The Girl You Know

Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Of course it was him. Out of everyone here, Gabe had the most to gain if Solina was out of the picture. Poppy may get Hunter to herself, but she’s right. Solina wouldn’t have him for long. Hunter would move on within a week, but Gabe would relish her disappearance. Finally snatch the Hightower Fellowship—focusing all the hard work you needed to spend on academics on pushing her out instead.

Another person who didn’t kill her but hurt her all the same.

Buying drugs off Gabe may be the norm here, but I know someone like Claudia would pay a much higher price if Dean Hughes found out. If Poppy knows she bought off Gabe, then she’s probably not the only one. I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t talk someone out of making a bad decision. It didn’t work with Papi, and it probably won’t work now if this is what Claudia’s determined to do, but the least I can do is warn her. Before Dean Hughes finds his next scapegoat.

And before Gabe can get rid of me.

The Robert L. Grant Concert Hall is a hulking beast of a building. The red brick stretches on for what feels like miles, thin towers dotted along the exterior walls like commas. Large windows and ornate balconies decorate every other floor. It’s one of Kingswood’s many crown jewels, a Gothic feat of architecture to impress the donors, alums, and parents who drag themselves to campus for graduation or the occasional performance.

Inside, the concert hall is as massive as the fa c ade promises. The lobby’s gilded ceiling takes my breath away when I first step inside, the royal-blue-and-gold trim like something out of a palace. It’s easy to see how Claudia can lose herself here. If I weren’t here for a reason, I’d stop and take in the grandness of it all—the marvel that beauty like this exists in a place where the only people who’ll witness it are the type who never bother to look up.

Off the lobby is a maze of hallways. I follow the signs to the practice rooms down in the basement. Wide windows peek into the rows of soundproofed rooms, bright white blinds pulled down over some of them. I pass a handful of occupied rooms, no one looking up from their instruments as I walk by. The hall is soundless except for my footsteps. It’s eerie, watching fingers move rapidly across keys and strings without hearing a single sound. I move quickly through the halls, scanning each room for any sign of Claudia.

Music breaks the silence. The opening notes of a cello piece that’s equal parts slow and melancholy. I follow the music back the way I came, up the stairs and down a hall leading to a large set of cracked-open double doors. I peer through the opening, swallowing a gasp as I take in what must be the main performance hall. A sea of plush velvet seats surrounds a brightly lit stage, adorned with heavy red-and-gold curtains. The ceiling sweeps into an arch that stretches so high up I have to crane my neck to see it, letting the music travel through the room as if on a wave.

Seated at the center of the spotlight is Claudia.

Her eyes are closed, her head swaying back and forth with the rhythm of her body. Every flick of her wrist, press of her fingers, twitch of her jaw, is entirely in sync in a way I’ve never seen before. The music flows through her as if it’s coursing through her veins, controlling each movement like she’s a puppet on strings.

It’s so captivating I don’t notice the blood.

As I step farther into the hall and closer to Claudia, I see it clearly. Dark red droplets trickle down her wrists, staining the cuff of her wrinkled button-up. I don’t snap out of the music’s spell until she pulls her hand back, a sweeping blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gesture as she readjusts her grip, staining the lapel of her shirt.

“Claudia,” I call out, but my voice is buried under the music. The closer I get, the more I can make out—the blood soaking through the Band-Aids wrapped around three of her fingers and dried under her cracked fingernails. The subtle tremble in her left hand that, even this close up, seems like it’s a part of the music itself.

“Claudia!” I shout this time, loud enough for my voice to echo along with the chords she’s playing.

She doesn’t so much as blink, her eyes still closed as she leans into every note. The piece takes a discordant turn, her fingers moving across the strings in a blur, and I break into a run.

“Stop it!” I yell as I storm the stage. She doesn’t notice me until I’m pulling her wrist back, the bow slipping out of her hand and clattering to the ground.

When the music cuts off, she slumps forward like she’s been unplugged, her body sagging with each labored breath. I take her hand in mine, calluses and worn bandages scratching against my skin. Her left hand is still poised on the strings, as if waiting for the signal to keep playing, a drop of blood clinging to her fingertip.

“You can stop,” I whisper, but she doesn’t respond until I reach for her other hand.

“I can’t.” She pulls away from me, wiping the blood off on her skirt and reaching for the bow. I’m not able to grab it before she can, but I manage to kick it out of her reach, my shadow stretching over her as I step between her and the spotlight. Her eyes don’t meet mine, staring blankly at the Kingswood crest on my blazer’s breast pocket instead. “Why are you doing this?” she mutters, her voice low and hoarse like she’s just woken up.

