Good Girls Lie

by J. T. Ellison

  Peals of laughter.

  It takes me a second to realize why they’re laughing.

  The assholes have sent me to the wrong room on purpose.

  Oh, ha, bloody ha.

  I look back up the hall and one small wren detaches herself from the flock and joins me. “Sorry. We like to have fun with new girls. You’re Ashley? I’m Camille.”

  “My name isn’t Ashley. It’s Ash.”

  “Well, that makes no sense. Ash isn’t short for Ashley?”

  “No.”

  Camille’s perfectly petite nose rises an inch, and one groomed eyebrow quirks.

  Judgment made.

  “Ash, then. Well, as I said, I’m Camille. We’re here. Across the hall.” She gestures toward a pristine white door with 214 engraved on a rounded, champagne brass plaque bolted to the door. How could I have missed it?

  Two corkboards are below the room number with our names on top: Ash—Oxford, England on the left, Camille—Falls Church, Virginia on the right. Both hold pushpins. Mine is empty, Camille’s has photos of her travels—in a sari, on the back of an elephant, feeding a camel—and a few buttons with chirpy sayings on them.

  “Don’t be angry. The girls thought it would be funny if you believed the storage room was your suite.”

  “I didn’t find it funny at all.” An intimate staring contest ensues. Camille is the first to look away.

  “Whatever. They’re just goofing. You’re the last one here. This is ours. The view is decent, but the room’s nothing to write home about.”

  I follow Camille in and have to bite my lip again from exclaiming aloud. Gotta look cool, gotta look nonchalant. But...this is nothing like what I expected.

  Oh. Oh, my.

  The website showed rooms that were small, dingy, and dark, similar to the one across the hall, but this—this is practically sumptuous. Light gray walls, wainscoting, bright white crown molding along the ceiling. Spacious. Lovely.

  The beds are bunked, one on top of the other, towering with fluffy pillows and warm down comforters. There is an overstuffed sofa, the windows have gray velvet hangings, two dark wood desks that look like priceless antiques sit side by side on the other end of the room.

  This palace is mine. Mine, and Camille’s.

  It takes me a moment to focus back on my new roommate. Camille has been prattling on, ignorant to my awe.

  “Are all the rooms like this?”

  Camille pops a hip. “Ugh, yes. They redecorated last year and went with this neutral crap, and it’s soooo boring. It’s like living in a hotel. It used to be so cool, sort of dark and gothic, had its own personality, you know? Really old-school. More European flair. Granted, the building is super old, so it was probably time for an upgrade. I mean, nothing worked, the windows were stuck shut, and the bathroom pipes creaked and moaned. But this...it’s, it’s...”

  “Monotonous.”

  “Yes, that’s it, exactly. Monotonous. Monochromatically monotonous.” She giggles at her alliteration as I move to the window. The view is pretty, the quad a green expanse stretching out in front of the building, lined with old oak trees and pathways. A large sundial stands in the center, circled by a stone bench.

  Camille is still talking. “You’re allowed one painting for above your desk, but we can’t even put things on the walls outside of that. It is so 1984 here. Rules, rules, rules. Big Mother is always watching, too.”

  “Big Mother?”

  “Dean Westhaven.”

  I bite back a laugh. The moniker fits.

  “Anyway, I was saying, I never got your letter. I’m from DC. You’re from England?”

  “Yes. Oxford. It’s northwest of London.”

  A full-blown eye roll. “I’ve been to Oxford. My father was ambassador to France for a time, and we traveled all over Europe. But you already know that from my letter.”

  “Yes. How nice for you.”

  “I took the top bunk and the left desk.”

  Camille promptly exits the room, I assume to insist on a different roommate. But she returns a few moments later with two more girls in tow.

  “Ash, meet Vanessa Mitchell and Piper Brennan. Vanessa’s mom works for State, her dad’s off on some submarine somewhere for the Navy, and Piper’s parents own like half of North Carolina. Ash is not short for Ashley, ladies.”

  Is she mocking me? Her smile seems genuine, but her tone is off.

