Good Girls Lie(72)

I’ve never had a serious boyfriend—or a girlfriend—before. Becca wasn’t my first kiss, far from it, but I’m still a virgin in all the ways that count. That I’d shy away from an encounter isn’t an indictment of Becca, it’s simply my own inexperience with these things. Sex. The word is sex, Ash.

I have no real objections to having sex with Becca. But I’d also like to have sex with Rumi, and that’s what’s confusing. Maybe I just need to try it with both of them and see which one works the best for me.

But now is not the time. Sex equates to intimacy, closeness, secrets. And I’m not willing to give my body in place of my safety.

I open my laptop and check my intranet Goode email. Assignments. More assignments. An invitation to Dr. Asolo’s house for a supper party and discussion of Virginia Woolf four evenings hence. I look at the other addresses on the email; it’s been sent to everyone in the class. All eight of us. And the dean.

I RSVP yes, then scroll through the Goode-approved websites online for a while, which are excruciatingly boring—how many turns around National Geographic is a girl supposed to take? I finally activate my VPN and override the system. I haven’t looked to the outside world in weeks. I check my external email, the one I had before moving to America. Junk. Junk. Junk. I delete everything.

There is a draft email in the folder. What’s this? I think back to the nasty surprise from Vanessa last night, that Camille was spying on me. I don’t remember writing and saving any emails. Did Camille manage to get into my email, too?

I click on the draft but the second I do, I hear the onomatopoeic triggering whoosh that means the email has been sent. As Pavlovian as it gets, these notifications. I should talk to Dr. Medea about this. What a great study it would be. Can we shift perceptions with sounds, recode the world? AOL did it. Apple followed. Perhaps Ash Carlisle can, too.

I click on Sent emails, but the program crashes.

“Oh, bugger me.” I reboot, which means I have to go through all of the steps again, activate the VPN, override the system, log in to my email, but the Sent folder shows nothing recent. Weird. There must have been an old email stuck in the outbox from the last time I logged out. Its date would correlate to when I originally sent the message. Who knows what it was?

Still, I delete this email account entirely. No reason to have it anymore, this last vestige of my old life. It’s not like I’ve received anything except ads for new trainers and knickers in weeks. Nothing of worth. Nothing personal.

I have another account for that, like any good hacker. But there’s no way anyone can access it, nor can it be tied to me in any way. It’s totally encrypted, completely anonymous.

Just this small action makes me feel more in control. Good thing I haven’t done too many illicit online activities from my laptop, or I could have really gotten myself in trouble. Even though I’ve already wiped the computer, I double-check everything. Yes, it’s all gone. Besides, Camille couldn’t have found out much. Her knowledge came from outside the school. Her parents, undoubtedly. The prosecutor and the ambassador.

I give them both a cursory search online. Nothing leaps out. There is a small piece in the Washington Post about Camille’s death, but it’s more an announcement than a story.

I move on to the Marchburg Free Press archives and plug in the name Rumi Reynolds.

Nothing.

Not a surprise. He was a juvenile when his father committed the murder. I doubt even the American papers are so callous as to name an innocent child in a report.

I try again. Murder at Goode School.

The hits are immediate and extensive. I’m still amazed I didn’t come across the stories when I looked at the history of the school in the first place, over the summer, when the idea of attending Goode had been presented to me. I never thought to look to see if any of the students had died. Who does that?

It’s beautiful and old, and you’ll get a fine education. Be able to write your ticket to any college you want.

“Go away,” I say to my ghosts, and begin to read.

* * *

The afternoon bells have long finished tolling when I stop and stretch. I don’t know much more about the murder than what the rumor mill and Rumi himself told me, outside of learning an eyewitness at the scene helped prove the guilt of Rick Reynolds. That, and a detailed listing of the body parts found on his living room mantel. It wasn’t just the eyes. He took her breasts, too.

Fucking freaky shit.

Reynolds is serving a life sentence in maximum security at Red Onion down in Wise County. I look at the map I carry in my bag—it is in the far southwest of Virginia, on the border of Kentucky. He is very far away. I wonder if Rumi ever goes to visit? I never asked how he feels having a murderer for a father. I should. See if it compares to my experience at all.

I haven’t thought much about the rest of the country, but looking at the map, I see the vast spread of the United States, pushing westward away from my spot in tiny rural Virginia. What would it be like to get in a car and drive? I’d like to see the mountains of Colorado, the ocean along the California coast. One day, I will.

These thoughts are getting me nowhere, so I pull on my trainers and slip down the stairs to the back door. Yellow crime scene tape blocks the courtyard behind Main, and the shadow in the middle of the concrete slab must be the leftovers of Camille’s blood, permanently scarring the gray circle. The thought makes me feel queer, slightly dizzy and nauseated.