by Stella Hart
“Don’t worry. It’ll get better. You seem cool, so once people get to know you, you’ll have no trouble fitting in.”
We returned to our studies, quietly reading and taking notes. A while later, some movement in the corner of my eye attracted my attention. I looked up, worried it was Nate on the warpath again, but it was just a petite girl with fair skin and auburn hair. She was glancing around the octagonal reading room, presumably searching for somewhere to sit.
Laurel leaned over and muttered in my ear. “Oh, god, I hope she doesn’t come over here.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“She’s in one of my other classes,” she explained. “I’m sure she’s nice and all, but she’s so fucking bubbly and perky. Like a redheaded Barbie doll or something. It’s annoying.”
I raised a brow. It sounded like her caginess about meeting new people was rearing its ugly, standoffish head again. “I’m sure she’s not that bad.”
“Trust me. She hangs out with multiple snob squad members. They all look like they fell off the set of Gossip Girl.”
“Well, she’s not with them now.”
“Yeah, because she isn’t actually one of them. She just sucks up to them, hoping to be invited into the inner circle. It’s pathetic.”
“Hey, don’t be mean. You don’t really know her, do you?” I said. “Besides, she looks so sweet and nervous. She really can’t be that bad.”
Laurel pursed her lips and fell silent. The auburn-haired girl tentatively made her way over to our desk and smiled at us. “Hi. Can I sit here?”
“There isn’t enough space,” Laurel said sharply.
The girl’s face fell. “Oh. That’s okay,” she murmured. “I’ll find somewhere else.”
I kicked the bottom of Laurel’s shoe under the table and gave her a meaningful look. She let out a short sigh. “Sorry. I meant there’s not enough space because all our stuff is laid out everywhere. Just give us a second to move it so we can make room for you.”
“Thanks!” The girl’s face brightened again. “By the way, I’m Ruby.”
I smiled. “I’m Alexis, and this is Laurel.”
“Nice to meet you. I think you’re in one of my classes, Laurel.”
Laurel nodded. “Yeah, I am.”
“Thanks again for letting me sit. All the desks out there are taken up by frat boys right now,” she said, gesturing toward the other side of the library. “They’re so loud.”
“Frat boys?” I said, arching my brows. “I didn’t know there were any fraternities here.”
Ruby nodded as she pulled her notes out of her bag. “There are a few. Sororities too. They all live on the north side of the campus.”
“Wow, I had no idea. Are you in a sorority?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Laurel said under her breath.
Ruby sighed. “No. None of them would accept me.”
Laurel looked guilty. “Really? But you seem so…” She trailed off and started again. “I mean, I’ve seen you with all those other girls in our class, and they’re definitely in them.”
“We’re not really friends. More like acquaintances,” Ruby said with a sad little half-smile. “I grew up here on the island, so I know some of them. But I’m not Blackthorne sorority material. Not like them.”
“Why?” I asked, forehead wrinkling.
She leaned forward. “They’re super-exclusive. Even the lower-tier ones. They’re obsessed with legacy, bloodlines, and power. It’s literally all that matters to them.” She raised a brow. “My family has money, but not Arcadia Bay money, so I would never be accepted.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, there’s five frats and five sororities,” she went on, twirling a long strand of hair around a finger. “The top-tier frat is the Skulls, and the top-tier sorority is the Roses. They basically won’t let you in unless you’re American royalty. You can recognize them by the stuff they wear. The Roses wear necklaces with little silver rosettes, and the Skulls wear silver signet rings with skulls.”
“Are the others the same?”
She nodded. “Yeah, they all have their own emblems too. The families here really get it into their kids’ heads that symbols matter. A lot. They represent who you are, where you come from, what you’re worth, and what sort of power you have.”
“So the frats and sororities are basically a breeding ground for the elite,” Laurel added, rolling her eyes.
“Exactly,” Ruby said, giving her a knowing smile. “But it’s not all bad. Some of the girls from the Roses are actually pretty nice once you get to know them. They’ve even invited me to some of their parties.”
“That’s cool.”
“Yeah. Anyway, where are you guys from?”
“She’s from California, and I’m from Connecticut,” Laurel said, nodding in my direction. “I grew up in California, though.”
“Cool. And you’re both freshmen?”
“Uh-huh. We took gap years, though. So we’re probably older than you,” Laurel said. There was a nervous tinge to her voice.
“Cool. I wish I took a gap year, but my parents wouldn’t let me,” Ruby replied.
I saw Laurel breathe a visible sigh of relief when Ruby didn’t question the gap year thing.
“You said you grew up on the island. Whereabouts?” I asked, wondering if it was an area I knew.
“Thunder Bay,” she said. “It’s about forty minutes south of here.”
My eyes widened as my breath hitched in my throat. I felt like I’d been hit in the guts with a fist. Ruby grew up in my hometown, and she was only a year younger than me. I probably went to elementary school with her. Maybe even lived near her.
“I’ve heard that’s a nice place,” I said. I kept my voice steady, even though the panic inside me was fizzing and bubbling, begging for an escape.
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” she replied. “It’s nothing like Arcadia Bay, though. This place is like a whole different world.”