  I greet the two new girls, quietly assessing, being assessed. Vanessa is petite like Camille but athletic, with muscled calves like a runner or dancer, brown skin, and natural, riotously curly hair. Piper is almost my height, with red hair and freckles. Both seem friendly enough.

  “You’re from Oxford? Talk. I want to hear your accent. I love a good British accent.” Vanessa is the imperious one. Piper only nods her agreement.

  “Um, hullo? Care for a cuppa?”

  The girls look at me impassively.

  “Oh, stop torturing her,” Camille says with mock severity. “It’s rude. You’ll hear her talk plenty. Vanessa and Piper are in the suite next door to us. We’re going to convocation. Would you care to join us?”

  I can think of nothing I’d like less, the jet lag is catching up to me and I’d like the bathroom and another cup of tea, but in the spirit of international relations, I agree and start toward the door. Camille clears her throat.

  “Um, Ash? Aren’t you going to change?”

  I stop in the doorway, glance down at my outfit. I am wearing travel clothes, comfy ripped skinny jeans and an oversize plaid shirt.

  “No, why?”

  Only then do I realize the three girls are wearing dresses. And holding robes of some kind, cloaks, maybe, over their arms.

  “We dress for convocation, always. Westhaven’s orders. She likes us looking put together.”

  Oh, you idiot. Of course, they would. Whatever were you thinking?

  “No one told me. I didn’t pack any dresses. Just the white shirts for our uniform.”

  There is a momentary silence.

  “No dresses?” Camille looks stricken, her head whipping between my ruined jeans and her own immaculate hose and skirt as if she can’t believe she’ll have to go out in public with her new miscreant roommate, but it is Piper who saves the day, crooking a finger.

  “Come with me. I have something that will work for you. You’ll never fit into any of Camille’s things, she’s a teensy little stick.”

  Camille tosses her head. “Rude. Shut up, Piper. We can’t all be Amazons.”

  8

  THE WARNING

  The room next to ours looks exactly the same, like it’s out of a sleek, modern hotel. The “something” Piper offers is a black satin sheath with a black lace overlay. Simple. Elegant. An Audrey Hepburn movie costume. She hands it over, the price tag still dangling from the collar. Rents can be paid with such a sum.

  “You can keep it. I have another almost identical,” Piper says.

  I demur and hand it back. “Thanks. I’ll take my chances with the dean.”

  Piper shrugs and hangs the dress back up in the wooden wardrobe. “Suit yourself. If you keep your robe tight, maybe she won’t notice. It’ll be in your wardrobe with your uniform skirts—standard issue, everyone gets them. The seniors’ stoles are black with a white stripe, we lowly sophomores are blue. Freshmen are red—they stand out, trust me, I felt like I had a target on my back all last year—and juniors are dark green. Graduation stoles are different, multicolored based on your area of study, just like a college. I’m ready for the black-and-white stoles, they’re so much easier to match. Our blue—” she pulls the stole out of her gown; it is a sickly pewter blue and doesn’t work with her coloring at all “—is a pain, I look terrible in it. Though you can imagine how I clashed with the red last year. You will need to get some dressy clothes, though, we have a
lot of formal events.”

  She closes the wardrobe and faces me, looking me up and down with cool, inscrutable blue eyes. She would look severe if it weren’t for the freckles. They ruin the seriousness of her demeanor. She will always look like a girl, not a woman, even when she’s fifty.

  “You might as well stick to black. It goes with everything, looks good under the robes, and your coloring is perfect for it.”

  “Black. Right.” The color of mourning. I’ve been in black a lot recently.

  “I’ll take you shopping if you want. There’s a nice little boutique around the corner. Next to the laundry, which is part of the restaurant where we eat on the weekend, Jacob’s Ladder. It has a pool table, too. It’s not exactly couture, but they’ll have a skirt or two that will work. What else do you need to know? Oh, stay away from the handyman. He’s a creeper. And remember not to walk alone along the back path through Selden Arboretum if you take the shortcut.” Her voice has taken on the warning edge I’ve already heard several times this afternoon.

  “Not another ‘I won’t graduate’ legend?”

  “Oh, no. The arboretum is haunted.”

  “Haunted. A path? Ludicrous.”

