“You should stay.” She drops her voice. “Sorry if I was harsh earlier. I didn’t want to go into this weekend with any grudges.”
“You did this.” I pick up the vote curled in my hand. “You wrote my name.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Ella says, laughing. “I voted for you for that reality TV one. Since drama seems to follow you everywhere you go.”
“Did you send this?” I unclasp my clutch, rummage around inside for the note, but it isn’t there. It’s in my cross-body bag, back at the Nics. I have no evidence. And now I notice that something else is missing, too. My phone.
“Send what?” She arches her eyebrow.
“The notes. You know what I’m talking about. You stayed home sick that night—” You figured it out. I know I sound crazy.
“I didn’t send you any notes.” Her raised voice elicits a giggle from Lauren. “The only person I send mail to is my grandma. She’s ninety-four. Seriously, what’s up with you?”
“I’m fine,” I say. Sully killed Flora and now she’s with my husband.
“I had a feeling this weekend would end in some kind of drama,” she says. “You and Sloane rooming together. Whose idea was that, anyway?”
I get up, then sit back down in a dizzying rush. I should have figured it out earlier, when she showed up at our door. She knows where to find us.
“How did you know we were rooming together?”
Ella shrugs. “I don’t know. Someone must have mentioned it to me. Oh. It was Poppy. She wanted to meet you guys, then you both bailed at the dedication.”
I cup my hand over my mouth. My palm comes back smeared with red.
Poppy Banning, the closest thing the world has left to Flora. She wanted to meet us. Poppy wants to come for a visit, Flora told me, the two of us sipping from our mugs. I told her all about you.
“What?” Ella says, annoyed with my drama. But I don’t answer her—I can’t—so I get up and weave my way through the tables. I need to find Adrian and get us out of here. Flora couldn’t come back to haunt us, since ghosts don’t exist. But sisters do.
I come face-to-face with Flora in the lobby. For once, I read the fine print on her poster. If I’d paid attention two days ago, I would have been home by now. Because the fine print is in calligraphy—Poppy’s neat hand. The Flora Banning Memorial Foundation. Created by Poppy’s Pretty Pen.
Flora’s pride, when we were trading details about our sisters. She’s super artistic. I saw Poppy, a gangly kid whose artwork covered a hulking stainless steel fridge. Not this. The notes. The lipstick. The scroll. The ballot box, stuffed with my name. How long has she been waiting to strike? Flora died almost fourteen years ago. Poppy shares at least one of her qualities. Patience.
Chairs scrape and people brush past me. Dinner is over and everyone will be heading to Andrus for the All-Campus Party. Maybe I should follow them and lose myself in the crowd, where I’ll be safe. But I’m not safe anywhere. And Adrian isn’t safe as long as he’s with Sully. I’m not sure what’s worse: that I know what Sully is capable of, or that I don’t know the same about Poppy.
I take off my heels and start to run, up Wyllys, past the white tents set up on Andrus, past laughter and music. I run until I’m at the entrance to the Nics, where I notice the plume of smoke. The shadowy figure it leads to.
“Looks like you’re trying to find someone,” Felty says.
I rattle the door, then remember that my key card is missing. I’m not afraid of Felty. He’s just a man with a theory that nobody could prove. I almost want to tell him about Sully, about the blackened truth I finally unmasked tonight. But he has no reason to believe me, and I would just end up implicating myself.
“I haven’t given up,” he says to my back. “One day I’ll get a confession out of one of you.”
“Amb.” I whip my head around and see a figure sprinting across the grass, long dress hitched up. Sully slams to a halt beside me, hair wild and face white. “I think somebody was just following me. Let’s get inside.”
“Where’s Adrian?” I’m both glad she isn’t with him and afraid of where he could be. When her bare shoulder brushes mine, I recoil.
“I have no idea. I haven’t seen him. But I think something happened to Kevin.”
“Don’t—” I say as dread thunders in my ears. She hasn’t seen Felty yet, glowering in the darkness. I can’t get the rest of the words out. Don’t say anything else.
