Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My first few classes aren’t any better, but thankfully not any worse either. Calculus is more straightforward. No winter break assignment, but we’re hit with a stack of worksheets as thick as my wrist the second we’re seated. The teacher, a stout middle-aged woman with a heavy Russian accent, tells us we’ll need to hand in the entire packet by Monday. Advanced Spanish II is the only place I’m able to get my bearings. I don’t know shit about grammar, but I know the language like I know how to ride a bike. Even if it’s been a minute since I last spoke it, it always comes rushing back.
I brace myself during chemistry, waiting for Mrs. Sutherland to ask why Solina never showed up for her apprenticeship as planned, but she doesn’t so much as glance up at me when she calls roll. No other teachers approach me in the halls with concern, wondering where I was. Another lie—this time to my face. It doesn’t hurt so much as throw me off. What did Solina gain from making up an apprenticeship? I never would’ve known the difference. I didn’t have eyes on her once she left Luster.
Unless there was a reason she needed to get back here early. And another that made her decide not to.
By the lunch bell, I’m drained but relieved that I finally get a break. The day is only half over, and I already have a shot against me. Last month I’d called bullshit on Kingswood starting their semester on a Friday. With tuition prices as high as theirs, they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with one-day school weeks. But, today, I’m grateful. If I can barely make it through a day, how am I going to make it through a week?
Tiffany doesn’t take twenty-four-hour radio silence well. Our text thread is a one-sided manifesto that’s kept my phone buzzing every hour since I woke up.
did you get there okay?
find anything?
hellooooooooooooooooo?
if youre ignoring me I swear to god lu
bitch HELLO you could be dead right now and I wouldn’t even know
im sorry for calling you a bitch
especially if youre dead
(please don’t be dead)
Once the lunch bell rings, I finally text her back.
Not dead
While everyone races out of the room, I snap a picture of the top page of my Calculus packet and send that too.
Think you could answer these?
Three gray bubbles appear almost instantly.
seriously
you ghost me for a whole day
got me thinking you might be dead
JUST TO POP UP AND ASK ME TO DO YOUR HOMEWORK FOR YOU????
I give it thirty seconds. A new text appears.
ill send you answers tonight
For once, the theatrics are welcome. I’d take Tiffany’s drama over whatever spell the kids here are under any day. No wonder Solina always came home with bags under her eyes. It’s practically part of the uniform.
The classroom has emptied out by the time I toss my phone into my bag. A woman in a muted sweater and pencil skirt hovers by the door, biting her nail and shifting from foot to foot. I hurry out to give her the room, but she steps into my path as soon as I’m close enough for her to whisper.
“Solina,” she says, and my heart leaps at someone finally calling me— her —by the right name. “I was hoping you might have a couple minutes for a check-in?”
Her voice is gentle but hesitant. Not afraid but … concerned.
Everyone here is a stranger, but there’s a kindness to her. Unlike the other adults here, her dark brown skin isn’t cracked with wrinkles, despite the gray streaks in her neat bun. When her eyes meet mine, I don’t flinch and brace to hold my ground like I had with Mr. Benjamin.
“Yeah. Sure.”
She nods, giving me a tight-lipped but earnest smile before turning on her heels. I follow her down the hall and up two flights of stairs to a floor that seems detached from the rest of the building. The polished wood banisters lead to a dull gray corridor, its walls missing the portraits of past Kingswood deans or paintings of the grounds through the years. All they have in the way of d é cor is a water cooler with a busted top, the plastic warped like it got bashed in with a baseball bat. A redundant Out of Order sign hangs from the dented plastic, collecting dust. Guess it won’t be back in order anytime soon.
The warm glow from the lower floors’ lamps and occasional chandeliers is replaced by harsh fluorescent lighting. The same kind that always flickers in the diner’s bathroom, no matter how many times we replace the bulb. A simple bronze plaque at the base of the stairs deems this the Wellness Wing.
Nothing about this says “wellness” to me.
“I know things must be busy with all the first-day chaos, but I promise this’ll be quick,” the woman says as she ushers me into the room. Charlisa Harold, according to the nameplate at the edge of her cluttered desk.
Three framed diplomas sit on the wall behind her chair. A bachelor and a master’s in social work. A second master’s in psychology. A younger, less gray version of her smiles up at me from the photo on her desk, holding on to a woman who must be her wife with one hand and cradling a chunky tabby cat with the other.
It feels familiar. The illusion of warmth and openness. They want me to think this is someone I can trust. But I’ve already made that mistake once.
