How We Fall Apart

by Katie Zhao

  Krystal, alone in that gleaming, picture-perfect penthouse. Alone, always alone.

  She sniffed. “Sometimes I felt like my parents forgot they even had a daughter. So I decided I was going to do whatever I wanted. And one night toward the end of eighth grade, my girls and I got into a street fight. It was bad. Really bad. One of my closest friends . . . died.” And she whispered the words as though afraid someone else was hearing, someone lurking unseen. Someone who could punish her. But there was nobody here.

  “I hurt someone from the other gang so badly that I put her in a coma, and she . . . ​she still hasn’t woken up. That got my parents’ attention, all right. They sent me to boot camp. After that summer, I realized I didn’t like who I was before. I wanted to change, and Sinclair Prep was the fresh start I needed. I wanted—I wanted to prove that I could be good.” Krystal inhaled, a long, shaky breath.

  “Oh, Krystal.” I reached out to hold her hand. She squeezed it.

  “My parents did a good job clearing most of my tracks. I don’t know how the Proctor found out, but I guess they looked up the enrollment for St. Jude’s Reformatory School,” mumbled Krystal, more to herself than to me. “I wanted a fresh start here. I wanted the past to stay in the past. Like with . . . ​ with the Incident.”

  I wanted the past to stay in the past.

  But if there was one thing I’d realized, it was that the past never stayed buried for long. The messiest parts of our pasts, coming back to haunt us now, one by one.

  And now Krystal grabbed both my hands and squeezed them, a desperate gleam in her eyes. “Be careful, Nancy. Whoever this person is, they’ve done their homework. They mean serious business.”

  “We won’t let them get away with it.” I wouldn’t let them get away with it. With shattering my friends, one after the other. “Do you want to go back to the newspaper club?”

  Krystal hung her head. “I can’t face anyone. I think I have to go home today. Don’t worry about me.” She dropped my hands. Picked up her black leather backpack. Looked at me once more. “Good luck. And be careful.” Then she pushed open the bathroom door and left.

  Krystal’s secret violent past now out there, out in the open. I should’ve been more surprised to learn about it. To learn that she’d put someone in a coma.

  But then, in the Incident, we’d all done something much worse.

  When I entered the newspaper room, everyone’s eyes swiveled to me.

  “Krystal went home,” I said. “She’s . . . ​she’ll be fine.” I hoped. I caught Alexander’s and Akil’s worried gazes and nodded. “Let’s go catch the Proctor.”

  We had to make this person pay for splitting Krystal open like that. For ruining Akil’s chances at a track scholarship. Had to stop them before the situation got even worse, before I took the fall for Jamie’s death.

  Louisa and Isabel stayed behind to finish up some work for the newspaper. With Akil, Kiara, and Nishant in the lead, the rest of us shoved through the crowd of Manhattanites on the sidewalk. A yellow cab honked its way through an intersection. A pair of women in their midthirties power walked past us. Even in the middle of the afternoon, this city was always bustling with people in a rush to get to wherever they were going.

  “Akil,” I yelled above the noise, “do you even know who we’re looking for? How are we supposed to identify the Proctor?”

  “We’re probably looking for a student wearing a Sinclair Prep uniform. Somebody suspicious-looking.”

  Mark, who was huffing and puffing to keep up with us while holding his camera, groaned. “Well, that narrows it down to . . . everyone who goes to Green Bottle Coffee.”

  Mark was spot-on. As we reached the coffee shop, I peered through the glass at the crowd of customers. A trio of Sinclair Prep students sat at the table in the window. There were a few more Sinclair Prep students among the cluster of people waiting impatiently at the pickup counter.

  Our group stopped at the entrance, parting to let people past. Akil turned to face us, biting his lip. “Okay, so . . . ​here’s the plan. Kiara and I will go ask the baristas if they’ve seen anyone shady come within the last half hour or so. The rest of you, scope out the shop. Look for any Sinclair Prep student who’s alone. That’s most likely our person. Everyone got it?”