“I keep calling him. He’s not picking up, and he wouldn’t have just left.”
Felty steps forward. Sully must see his shoes, not the body attached to them. She looks up and I can tell she wants to fall apart, the same way my limbs push to deconstruct. This is it, I realize, a static shock. This is our reckoning.
Sully doesn’t try to think up an excuse. Instead, she rises to her full height, puts her hand on Felty’s arm. “We’re being threatened. We got these notes—me and Amb. And things have been happening.”
Felty clears his throat and pulls his arm away. He has us where he wants us, cornered and scared. “Where is Kevin McArthur?”
Sully narrows her eyes, obviously realizing that Felty is immune to her charm. “Did you not hear what I said? Amb and I are being threatened. Kevin’s missing. We all got these notes.”
Felty rolls an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Unless he has been off the grid for twenty-four hours, he can’t be considered a missing person. And a note doesn’t exactly sound like a murder weapon. Although I suppose people do get creative with words.” He glares pointedly at me.
“She’s telling the truth,” I say. “Somebody wants to hurt us.” It’s ridiculous that I’m saying us. I shouldn’t care what happens to Sully. She’s a murderer. But I can’t shake the thought that I’m just as bad. That I suspected what she did the entire time and absorbed the knowledge into my skin. That I chose to live with it, because what Sully did meant somebody cared enough about me to eliminate the person I saw as my enemy.
“Are you ready to tell me what really happened that night?” Felty says. “If you’re ready to tell me, I’ll go check on Kevin myself. I’ll even bring you with me. How does that sound?”
Sully sets her jaw. “We already told you everything we know.”
We’re we again, now that she needs my help.
Felty’s expression is somewhere between amused and annoyed. “If you girls let me protect you, we can sit down and have a conversation and talk about what happened.”
“No,” I say. Sully may be more dangerous than Felty, but she’s not as dangerous to me. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have done it by now. “Sully, let’s go. Where’s your key card?”
She hands me her purse, wordlessly, and I rummage through it, grabbing the card and swiping it against the door. Felty watches us walk in.
“Goodbye, girls,” he says. It almost sounds like a threat.
NOW
To: “Ambrosia Wellington” [email protected]
From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” [email protected]
Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion
Dear Ambrosia Wellington,
If you’re still around at midnight, there will be celebratory fireworks! Don’t miss what is bound to be a dazzling finale to an unforgettable weekend.
It will be the spectacle we’ve been waiting for—the one we deserve.
Sincerely,
Your Alumni Committee
“It’s Poppy,” I blurt out when we’re inside, doors separating us from Felty. I keep my voice down, certain he’s lurking outside. “She wrote the notes. I’m sure of it.”
Sully’s eyes widen and she brings a shaking hand to her cheekbone. I haven’t seen her scared many times, but I think this is as close to terrified as she’ll get. “Poppy. She—how would she have found out?”
“I don’t know. She lost the person who meant the most to her, so she must have found a way.” I watch Sully’s face for a reaction—for the confession she’ll never say out loud.
“I know what you did,” I yell. “Poppy knows too. She wrote the notes to get us here, and now she’s not going to let us leave.”
Sully stops. Her shoulders are hiked up around her ears. “She must be on her way here. She knows where we are. I’m leaving. If you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”
“You can’t just leave. We have to talk to her.”
Sully spins around, wiping greasy eyeliner from under her eyes. “Yeah. I’m sure she really wants to hear anything we have to say.”
I put my arm out, even though I’m not sure if I want to reach for her or push her away. “We need to confront her, or else she’ll just find us again. This won’t stop.”
Maybe I’m daring her to repeat her famous line. There is no us. She turns and keeps walking instead. “You do what you want, but I’m going home.”
I stare at her back, at the beads of her spine, her shoulder blades sharp wings. At the door to our room, she gestures impatiently for her key card. But it doesn’t matter, because the door is ajar.
