. And worse, both of our houses were blazing with lights. Lit up like freaking Christmas trees.

  This was really not my night.

  “Well, that’s not good.” There was a trace of sarcasm in Seth’s tone, and I was proud of him for it.

  “No, it’s really not.” I agreed. “Think your parents are going to flip?”

  “Nah, my mom always pretends to be mad about this stuff, but secretly I think she’s just happy that I have friends.” He beamed over at me when he said the last word.

  I threw my arms around him. I was just so grateful for Seth and for all he was doing for me.

  “What are we going to do?” I mumbled the words into the shoulder of his fleece.

  “You’ll figure it out, Kate. You always do.” Normally I would have made fun of him for sounding like an overenthusiastic preschool teacher, but I was too grateful for the words of encouragement tonight.

  “I was so sure it was Sinclair and then Ms. D.” I shook my head. “I just can’t figure it out, Seth. Why can’t I figure this out?”

  I was talking about so much more than just who was hurting members of the Brotherhood. I was talking about figuring out who the bad guys were and putting them in jail. It was so easy on the cop shows my dad watched all the time. I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t working that way in real life.

  My parents came running out the front door like a pair of lunatics. I could already hear them yelling something about it being a school night and scheduling an appointment with good old Dr. P. first thing tomorrow morning.

  Seth apologized and practically shoved me out of the car. Can’t say I blamed him.

  “This stops now, Kate. Tonight.” My mother’s voice was full of anger and fear.

  “We love you too much to worry like this, Kate. We’re done.” My father looked exhausted.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I could say, because I couldn’t promise them that this wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t pretend like I’d had some epiphany that ended with me turning into the person I was before Grace died.

  Because no matter how many times I lied to them, how many times I snuck out or skipped school, I would never stoop to making promises I couldn’t keep.

  ***

  “So, Kate, your parents tell me there was an incident last night. Care to fill me in?” Dr. P. tapped his fingers together like Hannibal-freaking-Lecter. I wondered if maybe he was a secret sociopathic murderer. Honestly, I might have preferred it that way. At least it would have made our time together a little more interesting.

  I shook my head in response. Today I decided to see if I could make it through the entire session without saying a word. It was a huge challenge, but I was feeling pretty good about it.

  “Do you think you might be acting out right now because Alistair’s death has stirred up some of the same feelings you had when Grace died?” Dr. P. nodded his head slightly and made a little grimace that I suppose was meant to encourage some type of verbal response from me.

  I shrugged, drunk on power. Why hadn’t I thought of this before? This not-talking thing was amazing. Honestly, it made me wonder why I was talking in general. I bet if I’d stopped talking, I would have finished the Sisterhood off months ago.

  “When you act out like this, Kate, you’re pushing away all of the people who care about you the most. You’re alienating them and alienating yourself.”

  It occurred to me that Dr. P. was kind of a crappy shrink. I mean, he was literally doing all of the talking and I was just sitting there. Shouldn’t he be pulling some psychiatric kung-fu moves where he matched my silence by not talking to force me to say something, anything? Not that it would have worked, but it would have been kind of awesome if he tried.

  “Life is going to continue to throw curveballs, Kate. It’s never going to be perfect. You need to learn how to deal with these setbacks head on, but you can’t do that until you’ve finished grieving Grace. You’re stuck, Kate. It’s common, especially for those who are grieving a very sudden, very tragic loss for the first time.”

  He paused to scribble something in his notepad.

  “The only way out is through.”

  Those words resonated with me more than I wanted them to. Hadn’t I come to the same conclusion?

  “And to get through it you need to move past anger, move past this obsession with revenge, and you need to let yourself be sad.”

  And he lost me. I was so over people shoving me into one stage of grief or another. Did anyone ever really stop being angry after they lost someone they loved? I sincerely doubted it.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket and I managed to slide it out while Dr. P. was busy scrawling more riveting tidbits about our session in his little notepad.

  The text was from a number I didn’t recognize, and there was no message, just a picture.

  Liam and Bethany. Kissing. With lots of tongue by the looks of it. He was wearing the same outfit he had on last night, so this little encounter had happened either before or after we got caught by Ms. D.

  It felt like someone had dropped a boulder onto my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to cry. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have assumed that he would just be waiting around for me indefinitely? How could I have trusted him? Because when it came down to it, if all of that bullshit about him caring for me and loving me and wanting the best for me had been true, then this picture wouldn’t exist.

