by Hannah Capin
“God, say it a little louder,” says Piper.
Lilia’s hands scrabble at her purse. She pulls out a pack of Parliaments and flicks her lighter.
“Lili,” says Piper. “Get it together.”
She breathes out a thin line of smoke. “He didn’t die right away,” she says. “He was lying there—he was bent all wrong—Dunc wouldn’t let me call 911 until we knew he was dead—and he was breathing like there was a knife in his neck—and there was so much blood—”
The cigarette falls out of her hand. She lights another one and leaves the first on the floor, trailing haze.
“Jade,” says Piper, staring. “What the fuck.” She glances at Lilia. “Your new girl’s getting off on this, by the way.”
I’m breathing too fast. I slow it down, count it off—
Duncan, Duffy, Connor, Banks—
—hear Connor’s broken lungs rasp and see his eyes wide and scared and searching, and then finally empty.
I smile at Piper. “He deserved it.”
“Fuck you,” she says. “And fuck whatever Mack told you. You didn’t even know Connor.”
Lilia’s fingers tremble on her cigarette. “But it’s true.”
Piper’s mouth drops open and she turns it into a laugh so harsh the flock-girls peek over their shoulders to see. “God,” she says. “Everybody’s losing their shit this week. Ever since that stupid party—”
The boys come in.
It’s exactly like yesterday, and nothing like it at all. Today the lights don’t flicker: they blaze brighter and stronger, so everyone squints. Today they’re not laughing, but their silence is ten times louder than anything they said yesterday—
Duncan—
—sharper edges overnight, still the good-king, more the good-king than he’s ever been, eyes fading from gunmetal-gray to pure silver, something fast and fatal in the way he walks, something that makes the not-it girls bow their heads—
Duffy—
—trying so hard I can smell it like burning oil, three razor-nicks on his jaw, squaring his shoulders on every step but still with his face blanched white and circles under his eyes, because yesterday was a test and he failed and he knows it—
Banks—
—all heat where Duffy is cold, liquor on his breath and a dangerous spring in the way he walks, not SS-tight like Duncan but loose and loping and ready to kill again if he has to, or maybe even if Duncan tries to collar him too hard—
Mack—
Mack.
Not Connor, because Connor is frozen in the morgue with his chest cracked open. Ugly Connor. First-in-the-door Connor. Connor is dead because of me, and Mack is in his place because of me.
—and he wears it better than any of them. Not sick and shaking like Duffy or drunk from it like Banks. Not polished past perfect like Duncan. Still with that golden-boy glow all over his face, and glowing even brighter with the ambition no one else could see until I saw it.
“Shit,” says Piper. She takes a step back.
They stop in front of us. I can feel the rest of the commons watching. Everything stands still: Lilia trailing her forgotten cigarette, Piper with her hand on her sabre, the boys in their same wolf-pack formation like Connor never existed and it was always Mack.
Duffy breaks first. He flinches toward Piper. She dives for him, puts her hands on his shoulders, presses her lips to his. He kisses her back but his eyes stay haunted.
Banks laughs. “You’re losing your touch, Piper.”
She jerks back and scowls. “Maybe Duff just has some fucking decorum.”
Shutting bitches up is my specialty, said Duffy on Friday night when Duncan told him shut the bitch up. And he locked his hand across my mouth and even when I bit he didn’t let go. Not like dead Connor.
I smile wide at Banks. “Duffy’s a gentleman. Show some respect for the dead.”
Then I take Mack’s hands in mine and stare hard into his eyes and everything twists, but not the way it does when I look at the other boys. He doesn’t look away. He’s afraid, because of Connor, but not as afraid as he wants to be.
This time he kisses me first. The boy who let Connor die. For a second—
—blinding summer light and Malibu sunsets, and leaning my head out the window with my hair streaming out behind me and screaming wild into too-fast turns—
“Damn,” says Banks. “That’s more like it. I’ll take her when you’re done with her, golden boy.”
The summer light splinters into scraping white marble and poison.
