“You have the school. The dean. Your friends. Your family’s money. Don’t talk to me about having nothing until you understand what it means.”
Twice in one day, attacked. Forget this.
“You think listening to the rumors gives you some insight? You don’t know me. Thanks for the tea.”
30
THE REVELATION
I take off toward the coffee shop door, but Rumi leaps to his feet, imploring. “Wait, Ash. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a dick.”
“Yes, you did. You wanted me to feel sorry for you because you have to work around all these little rich girls. We all make our choices, Rumi. You’ve made yours. And I’ve made mine.”
“Stop. Really. Sit down. It’s pouring. I’ll drive you back.”
“Oh, my God, no. I’ll get in much more trouble if I do that.”
“You’re worried about getting in trouble?”
I pause. Am I, really? “No. It’s not like they’ll do anything awful to me. JPs. Saturday school. I’ll probably end up folding laundry or sorting the costumes in the theater.”
“Then stick around. Drink your tea.”
“It’s terrible,” I blurt, slapping a hand over my mouth.
Rumi laughs. “What did I do wrong?”
“You scalded it. And the teabag is old.”
“An espresso, then? I opened a new bag of beans an hour ago.”
He makes two, sets the tiny cups on the table, one for me, one for him. I take the sugar this time, drop it in, stir. Rumi waits patiently until I take a sip and nod approvingly before touching his own cup. His fingers are long, the nails clipped short, and I want to touch them. I want them to touch me.
I don’t understand myself. I’m furious with him, but I also want to see what it would feel like if he put his arms around me. He narrows perfectly from shoulder to waist. We’d fit well together.
Get a grip, Ash.
“Talk to me. I’m a good listener,” he says, sitting again.
What do I have to lose? “The coroner’s court found my father’s death a ‘misadventure.’ That’s the official story.”
“Makes it sounds like he was a pirate on the high seas. What’s the unofficial story?”
“A pirate. Oh, yes. He was. Until he took a handful of pills. When my mother found him dead in the dining room, she freaked out and shot herself.”
“Damn.”
“I found them.”
“Double damn.”
“We’d had a fight earlier in the day. We fought all the time, he and I. He...” I gesture to my cheek and Rumi’s lips thin as he grasps what I’m saying.
“Bastard.”
I shrug. “You can understand why I don’t want everyone at school talking about it. It’s bad enough they’re dead, and in such a splashy way. But these girls, they live for the details. They’ll be after me nonstop. And I can’t stop seeing it. Reliving it. They were so... And my mum, too...”
Shit, now I’m crying again. Twice in one hour, on two different shoulders. Am I so starved for compassion? Or have I kept everyone at arm’s length for so long I don’t know how to properly connect with people anymore?
Rumi hands over a napkin.
I gather myself, wipe my eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’ve been through a lot. But you have to give the girls here a chance. They all come from some sort of dysfunction. Privileged people are all kinds of fucked up, and they fuck up their kids. Honestly, if you’d just been up-front about it, they wouldn’t be watching you like hawks. Why’d you change your name?”
“I wanted to forget. I wanted to run away and forget everything. It was stupid, I know. But the dean agreed it was for the best. We thought it would give me time and space to heal.”
“Well, Ash, your time is up. You’re not going to be able to run away anymore. They know, and it’s best to fess up and get on with things.”
I drain the cup. There are sugar crystals creating sweet espresso mud at the bottom. I resist the urge to lick them. He’s giving me good advice.
I turn the spotlight on him, instead. “Why are you here? In Marchburg, I mean?”
“I’m a Russian mole. I’ve had plastic surgery and am hiding out on top of this mountain.”
“Stop. I’m serious.”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“You’re probably the only one.” His voice sounds inexplicably sad. He rubs a hand over his dark curls. “You’ve heard about the murder in Selden Arboretum, haven’t you? Ten years ago?”
“I was warned never to go there alone. It’s haunted.”
Rumi spits a mirthless laugh. “Haunted. Right. It was my father who committed the crime.”
Now it’s my turn to be taken aback. “You mean, he murdered that girl?”
“He did. I was just a little kid at the time, only ten.” His dark eyes grow distant, sad. “My mother split when I was a baby, and my dad, he wasn’t ever totally right in the head after. The night...the night it happened, the police came to the house, broke down the door, found him in the living room with—”
Flustered, he slams the rest of his espresso. I recall what Piper said. ...he carved out her eyes and took them home with him. They found them on his mantel. Really freaky shit.
Holy mother.
“Anyway, he went to jail, and I went to the state. Foster care sucked, so I emancipated when I was sixteen and came back to Marchburg. Dean Westhaven hired me on the spot, set me up in one of the little cabins on the edge of the forest. She’s always been cool. Some of the parents balked when they found out, but she said it was her duty to the school and to the town, that I was as much a victim of my father as Ellie Robertson had been that night. She’s a good lady, the dean.”
“Wow.”
“You sound downright American, Ash.”
“‘Wow’ is a universal exclamation, Rumi.”