The light I’d seen in her my first day here is snuffed out, not even a trembling flicker of a flame left. This place has bled her dry—just like it did to Solina.

“Because you’re hurt.” She doesn’t fight when I take her bloodied hand, but lets out a muffled hiss when I uncurl her palm. Two of the blisters on the pads of her fingers have burst, new blood mingling with the brown dried blood smudged on the half-healed calluses.

She stands up and carefully sets aside her cello. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter,” I protest. I don’t have any extra height or weight on her, but I’m at least quicker on my feet. I grab the bow again and hold it behind my back, taking a step back from her until I’m almost to the edge of the stage. “Let me get you some bandages, at least.”

She doesn’t budge, her attention focused on my bent arm.

“I’ll give it back after,” I offer. “But only after.”

The darkness in her eyes softens as she looks up at me with confused scrutiny. I can’t tell if she’s pissed or doesn’t know whether she should trust me, but neither matters when she rolls her shoulders back and nods.

“Fine.”

Claudia has her own pharmacy tucked under her bed. In a little pink box, the kind that should hold jewelry or makeup or knickknacks from trips with friends, are three rolls of Ace bandages, two wrist cuffs, and four boxes of Band-Aids. She pulls cotton swabs and peroxide out of her bedside drawer, tossing them onto the bed and reaching for a new box under the bed like it’s a practiced routine. I watch in silent awe as she grabs a cold compress and holds it to her shoulder before sitting down on the edge of her bed and offering up her hand to me without bothering to meet my eyes.

I dab the peroxide on a swab and run it delicately across her palm. She doesn’t wince, even when I pass over the raw, burst flesh of her fingertips. “Do you always use all this after practice?”

“No,” she replies, shrugging before adding, “Not usually.”

“What is ‘usually’?”

She bristles, crossing her arms once I set her hand back down to open a fresh bandage. There’s no green-gray tinge beneath her skin anymore, but she doesn’t look any less exhausted. “The recital is tomorrow, and the third suite isn’t where it needs to be yet.”

“You can change that in a day?” From the little I’d heard of her rehearsing, I can’t imagine anyone describing her performance as anything but spellbinding.

Once I have the bandage unfurled, she holds her hand back out begrudgingly, eyes still focused on the wall above my head. “I have to.”

“Why?” My voice trails off as I focus on wrapping the thin bandage across the angriest cluster of blisters. “It’s not like it’s an audition.”

“But it is,” she snaps, wrenching her hand out of mine like I burned her.

My heart stutters, guilt creeping down my spine as I rush to figure out how to fix things. Empathy has never been my strong suit. Solina once told me I’m as comforting as a rock. Tantrums and emotional breakdowns were reserved for Tiffany. She’d pull you into her arms and whisper exactly what you want to hear before offering you a plate of sliced fruit. All I’d ever do was stare and tell Solina I was sorry, like I was the one at fault.

I decide to give Claudia space. Opening my mouth will just make things worse. And even when I’m not supposed to be me, I can’t force myself to pull her in for a hug and apologize. Not if I don’t want to sound like a robot.

Claudia runs her uninjured hand through her hair, her breath shaky as she exhales slowly and takes another deep inhale. The same breathing exercise she walked me through the night of the storm. Without thinking, I join her. Both of us taking deep breaths in and out until it doesn’t feel like there’s a ticking time bomb sitting between us.

“This isn’t some kids’ concert,” she says once she’s calmed. “Legends are sculpted here. They told us that on the first day of rehearsal and tell us every day until we start acting like it. When people come to our performances, they’re expecting perfection. And if we give them that, doors open. Give them anything less and you might as well shoot yourself in the hand. Your career’s already dead in the water.”

Her shoulders tremble with each passing sentence, and when she finishes they drop like she’s weightless. Free of the burden of holding everything inside her.

“Oh …” Stupid , I scold myself. If I can’t pass a math test, you’d think I’d at least be able to hold a basic conversation.

“Sorry.” She tucks her hands under her armpits, curling in on herself again. “It’s just … intense.”

“That’s an understatement,” I choke out.

And, to my relief, she laughs. Not a deep belly laugh, or even a chuckle, but something bitter and hollow. It’s better than nothing. Neither of us can face one another as we let the silence grow, her looking at the ground with half a bandage on her index finger and me trying to look anywhere but at her.

“They’re not just saying it to say it, though. It’s true,” she says after what feels like eons of nothing, her voice softer now. “You blow the right person out of the water at your senior recital, and you can get the world handed to you on a platter before graduation. Slots in renowned orchestras without a formal audition. Touring opportunities. Last year’s first-chair violinist has played at Carnegie Hall six times.”