I pull back, but I don’t let go of Mack’s hands. And I smile at Banks again, but different this time. My innocent-little-flower smile. “You’ll never have me,” I say.
Duncan lets it land, and then he takes another step in. Closing off our inner circle from the rest of them. “We’re clear,” he tells us, instead of asking. “No texts about what happened. No talking to the rest of them.” He nods toward the flock-girls and Malcolm’s second-rank, hanging back.
“They know,” says Piper. “Everybody knows.”
Duncan’s eyes are so silver-bright he makes Piper blink. “They know Connor can’t keep it together when he’s cross-faded. It’s a real blow to the team. We’ll miss him. We’ll remember.” He leans on the last word.
His pack takes it in and stays quiet, even Banks. Piper’s lips twitch.
Lilia brings her cigarette up, ash crumbling off the end, and takes a drag.
“Jesus, Lilia,” says Duncan. “Get rid of it.”
She doesn’t say no, but she doesn’t move, either.
Duncan takes the cigarette out of her hand and drops it. His heel grinds it into the floor. “We’re going in,” he says to Duffy and Banks and Mack.
“Where?” Piper shifts for her blade.
“Chapel,” says Duffy, dry lips and faking it. “So they can tell us about Connor.”
Right as he says it, a cluster of baby-bird freshmen flitters past with a banner bigger than they are, carved with Connor’s name.
Piper’s eyes narrow. “Fucking shitshow.”
Duncan measures out a look. “We’re going.”
They leave the way they came in: united. Blood-bound. Strides almost matched.
But Mack looks over his shoulder—
—at me.
Only me.
Piper scoffs. I don’t care.
Bells toll from the chapel, the same as yesterday, but today there’s something better about them. Deeper and darker and weighted, warning-heavy. The rest of them—all the St Andrew’s Preppers who won’t ever be as good as Duncan and his wolves—fall in line behind them. Filing past us until it’s only Lilia and Piper and me with two spent cigarettes on the floor.
“God,” Lilia sighs, and she starts for the chapel.
Piper stops me from following: a half-step in front of me with her hip jutting out so her sabre catches against my skirt.
Lilia looks back. “Coming?”
“Just need a minute with the new girl, sweetie.”
She shrugs and drifts around the corner.
Piper waits, like maybe I’ll break. Like I’ll spill my darkest secrets to her right here with Mary gazing down at us and Lilia’s first cigarette still pluming smoke.
I wait right back. The hall stretches bigger, all shining planks and perfect arches. Sister María de los Dolores slips out of the shadows and crosses the hollow space corner-to-corner, almost gliding, eyes cast down the same as the statue’s.
When she’s gone Piper pushes too close and says, “Why are you here?”
“Ask my parents.”
She laughs. “I’m not Lili. You can’t bullshit me like that.” She shifts even closer. “You’re nowhere. You don’t even exist.”
I spin my phone between my fingers. “You followed me yesterday.” And she did, with her thousands of sunbleached selfies she never captions and her thousands of followers she never follows back. Piper Morello, the better version, angled just right and filtered into the queen she thinks she’l
l be when Lilia stumbles one time too many.
Her lips pinch and unpinch. She doesn’t say, You made that account yesterday, too. She says, “Jade Khanjara. Is that even your real name?”
I keep my voice exactly as light as it needs to be. “Of course.”
“Where were you before St Andrew’s?” she asks. “Exeter? St Paul’s?”
I don’t answer. My heart skips faster, but I’m glad. I want her to fight. I want her to know I’m lying, and not to be able to prove it.
“You’re not on anybody’s records,” she says. “So where was it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Why won’t you tell?”
“Non-disclosure agreement,” I say. “From the settlement.”
“There’s no case anywhere.”
I tip my chin just the slightest bit. “I was fifteen.”
“There’s nothing from this year about a fifteen-year-old-girl and a teacher at any of the boarding schools in New Hampshire,” she says, all her gloss gone now. Closing in.
So I laugh. “Stalk much?”
