Honor Code

by Kiersi Burkhart

  Advance praise for

  Honor Code

  “Honor Code explores the harsh reality of victim shaming and how too often the very institutions designed to protect us are the ones to silence those who dare come forward. Tragic, gripping, and very important.”

  —Amy Giles, author of Now Is Everything

  “Feminist and furious, Honor Code will have your heart racing and your blood boiling up to the last twisty page.”

  —Emma Berquist, author of Devils Unto Dust

  “Relentless, twisting, raw, and incredibly human.”

  —Kate Brauning, author of How We Fall

  “Not the private school book you’ve been prepping for—Honor Code weaves a seductively dark web and then burns the whole thing to the ground. Breathless, gritty and thrilling.”

  —Kendra Fortmeyer, author of Hole in the Middle

  “Raw and rage-inducing, Honor Code will make you question what is right, what is real, and what we tell girls about their value in this world.”

  —Rebecca Barrow, author of You Don’t Know Me but I Know You

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kiersi Burkhart

  Carolrhoda Lab™ is a trademark of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Lab™

  An imprint of Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Cover and interior images: Nata Kuprova/Shutterstock.com (letters); Gordan/Shutterstock.com (border).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 10.5/15.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Burkhart, Kiersi, author.

  Title: Honor code / by Kiersi Burkhart.

  Description: Minneapolis : Carolrhoda Lab, [2017] | Summary: Fifteen-year-old Sam contacts a reporter, hoping to expose a fellow student at elite Edwards Academy for rape, but the reporter tells her parents and soon, she is facing him in court.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016034413 (print) | LCCN 2017007086 (ebook) | ISBN 9781512429961 (th : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781512442755 (eb pdf)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Rape—Fiction. | Preparatory schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Reporters and reporting—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B88 Hon 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.B88 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034413

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1-41593-23503-10/26/2017

  9781512467352 ePub

  9781512467369 ePub

  9781512467376 mobi

  To Amber J. Keyser—Friend, mentor, mom, sister . . . and the other half of my brain. Even a thousand miles apart, we are still always together.

  Act One

  Chapter One

  http://privateschoolnewb.tumblr.com

  Aug. 30, 2017

  Sorry if this first post is weird. I’m writing on my phone in the car. We drove through some enormous stone gates earlier, but we still haven’t gotten to the school. It feels like the campus goes on forever, just grass and trees and big brick buildings.

  My parents are about to drop me off for my first day at a fancy-pants private boarding school. No, I won’t tell you which one. That would defeat the purpose of an anonymous blog, wouldn’t it?

  Before I got here I always wondered what it was like. I bet a lot of other people have, too. So I thought it would be cool to relay my authentic experience. Show the world what the inside of one of these places is like. For all the other wonderers out there.

  I’ll post more when I’m settled in. Hopefully I get some followers before then so somebody will read this drivel. Not that it really matters—I’m also doing this for me. To keep myself accountable. I know how these places can suck you up, mold you around, and spit you back out in a totally different shape than when you started.

  I need to stay me. But do stick around, ask me questions, whatever you want. Who doesn’t like having an audience?

  -----------------------

  It’s two in the afternoon, and a loose crowd of First Years—me among them—snakes toward the towering stone cathedral at the center of campus. I walk right behind a pod of chattering Second Years who are all finding their old friends in the salmon stream, catching up on what they did over the summer.

  I wonder if I’ll make it to my second year. When I got accepted to Edwards Academy, Dad made me commit to one year before he’d write that first tuition check, the Titanic of expenditures. The deal is this: I can’t back out before one year is up, the way I backed out of guitar, soccer, and mock trial back in middle school. No matter what.

  “And if you don’t like Edwards Academy after giving it a whole year,” Dad had said, “then fine. Experiment over, no hard feelings.”

  The conga line of students and faculty finally reaches the double doors of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, or what I’ve heard called “Cath.” The tops of the cathedral towers, far overhead, are made of stone and glass and good old wood. As we enter through the massive doors, the quality of sound suddenly changes—the chatting and giggling of students fills up the air around me, echoing, multiplying. It feels like there are a few thousand people here instead of just a few hundred. A vaulted ceiling yawns over us, flanked by enormous buttresses that hold it up, like the ribs of a blue whale. The light streaming in through stained glass windows turns everything yellow and pink and glowing.

  If I were the religious type, it would be easy to believe a higher power resided here. Cath feels alive. Will I really get to come here every single morning? I can’t imagine ever getting used to this—to the marble pillars that mark the aisles, or the delicate gold molding, or the vibrant colors of the glass panels.

  Up ahead, the Fourth Years slip into the front-most pews. Behind them sit the Third Years, then Second Years. And finally, us lowly Firsties, standing at the very back while we wait for permission to sit.

  I’m busy looking for somebody. There, that must be her—in the very first seat of the very first pew, across the aisle from Provost Portsmouth himself. That must be the Head Girl.

  Last year, all the prefects from all the houses got together and voted her as the best of them. And even luckier for me? She’s the Head Prefect of my house, Isabel House.

