Chapter 6 - The Girl in Green

I made my way to the second floor in a daze. Students bustled around the halls in slippers and robes, caddies full of hair care products and toothbrushes, heading for a large communal bathroom toward the end of the hall. The unmistakable smell of fingernail polish filled the air.

It felt normal.

Not at all like the headmaster had just put a knife in my hand and dared me to stab her.

Back in the dorm room Ava was on her bed, reading.

“Kimber brought your clothes,” she said without looking away from her book. Not an e-reader but an actual paperback. In her hands, the book seemed exotic, as much an accessory from an earlier era as the pink lipstick and cat-eye eyeliner. I watched as she turned a page crisply, smoothing it down with her free hand.

I turned away to look for my things.

My backpack and my suitcase from home were in the closet.

Hanging in the closet was a plaid skirt, roughly my size, a dark blue wool sweater, navy blue pants with a webbed belt, and two white button-down shirts. A blue blazer. One bow tie and one regular tie. On the floor, navy blue loafers. Generic gym shoes. I craned my head to look at them. Size 12. Mom must have told them my shoe size. I was momentarily impressed that they had size 12 shoes waiting.

Mom. The thought of her formed a hard lump in my throat. She’d told Burton she was tired of me. My inability to deal with school. My on-again, off-again relationship with the corporate coffee world. I wasn’t surprised.

Burton had said the last few years were hard on Mom. They were hard for both of us.

I slumped on my bed, my arms slack at my side. I had a sick, sour feeling in my stomach from too many fries, and an adrenaline hangover from the confrontation with Burton. Had Mom really told Burton that life was too hard with me in tow?

Ava tossed her book aside and sat on the edge of the bed across from me.

“Are you okay, Jess?” she asked softly.

She craned her head to catch my eye, and I was surprised by her genuine look of concern. The way she’d talked when I was on my way to meet Burton made me suspect she’d known what I was walking into.

I just hadn’t expected her to care.

I shook my head slightly, grunting.

“Burton,” I said. “She asked me to . . .”

I stopped mid-sentence. She asked me to stab her. I was beginning to doubt my recollection of events. Had Burton really told me that she kept her letter opener sharp for just such occasions?

“Oh, I see,” Ava said. “Burton likes to lay down the law—especially with hard cases. I wouldn’t take it too seriously.”

Hard cases. Was that what I was, a hard case?

“What did she do to you?” I asked.

“Me?” Ava said. “Nothing. But then, I’m a perfect angel.” Ava laughed, but then her face clouded.

“Layla hated Burton,” she said. “She said Burton was the kind of person to press her thumb into your bruise.”

Layla. Ava’s old roommate. She wasn’t wrong. I felt that Burton had found the deepest bruise on my ego and ground her boot heel into it.

“Deep breaths,” Ava said. “It will pass.”

I hadn’t realized that I was breathing in short, tight, anxious spurts, until Ava pointed it out. Deep breaths—something Mom always said to me. It helped.

“I’m worried about my mom,” I said. “Burton said she was in the guesthouse, but I didn’t see anything on the grounds that looked like a guesthouse. . . .”

“You can relax, your mom is fine,” Ava said. “The Guesthouse is the name of the hotel in town. Burton’s cousin runs it. He has a deal with her to put up all the visiting parents.”

Mom was in a hotel in town? My breathing calmed. Mom was in a hotel filled with other parents. Nothing bad could happen to her. I needed to get out of here and make my way to the hotel. Once I told Mom about Burton calling me a killer, she’d take me out of here. I’d promise to give online school another try.

There was a knock on the door.

“I wouldn’t say anything about this,” Ava said in a low voice. “The rich kids don’t get it. Burton treats them like royalty.”

“Come in,” she yelled.

Kenzie stepped tentatively through the door. She looked surprised to see me.

“Kenzie, meet Jess, my new roommate,” Ava said. Whether Kenzie was a rich kid or not, Ava visibly relaxed as she entered the room.

“We’ve met,” Kenzie said. “So, I guess Layla’s not coming back?”

“Apparently not,” Ava answered.

Kenzie plopped down on the bed next to Ava.

“What’s up?” Ava asked.

“I was just looking for a place to hang out,” Kenzie said. “My roommate, Madison, is being . . .”

“A sociopathic bully?” Ava said.

“She’s not that bad,” Kenzie protested. “Just a little . . . extra.” She leaned across the bed, her heart-shaped face shaded in anxiety. “But I don’t want to intrude on your first day here if . . .”

“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly.

I looked at Kenzie and realized where I’d seen her before. Those tight curls and that heart-shaped face. A vintage bodycon Alaïa dress—not used, but vintage, as though it were a priceless antique or something. Her arm wrapped around Josiah Hall, leaning on him, probably because her spindly vertiginous heels, wrapped with ankle bows—like her tiny perfect feet were a present to the world—made it impossible to walk unassisted.

“Wait, I know you,” I blurted out. “I’ve seen you on Instagram.”

“That was a long time ago,” Kenzie said evenly.

She smiled sweetly, maybe even a little wistfully. Not sad because it was over, but almost a little embarrassed that she was once a thing. It was charming.

She was charming.

I’d always imagined that most influencers were fake people, surgically and cosmetically engineered out of a dark, grasping ambition.

But Kenzie was—nice.

I was forced to consider that maybe the internet really was a magical fairytale landscape where inner beauty translated to kindly princess energy and full market penetration.

“How did you end up . . . here?” I blurted out. Okay—rude. But I couldn’t help but be curious.

Ava shot me a dark look.

“It’s a very good school,” Kenzie said evenly.

“Sure it is,” Ava cracked. “A great school.”

“The family wanted me out of public view for a while before I head to Brown.”

The family. The way Kenzie said family made family sound like the juvenile court system or a board of stockholders. Big, impersonal, punitive.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I mean, about here, not about Brown.”

Kenzie nodded. A small, graceful gesture.

We were all trapped here.

I was suddenly exhausted, so tired I couldn’t think about it any longer. I just wanted to close my eyes.

“Do you mind if I stay here a while, Jess?” Kenzie asked softly.

“Of course not,” I replied.

I stretched out on the bed. I probably needed to get up and brush my teeth or unpack, but it all seemed like a lot. I was too tired to do anything, and it had been so long since I’d been in an actual bed. I fell asleep to Kenzie and Ava’s murmured whispers, which felt oddly reassuring.

I don’t know why, but I trusted Ava’s assertion that my mom was perfectly safe and sound in town. Ava seemed like the kind of person who would tell the truth as long as you promised not to repeat it. And maybe she was right about Burton, that she made a big show for the “hard cases.” I probably wasn’t the only person in school with a record.

But I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.