“Like you don’t,” she tosses back, and I don’t deny it. “You’re hiding something.”
“Everyone’s hiding something.”
She goes still when I say that. In her eyes I can see her thoughts spinning fast. “What did Mack tell you?” she asks.
“Nothing I didn’t already know.” I pause. “Not yet.”
She steps back, straighter. Her filtered sunbleached good-citizenship self is back in place. “You’re not getting away with it. Whatever it is.”
I tap my phone open and flip to the front camera. Check my lipstick—for her, not for me. “Neither are you.”
We leave it like that. A draw.
But she walks away first.
In Memoriam
I’m the very last St Andrew’s Prepper through the door.
Piper is just ahead of me, passing the freshman girls’ banner and Connor’s team portrait without looking. The same portrait Mads circled in scarlet on Saturday.
The chapel doors swing shut behind us. The air is hot and hazy and every pew is full, blazer shoulders lined up tight. Sister María de los Dolores stares heavy-eyed at Piper. I smile innocent and she softens just enough and waves us toward the space behind the last pew. We slip in and stand with our backs to the stone. Piper elbows me and nods past the sister: a man stands against the wall, in plainclothes but with a gun on his belt. His eyes rove to Piper and me.
Sister María de los Dolores turns, stern, and puts him back in his place.
At the front of the chapel the dean tells Duncan’s lies. The good-king and his wolves sit in the very first row, four together, and the second-rank boys fill in the row behind them. Malcolm glances over his shoulder and meets my gaze for one stilted instant. He chews his lip again, nagging forgotten and familiar.
It’s not a funeral. It’s not even a memorial. Even the dean isn’t captive enough to try to turn Connor into anyone we should miss. Everything he says is cut and dry and courtroom-perfect.
The dean’s words bleed together and swirl up like smoke to the rafters. I don’t listen. I don’t care. I don’t want to stand still, caught here between Piper and Sister María de los Dolores and the detective, not checking my phone and not watching Duncan and not next to Mack.
I don’t want to wait.
Every second Duncan stays king is too long.
When the dean finishes reading the lawyers’ speech everyone stands to file out. The whispers start. First the freshman banner-girls and then the ugly boys who stand at the farthest side of the commons and stare at Lilia and Piper and their flock with bitter jealous hate.
Piper and I don’t cut in front of them. We wait for our boys.
Outside the doors, somebody gasps and the whispers weave tighter.
“Fucking freshmen,” Piper mutters.
Sister María de los Dolores pretends she doesn’t hear.
The voices get louder. The line surges forward and bunches up at the doors.
Piper slips a sideways glance at me. I keep my eyes on Duncan and Duffy and Banks and Mack, at the very end of the line, not talking.
“It’s not okay!” comes a banner-girl’s voice, whining up. “It’s nasty and lies and—it’s vandalism anyway—”
“You just think Lilia’s going to blame you. No more prom princess.” It’s one of the edge-of-the-commons boys, his words glee-greased and simmering.
And the voices swell loud again.
Sister María de los Dolores pushes into the crowd and out through the doors. Her words cut ruler-quick: “Move along! Get to class!”
Piper shifts closer to me, eyes darting across the crowd. She wants to cut in, I can tell. But Duncan is watching. She hisses, “You brought the storm with you, new girl.”
Then Malcolm’s boys pass us, and the starlings, hovering off-balance without their queen.
Piper’s glare clips all their wings at once. “Where’s Lilia?”
“She—” three of them say together, and then they all go quiet. Finally the prettiest one says, “She fainted—”
“She didn’t faint,” another one breaks in. “She fell. She almost fainted—”
“Close enough,” says the prettiest one. “She was blacking out. So Rosie and Calla took her to the nurse—they practically had to carry her—before the dean started, and they never came back, so—”
“I don’t need a fucking novel,” Piper snaps. She checks her phone and says to me, so the rest of them can’t hear, “Did she text you?”
“She barely knows me. She’s your best friend …” And I leave a little pause with an almost-question hiding in it. “She’d text you first.”