I can picture it. Any one of the names in the Kingswood brochure could easily open a dozen doors if you rubbed them the right way. Imagine what a whole room of them could do.

But this can’t be what they expect? A teenager working herself so hard she literally starts bursting at the seams. It’s not something I haven’t done. Worked double shifts on two hours of sleep because we were short on rent. Pushing my body to its limits for the sake of something impossibly enormous. But isn’t that why she’s here? Why Solina was here? Why I had to push my body so Solina could stay here? They sold us on this fantasy of ease—of doors being opened, of opportunities people like me would never be able to have, no matter how hard you worked—but none of it is easy. Not for them. Or the dozens of other scholarship kids before them, dropping like flies under the pressure. What does any of it matter if they burn themselves out before they can reach the end?

“Do you really have to do this to yourself, though? I mean, what, if you accidentally play the wrong note or you’re … I don’t know, flat or something, you’re never allowed to be a part of an orchestra for the rest of your life?”

“Not for everyone, no. The rest of the orchestra will probably play in college. Train a little more and eventually try out for conservatories.” She cuts off with a wince, her fingers, curled into half fists, twitching before falling into her lap. “But I don’t get a second chance.”

She holds her hand back out, the bandage hanging limply off her freshly bloodied finger. I go over her reply while I clean off the wound and refasten the bandage. It’s not a secret that students like her and Solina don’t get the same kind of second chances Hunter or Gabe or Poppy would have. If they even get a second chance at all.

A place like this can be make-or-break. If Solina didn’t get the Hightower Fellowship, we’d be fucked. Paying for Kingswood textbooks was rough enough—affording a whole new set for college would’ve been a nightmare. We had backup plans, we always do. Other scholarships and grants and whatever we could scrape out of people with too much money who made themselves feel better by giving it to kids they didn’t really care about. But what if that hadn’t worked either? What if Solina didn’t have the grades or the charisma or the extracurriculars to wow committees and board members into opening those doors for her? Everything we’d done—the running, the lying, the work —would’ve been for nothing.

As I wrap another bandage around Claudia’s ring finger, I delicately trace the lines of her palms. The one part of her that’s still smooth and warm to the touch.

“Then why’d you buy from Gabe Hughes?”

It’s barely a whisper, a question I already wish I’d kept to myself. It’s not that I don’t understand why she might’ve done it. Clearly Solina did the same thing, but she’s not here for me to remind her that sneaking answers in your skirt and buying pills from the campus drug dealer don’t come with the same consequences. Especially at a place so hell-bent on pretending their drug problem doesn’t exist.

Claudia’s eyes widen as she freezes in my grasp like a startled deer. “How do you know about that?”

“He told Poppy. Poppy told me.”

“Shit,” she mutters. It’s odd, hearing her curse. When she looks back up at me, the shock in her eyes has morphed into panic, her hands trembling as she grabs my arms and crowds my space. “Please, please , don’t tell anyone. I-I didn’t even wind up taking any of it.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I reply quickly, resting my hand on top of hers. Poppy keeping her mouth shut is one thing, but her secret’s at least safe with me. “And you should stay away from Gabe,” I add. “He’s up to something shady that you don’t want to be involved in.”

Whatever plan Gabe has to take out the competition for the fellowship shouldn’t involve anyone besides me, but my gut still urges me to warn her. In case she becomes what the Hightowers want—a musical prodigy who can make your body sing if you just close your eyes. There’s no telling who Gabe will try to take down next.

She swallows hard, sliding her hand out from beneath mine to tuck it under her armpit again. But she doesn’t step back, so close it makes my heart race. “Thank you.”

I swallow hard around my pounding heart, clearing my throat before asking, “Why did you buy it? If you weren’t going to use it?”

For a long time, she doesn’t say anything. Just runs a hand through her dark brown, almost black hair, her sideswept curtain bangs catching on the tips of her eyelashes. “Because this place makes you do stupid things. Things you know are wrong. But all that really matters is getting what you want.”

There’s nothing I can think to reply with, so I don’t. We’re close enough to feel the warmth of each other’s bodies but not enough to look each other in the eye. It’s the most unnerved I’ve felt since I’ve been here. Not Hunter’s hands on my body or Gabe’s glares from across the table or Poppy’s subtle but sharp comments. This. Standing a breath away from a girl I’ve been afraid of seeing up close because it just confirms what I knew even from across the room.

That she’s beautiful.

When she turns to look at me, my breath hitches. In the reflection of those golden-brown eyes, I can see myself, more terrified than I’ve ever been.

