The Girls Are All So Nice Here

by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

  “Yeah. And they all still hate us. At least, they hate me.”

  “They’re idiots,” Sully says.

  “I thought you hated me too.” I sound wounded and pathetic.

  “I never did. You know that. But it was a weird time for me. I couldn’t really be myself.”

  I nod, but it doesn’t take away the chasm of loneliness I spun into without her. When Sully and I started spending all of our time together, I stopped needing to befriend the other girls. Sully picked them apart, a vulture on fresh carcasses. I only saw their flaws and insecurities and couldn’t believe I ever cared about their approval.

  After Sully, nobody wanted to know me. When Wesleyan’s ACB started up on LiveJournal during my junior year, I knew my name would be on it. I knew people would say horrible things, and I read every single one. I saw AW running from Butts that night in a slutty outfit—she did it. She hated Flora.

  Sully had her own thread, too. And I remember what somebody wrote on it. This bitch is not only insane but may also be a sociopath capable of killing people! Just saying!

  “Did you keep in touch with anyone after graduation?” I don’t know why I ask, except it suddenly seems important. “Do you still talk to any of the girls?”

  “No,” she deadpans. “Definitely not.” I think about the girls I used to see her with on campus, the ones who came before and after, my bookends. She snipped so easily, cut out everybody she pretended to care about and hurt at Wesleyan. I was just another hanging thread.

  I cough into my hand. “They’re all the same. They love the drama. You know they’re going to be at the dedication later, with their fake tears. As if they ever really cared about Flora.”

  “They didn’t.” Sully laughs, still at her most relaxed when she’s getting dirty. “But you know, death makes everyone best friends. You were brave to bring your cute husband here. I always wondered if you’d find someone.”

  Normally that might be insulting, Sully calling my husband cute, but what she said isn’t about Adrian. It’s about me. She thinks I settled, and I’m torn between wanting to defend Adrian and wanting to agree with her.

  “You better keep an eye on Lauren,” she continues. “There’s something about how she’s been looking at you. And Adrian.”

  “I don’t trust her. She was there, at Double Feature. And she’s the one who told the cops that she heard us talking about Flora, and that we were looking for a guy at the party.”

  “Lauren’s the worst,” she says. “She just wants to stir up shit. Don’t believe a word she says. She thought she was such a mastermind, pitting people against each other.” She turns her head to look at me. “I thought maybe she had something to do with this, but she’s too dumb to pull it off.”

  Pull what off? I almost say, but now we’re rolling into Friendly’s, and I’m suddenly shit-scared. I have so many questions for Kevin that I never thought I would get to ask, and now it’s like an exam I didn’t prepare for. Did you mean what you said about me? What you said about her? His promises changed my life, and I don’t know if they were ever real.

  He’s sitting in a booth, red cap pulled down, hair flattened out at the ends. He’s in a sweatshirt, not a Dartmouth one. He never graduated from there. Maybe he never graduated from anywhere. Just like Sully fell off the face of the earth after college, Kevin disappeared too.

  Sully and I slide into the bench across from him. “No need for introductions. You obviously remember Ambrosia. This is the real reunion, huh?”

  He looks up and I lose the generic greeting that was building on my tongue. The same eyes, same mouth. There’s shadowing on his cheeks and chin that I didn’t notice through the windshield. He probably has to shave every day. Adrian can’t grow a proper beard. Kevin looks handsome and tragic, somehow, a hurt built into the structure of his face.

  “Hi,” he says. “Amb. You look great.”

  After all that, You look great. A downgrade from beautiful. I play with his words. I’m sure he says them to everybody, because it’s the nice thing to say when you haven’t seen someone in over a decade, even if it’s not true. It’s the nice thing to say to the last person you slept with before your life imploded. And Kevin always had the right things to say.

  “You too,” I manage. I can’t decide if he actually does. If he ever did, or if he only did when Flora had him, her ownership branding him as someone worthy.

