Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
None of the brochures did Kingswood justice.
The winding single-car road up the cliff that Kingswood was carved into makes it feel like you’re barreling toward something extraordinary. Like the slow, nerve-racking trek up to the crest of a roller coaster. It’s harder and harder to breathe with every wrap around the cliff, going higher and higher until it feels like I could touch the clouds. I can’t tell if it’s me, or if everyone here has to work this hard for something as simple as breath. It hitches in my throat as the mostly empty shuttle finally reaches the peak of the cliff, black iron gates waiting for us.
A man in a crisp suit nods to our driver. The badge pinned to his chest says “Security,” but I wouldn’t have thought otherwise if he’d said he was a professor.
The guard taps his knuckles against my window twice before pulling the door open. “Student ID,” he orders as light floods the back seat.
The shuttle’s only other passenger, a boy with a crew cut and a glitzy designer watch, rushes out of the car. He spent the fifteen-minute ride from the train station barking orders at someone over the phone, digging into some unlucky bastard for screwing up his flights and forcing him to take the train instead. I’d get a kick out of how red in the face he got over being stuck in business class if it wasn’t a stark reminder of how insufferable the people here will be.
I readjust the collar of my sweater—another one I don’t remember buying for Solina. Lilac this time, and softer than anything you can find at Goodwill. Based on the label, it cost more than two weeks’ worth of paychecks. She’d mentioned in passing that a friend had let her borrow some stuff for a party. On the cuff of the sleeve are three monogrammed letters—PMW. The same three letters on the cuff of the cream sweater Solina wore the night she died. I’d shrugged them off as a designer label then, but when I spotted them again, and again, and again—almost a dozen sweaters I’d never seen before carefully hung up in the closet—I realized they may have been something else entirely. Initials.
With my shuttle-mate already barreling toward campus, I reach into the pocket of my blazer for Solina’s ID. The first official test. My first performance. The guard had barely glanced at Business Class Boy’s ID, but he takes his time with mine.
Solina Grace Flores, Year 12, Kincaid Hall
Leaning in with a scrutinizing scowl, the guard scans the details twice before examining my face. Something tells me his suspicions don’t have to do with whether I should be here, but whether I deserve to. With my weathered peacoat and torn stockings, I’ll never blend in the way I want to.
The guard finds whatever it is he’s looking for. “Best of luck this semester, Ms. Flores.”
I nod because I don’t trust my voice. Not yet. I’m still jagged and raw and you can hear it in the way I clip my words. Solina’s voice was warm and sweet like her morning coffee. It’ll take time to learn how to capture that.
Once the guard steps aside, the iron gates part. I take my first hesitant steps onto Kingswood’s grounds with a stomach full of knots and my nails digging into my palms.
To say the campus is intimidating wouldn’t do it justice either.
The campus is as gray as the sky. From the buildings to the benches to the students milling around, it’s as if the entire cliff top has been sapped of color. Even the ivy snaked across every building’s edges is a green so dark it’ll vanish after sunset. Gargoyles and cracked angels loom over the campus from sills and tower spires, their hollow stone eyes watching me no matter which way I turn.
After miles and miles of flat dirt roads whipping past the train’s window, barren of life except for the occasional coyote, the greenery here feels like an offense against nature. Nothing natural should be able to exist this high up, yet everywhere you turn there’s something new to ogle at. Like Kingswood tore everything lush and fruitful from the ground and kept it for itself.
Once the iron gates close behind me, I pull my jacket tighter around my torso, burying my face in my frayed yellow scarf. A handful of students are wandering across the grounds, most of them dragging suitcases behind them. Solina didn’t leave me many breadcrumbs to follow. No social media accounts. No notes hidden beneath the mattress. With her phone lost somewhere in the river, I didn’t even have her texts to go off of.
Having no evidence means everyone on campus is a suspect. Chills surge down my spine as I rush toward Kincaid Hall, checking over my shoulder every few steps. I’m surrounded by possibilities. And with every possibility comes a threat.
All the work I’d done studying the map of Kingswood I found online doesn’t mean much once I’m on the campus itself. The winter is as bitter here as it is in Luster, but by the time I finally manage to track down Solina’s dorm, I’m drenched in a layer of sweat.
The hall lights flicker as I dig through my pocket for Solina’s key ring—one of the few things they were able to salvage from her body. I hesitate with my hand on the knob, unsure what to expect behind the locked door. Maybe her killer, perched on her bed waiting to see if I was ballsy enough to try this batshit stunt. Or, more likely, her roommate, Claudia.
But instead I find nothing. Silence, and dust floating in the midday sunlight. The room is neat, comfortable. Not exactly luxurious in comparison to the beauty of the campus itself, but twice the size of our bedroom in Luster. It doesn’t take much to figure out which side of the room is Solina’s. The flower-patterned bedspread we bought at a clearance sale. Posters from the backs of magazines we swiped at the grocery store. Rubber vending machine toys and vanilla-scented candles on the windowsill. Small pieces of a home she’d built for herself.
I run my fingers along the blush-pink flowers lining her comforter before curling up on top of it, burying my face in her pillow. The smell is stronger here. Eucalyptus shampoo, peach tea, and lavender perfume. The sheets are cold but lived-in—messily tucked together because Solina never had enough patience to make the bed properly. I know I can’t linger. Last I checked, I had fifteen minutes to get to the senior assembly at the chapel across campus. That’s probably down to ten by now.
But I stay there a little longer. Dig my nose into the pillow a little harder. Hold the smell and warmth and feel of her a little closer.
It shouldn’t be possible for someone who’s gone to still feel so alive.