People Like Us(2)

Maddy takes out her phone and dials the headmistress’s number while the rest of us huddle in the darkness, staring at the dead girl’s body. With her open eyes and lips parted as if mid-sentence, she looks so close to being alive. Close, but not quite. It’s not the first dead body I’ve ever seen, but it’s the first one that’s almost seemed to look right back at me.

“Does anyone know her?” I finally ask.

No one answers. Unbelievable. The six of us, separately, probably hold more social capital than the rest of the student body combined. We must know nearly every single student between us.

But only students are allowed at the Skeleton Dance. At other dances, we are permitted to bring guys and other off-campus dates. The girl in the lake is our age and elaborately dressed and made-up. She has a familiar face, but not one I can place. Especially not like this. I lean over, clutching my arms to try to keep from shivering too hard, to get another look at her wrists. It’s a grisly sight, but I find what I’m looking for: a thin, glowing neon tube.

“She’s wearing the wristband. She was at the dance. She’s one of us.” I shudder at the words as they leave my lips.

Tricia studies the ripples in the lake without raising her eyes quite high enough to look at the body again. “I’ve seen her around. She’s a student.” She twists her silky black hair absently and then lets it fall over her perfect replica of Emma Watson’s Beauty and the Beast ball gown.

“Not anymore,” Tai says.

“Not funny.” Brie glares at her, but someone had to break the tension sooner or later. It knocks me back into myself again a little. I close my eyes and picture the ice walls doubling, tripling in thickness, until there’s no room for sirens in my mind, no room for my heart to thump chaotically off rhythm.

Then I stand up straighter and eye Maddy’s costume, Little Red Riding Hood with a scandalously short dress and a warm-looking cape.

“Can I borrow your cape?” I hold out one finger, and she slips the warm shrug off her pale, bony shoulders and hands it to me. I only feel a little bad. It’s cold and I’m a year older. She’ll get her turn.

A wailing sound fills the air and a swirl of red-and-blue lights hurtle toward us from across the campus.

“That was fast,” I murmur.

“I guess Klein decided to notify the cops herself,” Brie says.

Cori emerges from the darkness clutching a bottle of champagne, her catlike green eyes seeming to glow in the dim light. “I could have called Klein. But nobody asked.” Cori never misses an opportunity to mention her family’s connection to the headmistress.

Maddy hugs herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Typical Notorious,” Tai says, shaking her head. Maddy glares at her.

“It doesn’t matter. She’ll be here soon.” Brie wraps an arm around Maddy. The bathrobe looks thick and soft, and Maddy nuzzles her cheek to it. I narrow my eyes and toss the cape back to her, but overshoot, and it lands in the lake.

Tai stabs the waterlogged mass with a stick and fishes it out, dumping it at my feet. “I remember her. Julia. Jennifer. Gina?”

“Jemima? Jupiter?” I snap at her, wringing the cape out as well as I can.

“We don’t know her name, and no one recognized her at all at first,” Brie says. “It would be misleading to tell the police we knew her.”

“I can’t look at her face. Sorry. I can’t. So . . .” Maddy pulls her arms inside her dress, making her look like a creepy armless doll with her chalk-white skin and smudged dark eye makeup. “We should lie?”

Brie looks to me for help.

“I think Brie means we should simplify by saying we didn’t recognize her and leave it at that.”

Brie squeezes my hand.

Campus police arrive first, braking in front of Henderson and thundering out of the car toward us. I’ve never seen them move like that and it’s scary in a sort of pathetic way. It’s not like they’re real cops. Their sole job is to drive us around and break up parties.

“Stand aside, ladies.” Jenny Biggs, a young officer who often escorts us across campus after hours and turns a blind eye to our private soirees, ushers us out of the way. Her partner, a hulk of a male officer, barrels past us and wades into the water. A bitter taste forms under my tongue, and I dig my fingernails into my palms. There’s no real reason for it, but I feel protective of the body. I don’t want his hairy-ass hands touching her.

“I think you’re not supposed to disturb a crime scene,” I whisper to Jenny, hoping she’ll intervene. She’s been really nice to us over the years, joking and bending rules almost like an older sister.

She looks at me sharply, but before she can say anything, the real cops arrive along with an ambulance. The EMTs make it to the lake before the cops, and one of them dives into the water after Jenny’s partner.

“Do not approach the victim,” barks one of the officers, a tall woman with a strong Boston accent, jogging toward the lake’s edge.

The campus police officer, now waist deep in the water, turns and crashes into the EMT.

“It’s like the incompetence Olympics,” Tai murmurs.

Another officer, a short Tony Soprano look-alike, nods dismissively to Jenny like she’s a servant. “Get this guy out of here,” he says.