  “Okay, we all look great. Let’s get right to it,” Sully interjects hastily. “We came here because we all got notes, so now we have to figure out who sent them and what they want. Amb found a cell phone last night in the bathroom with our picture on it. She thinks it might have been Flora’s phone.”

  Kevin’s voice is gravelly when he speaks. “I was telling Sully that I’ve gotten this note before. Not the exact same, but pretty much. It’s from the same person. I’d know that handwriting anywhere. Most of the other threats I’ve gotten were typed out, like they were afraid I’d go to the cops and figure out who it was.”

  “Did you keep them?” I ask. He shakes his head. Of course he didn’t keep them. I’m sure he didn’t keep my emails either.

  “I thought it could be Felty,” I say. “He questioned me—us. He suspected that we had something to do with it.”

  Kevin, softly. “We did, didn’t we? I mean—you and me.” You and me. My legs, under the table, are drumming. Time away hasn’t made me any less pathetic. I still cling like Saran wrap to any form of attention.

  “Felty questioned all the girls on our floor,” Sully says. “Some of them totally lied. Like Ella Walden. She made it seem like Flora was her best friend. And this Lauren bitch that Amb and I were just talking about on the way here. She was my roommate, and that night, she basically followed us around the party like a lost puppy.”

  “I don’t think Flora talked much about Ella,” he mumbles. “Or Lauren. Just Amb.”

  Just Amb. There it is. The guilt, the same guilt I hold so easily at bay most of the time, because most of the time I can honestly convince myself that we weren’t friends. The details Flora told me about her life, her family, her ambitions, have been fuzzed out. She wasn’t innocent. She did what she did. Then there are the days when I hear her desperate pleas and can almost feel her tears on my skin.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t mention me. She sure judged me enough.” Sully is obviously annoyed, not used to having her name left off any list.

  “I don’t know how they found out where I live,” I say. “I don’t have the same address I had in college. The alumni magazines go to my parents’ house, but the note came to my apartment.”

  “Whoever it is, I’m sure they’re here this weekend,” Sully adds. “That still leaves a lot of possible suspects. Who has something to gain by getting us here?”

  “I don’t know,” Kevin says. He rubs his forehead, takes off his baseball cap long enough for me to see that his hair is graying under it. “I have a different theory. I think whoever sent these notes is the person who murdered Flora.”

  My entire body goes cold. Beside me, Sully laughs sharply. “You don’t actually believe that.”

  “I do. That’s why—that’s why I came here. Not because I was threatened by the note. But because I need to know. I owe it to her.”

  I didn’t want to believe that Kevin ever really loved Flora. But this is bigger than love. This is guilt, the thing I always turn my back on. If Kevin feels a duty to avenge Flora’s memory, there’s no telling how deep he’ll dig for the truth.

  “Okay, your interesting theory aside, we’re all here for the same reason.” Sully clacks a saltshaker against the table. “Because we want to know who’s targeting us and move on.”

  The three of us had one thing in common back then. Flora. And she’s all we have in common now.

  “So when do they make their move?” Kevin says. “And how do we figure out what it’s going to be and catch them in the act?”

  “There’s the dedication this afternoon,” Sully says. “W
hoever wrote the notes wants us to be there. I think that’s where it’s going to happen, whatever they have planned.”

  “Maybe,” Kevin says. “I don’t know what they have planned for me.”

  A waitress finally comes by, asks if we want to order. “We’ll be leaving soon,” Kevin says, his smile rising from the ashes, that gleaming white phoenix—and there it is, the familiar grip of jealousy, because Kevin could make any girl feel like the center of his universe.

  Sully glances at her phone. “The dedication starts in a couple hours. I’m sure we’ll get an email reminding us about it soon.”

  “I think you two need to stick together,” says Kevin. “Keep track of who’s always around and who’s asking questions. Who’s watching you.”

  Sully snorts. “Everyone’s watching us. Nothing has changed.”

  “I’m serious, Sully. I’m going to be around. I mean, I can’t be seen on campus, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be looking too. I’m not going home until I figure out who did it.”

  Who did it. Who sent the notes, or who killed her, because he doesn’t believe it could have been me.