“You’re here because you want something too.” The words are warm against my chapped lips.

“I want to be a doctor,” I reply, the answer coming easily. Some days it felt more like my dream than Solina’s.

“Not like that.” She shakes her head, the ends of her hair whipping softly against my cheek. “Something you want so bad, if you can’t have it, you’d rather be dead.”

My heart stammers, louder and louder until it drowns out my thoughts. Because I’m taking a step closer. Because she smells like apricots and Earl Grey tea. Because she’s the only person here who managed to see right through me.

All I’ve ever wanted was for Solina to have everything. To give her the future only one of us could afford. What’s left for me to want now? Something better than a dead-end job, where I don’t have to kiss tripper ass all day? A GED? A house with a working radiator and a faucet that doesn’t leak? None of it sparks anything in me other than spite—that I can only have those things because my sister is dead.

Claudia’s right. All I want is an answer. Who hurt my sister and why. I knew when I came here that I might be walking right into a killer’s trap, but I did it anyway. Because I need to know none of it was wasted, that I didn’t spend the last four years of my life giving everything up for her just to push her to the same edge that took her away from us. Even if it kills me.

“Yeah,” I reply, after what feels like hours.

She nods slowly, and when she bites her lip, it takes all my strength not to stare at the curve of her mouth. “What do you want?”

I want answers. I want someone to blame. I want to start over again. I want another life that Solina is still a part of. I want to run away with Tiffany to a city full of sun. I want to stick my knife into someone’s throat. I want hundreds of things and nothing all at once, but all I can focus on is the one thing I want right now.

I kiss her. Soft, at first. Until her teeth aren’t digging into her lower lip and she comes undone for me like a spool of thread. Harder, when she leans into me. My fingers twitch at my sides before reaching out to touch her, one hand on her waist, the other cradling her jaw. It’s not like those other kisses with boys in dark rooms. No taste of cigarette smoke on her tongue or the scrape of her nails against my bare skin. Stars bloom behind my closed eyes when her hands curl around my waist, the smell of her overwhelming every part of me.

It’s easy to imagine wanting things—simple things—when I glide my tongue along her lower lip to taste her peppermint ChapStick. Summer nights on a beach looking up at the stars. Winters on the couch with her body pressed against mine. Days and nights and everything in between.

It’s as easy as breathing—until she cuts it short.

The hand she had on my waist comes up to my chest, pressing on my collarbone until we pull apart. Our chests heave as we struggle to catch our breath, her lips a soft pink that makes me want to kiss her until I can’t remember my name. My thumb coasts the edge of her lower lip, pulling her in again, when she pushes more firmly.

“I can’t,” she says, eyes focused on the ground instead of on me.

“O-oh. Okay.” My hands drop back to my sides. I fight the urge to shake myself and her touch off, shoving my hands into my pockets to keep them from trembling. “I-I’m sorry. I thought …”

What? That she wanted to kiss me even though she doesn’t know my real name? That I could keep pretending to be a dead girl because people never like me the way they like Solina? That we could walk out of here hand in hand like this isn’t the type of place that destroys girls like us?

Before she can answer, I bolt, hand clamped to my mouth. Regret and panic and the bagel I ate for breakfast come crawling up my throat. I race down the hall to the bathroom, slamming doors behind me with too much force. In the bathroom, I collapse against the counter and dry heave into the sink. Sweat dots my brow and drenches my hair as I retch and retch but nothing comes out.

Wiping the spit from the corner of my mouth, I begrudgingly blink up at my reflection. The mascara I swiped on this morning is smudged into the creases of the bags beneath my eyes. My hair is a mess of flyaways, any style I’d worked into it undone by Claudia’s fingers. A few minutes ago, she’d tangled her hand in my hair and pulled me in until all I could taste was her lips on mine.

How did I fuck it up that quickly?

After spitting into the sink, I rinse out my mouth and run a hand through my hair, willing it to calm down before I head to class.

The clock is ticking and I still have to make it across campus, but I stay rooted in place, stuck watching myself in the mirror. Except I’m not looking at my screwed-up hair or smeared makeup, but at the door over my reflection’s shoulder. Waiting, hoping, for Claudia to walk in and hold me close again.

But she doesn’t.

And I know she won’t.

I try to count the seconds on the water dripping from the tap. Make it to thirty and give up. No point keeping track of time like it’s a countdown to something I know isn’t going to happen. A quick pulse in my pocket snaps me back to reality. With one hand I wipe the mascara under my eyes, and the other pulls out my phone, the notification on the screen making my blood run cold.

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