  “Seriously. It cuts through the woods, and a girl was murdered there.”

  “How horrible. When?”

  “Ten years ago. That’s when Dean Westhaven—the current Dean Westhaven, I mean—took over from her mother. It’s why she’s so young. She was only twenty-five when it happened. The board sent Westhaven the elder packing over the bad PR. The student, Ellie Robertson, she was the heir to some massive New England fortune, I don’t remember whose. Her dad has serious pull and, after the whole incident, got the dean removed.”

  “The incident? That’s a mild word for a murder.”

  “The school’s verbiage. They’re always in publicity mode. Ellie had been complaining to anyone who would listen, the dean, school security, teachers, about a townie who was stalking her and the dean didn’t do anything about it. One night, late, the guy followed her home from the laundry and killed her behind the dorms. Raped her, too. There are varying stories about the damage he did to her face, but supposedly, he carved out her eyes and took them home with him. They found them on his mantel. Really freaky shit.”

  An intense shiver goes down my spine. “I’ll say.”

  “So seriously, you never walk the arboretum path alone. Even if it’s not haunted, it’s creepy and not safe. It’s outside the walls.” This last is said with such earnestness I simply nod.

  “Outside the walls equals not safe alone. Got it.”

  “And stay out of the attics. They’re totally haunted. Supposedly, one of the secret societies found several sets of infants’ bones up there a few years ago, in between the ceiling and the wall. I don’t know what they were doing there.”

  “The society?”

  “The bones. They were probably the children of some of the girls who lived here, stillborns and the like. You’d think they’d bury them, the graveyard is actually pretty cool.”

  “Brilliant. Haunted attics with infant bones in the walls. This sounds like a stellar place.”

  “Well, Goode is old, and when you get old, you get weird. Oh, I almost forgot, be careful in the tunnels.”

  “The tunnels?”

  “There was an Underground Railroad through here. You know what that is, right?”

  “Vaguely. To do with slavery, yes?”

  “We were a safe haven from the plantations down South to the free North. Pretty cool. The grounds are littered with tunnels and old cottages, but they’re totally off-limits. They’re dangerous, and most of them have collapsed in on themselves.”

  “Where would I find one?”

  “I don’t know, actually. I’ve only been told to stay away.”

  The deep, resonating peal of a very old bell shudders through the building, making me jump nearly out of my skin.

  Piper intones, “For whom the bell tolls.... Don’t worry, Ash. You’ll get used to it. Even when the hauntings happen, the bells toll and chase away the ghosts. They don’t like the noise.”

  She smiles, and I feel a spark of hope. She might be a friend, eventually.

  “I can’t imagine why not. It’s unbelievably loud.”

  “It’s really not to chase away ghosts. It’s so we never try to use not hearing the bell as an excuse for being late.”

  “Right. Brilliant.”

  Camille sticks her head in the door. “Are you two coming? You heard the bells, we’re going to be late. Ash, why haven’t you changed yet? Hurry! I don’t want JPs on my first day!”

  “JPs?”

  “Judicial points. It’s like demerits. Get five and you’re stuck in Saturday school. Hurry!”

  Mum’s voice rings in my head. Pride goeth before the fall...

  “Hey, Piper? Thanks for the warning, and the offer of the dress. I would appreciate borrowing it. But just for today, until I get some of my own.”

  “Sure thing,” Piper says, handing it over. I run back to the room, strip, and throw the dress over my head, careful to make sure the price tag is tucked into the collar. I fully intend to hand it back after dinner, though I should probably have it cleaned. The trainers I’m wearing will not do. I have a pair of black flats tucked away in my bag, shoved into the shafts of my beat-up Dr. Martens. I dig through the bag; the boots are at the bottom. The second dong of the bell shakes the building, and by the third, I’m out in the hall, fully clothed, gowned, and shod, and we are racing down the stairs with the rest of the stragglers, out the back of Main Hall toward the chapel.

