Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Good news: thanks to Dede, I wasn’t expelled on the spot. Bad news: there’s no way Tiffany will keep helping me with homework answers.
I’ve never been on the receiving end of one of her infamous grudges, but I’ve lived with her long enough to know that it’s not pretty. Unless I’m screaming bloody murder in her voicemail inbox, she’s icing me out until I come crawling back home.
The train ticket burns a hole in my pocket. Behind my eyes is a gleaming countdown to tomorrow. A little more than a day doesn’t come close to enough time to finish my story here. There are still too many unanswered questions. Who slipped the note under my door? Why is there a camera in Gabe and Hunter’s room? And, of course, who hurt my sister? This place is full of secrets—any one of which could lead me to the answers I need—but I don’t have time to go down every rabbit hole.
Playing Solina has worn me thin, wrecked my body more than any double shift. I know I can’t do it forever, but I’m not willing to give up just because I’m tired.
But what happens if I don’t wind up on that platform Saturday afternoon? Will I find Solina’s killer and come home, bruised and bloody, to an empty apartment? A home that doesn’t belong to me anymore?
My grip around the pen in my hand tightens until the cap digs into my palm. I can’t rush this. Moving quickly means more room for mistakes, and I’ve already got two strikes against me. Ticket or no ticket, the clock on my time here is running out. Unless I want to go home exhausted and empty-handed, I need to finish this.
“Someone’s having a rough morning,” Poppy sings as she flops onto her bed.
As a thank-you for trekking to her dorm this morning to go over her essays, Poppy set up a breakfast spread that makes the dining hall look lackluster. Sliced bagels with a variety of cream cheeses are laid out across her desk, along with freshly sliced fruit and an assortment of pastries towered high on a three-tier display fit for tea with the royal family. Thankfully, she didn’t see through my half-assed comments and was grateful for my “eye-opening” input. In the few free spaces on the desk are my textbooks and worksheets, my everything bagel with scallion cream cheese sitting untouched as I scan Poppy’s calculus notes that she graciously let me borrow.
“Just a lot to catch up on,” I mumble as I toss down her notebook. Just as I figured, her neat handwriting isn’t the match I’m looking for.
So far, my second visit to Poppy’s room hasn’t been as productive as the first. The room is pristine, without so much as a loose thread on the fuzzy pink carpet out of place. Anything worth seeing has been carefully tucked away. The most interesting thing I’ve spotted in the half hour I’ve been here is a prescription acne medication in her desk drawer.
“Spring semester’s the wooooorst.” She groans dramatically. “Isn’t senior year supposed to be easy? What’s the point of making us do all this? By the time we get our grades, we’ll have already gotten into college. Just let us … I don’t know, watch movies or something.”
I shrug as I turn to my own calculus notes, the words and symbols on the page blurring the longer I look at them. Playing a confused, defeated student is easier than playing Solina—it doesn’t take much for me to look completely out of my depth.
Out of the corner of my eye, I peek over at where Poppy is scrolling through her phone, brainstorming ways to get her to leave it behind long enough for me to get a good look at it, when she speaks up again.
“If you want, I can get you some Addies,” she says without looking up.
Not what I was hoping for. “Addies?”
She reaches into her bedside drawer and tosses me a baggie full of peach pills. The exact same I’d found beneath Solina’s bed. “Adderall, duh. What, do you live under a rock?”
It shouldn’t still sting, knowing that Solina took shortcuts. I saw it for myself when I opened the hems of her skirts. What hurts more is watching the cracks form in the version of her that lives in my memories. In Luster I would’ve boasted that Solina could do it all. Even last week, I was still putting her on a pedestal. Refusing to consider that she might not be as different from her classmates as I wanted her to be.
And maybe that’s what killed her. Trying to live up to my expectations.
I quickly shake off that line of thought. Can’t let Tiffany get to me. “I’m good, thanks,” I mutter, and toss the bag back to her.
“Oh, c’mon.” She comes to sit beside me on the edge of her desk, her thigh dangerously close to an open tub of hummus. “I know being Little Miss Mary Sue is your schtick, but it’s not a big deal. Seriously.”
The look I give her answers for me. Something softens inside me. If Solina was taking the pills after all, at least she was being discreet about it. She may not have known not to play with vices, but she knew not to mess with the kind of gamble that could get her expelled.
Poppy rolls her eyes. “Look, all I’m saying is if it’s good enough for your new bestie, it’s probably good enough for you, Your Highness.”
There’s no one here I’d consider a best friend, or, from what I can tell, that Solina would have either. “Who?”
Poppy snorts before hopping off the desk and walking toward her closet, changing out of her matching pajama set along the way. “So, you didn’t hear it from me, but …” She pokes her head out of the closet, her top unbuttoned. “Claudia bought some off of Gabe last semester.”
Shock must be written all over my face, based on the way she grins. “I know, right?”
“That … doesn’t sound like her,” I say, even if I’m not sure that’s true. The Claudia I’ve gotten to know doesn’t strike me as the type to break the rules, but then again, I thought the same thing about Solina.
