Good Girls Lie(36)

Becca wants to give Ash a hug but knows she’ll be rebuffed. Instead, she sits, digs two cigarettes out of a pack, and offers one to Ash.

After a moment, Ash accepts, and the small spark of light in her eyes emboldens Becca. She’s dealing with a rebel after all. She knew it. Could sense it in her bones. Ash has been swanning about for weeks now, head high, looking neither right nor left, ignoring the whispers and the innuendos, but at heart, she wants to run free. Becca feels the same way.

She lights both their cigarettes, then takes a long drag off hers and blows the smoke in a smooth stream toward the branch above. The nicotine is calming.

“Bad day?”

“The worst,” Ash replies.

“I’m very sorry about your father. And your mother. It’s horrible, what happened.”

Ash stares at the ground, takes a puff. “How long have you known?”

“Since the first week of term.”

“God,” Ash says, voice breathy, accent stark on the one-syllable word, staring up at the tree branches to blink back sudden tears. “And everyone else?”

“It’s been trickling through the ranks the past week or so. Your buddy Vanessa has been waiting to spring it on you.”

“Brilliant. She’s never liked me. We don’t get on.”

“They actually brought it to me last week as an Honor Code violation and I shut them down. Told them it wasn’t their business, and it certainly wasn’t a violation. I explained you have a right to privacy, especially in a situation such as this.”

“Bollocks.” But there’s no heat in the exclamation, just resignation. A girl beaten, her gorgeous shell cracked open to reveal the soft, vulnerable innards. Becca resists the urge to run her hand down Ash’s golden ponytail.

They smoke in silence for a few minutes, until the cigarettes are down to the filters. Becca scrapes hers in the moss to kill the cherry, does the same with Ash’s, then carves out a small hole and buries the butts in the dirt.

“Why are you trying to hide it?” Becca finally asks. “I mean, it’s not like it’s your fault. No one is going to blame you for their bad choices.”

“Why are you being nice to me?” Ash replies instead of answering. Her voice is a little wild, like she’s about to become hysterical.

“You intrigue me,” Becca says, then kicks herself. “That sounded weird. You’re not like everyone else here. You’re different. You try to hide your intelligence by being meek in your classes. You just listen and absorb everything around you. You don’t want people to know who you are. You don’t want to show off who you are. There’s a humility to you, and considering the wealth and station you come from, it’s surprising.”

“I’m just a stupid sophomore with dead parents.”

There are tears now, and Becca doesn’t try to comfort, lets her cry it out. She has the sense if she tries to touch Ash, she’ll go up in smoke or run screaming from the forest. Ash is shy, gentle. Sweet natured, behind the boots and the hair and the insouciant attitude. Becca has been observing the girl for weeks now, watching how she always lets the other girls go first, how she is content to let others take credit for her work. In the cutthroat world of Goode, this is unusual. They are taught to be assertive and confident, to debate and push and scheme. Cooperation is important, yes, but strength and individuality are rewarded. Ash’s strength is quiet. But even granite can crack under the right sort of pressure.

“I get down myself sometimes,” Becca confides. “The pressure of being a senator’s daughter... The expectations are off the charts. I don’t even like politics. But every summer, I’m interning on the Hill or going to ambassadorial camp, and every break I have to work in my mother’s office, talking to constituents. It’s mind-numbingly awful.”

“What would you rather do?” The words are soft, spoken from behind a curtain of hair where Ash’s omnipresent ponytail has fallen in front of her face.

“Anything. I hate DC. I hate the noise, the people, the self-righteousness. They’re all so fucking smug. They pretend they run the world, but it’s all nonsense. I’d like...”

“What?” Ash is looking at her now, her nose red as a cherry, eyes swollen.

“I’d like to move somewhere in the wilderness. Design an eco-friendly farm, live off the grid. It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but I watched this show once, where they built a cabin in the wilds of Alaska. It seemed perfect.”

“It sounds nice. I understand the desire to get away.”

“I could reinvent myself if I didn’t have my mother breathing down my neck. Oh, so sorry, Ash. That was insensitive of me.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

But the dialogue is over. Becca is genuinely stricken to see Ash has retreated into that quiet, self-contained shell again.

“Do you want another?” Becca hands Ash a second smoke, lights it. Watches her inhale and blow, hard, like she can dispel all the negativity through the haze. She coughs lightly, hand over her mouth, polite. So proper.

“What do you want with Camille tonight?”

“I don’t. That wasn’t my summons.”

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“Camille? She’s...not terribly bright. A lot like her sister. Emily was head girl last year, and was very full of herself.”