  “Me either.” I clamp my teeth together. “We’ll go to the dedication.”

  “Don’t trust anyone,” Kevin says, paranoia etched into his frown. “You don’t know what this person is capable of, if they did—if they did that.”

  I meet his eyes, and it’s like they’re pleading with me to believe him. I used to be scared that if I ever saw him again, he would read the truth on my face. But he only wants me to read the truth on his.

  “You guys don’t understand. I tried to get them to figure it out. The cops and detectives. But they were always satisfied for it to have been me. That I was the only one capable.”

  Sully’s expression has become strained, and she’s tapping her foot impatiently, like she wants to leave immediately. “We’ll find whoever wrote the notes. Amb and I—we won’t let them get away with it.”

  Before Sully ushers me out of the booth, I reach over and touch Kevin’s shoulder. He doesn’t move—doesn’t stiffen away or lean into me. I don’t know what I expected, that a touch would validate me somehow, but it’s just fingertips on a sweatshirt.

  “Can you believe him?” Sully says as we stride across the parking lot. “He actually thinks someone—I mean, I had no idea he was so wrapped up in conspiracies.”

  “What if he’s right?” I say in a small voice. “We don’t know what really happened.” I don’t tell her that as terrifying as Kevin’s theory is to contemplate, it might absolve us. Me.

  “I’m pretty sure we were there,” she snaps. “We know better than anyone.” When we get back into the car, she jams the volume button with the heel of her hand. I guess we’d both rather listen to the radio than play tug-of-war with those memories.

  “What now?” I say when we arrive back on campus.

  “I think we should split up.” Sully slams her car door. “Everyone’s at the run. It’s the perfect time to look around. I’m gonna try to get into Ella’s and Lauren’s rooms and see if I can find anything.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I doubt they just left their doors unlocked, but we can try. I’ll go with you. Kevin told us to stay together.”

  She arches an eyebrow. “Are you seriously going to listen to him? We don’t have much time before the dedication. We need to separate and cover some ground. You should find Felty. Keep an eye on him.”

  I watch her walk away, with her hands jammed in her pockets, her familiar swagger imbued with tension. I reluctantly set off in the other direction, with no intention of looking for Felty. I pass people setting up tents on Andrus for some of the reunion dinners and sidestep Olin out onto High Street, where Beta stands behind immaculate hedges, windows glinting in the sunlight. There’s the roof where Sully and I sat, legs dangling and heads bowed over, our laughter spraying the air.

  I suddenly can’t breathe. I need to get off campus, out of the purgatory of memories that share the same source: Sloane Sullivan.

  I walk until I’m at a Rite Aid, where I stop to buy a bottle of water and a magazine and pick up something else at the last minute, a First Response that I shove in my purse, not making eye contact with the cashier. I’ve taken them before in the dorm bathrooms, the surge of fear, the thumping heartbeat and sticky armpits followed by relief, the promise to myself that I’d be safer next time, that I’d make them wear a condom even though I was on the Pill. I don’t think I’m pregnant—I’m sure the sick feeling in my stomach is just the stress of being back here—but I’ll feel better when I know for sure.

  Lauren jogs up to me when I’m headed back up Foss Hill toward the Nics, which means the run must be over.

  “How are you feeling?” she chirps. “Adrian said you were having a nap. I remember those days, having to sleep off the hangover.”

  “I’m fine.” I don’t give her any more. I wish I could know what Lauren told Adrian during the run. Her fanged comments, always calculated, biting into unsuspecting victims.

  “That’s good. You know, I was saying to Gemma that it almost feels like old times. With you and Sloane hanging out.” She always insisted on calling Sully “Sloane” even when nobody else did.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I think everything is different now.”

  “A lot of us thought Sloane had something to do with it.” She takes a drink from a pink water bottle. “With getting to Flora. Getting in her head. You know, I only found out the weekend of graduation that Sloane slept with my boyfriend during freshman year. Remember Charlie, who I started dating after Thanksgiving?” She pushes sweaty bangs off her face. “I told you guys about him. At that Psi U party.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know.” I’m sick of Lauren. She’s the type of woman who insists that we have to empower other women, only to peel them apart and chop them up.