Mrs. Sanchez’s office at my old middle school felt the same way. Diplomas lining the walls. Pictures of her dog snuggled in a basket, or her two-year-old dressed up as a lobster. I was never an amazing student, but she was the only person at that school who made me feel like they weren’t disappointed I wasn’t as bright as Solina. I had my talents, she said. I’m still figuring out what those are.
I didn’t mean to tell her. When she pulled me into her office after Mami died to ask me how I was adjusting, I told her the truth. That it was hard, but Papi had it harder. I didn’t tell her everything, that he’d broken ten years of sobriety, because I still didn’t understand what that meant. But I said enough. That he was gone most days, started crashing on the couch. Sometimes brought around people I didn’t know or trust. She could read between the lines—see everything I wanted to say but couldn’t. Within a week, a social worker was knocking on our door. Three days later, they took us away.
I’m not falling for that trap again.
“How was your break?” Charlisa asks as she settles into her seat, shoving protein bar wrappers and empty coffee cups into the waste bin beside her desk. “Manage to get any rest?”
I yelled at my sister until my lungs ached.
The last time I saw her was at the morgue.
If I close my eyes too long, I see her body.
I can still smell the blood.
No one will listen to me.
There’s a knife at the bottom of my bag and I want to use it more than I want to be alive.
“It was fine.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she doesn’t push either. Just gives my bandaged hand and the fading scar on my forehead a wary once-over. I keep my eyes on my nails, picking at the chewed-up edges of my thumb.
“That’s good to hear,” she says quietly, taking an almost minute-long pause before continuing. “I wanted to check in with you to see how you’re feeling going into this semester.”
Another pause stretches between us. I shift my eyes up to meet the concern in hers. A chill runs up my spine, settling at the back of my throat. Could Solina have talked to her guidance counselor about not wanting to come back this semester? Answers suddenly feel within touching distance, sitting on the other side of the desk. All I have to do is stay calm and play the part.
“Better … I guess,” I choke out. A vague enough answer, I hope, that she’ll fill the gaps in herself.
Charlisa nods, primly folding her hands on the desk. “I know the board’s response to your case was disappointing, but remember that you’re not alone here.” She leans in, her expression serious but kind. “Even if the outcome wasn’t what we wanted, we can still take measures to keep you safe. And you can always come to me if you need to talk. Everything here remains confidential.”
I swallow hard, digging my fingers into my palms to keep them from shaking. Measures to keep her safe? Too little too late.
Still, my gut was right. Someone had hurt her.
“We’ve made some adjustments to your class schedule,” she continues when I don’t respond. She flips open the folder sitting in front of her. I glimpse the label—Solina Grace Flores. Her folder is thicker than the others cluttering the desk. “You’ve been removed from any shared classes for the remainder of the semester. You’ll also be placed in different advisory groups for your senior thesis and college counseling sessions.”
My heart races, my fingers itching to snatch the file so I can find out more. I run through the blur of faces in the classes I’ve had so far, trying to lock on any noticeable absences. But what if the face I’m looking for is one I haven’t seen yet?
Silence stretches between us for miles, and my heart pounds so loud it makes my shoulders tremble. I think of Solina’s vacant eyes. The split in her lip, the black blood on her chin. The answer could be sitting less than a foot away from me and I’m expected to just walk away. My mind races with pleas and excuses, but fear and something more desperate than any hunger I’ve ever felt takes over.
And I burst into tears.
Once the dam breaks, it’s impossible to stop. All the things I’ve swallowed down spill onto Charlisa’s desk like the contents of my stomach. Sobs rip through my throat, making me ache as my body shakes from the force of it. All the pain and the anger and the fear pour out of the hole Solina left behind when she slammed the door on me that night. All-consuming and blinding as a fever.
It feels like the worst kind of pain.
It feels like relief.
“I-I’m sorry,” I choke out in between heaves for breath. Charlisa quickly jumps into action, pulling tissues out of the box in a drawer beside her and handing them to me. “I-I just n-need a m-minute.”
“Can I get you anything?” she asks after I accept her offered tissue.
“S-some water?”
Even when I’ve torn myself open like a half-healed scab, my mission is clear. I’m here for her, to find out who hurt her.
Charlisa’s controlled composure breaks as her mouth hangs open and half words stammer out. That cooler out in the hallway won’t help her, and the vending machines are at least three floors down. “Of course.” She shuffles out of her seat, grabbing a key ring and the only coffee cup without a lipstick stain on the rim. At the door, she whips back around to face me. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nod and make a show out of whimpering into the wad of tissues balled up in my fist.
Once the door clicks shut, I inhale sharply and exhale slowly. There’s a reason I never let myself give in the way I just did. Opening up means leaving scars. The edges of me sear and burn as I struggle to pull myself together. The image of Solina’s body in the morgue lingers as I struggle to my feet. My knees are wobbly, unsteady, but at least I’m up at all. The last thing I have is time.