“That’s what I said.” She disappears back into the closet. “But I swear, that’s what Gabe told us. Even he didn’t believe it at first when she asked.”
My throat tightens at the thought of it—Claudia, a ghost of a girl, meeting Gabe in a dimly lit hallway or behind a crumbling building. Slapping cash into his hand for a bag full of risks with sky-high consequences. The thought doesn’t compute, glitching like a corrupted file. Poppy has no reason to lie, but I can’t find it in me to believe her. It doesn’t make sense, but nothing here does.
“If you change your mind, let me know.” Poppy comes out of the closet clad in a plush pink robe. She shoots off a text before setting her phone down on the edge of the vanity. “Give me ten minutes to shower and then we can head out.”
The door to the en suite bathroom closes behind her and I’m left with my reeling thoughts, a dozen questions, and, I slowly realize, Poppy’s phone.
Finally, something goes right.
I lean back slightly, carefully glancing over at the bathroom to ensure that the door is fully closed. Moments later I hear the squeak of the shower roaring to life and the metal clang of the shower curtain. Biting my lip, I tentatively pick up the phone, prepared to hold it up to my face and pray my Face ID wasn’t deleted.
But the phone is already unlocked.
Brow furrowed, I keep my thumb on the screen, ensuring it won’t lock on me. She left it open on a text thread between her and Hunter.
What’s your problem? the most recent text from Hunter reads, from yesterday morning after breakfast. Read, but unanswered.
Farther up the chain, the conversation starts with Poppy sending Hunter a selfie prominently displaying the hickey he’d called her out for at breakfast. Her face is barely in frame, her neck and cleavage—accentuated by a lacy pink bra—are the primary focus. She’s throwing up her middle finger, hammering in the sentiment with the brief text below the photo: fuck you.
lol my bad babe , reads Hunter’s reply.
Surprisingly, there’s no pit lodged in my throat or twisting feeling in my stomach at the reveal. If anything, all I can feel is excitement.
There’s no hiding the way Poppy looks at Hunter—like the world starts and ends with him. Based on the way he brushes her off like a loose thread, I didn’t think the feeling was mutual. Clearly, Hunter doesn’t care much about treating people with dignity, though.
Still, a part of me aches for Solina, wondering if Hunter was sneaking around with Poppy the entire time they were together. A new rage simmers beneath my skin, aimed pointedly at Hunter. Hadn’t he already hurt Solina enough?
Poppy has never been Solina’s friend—not really. The borrowed clothes and cheek kisses sugarcoated the truth sitting beneath the surface. Relieved as I feel to find a new concrete lead, a motive as clich é as can be, I can’t imagine a world where someone like Hunter is worth killing for.
Did Poppy want me to find this? There’s no way someone as smart as her would be careless enough to leave her phone inches away from me unlocked on an incriminating text thread unless this was something she wanted me to know. But why? For revenge? To get me to finally end things with Hunter so she can have him for herself?
Or was it a warning?
Quickly, I close out the texts and return to the home screen. In the background, a summer-tanned Hunter and Poppy grin at me, watching as I swipe through the home screen for something that can help me.
Keeping my neck craned toward the bathroom, I open up her banking app. I can feel the seconds tick by as I scroll through the well-over a hundred charges she’s made on her card since we got here. Designer boots and moisturizers, an Emirates flight worth more than our rent. I slow down once I reach December, carefully examining each charge. All I need is something that breaks the pattern. It doesn’t even have to put her in Luster, so long as it puts her anywhere but her parents’ place in California. A gas refill, or a parking ticket.
My mouth goes dry as I reach the single charge on December 20. Sixty dollars at a yoga studio.
In Los Angeles.
The steady hum of the shower switches off. I don’t have time to sit in the disappointment, or find a loophole that still puts the smoking gun in Poppy’s perfectly manicured hands. They all have alibis. Her, Hunter, and Gabe. And not even the shitty kind money could buy them. I don’t let myself entertain the thought that there may have been some truth to what Tiffany said. There’s still the note. Someone here still has a reason to want me—whoever I am to them—gone.
Darkness creeps into the edges of my vision, the room slowly going out of focus. It’s not from the thought of a murderer coming after me. Or the thought of having to fight them off or die trying. It’s that I found this many leads at all. That this many people had a reason to hurt her.
“Mind if we swing by Hunter’s before we head out?” Poppy asks as she steps out of the bathroom, her hair secured in a silk shower cap. “I’ve gotta grab something from him real qu—”
“Why do you like him?” I interrupt, my heart getting in the way of my head.
That’s the part I still don’t understand. Why would girls like Solina and Poppy—beautiful and vibrant—fall for someone like Hunter? Looks can’t be the end of it. No one’s worth the type of pain he’s put both of them through. Not money either. Poppy has plenty of that. What about him lured them in?
Poppy wrinkles her nose in confusion. “Like who?”
“Him.” I hold up her unlocked phone, open to the home screen photo of the two of them at the edge of a pool. The lack of surprise on her face confirms my suspicion. She wanted me to see those texts.