Piper ruffles. “Lili plays mind games,” she says, and then she pushes past the flock-girls and hooks her elbow into Duffy’s. They fall back, the two of them and Duncan.
Mack is right in front of me, with Banks. He holds out his hand and I take it and fold in next to him. Look up into his eyes.
“Get a damn room,” says Banks.
I smirk at him and bring my other hand to Mack’s so both my hands lace together around his. “Are you all right?” I ask—
—and I keep my voice low and warm and red, and I mean more than I say.
“I am now,” says Mack.
Banks snorts out a laugh. “Whatever the hell you two have going—”
But he cuts himself off and his face goes as marble-white as Duffy’s. Then it goes red and he’s laughing harsh and pushing through the doors and grabbing the banner hard enough that the stands it’s tied to crack against the floor.
All the beautiful vain St Andrew’s Preppers have stopped moving again. Started talking again. Banks tears hard at the banner but it won’t rip apart. One lone girl giggles, high and desperate.
Banks whirls. His eyes are rage and his hands are striped with blue. “Move,” he barks out, and they do. Like rats out of a sinking ship.
Across the banner, cutting through Connor’s name, bold blue letters say GUILTY.
“Porter,” Banks shouts, and he grabs his shoulder. Porter spins wide-eyed and so scared I have to bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t smile and ruin everything.
“I didn’t—I’m not—” Porter tries to say. Sweat on his lip and his forehead shining.
“Knife,” Banks says, low, crushing the banner in on itself. The metal stands shriek against the floor.
Porter digs into his bag and holds out a leather-sheathed knife. His hands shake and he drops it and yelps. Banks snatches up the knife before Porter can move. He slashes once—
Hard.
The banner slices in two and crumples down. Two white flags waving.
Banks throws the knife back without its case. Porter barely catches it, handle-first but only by luck, and then he runs.
The door swings open again. Sister María de los Dolores steps out of the chapel with the dean and the detective close behind her. Duffy sees his gun and almost gags. The detective stares too
long.
“His teammates,” says the dean, smooth and unbothered.
Duncan nods at the detective. Says, so practiced I can see it in print, “He’ll be missed.”
The detective’s gaze slides over each of us in turn. Holding on until the dean catches his shoulder and eases him away and says, “Well, then, the sister and I will show you out—”
Then it’s just us: Duncan and Duffy and Banks and Mack, and Piper and me with Lilia nowhere, and Connor’s team picture watching, and the banner broken on the floor.
We wait for Duncan to speak. The silence gleams dark blue.
His jaw clenches twice, fast.
He smiles his same slick smile from yesterday’s end-of-the-match good-game line.
“Get rid of it,” he says to Banks. And then, to all of his pack, “See you at practice.”
They leave, all four of them, with Banks ripping the banner off the stands and burying it in a trash can. It’s just Piper and me left behind.
I take down Connor’s portrait. Stare into his dead eyes.
I don’t feel anything now that he’s gone.
“Jade,” says Piper.
I turn.
She swoops to the floor and back in the same nimble little dive the flock-girl did when Lilia let her coffee cup fall. Holds up a bullet-black lipstick tube. Uncaps it and twists it up.
It’s crushed almost to nothing, but we’d both know the color anywhere. The same as the letters scrawled across the banner. The same as the streaks our queen painted on our faces before the game.
Lilia’s war-paint.
Courting
After school I stop in Dr. Farris’s classroom and linger too long with my eyes bright and my chin tipping just-so. Asking questions and not listening to the answers. Waiting for him to ask me about Connor, so I can bring out my innocent-little-flower face for him and for the not-it senior with the electric-blue hair grading quizzes at a lab table. Piper would never give her a single glance, but the story will get back to her in an hour anyway: that new girl, the one who fucks teachers? She’s trying it again.
Once the halls have drained themselves empty and Dr. Farris knows how very sad I am about poor dead Connor, I give the senior girl a zipped-lips wink and make my exit.