On the other side of the desk, I pull my phone out and spread Solina’s file across the flat surface. My vision is still too tearstained to make out the handwriting, but a set of photocopies stops me in my tracks.
Photos of Solina.
With finger-shaped bruises on her throat.
The dark purple marks don’t stop at her neck. There are dozens. Scratch marks on her shoulders and thumbprint bruises on her hip. The shape of another person’s grip staining the crescent moon on her wrist.
It takes every bit of strength I have left not to tear the copies in half, ball them up, and destroy them so no one has to see my sister the way I was forced to see her. Beaten and bruised like she wasn’t the most beautiful person I knew. Like she couldn’t light up rooms with her smile and shock you into silence with her wit.
Rage blooms red-hot in the pit of my stomach. I was right. I was right. I was right.
And now that I’ve found the proof, I wish I wasn’t.
I take pictures of everything. The forms, the notes, the photos that make my body coil so tight the lightest breeze could snap me. Any disappointment I’d felt at not immediately finding who I was looking for dissolves into fresh spite. Someone here hurt my sister. And someone here is going to fucking pay.
The orange label on the folder beneath Solina’s catches my eye, the first name scribbled out with red pen.
Isabella “Izzy” Tucker. The girl from Solina’s dorm who also didn’t make it back to Kingswood this semester.
As little as I know about her, Izzy’s and Solina’s stories are too similar not to jump at the chance to find out more. After I’ve rearranged Solina’s file back to how I found it, I flip open Izzy’s. It’s sparser than Solina’s, just two pages instead of five, and no photos. I snap as many pictures as I can, ignoring the pounding in my ears as I double- and triple-check that everything’s exactly the way Charlisa left it.
I settle back into my seat with barely a second to spare. I’m able to cover my gasp as a sob when Charlisa steps back into the room, and toss my balled-up tissues into the wastebasket.
“I should go,” I mumble as I head for the door, making sure to grab the mini water bottle in her hand, but Charlisa stops me in my path.
“Remember that you’re not alone in this,” she whispers, as if the walls are listening. “You’re safe here.”
That’s never been true. And now I have proof of it.
I give her a stiff nod, wiping at the tears still clinging to my lashes and hoping she doesn’t notice how badly my hands are shaking. As soon as she steps out of my way, I make a break for it, rushing as fast as my lungs will let me down the stairs and out of the building.
Nowhere on campus feels safe, not with this kind of truth searing a hole in my pocket. Claudia’s probably at lunch with everyone else, but even the empty dorms don’t feel safe enough. I walk along the edge of the campus until I reach a row of benches overlooking the sweeping view of the trees at the base of the mountain. Fog rolls over the branches, stretching out endlessly until all I can see is white smoke. Peering over the edge makes my stomach swoop. All that’s standing between me and a three-thousand-foot drop is a chipped stone barrier that barely reaches my waist.
It’s no wonder Kingswood kids think they’re so important. They’re already on top of the world.
Checking over my shoulder that no one’s around, I huddle on the closest bench and unlock my phone. It’s tough enough to make out the writing on the tiny screen, and even tougher when my hands won’t stop shaking long enough to let me read. I pinch the screen and zoom in as far as it’ll let me, carefully reading through every single word.
It’s a report, submitted to the Kingswood Board of Trustees in November.
REPORT OF ABUSE: Case #QC10482
JANE DOE, a student at Kingswood Academy, who requests that all names be redacted until further action is taken, submitted a formal report of abuse by another Kingswood student (heretofore known as JOHN DOE), on October 13. The incident involved a sexual encounter in which Jane did not, or was unable to, give informed consent.
Every word tears a new piece of me open, leaving me raw to the bitter sting of the wind. My knuckles are white around my phone, dried and flaking as the chill seeps through all my cracks. Reading takes more out of me than I expect, each paragraph like pulling teeth.
But I keep going. I read every page, study every photo. The bruises, the cuts, the wounds that’ll stay with her forever because someone killed her before they could heal. A boy who never listened to her. Who took and took and took until it brought her to this. To a box in the ground and a grudge on my shoulders that’ll never leave. Even after whoever did this is in the ground with her. Soon enough, a new unanswered question grips me in a choke hold.
Why didn’t she tell me?
It rings in my ears like the roar of the chapel bells every hour and sinks into my skin like claws. Someone did this to her, and she didn’t think she could tell me?
The answer hits me like a sucker punch to the gut, all the breath flying out of me in a puff of icy smoke.
She did try to tell me. And I wasn’t willing to listen.