I stared at her as she spoke, searching for the faintest flicker of recognition in her eyes. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to realize who I was at all. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief and slumped back in my seat.
Laurel leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’ve heard of Thunder Bay. Isn’t that where the Blackthorne Butcher lived?”
Ruby nodded. “He lived a couple of streets over from me. My dad used to play golf with him, and his daughters went to my school.”
“Really?” Laurel’s eyes were like saucers now. “Did you know them?”
“Not really. One was five years older than me, so I never saw her. I think her name was Sophie. Or Sarah.” Ruby shrugged and went on. “The younger one was closer to my age. A year older, maybe. Alexandra. She was nice. She used to write this cute little neighborhood newsletter and stick it in our mailbox every month.”
My heart pounded as she spoke, and I could feel my cheeks flushing. What were the odds that I’d end up at a table with a girl who grew up two streets away from me?
“You said you lived really close to them. What’s the house like now?” Laurel asked. “Does anyone live there?”
Ruby shook her head. “No. I don’t think the family could sell it, so it just sits there, totally empty. No one ever goes near it.”
She was right. The property still belonged to my family, because no one was interested in buying a house that once belonged to a man who’d supposedly massacred thirteen people in the middle of a freezing winter night.
“It’s like our town’s very own haunted house,” Ruby went on. “Sometimes kids will dare each other to run up and knock on the front door, but they’re usually too scared to do it. They think the Butcher’s ghost will fly out and cut them into pieces.”
Laurel knitted her brows. “What was he like?” she asked. “I mean, you must’ve met him, right?”
“Yeah. He used to pick up my dad every second Saturday morning so they could drive to the golf club together. He always brought me a treat to have before they left, lik
e lollipops or cookies.”
“What a creep. He was probably a pedo as well as a killer,” Laurel said, wrinkling her nose.
I gripped the edge of my seat until my knuckles went white. They don’t know any better, I told myself. Just breathe.
Ruby shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. He was just a nice guy.”
“Nice enough to dismember thirteen people and hang them from trees right here at Blackthorne,” Laurel said, raising a brow.
“I meant he was nice before that,” Ruby replied. “We were all shocked when it happened. No one had any idea that he was actually a total psycho.”
I felt rage boiling up inside me. I’d seen, heard, and read about people’s opinions on my father’s mental state for years. They called him crazy, a lunatic, a psycho. A monster.
He did have a mental illness, but it wasn’t like people thought.
Long before Sascha and I were born, Dad was offered a position as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. He didn’t want to leave my mom alone on Avalon for too long, but it was a big career boost for him, considering he was working at a small local paper at the time. Eventually he agreed to do an eighteen-month stint—twelve months in Iraq and six in Yemen.
Even though he wasn’t in the military, he still witnessed a lot of atrocities while he was over there covering the conflicts and uprisings. One of his colleagues was killed in a bombing, too.
When he returned, he wasn’t the same man he used to be.
My mom had told us all about it over the years. She said he was still the nicest guy she knew, and he never treated any of us badly, but it was like he left a piece of his mind overseas. Sometimes he would sleep for far too long before waking up in a sweat, hyperventilating and shouting. On other occasions he would freak out and jump a mile if he heard sudden loud noises.
He was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. It could happen to anyone who’d experienced or witnessed traumatic events, and it didn’t mean he was a ‘batshit-insane psychopath’ who fantasized about committing massacres.
I couldn’t stand how people talked about it, as if every single person with a mental illness was nothing more than a ticking time bomb. It was so ignorant and fucked up. So grossly unfair and untrue.
“Sometimes they hide it really well,” Laurel said. “But I guess he couldn’t hold it in forever. The worst psychopaths rarely can.”
I narrowed my eyes. “He wasn’t a fucking psychopath!”
The words were suddenly out there, like a grenade slipping from my hand. Laurel and Ruby turned to look at me with wide eyes, clearly shocked by my outburst.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap,” I said hastily. “I’ve, uh… I’ve had a really long week. I guess it’s made me grumpy.”
“Oh. It’s okay,” Ruby said. She was looking at me curiously now, and I knew I needed to do something else to save the situation.
“I just meant to say that he wasn’t a diagnosed psychopath,” I said in a much softer, warmer tone. “I’ve read a lot about the case. Apparently, he was diagnosed with PTSD over a decade before the murders. But he didn’t have any other mental illnesses.”
Laurel nodded slowly. “Right. So you’re a true crime junkie, huh?”
“Yeah.” I forced a smile.
“Do you think he did it?” she asked, brows rising. “Most people think he did, but I’ve seen a couple of people online saying that they think he might’ve been innocent.”
I hesitated. If I told her I thought he was innocent, I risked outing myself as a supporter, and that in turn meant I risked outing myself as his daughter. I couldn’t do that. I had to make myself seem as distant from the case as her or anyone else.
I swallowed hard. “He totally did it,” I said. Each word felt like acid on my tongue.
Ruby nodded. “There’s no way he was innocent. They found so much evidence,” she said in a hushed tone. “Like, in his office here at Blackthorne, they found a knife in a vent that turned out to be the murder weapon. It was covered in his fingerprints along with blood from the victims. One of his jackets had hairs from three of the victims, too, and a few small bloodstains. They also found stuff buried in his backyard. Stuff that belonged to the victims.”