  “Screw it.”<
br />
  I accidentally said the words out loud and Dr. P. jerked his head up in response.

  “Yes, Kate, now we’re onto something! Screw the grief! Screw the anger! We’ve made such progress today, a real breakthrough!”

  I nodded. Something had been broken all right. Unfortunately, it felt a little bit like my heart.

  Chapter 24

  My parents kept me home from school, and I turned off my phone and holed up in my room for the rest of the day. I needed time to think.

  If Sinclair and Ms. D. had nothing to do with the letters to the Brothers, who was sending them and, more importantly, why? The Brotherhood was over, dead. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would go after their former members.

  I read the letters sent to each of the victims over and over again. I scanned all of the articles on the headmaster and his half brother. I stared at the yearbook picture of Ms. D. and ex-Headmaster Sinclair. But nothing was adding up, nothing was making sense. Finally I fell into a fitful sleep.

  Hours later, I woke with a start. My heart fought my rib cage, knowing before I could that something was wrong. But as my eyes swept across my bedroom, everything was in order. A book hadn’t fallen off the shelf. My phone hadn’t vibrated across my nightstand, and neither of my parents was awake. Everything was in place. For some reason, that only made my heart drum faster.

  The neighbor’s dog barked, and I jolted to a seated position. There was no going back to sleep. I could either crawl into bed with my parents in homage to my seven-year-old self or I could put on my big-girl pants and check things out on my own.

  As slowly as I could manage, I untwisted the sheets from around my legs and placed my bare feet on the wood floor. It was kind of an out-of-body experience. I was that girl in the horror movie that everyone in the audience begs not to go down into the basement. Don’t turn on the lights. Don’t walk outside the tent to explore the creepy noise.

  Just. Don’t.

  And yet I did. And I knew it wasn’t going to end well, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself. I made a mental note to quit judging those bimbos quite so harshly in future screenings.

  Inhaling deeply, I crept to the side of the window and craned my neck to peer through. The yard was empty, trees still, street clear. A car was parked a few houses down, but the lights were off and the inside completely dark. I let some air escape my lips. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe I’d just had a weird dream or something.

  But then a warm glow lit the side of the house. The neighbor’s dog barked again. Someone or something had triggered the motion light in the backyard. It spilled to the front. Someone was out there. I glanced at my parents’ bedroom door shut tight and wondered how alarming it’d be if I threw it open and jumped into their bed. It was their job to protect me, after all. But as I hesitated in front of it, I couldn’t bring myself to touch the handle. Besides, if they heard me scream, they’d be out there in two seconds flat. It’s not like I was home alone or something.

  So my new horror-movie-heroine persona avoided the squeaky steps and tiptoed to the first floor and into the dining room. Long shadows swept across the room from the light spilling in, and I could’ve sworn they shifted for a split second. Or maybe I blinked. Either way, my hands shook and my knees buckled. Hugging the wall, I inched closer to the window, holding my breath as though it’d give me away. And then the room went black. The backyard was once again doused in darkness, and I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Whoever or whatever had been back there was gone.

  As fast as I could, I darted back up to my bedroom, landing heavily on the squeaky steps this time, and jumped into bed. The covers felt like armor, so I pulled them to my chin, my eyes pushed wide with fear.

  And there it was.

  A single notebook page lay at the center of my room, the loopy orange script visible even in the pitch black. I ran my fingers over the tiny tears that lined the edge of the paper. It looked like someone had just torn it out of her journal moments before leaving it here. In my room. For me.

  Grace might as well have been lounging in my bed, pen in hand, cheek resting on her open palm. I saw her as clear as day, could practically hear pen dragging across paper as she wrote her careful words, lips moving silently as her hand slid across the page.

  So much for resting in peace.

  Chapter 25

  I knew something weird was going on the second I saw the chapel. It was just too quiet or something. According to my little invitation, I was like three days too early, but being fashionably late is for suckers. I needed to know what this place meant and who sent this invitation. I had to know if it was from the Sisterhood.

  I googled the crap out of them but only found a couple of mentions. They were some all-girls’ secret society that was founded by the same frigid gals that were actually pissed when their all-girls’ school went coed. For some reason, the idea of an all-girls’ society made me think of girls getting in pillow fights wearing silk camisoles. Ew.

  Honestly, I just kind of wanted to know what this whole thing was about. That way, I could just skip it the night of the bonfire if the girls looked like members of the Asian American Club that my parents kept trying to get me to join. The kids in that club weren’t even all Asian. They were just all completely lame. I went to one meeting and literally tried to slit my wrists with a plastic ruler. So yeah, if this society bullshit was just a bunch of National Merit Scholars wearing robes and chanting weird stuff, I was so out.