  Carefully sidestepping the people leaving the coffee shop, I craned my neck to try to see around the whole place. There was an unhelpful number of Sinclair Prep students present.

  But there, at the very back of the shop, was a scrawny blond boy wearing the Sinclair Prep uniform, sitting alone with his laptop. I started toward him, but then my gaze fell upon a lone girl with long red hair, also in our school uniform.

  Mark came up behind me. “You think it’s one of those two?”

  “I . . . don’t have a clue,” I confessed.

  “Well, it can’t hurt to get a little closer to them,” Alexander said, and the three of us headed their way. Mark was taking pictures already, though I didn’t know of what.

  Then, Akil’s shouts rose above the din of the coffee shop. “Guys! Up here!” He waved at us from the counter, where he stood in front of a young male barista.

  When we hurried over, Mark snapping away with his camera, the confused-looking barista slid a piece of white paper in front of us. “This is what you guys came here for, right?” he asked.

  I squinted at the words printed in Times New Roman font. Alexander stood close so he could read over my shoulder.

  Decepit te!

  —The Proctor

  “I don’t know what ‘decepit te’ means,” Akil confessed.

  Nishant sighed and rubbed his forehead. “It means ‘tricked you’ in Latin.”

  “Why would the Proctor write . . . ​oh.” Akil’s triumphant expression crumpled as the realization dawned on him.

  “We’ve been had,” I groaned.

  The barista followed this exchange with great interest, watching us, wide-eyed.

  “Who gave you this paper?” Kiara asked.

  The guy shrugged, brown eyes reflecting puzzlement. “Some guy handed me this paper. Paid me a hundred bucks to hang onto it. He told me to give it to a group of Sinclair Prep students who’d come in asking about any suspicious customers. Said you guys would recognize the name ‘The Proctor.’ ” His forehead scrunched up. “Are you kids caught up in a scavenger hunt? Some kind of game, maybe?”

  A mirthless laugh escaped my lips. Well, technically this was a game, though nobody was having fun except the Proctor.

  Another dead end. Or maybe not. “What did this guy—the Proctor—look like?” I asked.

  The barista frowned. “He wore a black suit—he had brown hair and sunglasses—looked like a security guard, or a doorman, maybe.”

  Black suit. Brown hair. Sunglasses. That described almost every rich Sinclair Prep student’s butler or bodyguard. That gave us next to nothing to go on. I halfheartedly glanced toward the street, but unsurprisingly didn’t see anyone who might fit that description. Whoever it was had disappeared a long time ago.

  I reached for the piece of paper, pinching it between my thumb and forefinger, and picked it up carefully. “We can take this as evidence,” I said.

  “Good thinking.” Alexander gave me a lopsided grin as we ducked out of the coffee shop.

  “This whole thing was a bust. What a waste of time.” Akil kicked the ground, and Kiara patted him on the back in sympathy.

  “No, it was pretty thrilling. I think that’s the most excitement Sinclair Unveiled has seen since . . . ever,” said Mark.

  “And I’ve got the paper, too,” I pointed out. “We can give it to Bates and have him get the police to look into it for fingerprints.”

  “Wait, Nancy—put it in this.” Akil took something out of his backpack—a boxful of ziplock bags—and, when I handed over the Proctor’s note, carefully placed it into one of the bags. Then he handed it back to me.

  “You keep ziplock bags on you?” Nishant gaped at Akil.

  “Watch
ing CSI taught me to be prepared for anything,” Akil said seriously. “That show’s more useful than all of our classes combined, to be honest.”

  We headed back to school. The plastic baggie with our evidence, clenched in my fists. Scorching me, white-hot.

  NOVEMBER, FRESHMAN YEAR

  I was burning up inside, burning up with this secret.

  After bumping into each other a few times at lunch and in the halls, Peter asked for my number. We texted here and there, and then, before I knew what was happening, we texted all the time. Peter, sending me recordings of his music. Me, showing him snippets of my poetry.

  Peter, one of the Golden Trio, the elite at Sinclair Prep. Me, a no-name freshman. It was like a dream. It was a secret I longed to shout from the highest rooftop in the Upper West Side.

