Good Girls Lie(89)

She slaps the mouse to open the browser again. Her screen is filled with the image of a dark room and a young lady with blond hair that hangs in her eyes.

Ford clicks Play, watches, listens. Hears her own voice, sees her smiling, happy face in the small corner of the screen.

“Why do you want to attend The Goode School?”

The voice sounds right, the inflections the same, though tinny through the computer’s speakers. “I have to admit, it was my parents’ idea. I’m not too keen on being stuck at an all-girls boarding school. It feels like a punishment.”

“It’s an opportunity. But I’m not here to sell you on this, Ashlyn. Your parents have arranged for your admission, yes, and yes, most of the girls who attend Goode are desperate to be here. But they can’t force you to come. I don’t want you here if your heart and soul aren’t going to be in it.”

A glance down. Ash—or whoever she is—has that same mannerism. God, it’s so damn dark. Why hadn’t she noticed how dark the room was? Is this the same girl? She just can’t tell.

She watches, oddly cheering past Ash on—pull your hair back, I think I remember you pulling your hair back, do that and I’ll be able to see your face clearly.

There, yes, she pulls her hair back over her neck, then shakes it down to cover her face again.

Ford rewinds, then stops the video at the moment Ash’s face is fully exposed.

There is no question.

The Ash at her school is not the girl from the interview.

They do have an impostor.





“Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping.”

—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own



67

THE PHONE

Ford doesn’t panic, not yet. She is logical. Cool in the face of adversity. Nothing rattles her. She closes the program, closes the browser, logs out of her computer. Tells Melanie she’s going for a walk on the grounds, not unheard of this time of day, then heads directly upstairs to the sophomores’ hall.

Has she been snookered by a sixteen-year-old? Is there something much more nefarious going on?

Ford has every right to search a student’s room at any time. It’s in the handbook, it’s part of the Honor Code. She’s never done it before. She’s never had to. The girls police themselves and their classmates better than she ever can. An Honor Code builds trust, yes, but there’s always the bit of rivalry that means some girls are looking for reasons to rat out their frenemies. Ford has always been good at sussing out what is real and what is animus and punishes accordingly.

But now she has no choice.

Ash Carlisle, whoever the hell she is, is hiding something, and Ford must find out what it is before the girl takes down the whole school.

She’s a hacker; Medea says she has talent. She could very easily be the one who sent the email with the photos and she was simply lying about it.

That belies logic, though. Why, if she’s an impostor, would she draw any attention to herself?

Ford needs to get to the bottom of this, and for that, she needs the originals. She has to inform Tony and his niece about what she’s discovered, but she also can’t have an investigation into a student reveal her own secrets.

Ash’s room is monkish without Camille’s things cluttering it up. Ford didn’t give Ash’s lack of accoutrement any thought when she arrived last month; now it strikes her as odd. What teenager doesn’t have a thousand and one things around them? There isn’t another room on the floor she could enter and see this level of minimalism.

Which makes searching it easy.

She finds the mobile phone taped to the inside wall above the door to Ash’s closet. She gives herself a pat on the back for clear thinking. It’s where she would have hidden it if she’d been trying to make sure no one found it.

She swipes it open. The battery is almost gone, and there’s no passcode. How irresponsible, and how lucky.

The photos are easy to find, right there in the app.

That little bitch.

Ford is faced with a choice.

Take this phone into custody, drag Ash in, and find out why she has it, or delete all the photos and destroy the phone. It’s not like Ash can come to her and ask for her phone back—she’s in violation of the rules by having it. Ford should kick her out on her ear. She should kick her out regardless, though Tony might take care of that for her.

A Goode girl in handcuffs. Her mother will have her head.

Something to be avoided at all cost. The girl knows too much.

Push and pull. Push and pull.

Maybe the two of them need to have a heart-to-heart, get all this out in the open. Quid pro quo. I don’t expel your skinny ass, you don’t reveal what you know. And who the hell are you, anyway?

Ford is grasping at straws, and she knows it. Her mother wouldn’t hesitate here, she’d have already thrown Ash to the wolves. Ford should do the same. She can’t risk losing the school over a scandal, not on top of Camille’s suicide.

Tony’s worried face. He thinks Ash killed Camille, or that niece of his does and is planting that idea in his head. And now to intimate Ash had something to do with Muriel... Muriel... Ash quit piano.

She would have to, wouldn’t she? If she wasn’t the prodigy piano player, Muriel would have known quickly. Out of practice, my ass.