Instead of hanging her head in shame, or coming up with an excuse for why she’s been sneaking around with my supposed boyfriend behind my back, she shrugs. The faintest trace of a smirk tugs at the corner of her lips.
“Why do you?” she asks without looking at me.
That’s not something I can answer, even as Solina. I could come up with some half-assed reply about his hair or his abs or his smile, but it wouldn’t take much to see right through me. Not when so much of me still wants to hurt him for what he did to her.
Poppy doesn’t wait for me to reply, taking back her phone and texting as if nothing just happened between us.
“He records girls in his room, y’know,” she says as casually as if she’d asked me if I wanted to grab breakfast.
“W-what?” I reply, but my brain connects the dots before she can answer.
The camera on the bookshelf. The one I knocked over when I was looking through Gabe’s things.
“It’s creepy at first, but sorta hot once you’re used to it,” she says with a smug smile that tells me she knows that firsthand. “You could learn a lot from what’s on it. If you wanted to.”
I don’t need to see anything to know what’s there. Dozens of faceless girls. Poppy. Maybe even Solina, I realize.
The thought hits me like a truck. What if that’s the last real piece of Solina left? The last recording of her voice, of her smile, of the way she’d widen her eyes to the size of saucers when she was trying to force herself to stay awake. A video of her with the boy who hurt her.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I manage to choke out, forcing myself not to dwell on the thought of Solina on that camera.
“This place is brutal. If you don’t fit the mold, they’ll chew you up and spit you out,” Poppy replies after a beat, her voice unusually cold. This is a side of her I haven’t seen—angry, wounded, but not broken. The Poppy I’ve seen at breakfast or classes or parties wasn’t someone I could imagine hurting Solina, but this Poppy, with her deep-set frown and clenched fists, seems capable of anything.
“People like him make it easier. Fitting in. Earning respect. You know that. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.” Her words feel like a knife to the throat. A threat. “He picked you for now, but neither of us will make it to the finish line. We’ll never be enough for him. The ‘right’ sort of girl,” she says with an eerie sense of finality.
“Why are you doing this?” I spit out, resisting the urge to push her against the wall and demand answers to their twisted game. “You loan me clothes, you smile in my face, you pretend I’m your friend. Why? What’s the point?”
“Because I’m sick of girls like you,” she snaps back, angry like I’ve never seen her before—something wild behind her eyes. “Acting like you’re one of us just because you’re his for now, but we all know why you’re here. Why you want to be with him,” she spits through gritted teeth. “You’re not one of us.”
“And why do you care?” I reply, fingers curling into fists. “You said yourself he’s not going to end up with either of us anyway.”
She lets out a cold, cruel laugh. “You think you’re so different because he parades you around. Because you get to meet his parents. But I promise you, you’re the same as everyone else.” I’m frozen in place, pinned by her gaze as she leans in to whisper, “I know how fun it is. Getting to be on top. Enjoy it. It’ll be over soon.” Before I can reply, she steps back into her closet.
Her words sink through me like a stone, my limbs growing heavier the longer I sit with what she’s said. If I hadn’t seen the proof of her alibi minutes earlier, I’d go after her. Press the switchblade to her flawless skin and hold her tight until she tells me why she really hated my sister so much. But I spot something out of the corner of my eye that yanks my attention away from her.
Beneath Poppy’s calculus notebook are her notes from the chem exam last week. Her familiar bubbly handwriting tucked between several additional photocopies of the answer sheet. And another set of notes, not written by her.
“Anyway, let me know if you want the Addies or not,” Poppy calls out as she reemerges from the closet fully dressed in her uniform seconds after I shove the stack of papers into my bag. “Or you could always get some from your roomie, if she has any left over,” she adds with a wink.
Her tone switch is jarring, and the reminder of Claudia makes my blood run cold. I’m caught between wanting to pry for more and finding Claudia to warn her.
When Poppy’s eyes meet mine, I don’t see the same vapid, pretty girl I came looking for this morning. I see a hunger in her hazel eyes, a cunning edge to her smile. If I were another person, I might find it threatening, but I know the truth now.
She’s not a killer. Just a girl, looking in all the wrong places for a way to feel invincible.
Just like my sister.
“I’m good, thanks,” I mumble as I throw my bag over my shoulder and rush toward the door.
“Oh, come on,” Poppy whines, as if she didn’t just admit that she’s sleeping with my “boyfriend” less than a minute ago. “Don’t get all weird about it. It’s chill, seriously. Everyone does it.”
Even if that’s true, I still have no interest. “See you in class,” I call out under my breath and storm out of the room before she can question where I’m going.
Quick as I can, I rush out into the stairwell, leaning against the wall once I’m sure Poppy didn’t follow me. I pull the notes out of my bag, taking a closer look at the stack I swiped from her desk. Pages torn from a notebook—the notes Poppy took from Gabe at the library. Heavy chicken-scratch-like handwriting, so rough it’s almost pressed through the page.
The same as the letter slipped under my door.