“That’s right,” I said through gritted teeth.
Laurel slowly shook her head. “I can’t believe that happened right here, only ten years ago.”
“Yeah, it’s so sad. So scary, too,” Ruby said in a solemn tone. She perked right up a moment later, clearly keen to change the subject to something less depressing. “Hey, I have an idea.”
“What?”
“Alexis, you mentioned that you’ve had a rough week, and honestly, mine hasn’t been the best either. So… why don’t you two come to the stoplight party with me tomorrow night?”
“The what?” I asked.
“It’s a party where you wear green, yellow, or red. Green means you’re single, yellow means it’s complicated, and red means you’re taken. The Skulls and Roses are hosting it together.”
“Would we actually be welcome at one of their parties?” I asked.
“Of course! The girls told me that I can bring anyone I want,” Ruby replied.
“I probably can’t go,” Laurel said. “I really need to study.”
I knew what she was worried about. She thought she might slip back into her old patterns and fail again if she went to a party.
“I read that recreation is necessary to stop you from overdoing yourself and burning out,” Ruby said in a sage tone. She lifted an encouraging brow. “That means it’s okay to loosen up and go to a party once in a while.”
Laurel sighed. “I don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “It’s probably not a good idea. I have so much to read.”
“What if we get together first thing tomorrow morning and study all day?” Ruby asked, eyes wide and hopeful. “That way you won’t feel guilty about taking a few hours off for a party.”
“I guess that could be okay. Thanks for the invite, by the way,” Laurel said, cheeks flushing. I could tell she felt bad about judging Ruby earlier, because she’d been nothing but nice to us and clearly just wanted to make some new friends. She turned to me. “What about you? Will you come?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I considered it.
On the one hand, I didn’t want to risk running into Nate Lockwood again, and something told me he was definitely a member of the exclusive Skulls fraternity.
On the other hand, the party would be a good chance to meet more people and increase my chances of getting ‘in’ with some of the uber-rich Arcadia Bay types. That could be helpful in my quest for justice for my father.
“Yes,” I finally said, earning a little shriek of approval from Ruby. “I’ll be there.”
6
Alexis
“I am so ready for this!”
Ruby let out an excited squeal as she fluffed up the sides of her hair to give it a wavy ‘just rolled out of bed’ look.
“Me too,” I said, linking my arm with hers so she didn’t trip over her own feet as she focused on her hair instead of where she was going. She was wearing five-inch stilettos, and she’d pre-gamed a couple of shots back in her dorm while we were getting dressed, so it was a miracle she hadn’t fallen over already.
We were all wearing green to signify our available status—a tight green t-shirt with black jeans for Laurel, a strapless mint-green dress for Ruby, and a short emerald green wraparound dress for me. Ruby had promised us there would be a ton of cute single guys at the party, and honestly, I couldn’t wait to meet one of them. After all the stress of the last few weeks, I could use a fun, mindless hookup.
“It’s not far from here,” Ruby told us as we headed past towering Gothic buildings and sweeping lawns, darkened by night’s paintbrush. “They have their own street and their own park. Isn’t that wild?”
When she said that, I pictured a lane with five houses on one side and five on the other, all close together
with a small park on the far end.
Reality was far more extravagant.
On the northern side of Blackthorne’s vast campus, a road lined with wrought-iron streetlamps led up to a grassy mound where a colossal statue of one of the college founders stood. From the left and right of that, another road swung in a massive circle around a lush park with trimmed hedges, neat gardens, and a large central gazebo.
The circle wasn’t just big enough to fit ten regular-sized fraternity and sorority houses, all jam-packed next to each other… it was big enough to fit ten estates. The Victorian and Queen Anne-style houses on the expansive properties were sprawling four-story monstrosities with turrets, wraparound porches, and widow’s walks. Each one could probably house an entire village of people if they needed to.
“I don’t even want to imagine the dues they have to pay,” Laurel said, staring at the houses with wide eyes.
Ruby laughed and led us over to a lit-up house on the left, where the front door and side entrances were open. Loud music and raucous laughter spilled out into the night.
We stepped inside to see priceless paintings on the walls, intricate crown moldings, and chandeliers suspended from the ceilings with a mixture of crystals and skull-shaped glass pendants. In the cavernous living area, just past the expansive foyer and curving double staircase, another glass skull pendant hung from the ceiling, five times larger than all of the others.
The place was teeming with people, all dressed in shades of green, yellow or red. I was pleased to note that green was the most popular color amongst the guys.
Laurel, Ruby and I weaved through clusters of bodies, making our way over to the far side of the main party space. A long table with drinks had been set up there—premixed cocktails, beers, liqueurs, mixers, and several large punch bowls. There was even a steaming barrel of spiced mulled wine on the floor beside the table.
On the other side of the table was a large picture window that overlooked the backyard. A massive pool and Jacuzzi took up part of the yard, and little skull-shaped lights had been hung above them. Shirtless guys and bikini-clad girls were cavorting in the water, screaming and splashing each other.