  “She knew. She went after him on purpose. She was all over him at a party in one of the wood-frames. Clara and Dora saw. I guess they went into a bedroom together.”

  “So what? He was the one cheating.”

  Even as I say it, I flash back to being seventeen and freshly betrayed, the image of Matt with Jessica French never fully leaving my brain, no matter how hard I tried to exorcise it. The bitterness of seeing them together at senior prom—a prom he had talked endlessly about taking me to—is still on my tongue.

  But I can’t feel sorry for Lauren. My mind so easily conjures what she wrote about me on the ACB and the rumors I know she started. As soon as we part ways, she’ll go to the others and tell them I’m a bitch. Nothing has changed.

  “Before you go defending her, hear me out. You know I went to Spence with her. Well, there was this girl Evie, who was Sloane’s best friend.”

  “Yeah, she told me about Evie. What does it matter?” I don’t want to hear her name again. I’m sure Sully raced back to her after I couldn’t keep up.

  Lauren’s forehead creases. “Well, she probably didn’t tell you the whole story. There was this party senior year, and Evie got wasted. Then a bunch of girls started screaming, and turns out Evie was in the bathroom, slumped over the tub. Apparently she’d OD’d on Oxy. She went into a coma and was, like, brain-dead, and her parents took her off life support a couple weeks later.”

  My first reaction is that it’s not true. I open my mouth to tell Lauren off. Evie was alive—Sully talked about her. I compared myself to her.

  But maybe I wanted to one-up a ghost.

  Lauren waits for my shock, smiling smugly. I won’t give it to her. “That’s really sad.”

  “Yeah. Sad.” Lauren pauses for dramatic emphasis. “Evie wasn’t even into drugs, just pot sometimes. And the day before that party, Sloane hooked up with Evie’s boyfriend. She obviously has a history of doing this. A lot of people pointed the finger at you with Kevin, but some of us thought it was Sloane the whole time.”

  The SS thread on the ACB. This bitch is not only insane but may also be a sociopath capable of killing people! />
  I thought the person who typed it was jealous. I never thought they were right.

  “I tried to tell you back then,” she says. “But you never wanted to listen.”

  “I already knew.” I struggle to keep doubt out of my voice. “We all did things we’re not proud of.” I want to say more to defend Sully, but my brain starts spiraling somewhere dark, to a day when Sully told me a story about a girl who overdosed at a Spence party. At least, that was her version of events.

  “Nobody’s perfect,” she says. “But she has a pattern. The girls and I saw the way she’s been looking at your husband. Just watch out, okay?”

  Almost a threat, except for the question at the end. She’s not worried about me and she never was. She loves the drama, loves to find the fissure between two people. She liked when Sully and I stopped being friends. She’s trying to do the same thing now—put a wedge between us.

  I won’t let her. Sully didn’t do anything to Evie. It’s not like she could make a girl take too many drugs. I know Sully’s brand of persuasion better than anyone. She could put ideas in someone’s head, but it was up to everyone else to follow through.

  Just like I did.

  “See you at the dedication, right? Then you’ll be at dinner? We should all sit together. Like old times.” Lauren’s tone is light again.

  “Maybe,” I say. Except in old times, she would have made sure I knew my spot was at the very end of the table.

  She actually has the nerve to blow me a kiss as we enter the Nics, and that’s when I decide to bring it up, no matter how much I know I shouldn’t.

  “Why are you pretending to like me? You stopped talking to me freshman year. And you called me pathetic trash. On the ACB.”

  She pauses in front of the stairwell but doesn’t turn around. “I didn’t write anything about you on there. It must have been someone else. A lot of the girls were pretty angry at you after. And you’re the one who stopped talking to me.”

  That’s not what happened. Lauren wasn’t the only girl who turned on me, but she’s the one who had the social prowess to take gossip and spread it like a disease.