Good Girls Lie(93)

I’ve done it.

Becca seeks me out and pulls me to her breast. I collapse against her with relief, my arms snaking around her waist. She is warm and smells like jasmine, and it’s just so nice to be held again by someone who loves me. She rubs a hand up and down my back, careful not to touch the brand, and it feels like a promise. I look up at her and she’s smiling at me, tenderness in her eyes. I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and touch my lips lightly to hers.

I am on the dirt floor before I can blink.

“What the hell, Ash?”

I have forgotten where I am. I am higher than high and in pain and drunk, and despite all of these things, I realize I’ve done something dreadfully wrong.

Becca is standing over me with a look of sheer panic on her face, and all around me, I hear whispers, louder and louder, some amused, some horrified.

“Did she actually kiss her?”

“Oh, my God, lesbo alert.”

“I knew she had the hots for her.”

“Wait, is Becca gay?”

But it is Becca herself who breaks me in two. Her voice is shaking and the rage monster I saw in her room is back. “Get out.”

What have I done? Oh, my God, what have I done?

This isn’t getting drunk at a party and hooking up, which is totally acceptable. Or even messing around behind closed doors. This was a kiss of love. I’ve just outed Goode’s head girl in front of our entire secret society.

Apparently, there are still some taboos at Goode.

“Go!” she hisses at me.

“Where?”

“Back to the school. You are out.”



70

THE DOOR

The door to the Commons swings closed behind me and I run, crying, down the stairs to my room. The pain in my side doesn’t compare to the pain in my heart, seeing Becca look at me like that. Like I am some sort of freak. She started this. I didn’t seek her out. She was the one who encouraged me.

Have I actually been kicked out of Ivy Bound? Is this even possible? She was talking about sisterhood and love and friendship and now I’ve been cast out, cast aside.

I didn’t mean to do it.

How could she? How could she?

I am so dizzy. The room is spinning, and the air seems like it’s wavering in and out. I don’t feel the ground when I hit it. I don’t feel anything at all.

* * *

I wake to chilled air sweeping around my body. I am on the floor in my room. I don’t know how much time has passed. I am thirsty, and I crawl across the room to my water bottle. I gulp down the contents, but it’s not enough, I need more.

I drag myself to my feet, and that’s when I fully realize cold air is pouring into the room. Where is it coming from? My windows are closed, my door is closed. But cool, damp air is bleeding in.

Someone must have left the hallway window open to the fire escapes.

And someone has been in my room. In my bed. A gift has been left on my pillow.

The bird is small, soft in its mutilation. The nail is driven straight through its tiny heart, impaling both the body and the note, written in red ink—or the bird’s blood, I don’t know which—which says in big block letters: WHORE.

I stumble backward, away from the horror.

Fuck. Fuck. They’re sick. Sick and twisted and wrong. How could I have ever wanted to be a part of this group?

I flee into the hall, retreating away from the mess, and see the door across the way is wide open. The draft is coming from a window on the far side of the darkened space. The sash is fully raised, letting in the cool air.

I trip almost immediately when I walk into the room, fall to my knees. I’m unsteady anyway, still feeling some of the effects of whatever drug they gave us, but someone has moved things around in here. Must be the janitors. And they left the window open. And something smells funny.

Cigarette smoke, I manage to put together. Someone was smoking out the window.

So much for the bright, shiny lock. If they leave the room open, what difference does it make?

I haul myself to my feet. I’ve skinned my knee, but I ignore the sensation of blood running down my shin. There is a shadow in the corner that has my full attention. My vision is adjusting to the darkness, the moon’s glow gives enough light to make out the strange shapes and lumps through the room.

The planks of wood that used to lean against the wall are stacked up in front of the door, that’s what I’ve tripped on. With them moved away from the wall, for the first time I see what they were hiding.

There is a door.

And it is open.

My first thought is to run. My second is more jumbled. Perhaps it was all a test. Perhaps I am not kicked out of Ivy Bound. Perhaps Becca is waiting for me. She complimented my strength. I need to be strong now.

Hope flickers in my chest. All is not lost after all.

I take a deep breath of the strange, dirty air and step through. There are stairs, winding down, gray concrete with black dots on them. It must be mold of some sort—the air here is overwhelmingly musty—but there is something lodged in the corner of the railing. It’s a piece of cloth. I pull it from its spot. It is black and stiff. I notice a small piece of plastic flapping in the breeze, staked to the banister with a nail, rotted through. It is yellow, with black writing, but it’s unreadable because of the holes and tears.

The black dots on the stairs... It’s blood. And someone, or something, must have wiped their hands off on this piece of fabric and left it behind. And the yellow plastic—is this crime scene tape?