  But no one, no one could know, Peter emphasized.

  And so no one knew except that statue of Richard Sinclair, which had overseen everything from the beginning. But it was only a statue, of course.

  Jamie, I could tell, sensed something was up. I’d saved Peter’s number into my phone as “P.” Luckily, she hadn’t figured out that “P” was her cousin Peter.

  “Oooooh. Who’s the lucky guy?” Jamie asked one day.

  Startled, I twisted around to stare at her and nearly dropped my phone. I hadn’t noticed her reading my texts over my shoulder. “N-Nobody.”

  That only made Jamie smile. An innocent schoolgirl smile, but too calculated to be quite authentic. “You can tell me who he is, you know. I won’t tell.”

  “I said, he’s nobody,” I mumbled.

  “Mm-hmmmm.” Jamie slung her arm around my shoulder. “As long as he’s making you happy, that’s all I care about.”

  I wanted desperately to believe her, and so I did. Wanted Jamie to care about my happiness above everything, to be a good friend, a true friend.

  Happy, though—I didn’t know about that. Peter was a bright spot in my life. His attention made me special, made me the best. He’d chosen me. He’d made me.

  Peter made it easier to forget that my father was communicating less and less from overseas, until he pretty much vanished from my life.

  Peter made it easier to forget the way my mother and I couldn’t stop lashing out at each other instead of talking about it—about Baba leaving, tearing this gaping hole into our already-tiny family.

  Peter invited me to the movies, and I snuck out behind Mama’s back. It was a night filled with a bad rom-com, too much popcorn, and stolen kisses. It was a night of exhilaration. A night where nobody—not Mama, not the students of Sinclair Prep—could tell me who I was supposed to be.

  When I got home, my giddy mood slipped away like sand through my fingers. Mama was home much earlier than she said she would be. And she was furious. Red splotches rose to her cheeks, and her hands were fists on her hips.

  I was in huge trouble.

  “Where were you?” my mother demanded. “You were supposed to be studying at home.”

  “I . . .” I thought quickly. “I-I was with Jamie. W-Working on a project. At her place.”

  “Jamie?” Mama squinted at me. I could tell she didn’t quite believe me. “So if I call Jamie right now, she can tell me you were there?”

  “Y . . . ​Yep.” Trying not to panic, I reached for my phone and wondered how well I could text with my hands behind my back.

  But Mama must have read my mind. She held out her hand for my cell phone. Her face was steeled.

  The jig was up. I handed my phone over, winced, and turned away, doing my best to tune out the conversation. I could already hear Mama doling out a harsh punishment for me once she found out I’d snuck out behind her back and lied to her face about it.

  “. . . oh—she was there tonight? Really? Math project? Okay. Thank you, Jamie.”

  I lifted my head. Mama was holding my phone out toward me, the anger in her face replaced by exhaustion.

  “Next time you have a project, tell me,” she scolded. “Don’t make me worry.”

  “Of course,” I said quickly, hardly daring to believe my luck. Jamie had covered for me. I owed her big-time.

  My phone pinged with a text.

  Jamie: Let me guess—you were out with your secret guy? Don’t worry. I’ve always got your back. But you do owe me a chocolate chip cookie from the cafeteria tomorrow.

  Nancy: Thx. You’re the best

  I loved when Jamie and I could be like this—when grades and money and status and family didn’t get in the way of everything. I loved simply being friends.

  “Le-Le . . .” Mama pursed her lips, and then she did something unexpected. She raised her hand, hesitating, as if unsure herself about what she was going to do. She patted my hair with her hand.

  “Mama?” I said, surprised.

  “Don’t lose sight of your goal, okay?” Mama urged me softly. “I push you hard because I know you are strong. Strong enough to be my good girl. Letting anything get in your way would be a mistake. The opportunity you have is very precious. I would give anything to be in your shoes. Do you understand that?”

  I looked at Mama. Her eyes glittered with tears. She looked at me as though I were the only thing in the world still of value. As if I were the most precious thing.