“I guess so. My point is, we aren’t so different, you and I. We both had horrible fathers, and we’re both trying to escape our pasts.” He glances at the clock. “You should let me drive you back now.”
I peer at the clock, too. It’s nearly ten. If I hurry, I can make the second half of the tutorial.
“No, that’s all right. Thank you for talking to me, Rumi. I feel better.”
“Anytime, princess.”
This time, the nickname doesn’t infuriate me.
He lingers for a moment, looking at me until the heat flushes my face and I have to break eye contact. It’s so daring, this look. Like he wants to kiss me. I want him to. Even as I’m looking away, I’m leaning closer. But he laughs, and I snap back into reality. Don’t be an idiot, Ash.
“Listen, I can trust you, right?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“Good girl. If you ever need anything...”
I’m your friend, yada, yada, yada. “Thanks.”
“No, I mean anything...”
“Right. Brilliant.”
“Ash. Stop being dense. I’m talking about rides off campus. The girls use me as their own personal Uber. Here’s my number in case you ever need to get out of here. Plus, you know, I can get other things. I’m your resource. I can help you establish yourself at the school. You could be very popular if you wanted to help me.”
Drugs, he means. Apparently it is the day for propositions. “Oh. Right. I understand. Thanks, but I think I’m okay.”
“You just shout if you need anything.”
He hands over a slip of paper with ten numbers on it. I glance at it, memorizing them, then fold it away.
He takes our cups and disappears into the back of the shop.
The bell on the door tinkles merrily as I leave. The town is still weirdly deserted. I take the arboretum path back to school at a jog. Running away from my past,
running toward my future?
Who the hell knows what I’m doing anymore.
But as I cross from the shelter of the trees onto school grounds, I can’t help but think about a young girl, body splayed out on the forest floor, her eyes missing from her head.
And Rumi’s own dark eyes, that spark of light in them as he told me the story.
The glimmer of tears?
Or something else?
PAST
Oxford, England
31
THE FUNERAL
I met her the day of Johnny’s funeral. I shouldn’t say met, I should say saw. Observed. Was made aware of.
We flew back from France the day after he died. Damien wanted to keep things quiet, had fixed it with the Giverny authorities. Sylvia was drugged up on Valium and went where directed without resistance, like a balloon half-filled with helium, listless and fading.
It was incredibly freaky to know his little body was in the hold of the plane, housed in a temporary wooden casket. I asked to go down and sit with him but it was a commercial jet and they wouldn’t allow it. I screamed. I railed. I did all the things a good sister should.
Damien spanked me, told me to stop acting like a child, quit throwing a tantrum, so I subsided. A flight attendant brought me a cranberry juice and a magazine, L’Officiel. I could barely read it but I could look at the pictures, glorious, beautiful French women who seemed to live without care or proper sustenance, smoldering eyes looking vaguely into the cameras.
I wanted to be one of them. Very badly. Even at six, I was aware my life as I knew it was over, and a new one had begun.
We flew west, the flight short, and a hearse met us on the tarmac. I stood there in my little peacoat and waved as they pushed Johnny’s wood-encased body into the back of the long car. Damien saw me and slapped down my hand. Sylvia moaned. She was especially good at moaning.
We buried Johnny in the family graveyard, half a mile into the lands from the estate proper. Foxhunts used to start at the cemetery gates before they were outlawed. It was grouse season; far-off shotgun cracks bled through the thin air. Each one made me jump.
The priest intoned. His words meant nothing to me. Johnny was dead. My little brother, gone. I didn’t miss him, not yet. I drifted, searching the crowd for friendly faces: Cook, or the jolly man who came when we had parties and brought me sweets.
I spotted a strange girl. Her hair was blond, like mine, though long down her back, unlike mine, which was chopped in a ruthless bob at my chin. I suppose my mother didn’t want the bother of putting it up in a braid anymore; she’d cut it right after we came home, with scissors from her sewing kit. I was not used to the feeling of cold air on my neck.
The girl was standing behind the skirt of a woman who wore big sunglasses and wept into a handkerchief; not a sweet, lacy one like my mother’s, but a coarse one, like you’d buy in the shops. The girl looked terribly interested in the proceedings, but as I watched, she glanced up at the sky at a flock of geese flying overhead in a perfect V. She smiled at them, innocent and kind, and I wanted to be her friend.
When the priest was done, the body was put into the ground, gears grinding on the lowering device. The funeral was over.
Mother stood by the grave moaning, Father alongside her, grim-faced and stoic. The girl and her mother approached my parents. There was a brief exchange, then they left. My mother watched their retreat, and I was surprised at the anger on her face. I’d never seen her look at anyone but me that way.
There was a party at our house afterward. I assumed I would see her there, but the woman and her girl never showed.
Several months later, we bumped into them in the village near our house. We never went there, Mother liked the shops in north Oxfordshire better than the ones in downtown Oxford, but there was something she needed that couldn’t be found elsewhere, so we bundled off to Broad Street. I had been very good since the funeral, and Mother was in a fine mood. She secured her package and took me to the tea shop for a cocoa.
