Good Girls Lie(110)

“Ford, we need to get everyone out.”

The dean turns on me, face ferocious. “Did you do this?”

“Me? No, Dean. I swear it.”

“The alarms started across from your room.”

“It’s her,” I breathe. “You know it is. She ruins everything. She’s trying to cover her tracks.”

“Come on, we can do this later.” The sheriff hurries me out of the dean’s office with a hand clamped on my shoulder. There is pandemonium in the hall.

The detective runs up, breathless. “We have to get the gates open, Tony. The fire trucks need to park in front of Main.”

“That’s a crime scene. Damn it all, Ford, why don’t you have cameras so we can see what the hell is happening?”

“You can berate me later. Damn, Tony, there’s real smoke here.”

She isn’t wrong. There is a fire burning, and burning hard. If it started across from my room, it’s Ashlyn, doing something to draw the attention away.

Has she done this for me? To give me a chance to escape the sheriff’s custody?

Possibly. But there’s nowhere for me to go. I refuse to run anymore.

Dr. Viridian, the chemistry teacher, is waving toward the dean. “The fourth floor is clear, so is the third. The fire is moving quickly. What happened to the suppression system?”

“It’s not working, Phyllis.”

Melanie, loyal assistant to the end, hurries forward, a handkerchief over her mouth.

“Dean, we have to get out. Now. The students are all outside. We’re doing a headcount. A few are missing.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know! But there are only 195 girls outside.”

I hear the fire now. It chuckles to life behind me, the ceilings are starting to blister.

“Open the fucking gates, Tony!” the dean screams.

The sheriff is done playing around, he speaks into his shoulder mic, then herds us toward the front doors and out into the quad. The smoke is heavy, pouring out after us. I cough and cough the bitterness out of my lungs.

The gate is open—what have they done with Becca?—and the fire trucks come barreling through. They swarm the grounds, forcing us back, back, until the sheriff is pulled away and it’s just me and the dean, standing in the center of the quad, watching.

They are too late. The delay getting Becca’s body off the gate and opening it wide gives the fire enough time to sink its teeth into Goode. The winds following the overnight storms have started, the cold front howling through the trees, the forest bending, furious at this scary intrusion. The sparks fly from one end of the school to the other. The conflagration is intense, and it feels like time is standing still, though I know it’s at least an hour that we stand, horrified, as the school burns.

Shouts, calls, water being sprayed. Nothing seems to work. We watch the flames grow higher and higher, the brick veneer blacken and crumble.

The firefighters put up a heroic effort. But when the roof collapses with a rending groan, the dean puts up a weary hand and says the words that doom The Goode School forever.

“Let it burn. It’s cursed anyway.”



86

THE ENDING

After the winds, the trees are nearly bare, leaves dried and fallen, the ancient branches revealing the nests of the birds who’ve roosted for the spring and summer. Soon enough, the nests will disappear, as well, their foundations rocked by wind and snow, the birds retreating to the evergreens for shelter.

Shelter from the storm.

This is what we are supposed to be given by our family. Care. Feeding. Love. Shelter.

But some families are different. They give only pain and fear and a frantic sense of need.

Every time I think about my father, I am reminded of the moment my mother told me how lucky we were. We had escaped him. We were free of him. We would never have to be subject to his temper, his rages, his hollow apologies. We were safe.

Only no one can escape the rule of a tyrant, not while the tyrant lives.

We were dragged back into the undertow of his world time and again until she was gone, and he was gone, and I was left alone to clean up the mess.

Do not mistake me. Damien Carr was a narcissist of the highest order. He fed off the power he accumulated, running the finances for the most powerful families in the country. He controlled my mother, he cheated on his wife, he abused his daughter. He walked delicately on the draglines as he built his web. But like an orb weaver, his sight was poor. He didn’t see what he’d created, right under his nose.

Me.

When I went away to America, I thought I’d left all of this chaos behind. I had escaped, like my mother always wanted for me.

But there is no escape when you’re caught in the monster’s nexus. Only something bigger to fear, a stronger predator to be devoured by. I was plucked from the broken strands and thrust into a larger web, one less visible, less clear, but controlled by a force I couldn’t begin to understand.

The dean puts a hand on my shoulder. It is meant to comfort, but there is no comfort to be had. It will all end now.

As the flames rise, licking the edges of the building, I swear I see Ash inside the windows. She is staring out at me, a hand raised in a farewell salute, a smile on her beautiful lips.

We are forever bound, she and I, through the blood that flows in our veins, and the blood we spilled together.