Chapter Thirty-Two #2
“There is something,” I say. “I came to tell you that. I didn’t want to hide everything from you, and if you insist on knowing—”
“I don’t.” He grabs a tissue and wipes my tears. “But you said you feel as if you’re spiraling. Can I help with that? Talk through the case?”
I nod. “I have notes. And charts. And diagrams.”
He chuckles and presses his lips to mine. “Of course you do. Okay, so after dinner, you and I are going to the library and I’ll read what you have.”
—
Maddox takes his dinner to go, which is frowned on, but no one ever stops him. I eat with Allegra and Polly. Allegra’s quiet, but not in her usual way, where she’s waiting to grace us with her opinion. She’s thinking.
Polly’s worried about Isolde feeling abandoned. She wants to go visit her at the hospital again tomorrow, but I’m not sure we’d be allowed. We talk about that, and it’s a welcome distraction.
After dinner, I beg off to go “study” in the library with Maddox.
Allegra seems to wake up at that, if only to murmur “study…” with a knowing look.
Polly smiles. “I like Maddox. He’s nicer than he seemed. I have no chance of getting him on my socials though, do I?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
She shrugs. “I respect it.” She leans back. “Not that I won’t try to change it, but I respect it.”
I shake my head and excuse myself. When I reach the library, Maddox is there, in his corner spot, where people can come in and never realize they aren’t alone, as I discovered.
When I walk over, he pulls me down into a kiss.
“I’m sorry I was an asshole earlier,” he says.
“You weren’t an asshole. Like you said, everyone’s been handling you with kid gloves. I don’t want to do that. But I also don’t want to pull Jenna into this theory based on what might just be an unrelated comment.”
I look up at him. “Also, to be clear, whether it’s related or not, Jenna did a good thing, Maddox. A really good thing. Her Dux liked her a lot.”
I tell her what he said about her marching to her own drum, and he’s quiet as he assimilates that. Then I take the chair opposite his and send him everything I have that doesn’t connect to Jenna.
—
Maddox reads what I have. We don’t want to openly discuss it, so we send messages, even though we’re sitting only a few feet apart.
When he’s ready, I tell him about Jenna and her interest in the attack on the Hephaestus contender, Taylor.
I don’t connect the dots. I need him to make his own decisions.
While he’s doing that, the double doors give a soft whoosh.
“Just me,” Allegra calls.
“Over here.”
She walks toward us and stops. “You two really are studying. I feel as if I should be disappointed. I just wanted to let you know that if you get any messages from Isolde tonight, do not be alarmed.”
“Uh…”
She waves her phone. “She sent me a video, telling me how much I mean to her and how she really needed me to know that.”
I push to my feet. “Is she okay? Did something happen? Is she—?”
“—well and truly medicated.”
I exhale. “For a second there, I thought she’d taken a turn for the worse.”
“That’s why I’m warning you. My first reaction was the same—that something was wrong and she was making final calls. Then I saw her eyes and heard the slurring. She’s not dying. Just…”
“High as a kite,” Maddox says.
“Yes. So I don’t know whether she’ll message you, but be ready. Also, after this, I’ve changed my mind. Isolde is obviously lonely, and we should visit her tomorrow. I’ll speak to Ms. Dimitriou.”
“Sounds good.”
“Then I’ll leave you two alone. I’d tell you to have fun, but it’d be wasted, apparently.”
—
After Allegra leaves, Maddox stretches to tug me over to him.
He talks about Jenna, whispering too low to be heard even if someone were around.
We talk and think and talk some more. He gets where I’m heading with this—that Jenna was investigating what happened to Taylor and might have died for it.
His take is that Taylor could be connected to the rest, at least in the sense that Taylor was injured to knock them out of the race. As for Jenna being killed for digging?
“Too much?” I murmur.
He nods.
I exhale. “Good. My mind went there, of course, but it seemed too big of a stretch.”
“Because Jenna wasn’t in anyone’s way. If someone wanted to shut her down, they only needed to plant dope. Discredit anything she says and get her expelled.”
“My brain was so busy buzzing that—while I knew killing her didn’t make sense—I couldn’t figure out why.”
He shifts, arms tightening around me. “Thank you for finding that. It helped. It brought Jenna home, if that makes sense. The Jenna I knew versus the party girl who OD’d.”
“Even her Dux didn’t think it was like that. He figured she got curious and tried something new. Which I know seems suspect, when she didn’t like needles. If you want my opinion…”
“I do.”
“I think someone at the party injected her. They didn’t mean to kill her. She refused the heroin, and maybe they thought it’d be funny or maybe they were being an asshole. I don’t think she gave herself that needle, but I also don’t think whoever did meant to kill her.”
“Yeah. That’s been my theory, too. I just didn’t like how no one seemed to care that the official story didn’t make sense.
But I suppose that happens all the time, at least to people who aren’t students at an elite boarding school.
Someone gives them dope at a party, maybe against their will, and no one looks into it because they were a kid at a party with dope. ”
“It still sucks.”
“And my mother did nothing about it,” he says, his voice low. “I think that’s what I’ve been most angry about. Not what Westdale did. What my mother didn’t do. She bought the official story, and I hate that so much. It’s like she never even knew her own daughter.”
I curl into his arms and hug him, and we huddle together in the silence and the grief.