This generosity was the first of its kind since Johnny died, and I was careful with my cup so as not to spill and ruin my outfit, not to give her a reason to hate me more.
The woman from the funeral was there. I recognized her hair, piled up on her head. Without her sunglasses, she looked tired, gray, lined. She was older than Mother. It took me a moment to realize she worked at the tea shop. When Mother saw her, she threw a few quid on the table and hurried me away. I hadn’t finished my cocoa, so I cried and wailed, and the day was ruined.
The girl stood by the doors as Mother dragged me away by the arm. I knew she would be my friend. At least now I knew where to find her. Maybe Cook would take me with her to the shops and I could speak to her.
I loved her, though I didn’t even know her. Isn’t that strange?
It didn’t feel strange at the time. She was a silent compatriot, a kind eye. I imagined all the things we would do together: ride horses; play in the mill pond; trek across the estate by the stone fences; watch the strange, quiet falconer who came to the land every once in a while to let her bird hunt, her hawk’s jesses jangling in the chilled air.
It was this fantasy that kept me going into my teens until I met her for real. She was shy. She was quiet. She was studious.
She was everything I was not, and I thought, more than once, she was the daughter my mother should have had, a changeling child—me with the fairies, punished for my deeds—and this sweet, biddable girl who was worthy of their love in my place. She was my friend before we ever spoke, and once we did, we were inseparable. Our lives intertwined; where one of us left off, the other began, our very own Möbius strip. I wanted to be her. I would do anything for her. I would give anything for her.
Until I had no choice. I had to kill her. It was the only way.
OCTOBER
Marchburg, Virginia
32
THE RULES
Ford is in the attics, practicing her usual “rah-rah Goode is all-girls for a reason” spiel for tomorrow’s board meeting, when she sees a flash out of the corner of her eye. She goes to the window. It takes her a moment to realize what she’s seen—Ash Carlisle emerging from the arboretum at a sprint.
Ford glances at her watch and frowns. What is her young charge up to? Skipping class, obviously, but why?
Ford gathers her iPad with her speech and heads down to her office. Melanie is seated at her desk with a cup of coffee in one hand and the Marchburg Free Press in the other. She smiles wide at her boss’s entry.
“Dean? You’re back early. All set for tomorrow?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. Pull Ash Carlisle’s schedule for me, would you?”
“Ha—busted.”
“What?”
“Ash. Busted. She missed her tutorial with Dr. Medea this morning. He came in to check on her a bit ago, see if she was sick. I asked around and it seems there was an issue this morning at breakfast. Ash had a fight with one of the girls and ran off.”
“Why didn’t you come get me?”
“Because you needed to practice your presentation. And Dr. Medea just phoned to say Ash showed up after all. Late, but she’s there now. That man is handsome, Dean. Looks good in the morning, you know what I mean? Scruffy. And the way he wears those jeans—”
“Melanie!”
“What? He’s a hottie. Seemed rather disappointed you weren’t here, too. I think he likes you.”
Ford rolls her eyes. “When you’re finished trying to set me up with my staff, would you mind getting Ash in here? She and I need to have a chat. Don’t interrupt her tutorial, she can come when she’s finished.”
Ford fixes herself a cup of coffee and powers through some email while she waits. Soon enough, Ash Carlisle is standing in the doorway.
Ford’s sensitive nose can smell cigarettes.
S
he gestures to the chair in front of her desk. Ash slumps in the chair, her head hung low.
“Look at me,” Ford says.
Ash meets her eyes.
“Want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Dean.”
“Oh? Then how about you tell me why you skipped class and went for a stroll in the arboretum instead of seeing Dr. Medea for your tutorial?”
Her face crumples. The story comes out in jagged waves. “They know. They know who my father is. How my parents died. They know I’m using a false name. I didn’t tell anybody, I swear it. But they found out. Vanessa found out. And she outed me in front of everyone. I was upset. I ran. Becca—”
She cuts herself off and Ford gently encourages her.
“Becca what?”
“She just, came and talked to me. Told me not to worry about it. She was...kind.”
“Good. Becca Curtis is a leader in this school and a good ally for you.”
“I don’t want allies. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. And I don’t have a home to go to. I miss... I miss my mother.” Her voice breaks and Ford can see she’s fighting back the sobs.
Ford moves around the desk so they can sit face-to-face.
“Oh, Ash. Poor little duck. The world is asking too much of you. No teenage girl should have to go through losing her parents the way you did. I understand how hard this is, I truly do. But your teachers have reported you’re doing well in your studies. I notice a number of the girls copying your style. You have friends here. You’ve been fitting in.”
“It’s not exactly the same, Dean. No offense, but I’d trade it all to get my mum back.”
“I’m sure you would. I certainly don’t blame you. I’m sure you’re missing your piano training. The structure you must have had at home. I’m interviewing a new teacher tomorrow. Perhaps you’d like to meet her, as well?”
“No. I am finished with piano. It was something my parents wanted, not me.”
“Talent isn’t something to squander, Ash.”
“I’m not squandering it. I’m just more interested in computers now.”
Good Girls Lie Page 13