  Edwards has . . . a patchy background. It was boys only for over a hundred years. The school opened up to female students in the ’80s, but this is the very first time they’ve had a Head Girl.

  Maybe I could be voted in as Head Girl in my Fourth Year if I stick with this. That would be admission to Harvard in the bag, and a straight shot from there to Harvard Law School.

  Up in the front pew, the Fourth Year girls greet each other by kissing each other on the cheeks, like Europeans. Weird. I’ve never seen people do that except on TV.

  Kissing on the cheek? Will I have to kiss people on the cheek?

  The faculty member who led us into Cath stops at the back-most pews, calling out, “Sit in alphabetical order, please!”

  Crap, I’ve fallen out of order. I glance around for the two kids who’d been standing on either side of me earlier—but I think they’ve gone to sit down. I’m already lost and school technically hasn’t even started yet.

  Eventually I spot their two vag
uely familiar faces and push toward my seat.

  Just in time. The full, thick, reverberating notes of the organ start to spill out. The First Years all sit silent and ramrod straight. The whole cathedral takes on an immensity as the haunting voice of the organ saturates it, and the old guy playing it closes his eyes and starts really getting into it as he strikes the two keyboards. The Second Years sitting in front of us start giggling as the combed-over threads of his white hair whip back and forth over the bald part of his head, which looks a lot like a fried egg sunny-side up. I close my eyes and just try to listen.

  After the organ, the chaplain recites something. Then Provost Portsmouth comes up to the high marble altar, which has been converted into a podium.

  He starts his opening remarks talking about old Dr. Edwards. When Morgan Edwards started his school, Portsmouth tells us, back in 1870-something, he’d lamented how his older sons had received only “half of an education.” Just book learning, he’d said, not life learning. Arithmetic was necessary, of course—but so were ethics. Morals. Poise.

  And so he created Edwards Academy as a place to educate and groom a truly wise, well-rounded young man. The young women came later—long after the old doctor had died.

  “That’s bullshit,” the girl sitting next to me whispers.

  I tilt toward her. “What is?”

  “This place is so closed off from the real world, how could you learn anything about life here?” She shakes her head. She has long, black hair that she parts severely down the middle, and light brown skin like topaz. “By ‘life learning’ he means how to be rich, white, and successful.”

  A Second Year prefect turns around and shushes us. We both fall silent.

  After the opening ceremony is over, I get a better look at the skeptical girl. She’s tall, stick-thin, and built like a dancer. Her dark brown eyes are big.

  “Hey,” she says. “I’m Gracie.”

  “Hey. Sam.”

  “Nice to meet you, Hey Sam.”

  It’s the most inane Dad joke ever, and I let out a noise that’s between a groan and a laugh.

  We must be in the same house—all the houses were corralled and seated together in Cath. Cool. My awesome new school comes with a built-in friend.

  -----------------------

  After the ceremony, we’re freed to go unpack and settle in. I cross the rolling green campus at a quick clip, glued to my campus map. There are so many little walkways that branch off the main brick path, I wonder how I’ll ever memorize where they all go. The trip back to my dorm winds me through emerald lawns of a meticulously uniform height, encircling red brick buildings with white stone finishes that remind me of movies set in England. There’s a lake on my map, which I don’t really believe is as big as it looks until I get to it.

  The water is clear and dotted with lily pads. As I circle it, approaching what I think is Isabel House just on the other side, an enormous koi fish with gold scales darts under the surface.

  I can’t believe I get to live here.

  I feel like my whole body is vibrating as I spot the giant stone sign that reads ISABEL HOUSE. I’m going to meet my new roommate soon. When my parents helped me carry up my things earlier this morning, she wasn’t there—but there were pieces of her already arranged around the room. A crisp gray bedspread and wrinkle-free pillowcases with curling embroidery, that reminded me of a hotel room. Her shiny, new, extra-large laptop sat on the desk, a small tablet lounging next to it. A polished, black leather messenger bag hung off the back of the chair.

  I can tell that my roommate’s a real upper-class girl. We’re going to spend the whole year together, probably become best friends. We’ll stay up nights talking in the dark about people we like and don’t like, boys, homework, our favorite music. Go to all our meals together. My mom says her maid of honor when she married my dad was her college roommate. What if we went to college together? We could live in a big college house. We could be friends for the rest of our lives.

  Inside Isabel House, a prefect sitting at a desk leans forward over a clipboard and stops me. She’s chewing gum and has milky, unblemished skin.

  “Gotta check in,” she says. “What’s your name?”

  Once I’m signed in, I follow the stairs up to the second floor. My room is at the end of the hall, and there are shadows moving under the door. I’m buzzing.

  She’s here.

  I push open the door. Inside, arranging her already-perfect pillowcases, is Gracie.

  Her head darts up, and she smiles when she sees me. “Oh, it’s Hey Sam.” I walk in and drop my backpack on my bed. “So we get to be next to each other in Cath, and we’re roomies?” She smiles a funny half-smile, like paint of slightly the wrong hue used to cover up a hole in the wall. “What’s the chance?”