I stop abruptly, my grip tightening on my shoes. “Someone’s here.”
“Fuck this.” Sully pushes the door open.
I don’t know what I expected. Poppy lying in wait, crouched in the dark. But it’s Adrian, sitting on the desk chair, hunched over, duffel bag at his feet. His pants have ridden up enough to show those ridiculous socks, which I gave him last year for his birthday. Now I’m afraid we’ll never celebrate another birthday together.
“Adrian.” Even his name sounds guilty coming from me.
“Were you expecting someone else?” He’s pissed off, but he doesn’t want to make a scene in front of Sully, because that’s not who he is. The only spotlight he ever wanted was the one I haven’t been giving him. My full attention.
Sully kicks off her heels and steps into her ankle boots. “I need to go.” She retreats to her room, where I watch her stuff clothes into her suitcase.
“You’re actually leaving.”
She looks up. “Come with me. I’m serious.”
She grabs my wrists, just hard enough to hurt, but I pull away like I’ve been stung. She blinks, almost childlike, hinting at a vulnerability I still don’t believe is in her arsenal.
Her sad smile makes me think part of her may feel after all, but not a big enough part. Our goodbye is wordless, anticlimactic. I guess we’ve already had too many highs and lows together. I don’t watch her walk away. I’ve seen her back enough times.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Adrian when she’s gone. “I didn’t know where you went, and I wanted to text you, but I can’t find my phone.”
“It’s right here.” Adrian has it in his hand, rose-gold cover against his palm. “I think it’s time you explained exactly what the fuck is going on.”
I lean against the door. Normally when Adrian and I argue, I bridge the gap between us. My arm around his shoulders, my hands in his hair. But I can tell he doesn’t want to be touched right now. “This whole weekend has been a mess. I wasn’t ready to come back here.”
“I’d ask you why Sully’s leaving in such a rush, but I know you’d lie. So who’s the other guy?” Adrian says. “I know you’ve been with him this weekend.”
“There is no other guy. I’m telling the truth. Nothing happened.”
“Billie says otherwise.” He tosses my phone onto the bed and crosses his ankles. “I’m guessing she’s a few glasses of wine in. I got a lot out of her.”
I walk over and grab the phone, even though I should be fighting for the lie, trying to say something that will make Adrian give up whatever mission he’s on. But I need to know what he has already uncovered.
I read the message he sent Billie as me. I feel bad about this. What about Adrian?
Seeing his own name on my phone, and knowing he typed it, is what makes me want to cry. Adrian, loyal and trustworthy, never duplicitous. I’ve turned him into someone else.
Billie’s response is typical post-Riesling Billie, blubbery and incisive at once. I can picture her typing it, cheeks pink, slippered feet on Ryan’s lap as he watches hockey or football. Maybe he isn’t your one true love. Figure things out with your college boy. You’ll spend another 10 years regretting it otherwise right?
Adrian didn’t respond to that. Billie sent another one. You told me you looked for him in every guy you ever dated…
Did I say that? I romanticized him, the same way an average vacation blooms in hindsight into the best time of your life.
Billie again, ten minutes later: I want details!
I put my phone facedown on the pillow. Adrian stares at the ground. He doesn’t want to see me. Doesn’t want to, or can’t anymore.
“I can explain,” I say. “There was someone I thought I loved. But it was a long time ago. He was here this weekend, and yes, I saw him. But nothing happened, I swear.”
It’s the silence that’s the most unnerving. Adrian always has something to say, a joke to clear the air, but he lets me keep talking, keep grasping to defend myself.
“He was—he wasn’t the one for me. You have to understand, being here has been so hard—”
Adrian stands up so fast that the desk chair falls over behind him, legs sticking out, an angry beetle on its back. “You’re such a goddamn liar. But you always have been, haven’t you? I’ve learned more about you in a day than I have since we met. It took this weekend for me to know you’ve been lying the whole time.”
I open my mouth, but he continues. “You know how I feel about cheating, right? And the vows we made at our wedding? About never betraying each other? That was all a big fucking lie.”
