The Case for Jamie (Charlotte Holmes #3)(47)

“No,” I said, trying not to laugh. They were talking about a guy who had farting contests with his roommate that you could hear all the way out in the hall. “It’s all about Kittredge, I guess.”

“And the money—”

“Look, honestly? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Anna,” the redhead said. “She spends a lot with Beckett Lexington and his stash. She spends a lot at Barney’s online. Maybe she overspent and was embarrassed. She told Lainey and Aditii and Swetha that she was going to stake them”—the other girls, if their expressions were any indication—“and maybe she didn’t realize she was too short on cash to do it. Got to the party, decided to blame you. I don’t know. I think there’s more to it than that.”

“If anyone knows, it’s Jason Kittredge,” said Aditii. Lainey? “He was on her from the second she showed up. He’ll know if she had it to begin with.”

“Thanks.” Elizabeth lingered there for a beat. “Marta,” she said to the redhead. “Your hair looks really good.”

“Thanks,” Marta said. Her eyes didn’t soften. “I like your boots.”

“Thanks.”

This strange ritual complete, we left.

“What’s the story there?” I asked, pushing the union door open.

“There isn’t one,” Elizabeth said. “They wanted things from me they couldn’t have.”

I stared at her, washed over with the strangest déjà vu. “What?”

“It’s pretty simple. Undying loyalty.” She pulled out her phone. “Which means, no fuckboys. And everyone’s a fuckboy. Crushes are fine, boyfriends aren’t. Dinner with the group every night at seven. Those are the rules.”

“Wait. They think I’m a fuckboy?”

“You have a fuckboy haircut,” she informed me, rapid-fire texting someone. “And no, I’ve been dating you for too long for anyone to think that. You were famously in love with a junkie who’d dropped out of school, you’d been framed for murder together and now she was gone, and they thought it was all crushingly romantic. Marta told me you’d break my heart. And we stopped being friends over it.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Elizabeth put her phone away. “Because I didn’t want you to tell me it was true. I have to go to Biology. I’ll see you later?” She kissed me on the cheek, and trotted up the hill.

There was so much about this girl I still didn’t know.

Three hours to kill until the end of the school day, when I could corner Kittredge in his room. I ducked into the library and hurried quickly up into the stacks, to the PQ–PR section. It was silent—most students didn’t have a free period, and almost no one had it after lunch—and smelled overwhelmingly like old leaves. The heater, as usual, was working overtime. I shed my outer layers into a pile and sat down at a carrel.

On the ride back to my father’s last night, I’d finally changed my email password. I pulled the account back up to go through the sent messages again. The remarkable thing was that the fake emails sounded so much like me. Whoever had been forging my mail had read through my old messages, listened to the tone, noted the way I’d signed off. The final one “I’d” sent yesterday, to Elizabeth, read:

E,

I’m so sorry about before. Maybe it’s best if we meet somewhere public, and then we can go talk? Come to Tom’s party—I’ll be there. J x

It was stupid to be unnerved by it—the template was literally right there, in the hundreds of samples I’d sent just this school year—and still I was. The initials (E, J) were easy enough to copy, and the one-or-two-x sign-off was standard practice for any email you sent in Britain. But the long-short sentence combo, the statement that ended in a question mark, the dash—they were all things I did all the time and hadn’t realized until now.

There wasn’t any clue there, at least not that I could tell. Nothing to learn except this wasn’t a slapdash job. They would have taken at least a few hours to learn how to convincingly sound like me.

It had to be Lucien. Who else could it be? But I’d seen firsthand what you got from forming conclusions before you had the facts. You dragged in Moriartys, Milo Holmeses, you threw your weight around trying to make your guess right. You ended up with a friend shot dead in the snow.

On my phone, a text popped up in my international app. I was grateful for the distraction. I’ll see you soon, Shelby said. Checking out that school, then headed to Dad’s house. Lots to tell. Hear you’re in trouble again. Shock-er.

I sent her a line of vomit emojis and a see you soon.

I still had time to kill, so I did my best to begin a response paper for AP Euro on one of the school computers. It was hard to feel focused. If I was suspended for stealing in the spring of my senior year, it didn’t matter what grades I got; I wouldn’t be going to college anywhere.

I felt a weird sort of calm about it. Maybe it was fatalism. Maybe it didn’t matter if it was. I was good at writing papers—not amazing, but good enough—and we had been reading about the causes of the First World War, and I found myself getting into the rhythm of it, laying down sentences, rearranging them, contradicting myself, and then stopping to figure out what I actually thought.