Good Girls Lie(31)

“Personal responsibility is the backbone of Goode, Ash. Never blame others for your own decisions.”

Ouch.

Once I’m fully chastised and allowed to leave, I find Camille standing in the hall, her ever-present soldiers Vanessa and Piper at arms.

“You need to be careful with Becca, Ash. She’s using you.”

“I know how to take care of myself.”

“Not with her, you don’t. She’s not as great as everyone says. I know some things. My sister told me—”

“Give me a break, Camille. I have to get to the lab.”

I swear, she stamps her tiny little foot. The Converse high-tops she’s wearing cushion the noise. “You know, Ash, at some point, you’re going to have to choose. The seniors will graduate, and you’ll be left with nothing if you don’t forge some real relationships with your own class.”

I am bloody tired of being scolded by this girl.

“You assume I want a real relationship with you, Camille. Just because we’re roommates doesn’t mean we’re friends. Stop telling me what to do, how to think, and we’ll be just fine.”

“You’re going to regret this. Mark my words.”

She takes off through the glass-fronted trolley toward Old East, Piper and Vanessa in her wake—eerily similar to Becca and the twins, I realize—and I go the opposite direction, toward the computer lab, shaking my head at the childish argument.

My whole life, people have tried to get me to take sides. I’m tired of it.

Becca is at our table in the computer lab, waiting for me with a smile.

She’s using you.

Probably so. Everyone in my life has been using me one way or another. What is one more? At least this one has power.

I know some things.

This is murkier ground. The innuendo in Camille’s tone is clear. There is something more to Becca than meets the eye.

Part of me wants to scoff. The other, the wolf brain inside me, the survivor, knows I should find out what my new friend is capable of.



23

THE REJECTION

After Medea’s tutorial, I spend the rest of the day avoiding both Becca and my suitemates, attending classes, scribbling notes, trying not to be called upon. Trying to disappear. To stay off the seniors’ and the sophomores’ radars.

I end up decamping to the library, ostensibly trying to catch up on my work. Dramas aside, I am already behind and I’m only just beginning to get a feel for the rhythms of Goode. The library is like a sanctuary. A safe place. It is cozy, wood-paneled with inlaid parquet wood floors. It seems to be one of the few places on campus that hasn’t been renovated, though it is modern, well stocked, with a history section that doesn’t quite rival the Bodleian but is impressive nonetheless. Private cubicles have a soft armchair in addition to the dark wood desks, scratched and worn, the relics of an earlier age, before Goode shed its past like a snake’s skin and became the shining monument on the hill to all-girls education.

The many books stashed within its walls are friends in a way none of the girls on my hall will ever be.

I spend the evening in a private cubicle, working, until Ms. Morton, the librarian, comes to kick me out. Now I have no choice but to face Camille. Détente is necessary.

I wind my way back to Main, walking quickly through the trolleys. They unnerve me, for some reason, these glass tunnels suspended in midair. It is deeply dark outside in a way Oxford never was. On my floor, I creep to the small kitchen, fill my water bottle, then slink down the hall. It is relatively quiet; everyone is in their rooms. Some music plays behind closed doors, unidentifiable pop screeching, but I am alone. All the better. Perhaps this will be my routine—classes, a snack, the library. If I can make it through the term with as little engagement as possible with my suitemates, all the better.

I stop in front of our room. The door to the storeroom across from us is cracked open slightly. Why?

I hesitate, then cross and lean in, listening. For what, I don’t know. Voices? Breathing? Vanessa and Camille, plotting as they’ve been each night?

This is silly. I reach for the knob to pull the door closed, but as I do, the scent hits me. Home. It smells like...home. Like freshly brewed tea and damp wool and my mother’s signature perfume, the scent I used to bathe myself in when I was little, when my mother would be careless enough to leave the bottle on the dressing table, finely cut purple glass with an old-fashioned ball pump made of velvet. Gardenia and civet. Lush. Unmistakably female.

It is so intense, this memory, so immediate, I slam my fist into the door and it swings open with a creak. I enter the room, eyes searching. It is dark, cold, and empty.

“Mum?”

But there is nothing.

This is ridiculous. The room is no different than the first time I saw it, full of old paint cans and drapes, hardwood flooring and ladders stacked against the walls. Boxes and crates, covered in paint-dappled sheets. A storage room. A leftover.

But the scent lingers.

I shake my head, trying to get it out of my nose. Whatever am I doing? My mother is dead. And I don’t believe in ghosts.

* * *

Camille isn’t in the room again. Whatever. I grab my bathroom gear, hurry down the hall, wash my face, brush my teeth, braid my hair, and am back in less than five minutes.

I am unsettled. I can’t fall asleep. And when I finally drift off, I dream of death. The slack jaw. The harsh scent. The blankness in my mother’s eyes.