“It’s not true. I meant it then. Nothing happened. I just needed to see him for closure. And I got it.” I scratch my cuticles and my thumb starts to bleed.
“You mean Kevin.” Adrian spits out his name. “Flora’s boyfriend, who you apparently met once. I know he was the guy in your photo at home. Let’s just say I’ve found out a lot of things I never knew about my own wife this weekend.” He paces back and forth, making the room even tinier.
“When I found his picture, you had the nerve to tell me he was dead. Something was off, but I didn’t question it. Because I should be able to trust my goddamn wife. You know, Google showed me a lot tonight about Kevin McArthur.”
“There are things you don’t know about me.” I sink onto the bed. “But it’s in the past. You know who I am now. I’m the person you think I am. You have to believe that.”
His hands go into his hair, making the curls a messy thicket. “I don’t have to believe anything you say, Amb.”
I flash back to our first Christmas morning in our apartment, when he got up early to put presents under the tiny fake tree we had set up beside our TV. We didn’t get snow that year and he knew I was disappointed, so when I came out of our bedroom, bleary eyed, and shuffled my feet into something dry and white, I was confused. Adrian was in our kitchen, the one I despise because there’s no space, smiling as he made French toast. We were genuinely happy.
Later, I bitched about the mess, hated how the flecks got stuck to the bottom of my bare feet, hated how we kept finding them in our couch for months. Sometimes I feel like you don’t appreciate me, Adrian once said, except I don’t remember when. Maybe he said it often.
“I’m leaving,” he says. “I really can’t do this anymore. You know, after we first met, I texted my friends and said I found the girl I was going to marry. They all said I was high on good sex. I have no idea who I fell in love with, but it’s not you.”
“It is me. We can leave together.” Pressure builds behind my temples and my eyes burn. I can’t remember the last time I felt this much. Sully desensitized me, her apathy a powerful drug.
“No. I’m going by myself. Now I see why
you wanted to get out of here so many times this weekend. You wanted to get me away before I found out too much.”
I can’t even tell him he’s wrong.
“You’re never going to be happy,” he says. “At least, not with me. Sometimes I think you like being miserable. So go be with Kevin. Find what you’re looking for.”
I hold in a breath, knowing that what I say next could define the rest of our lives. I need to make him see that it’s just us. That we can be different now.
“I’m pregnant,” I say quietly. “I found out today. I was waiting for the right time to tell you.” He wants kids so badly. This will change his mind. Maybe this is changing my mind. “We’re going to have a baby.” It’s the first time I’ve said the words aloud. We don’t have room in our apartment for a baby but we can move to the suburbs, out of New York altogether, even back to wholesome Pennington, which Toni says is the perfect place to raise a family. We’ll buy a crib and Adrian will put it together and afterward he’ll rest his hand on the dome of my belly, feeling the kicks. We won’t talk about this weekend ever again.
He turns away from me and bends down, reaching into my cross-body bag, which is slumped against the desk like somebody punched it in the stomach. His hand emerges with my birth control pills, the ones I swap from purse to purse.
“Sure,” he says. “You’re pregnant. Just like you stopped taking these six months ago. And texted Billie, No babies for me. You’re such a fucking liar. I can’t even look at you.” The pack of pills rattles onto the floor.
“No, you don’t understand. I took a test earlier today. I had a feeling—”
“Sure you did,” he says. “You think I’m so dumb, just because I didn’t graduate from college. But you’re the one who stole your roommate’s boyfriend. The guy who told her to kill herself. And now you’re faking a pregnancy because you think a baby will get me to stay. I don’t want a baby with you, Amb. I don’t want anything with you.”
My jaw is slack. It’s all careening away. Adrian, our love story, the life with him that I took for granted. I remember when he bought a pack of pregnancy tests, so confident we would be staring at two pink lines. He rubbed my back when they were negative and told me our time was coming. Now it’s here, but he doesn’t want it.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here Page 26