  But that’s not what it was.

  First off, there were guys there. Hot guys. Alistair Reynolds and Bradley Farrow. Kate and Maddie would have just about died if they saw them on their hands and knees by the seal. They were looking for something, but lucky for me, all that searching on all fours put them in prime ass-admiration view. I started to move in closer. Purely for research purposes. But then I felt a hand on my back.

  I would have screamed, but the girl was too fast for me. She already had her other hand over my mouth. Naomi Farrow. Bradley’s sister. I almost ran away from her right then and there. I mean, obviously I shouldn’t be there, lurking around. And she was more popular than me, so the ball was firmly in her court. Even worse, she was the best tennis player in our school, so I was pretty sure she was going to take this opportunity to spike that thing in my face.

  But that’s not what happened. Not at all.

  Naomi asked me if I could help her keep a secret. She asked for my help.

  And you know what? I’m in. All in. Because this invitation was so much more than I ever could have dreamed of. So much better than I thought. The Asian American Club can suck it, because after the bonfire, we’re going to be ruling the whole freaking school.

  Chapter 26

  It had been precisely four hours and forty-eight minutes since I’d read Grace’s most recent words. As I sat beside Bradley after school on his so-soft-it-practically-swallowed-me-whole sectional, I couldn’t stop picturing myself tackling his sister, Naomi, and tearing her hair out, chunk by chunk.

  Can you keep a secret?

  The Naomi in my head asked the same question over and over again. How dare she ask Grace to keep her secrets? How dare she pretend to be my friend?

  It hadn’t been easy convincing my parents to let me come over here, but in the end a school project and Dr. P.’s urging them to “give me the freedom to overcome my grief” had been enough to get me off lockdown. Bradley rambled on and on about protecting the Brotherhood and figuring out who was behind all of this.

  And all I could see was Naomi whispering in Grace’s ear. Naomi telling me about the Sisterhood for the first time. Naomi breaking the news about Liam and Bethany. Naomi throwing her arm around her brother.

  Naomi.

  I’d spent the day as a creeper, narrowing my eyes in her direction, assessing the dark waves that fell down her back and over her sparkling, golden eyes. Why would she do this to
me? To Grace? Why lie? Now the only realization that came into crisp focus in my mind was that Naomi was involved in a way she could never admit.

  “Right?” Bradley asked, his eyes full of hope.

  Crap. I had no clue what the hell he’d even been talking about. “Um…yeah? I mean, yes, yeah!” Wow. Convincing.

  Bradley deflated a little, so I blinked my eyes heavily and twisted my body in his direction. It was against pretty much everything I stood for, but I was desperate and I didn’t want to hurt him. And I liked the way his hands felt in mine. This at least wasn’t a lie. The way his fingers were calloused from holding a lacrosse stick, the surprising softness when his fingers linked with mine wasn’t a lie. The energy that flowed up his hand and set my whole body on fire wasn’t a lie either.

  And then the image of Liam and Bethany making out popped into my head, and I tilted my head back in a silent invitation which he accepted. Greedily. But when his lips came down on mine, I only saw Liam. I only heard Naomi’s whispered secrets. When I kissed him, it was a lie.

  If only I was in the before-Grace. If I’d been my first-year self, that brown-haired girl with all four years at Pemberly Brown laid out before her like some sort of all-you-can-eat buffet, I’d have surely melted at the first touch of Bradley’s soft lips. But the after-Grace Kate knew too much. In the after-Grace, I was kissing him so he wouldn’t sense my feelings toward his sister and my complete lack of attention.

  God, the after-Grace sucked on so many levels.

  Bradley pulled away, concern lining his features. He fell back into the couch, resting his head on a cushion and tilting his chin toward the ceiling. “We’ll fix this, right?”

  Loaded question. I nodded my head because it’s what he wanted me to do.

  The silence that bounced between us felt like an opportunity. I jumped on it. “I need to get my phone. My mom read some article about another mom who had a list of cell phone rules for her son, and now she’s full of regret and is randomly making up new rules like having my phone charge in their room at night. Um…no.” I shook my head, considering whether to continue. “So, I have to, like, check in. You know?” Bradley smiled, and my heart broke a little. He believed me. He believed all of my lies. And it felt like a knife in my chest.