People Like Us(5)

She grins for a moment, and then her smile fades. “Bates hasn’t had a suicide in over a decade.”

“I know.” She’s tactful enough not to mention that in the past, when her mother attended, there was an epidemic. An entire wing of Henderson was closed for nearly thirty years.

“How did you not know her?” Brie says.

“Maybe she spent a lot of time off campus.”

I pull a sweatshirt over my head and grab my campus ID and keys and then hesitate, my hand on the doorknob. I glance at the calendar hanging above my bed. My parents gave it to me in September with match days already circled heavily in red marker. Three scouts will be at Monday’s game to see me play, and unlike my friends, I can’t fall back on money if I’m not offered a college scholarship. I’m not the average Bates girl from a wealthy New England family. I’m here on a “whole student” scholarship, which is code for athletic, because my grades aren’t enough to float me, and my family can’t afford the tuition. Still, this is an extenuating circumstance and it might look bad to hold practice today. My parents might even understand.

I turn to Brie. “Should I cancel practice?”

She gives me one of her honestly-I’m-not-judging-you looks. “Kay, it’s already canceled.”

“They can’t do that.”

“Of course they can. We don’t run the school. Athletics, music, theater, every nonacademic department is shut down while this is under investigation.”

I drop back down on the bed, my head buzzing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Monday is the biggest day of my life.”

She puts her arm around my shoulder, drawing me into her warmth. “I know, sweetie. It’s not over. It’s just on hold.”

I drop my keys on the floor and bury my forehead in Brie’s shoulder, my eyes stinging. “I’m not allowed to be upset, am I?”

“You’re supposed to be upset. You just haven’t fully processed what you’re actually upset about. Last night was traumatic.”

“You wouldn’t get it.” I pull away from her and press my knuckles into my eye sockets. “I can’t go home. Even if you weren’t already signed, you have absolutely nothing at stake.”

“That’s not fair, or true.”

I study her earnest mahogany eyes and perpetually furrowed brow. Her soft, cloudlike hair frames her face almost like a halo. She’s always so neat and together. She doesn’t belong in my nuclear mess of a room, or my life. She has brains, looks, money, and a perfect family. “You wouldn’t get it,” I whisper again.

“It’s going to be open and shut,” Brie says firmly, rising and gazing out the window again. “Clearly a suicide.”

“What exactly are they investigating, then?”

“Whether there was foul play, I guess.”

“Murder?”

“That’s generally what they look into when someone dies a violent death.”

The words echo in my brain. It was a violent death. She looked so calm, so serene, but death is sharp and severe. It is violent by definition. “Here?”

“There are killers everywhere, Kay. In nursing homes and emergency rooms. Police stations. Everywhere you’re supposed to be safe. Why not a boarding school?”

“Because we’ve been here four years and we know everyone.”

Brie shakes her head. “Killers are people. They eat the same food and breathe the same air. They don’t announce their presence.”

“Maybe they do if you’re listening.”

Brie weaves her fingers through mine. My hands are always cold; hers are always warm. “It was a suicide. In a couple of days, athletics will be running again. You’ll be recruited. No question.”

The way the word suicide keeps rolling off her tongue with such ease is jarring. There’s poison in it, eroding parts of me barely stitched together that I don’t want Brie to see. “Now they’re going to blanket bomb us with assemblies on warning signs and how not to kill ourselves and shit. Because that’s so helpful after the fact.” Which I guess it is to a point, when you consider Bates’s history. It’s better than nothing. But it does fuck all for the person who’s gone and everyone who cared about them.

Brie hesitates. “Well, before the fact, we should definitely be nicer to people. You should think about that.”

I gaze into her eyes and look for my shadow self somewhere in the depths. Maybe there is a better version of me somewhere out there, and if it exists, it is in Brie’s mind. “Nice is subjective.”

“Spoken like a true Bates girl. We are such a self-involved species. How into yourself do you have to be to not notice someone who’s about to implode?”

For just a split second, I think she’s talking about me.

But she isn’t. She’s talking about Jessica.

I breathe again.

“You’re not running for president yet. It’s not your job to be everyone’s best friend. Just mine.” I grab her into a big bear hug and tackle her.

She sighs and nestles her forehead into the nape of my neck. I allow one moment of serenity, breathing the scent of her hair, one moment in the alternate universe where I’m a good person and Brie and I are together. Then I force myself to sit up. “Did you try to call Justine?”