  I glance at the little black name label she has painstakingly placed on the rear side of her laptop, a label I didn’t notice earlier. It says GRACIE CALEZA.

  Caleza. Barker.

  “Maybe the chance is greater than you think,” I say. I point at the label on her computer. “I’m Barker.”

  “You’re a barker?” she says. “You don’t look like a dog to me.”

  What is with this girl’s humor? It’s so off-key I have to laugh. It’s like she gets the concept of jokes, but doesn’t quite know how to put one together.

  “Barker is my last name,” I say. “Yours is Caleza. They paired us up because we’re next to each other in the alphabet.”

  “What? No way.” She looks at the label. “That whole form I filled out with my sleeping preferences, my hobbies, my level of cleanliness?”

  “All ignored in favor of the much simpler Alphabet Game,” I say.

  “That’s stupid,” Gracie says. “But still kinda rad, since we already met and seem to get along.”

  Rad? Are we in the 1980s? Okay, so she’s a quirky goth with a Morticia Addams hairstyle going on, but at least she’s up front about things. That will make living together easier.

  “But how do you know from just one conversation?” I ask, unpacking the new laptop I got for my birthday last week on my bed, then setting my favorite sketchbook on top. “I could be a serial killer.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Are you?”

  “Would a real serial killer just admit it?”

  Gracie picks up my sketchbook and starts leafing through it. “Oh, yes, these lovely drawings of trees—I can tell, you’re definitely a serial killer.”

  “Serial killers might also like trees.”

  “You’re right.” She turns the notebook sideways. “Maybe the tree is so big and green because someone buried a body under it.”

  I laugh and grab the sketchbook back. “That’s so dark! I’m gonna be a lawyer, not a serial killer.”

  She quirks an eyebrow at me. “A lawyer?”

  “You know. The legit way to fight bad guys. Get justice. I want to do pro bono work for innocent people.”

  Gracie outright laughs. “What? That is the weirdest dream I’ve ever heard. I want to be a lawyer who works for free. What about paying your bills?”

  I turn back to unpacking my bag. It stings a little. “Don’t we have to unpack before dinner?”

  “Oh, no,” she says, getting up. “Sorry if I hurt your feelings. I was just kidding. I think that sounds cool. Really, like . . . honorable.”

  “Running around in a mask saving people isn’t realistic,” I say. “Lawyer is the best I can do, since I don’t have superpowers.”

  “Yes, you do.” She points at my head and grins mischievously. “Right there. That brain is your superpower.”

  I’m blushing, I know it. “Come on,” I say, batting her hand away. “Let’s unpack so we can go get dinner.”

  “Jeez, it’s only the first day and you’re already a tyrant,” she says. “Or are you just hungry?”

  “Anytime I’m not eating, I’m hungry.”

  She laughs. “That explains a lot.”

  -----------------------

&nbs
p; After we’ve had some time to fill up our closets and meet the neighbors, our House Mother—who tells us brightly, “Please, call me Jean!”—ushers us all to the second-floor lounge, where she surprises us with pizza for dinner.

  The lounge is a tacky mixture of its 1980s construction, some old-world Victorian furniture, and dramatic oil paintings in elaborate gold frames. Third and Fourth Year girls are scattered around the room on couches and chairs, looking cozy. We, the First and Second Years, are confined to scratchy pillows on the floor. The TV off to one side plays visualizer effects for the light pop music that underscores the girls’ chatter. I nab a seat on a pillow next to Gracie.

  Once the pizza is finished and the boxes are cleared away, Jean moves to the front of the room. I’m expecting her to give some sort of speech, but instead she calls the Head Girl up to the front.

  “I’ll leave it to you, Hayden,” Jean says to her. “Ladies, don’t do anything you don’t want me to hear about later.”

  “Yes, Jean,” the Head Girl says. Jean grins a motherly grin and heads out of the lounge, leaving us alone.

  I’m confused. One of the big selling points of Edwards to parents is that no student is ever unsupervised, unless it’s nighttime and your door’s closed.

  I am simultaneously excited and uneasy. What will we be doing on the first night of school without an adult around? The girls around me are whispering to each other about what’s coming. Hayden, with her bouncy brown hair, stands with her arms crossed, like she ought to have a lectern in front of her.

  “All right, Firsties,” the Head Girl says, gesturing for us to quiet down. “My name is Hayden. Jean has passed the duties of initiation on to me, the Head Prefect of Isabel House.”

  She’s pretty, dressed in a high skirt and collared shirt like I imagine Prep School Barbie would be. Her presence is as big as the room.

  “Just think of us as your official Welcome Wagon,” she says, as two other girls with nice tans get up to flank her. One is blonde, one is brunette. Their outfits are as picture-perfect as Hayden’s. “It’s our duty to help make your transition here as smooth as possible. Jean left you with us because there are just some things that only another Edwardian can teach you. I take this duty very seriously, so we’ve made up a handy list of important information.”