A Lesson in Vengeance(18)

This day there being Complaint issued by Anonymous sources, whereby these named daughters are suspected of moste heinous Murder of one Flora Grayfriar in profane fashion, this court demands Apprehension of Margery Lemont, Cordelia Darling, Beatrix Walker, & Tamsyn Penhaligon of Dalloway School to appeare before us and speak truth before God and Justice, to face the graete damage and havock which hath beene wrought at the Devil’s hands.

—Province of New York, Quarto Annoq’e Domini 1712, Hudson Court Files, vol. 32, docket no. 987


Is there no way out of the mind?

—Sylvia Plath, “Apprehensions”





Alex and I fell in love via a series of accidents.

My first semester at Dalloway, I lived in Farquhar House, sharing a room with a skinny, anxious girl named Therese who had a bad habit of picking at her scalp and eating the scraps. Eager to distance myself from Therese’s orbit, I spent most of my time either in the Farquhar common room or pretending to belong to other houses: lurking in their common rooms, befriending their housemistresses, drinking their tea.

I met Alex at ten past midnight in the Lemont House common room. Normally I would have reluctantly returned to Farquhar—and Therese’s dandruff—by that hour, but there was a blizzard, and a severe weather warning was in effect, so we’d all been advised to shelter in place until the danger passed.

“I think you should go,” she said, standing in the doorway wearing a fleece jacket and hiking pants, her feet stuffed into those cozy wool booties that were popular for a few years despite how hideous they were.

“It’s still snowing.”

“I’m sure you’ve seen snow before.”

“Mmm,” I said, but all I could think was I’m done talking to this girl.

But she, clearly, was not done talking to me. Alex moved deeper into the room and planted herself in front of my chair with her arms crossed. There was no pretending not to notice her. I looked.

Alex was pretty. Maybe not in the conventional way—her jaw was too square, her eyes too far apart, her red hair always tangled and roped back into a fraying plait. But she exuded a fierce energy that ate up all the oxygen in a room.

I wanted her from day one.

First, though, we had to spend the whole night huddled on that sofa together, lighting a fire in the hearth to keep warm—because right as she had launched into a tirade about the moral faults of trespassing, the power went out.

It’s hard to maintain a consistent standard of animosity when you spend eight hours with someone in the dark. Alex could have gone up to bed. I would have, if it had been me. But she stayed downstairs, bundled up in one of the blankets off the sofa, and we discovered that we both loved Daphne du Maurier and Margaret Atwood, that we hated the snobby STEM students with equal fervency, and, most important, that we were both determined to be accepted into Godwin House.

Midnight secrets weren’t enough to build a friendship, though. I didn’t see much of her after that; at least not until I broke my wrist in December and encountered Alex in the same emergency department waiting room. She was curled up on a stretcher, sweaty and grimacing, from what would later turn out to be appendicitis, but she somehow spotted me and called me over. Mostly to make me hold her hair back while she vomited, but still.

I stayed with her after my wrist had been bandaged up. Her mother appeared right before Alex was about to be wheeled into surgery, a panicked woman whose frantic hands flit about like wild birds. I managed to get Ms. Haywood to take a seat and calm down, stroking her hair like she was a little child while Alex made faces at me from the cot.

I remember being so fascinated by Ms. Haywood: her tears and her soft words, the way Alex seemed to bloom in her presence, even sick. The maternal way Ms. Haywood pressed her lips to Alex’s temples.

“I’m so glad she has you, dear,” Ms. Haywood told me, blotting her wet cheeks with her wrist. “Alex told me how horrible all the Dalloway girls have been. But you’re so…so sweet. What a lovely friend.”

It turned out Alex was at Dalloway on full scholarship, one of only three girls in our year. Ms. Haywood had raised her as a single mother working two jobs. Alex had attended public school, not prep. These factors had resulted in Alex’s summary dismissal from every social group on campus.

Well, not anymore. I already had a generally low opinion of half the school, having seen how contingent their interest in me was upon whether they knew or didn’t know my mother’s name. Alex, I was fairly certain, didn’t have the first clue who Cecelia Morrow was—and that suited me just fine.

Alex and I became our own clique: inverse images of one another, the rebel and the heiress. Alex had her own charm; it was impossible not to love her.

Our first kiss was at a rooftop party in the city. It was just an hour’s drive away, so we’d gone out for Friday night, my mother’s credit card covering bottle service at a bar I hoped my mother had never actually visited. I didn’t want to hear the embarrassing stories if she had.

The roof was draped in greenery and market lights, which glimmered off the low reflecting pool that ran parallel to the bar. Alex and I were merely sixteen, but it didn’t matter—no one had even glanced at our fake IDs. We were wearing enough makeup to pass for twenty-three, smoky-eyed and red-lipped, in designer heels. Alex was luminous in lavender, her hair drawn up into a chignon and exposing her bared back, a fine lariat chain falling along her spine and punctuated by a single glittering garnet. I knew Alex, so I knew the gem was fake. But in this strange, warm light, anything could have been real.