  Baba might have left me, but Mama was still here. Still fighting. Still believing in me.

  I had never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted to prove myself worthy of that look.

  “I understand,” I said, my throat tight and burning.

  Mama’s message was this: friends like Mrs. Ruan came and went. Same went for men, like Baba.

  Mama’s message was this: I shouldn’t let anyone else get too close. The only person I could depend on was myself.

  I dug my sharp nails into my skin, gritting my teeth, welcoming the pain. The sharpness, the focus.

  Jamie was my friend. A good friend who’d pulled through for me. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder what my life would be like if I could bring home a test score that was higher than hers. Or if she would simply disappear, taking her impossibly high scores with her, making it so much easier for me to be the top student.

  Maybe then Mama would finally be proud of me.

  For that, I would do anything. Anything at all.

  I dug my nails deeper and deeper. I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop until they drew blood, the droplets welling from where nails pierced skin. Later, those open wounds would turn into scars. Into a promise. Into a blood oath.

  CONFESSION TWELVE

  I’m going to Stanford to study engineering in the fall. I don’t like Stanford or engineering. I’m only doing it to make my parents happy . . . —Anon

  *****

  While Akil returned to the newspaper room with the club members, Alexander and I headed down to Principal Bates’s office to turn in the Proctor’s note. The empty halls were quiet but for the sound of our footsteps and the creaking of the pipes in the walls.

  Principal Bates welcomed us with a tired smile and bloodshot eyes. He looked like he’d been running this school for a century already. He sprouted a prominent five-o’clock shadow, and dark circles lined his eyes.

  “So let me get this straight.” Bates paced back and forth in front of his desk. “You pinpointed the location where those Tip Tap posts originated—Green Bottle Coffee. A barista said he’d been paid to throw you off this culprit’s tail, and the evidence is this piece of paper?” He raised the ziplock bag, his expression full of skepticism.

  “The culprit’s fingerprints are probably on that paper,” Alexander said. “We’re hoping you can hand it over to the cops and have them investigate it.”

  Principal Bates gave Alexander a long, hard look, sizing him up. It was obvious that, to some degree, he still suspected we were involved in this somehow. “I’ll be honest. The story sounds a bit far-fetched. But, as we don’t have other leads, I’ll ask the police to look into the paper,” he said finally.

  “You were the one who told us to come here if w
e heard any information. We wouldn’t come here with some ‘far-fetched’ stories,” I insisted. I didn’t care if I was being rude to our principal. I wanted to get the message across loud and clear. “We are—” My voice caught. “—were Jamie’s friends. We want the truth.”

  “I want the truth as much as you do,” Bates said, his eyes burning. He glanced at the ziplock bag and then sat down behind his desk. He gave us a strained smile, which I understood to be a dismissal. “Thank you.”

  Even though I’d made myself sound certain in front of Bates, the truth was I was less certain about my friends than ever. Of course, I didn’t really think any of them could have done anything to Jamie. But from the public perspective, there were many reasons that the four of us would look suspicious. And that was what the Proctor wanted, wasn’t it? To pull these secrets out from their graves. To make us appear the most suspicious, the most capable of killing Jamie.

  “Nancy, you good?”

  I jerked. I hadn’t realized I’d spaced out, and had been staring at Alexander, who was peering at me with concern. “Yeah, I’m fine. We should go home. It’s getting late.”

  At my words, Alexander glanced down at his phone and swore. “I’m late for—for my shift.” There, a slight pause in Alexander’s words. Eyes, now avoiding mine. I didn’t miss it. He really wasn’t a good liar. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  After letting Alexander get several paces ahead of me, I made up my mind. I was going to follow him and get to the bottom of his secrets. His lies.

  Tailing anyone in this crowded city was almost impossible. The only way I kept Alexander from leaving my sight was by ruthlessly shoving past pedestrians. It seemed like he really was headed into Chinatown. I followed him onto the 1 train all the way to Canal Street, careful to keep a small crowd of people between us.