  9

  THE CONVOCATION

  The chapel is, like most things at Goode, undernamed. It is more like a cathedral with its sandy stone exterior and stained glass windows, the roofline soaring a hundred feet into the air. The remains of two hundred young women push and shove their way into the chapel, chattering loudly, robes flowing behind them. One last toll of the bell, the ring dying into the early evening air, which still shimmers with heat, and we are all inside the nave and hurrying into our seats.

  Inside it is a bit darker, but not much. The energy in the air is palpable, the noise deafening, not hushed and respectful. The rafters are so high the echoes reverberate. Voices call and shout, girls squeal with laughter. Trying to remember the class color schemes, I stick close to Camille, Piper, and Vanessa, grateful for their presence, especially when Becca Curtis notices me.

  Becca and another senior are handing out some sort of pamphlet, and I try to duck toward the girl on her left so I won’t have to come face-to-face with the bully again, but I’m jostled by the crowd right back to her. I keep my head down, avoiding eye contact, take the proffered paper, and start to move into the chapel, but the universe conspires against me. Becca rips the paper back, forcing me to a stop.

  “So. You’re our mad Brit.”

  Camille grabs my hand and tugs. “Leave her alone, Becca.”

  “Shut it, Shannon. Carlisle here can speak for herself.”

  I’d rather crawl into the nave’s warm brown wainscoting and disappear, but Becca is staring at me, challenge in her eyes. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  I know I can’t let Becca bully me. I need to stand up to her. But I hate conflict, hate it. I say the words under my breath and Becca cocks her head.

  “What? Speak up. I couldn’t understand you. Surely you know how to speak.”

  The sneer undoes me.

  “Yes, I do. I said, better a mad Brit than a daft cow.”

  “Ooo, snap,” Camille says, eyes wide.

  Becca’s lips go thin, and her face turns red. Her voice is soft, deathly cool. “Aren’t you clever, little Brit. We’ll see how smug you feel later, shall we?” The threat in Becca’s smile is unmistakable.

  “Later?”

 
“Move along, little ones.”

  Becca resumes passing out fliers and Camille yanks on my arm.

  “Come on. Hurry. Before she changes her mind.”

  We take our seats in the chapel, which is broken into class quadrants by layers similar to the dorm housing—freshmen in the front pews, then sophomores, juniors, and seniors at the back.

  Camille’s eyes are shining. “I can’t believe you mouthed off to Becca Curtis.”

  “Whatever. She was hounding me earlier, when I was checking in. Told me to take the left staircase, the Evens’ stairs, told me I’d get a single if my roommate died. I don’t like bullies.”

  Vanessa shakes her head, lips pursed in concern. “That was a dangerous thing to do, Ash. Becca Curtis is powerful. Why did she single you out?”

  “No idea. Her mum is a senator, I heard. Maybe she hates immigrants.”

  “No, I meant here, at Goode, she’s powerful. Doesn’t matter who her mother is, though it’s hard to forget, sometimes. Camille told you my mom works at the State Department, right? She doesn’t care for Senator Curtis. Anyway, Becca is head of the judicial board. She handles Honor Code violations, plus she’s class president, and rumor has it she’s head of Ivy Bound, too, but no one knows for sure, not unless you’re tapped and get in, that is. And the odds of one of us getting tapped are slim. Not as sophomores.”

  “Ivy Bound? What is that?”

  “It’s a secret society. The secret society. Goode has quite a few, but Ivy Bound is the cream of the crop. It’s the one everyone wants to be tapped for.”

  “If it’s secret, how does everyone know about it? And what’s tapped mean?”

  “Shhh!” A sharp whisper behind us.

  “Later,” Vanessa says quietly. “Pay attention like a good little mad Brit.” Her grin is infectious, and I relax, put my attention to the front of the chapel.

  The professors have filed in and taken their seats. There is Dr. Asolo, who seems to be having a joke with the woman next to her, small, older, with a silvery bun knotted on top of her head. Most are unremarkable, outside of Asolo and one devilishly handsome man on the far left. He’s younger than the rest, and I know this is Dr. Medea, the computer science professor. He alone sits at attention; the rest look alternately bored and tired. Moments later, when they sit up straight, all the girls rise. I leap to my feet with them as Dean Westhaven comes from the wings and steps behind the pulpit.