Chapter 3
Summer moves by in streaks of light across the carpet of my bedroom. Days blur into one another, and it’s not that I’m surprised when Grandee and Linden begin to pack for school; I’m just not interested.
Grandee tells me I have to return. It’s for my own good.
“The mind needs to move,” she says. “And you stink.”
I don’t pack my things; Linden does it for me. She collects everything I need for my classes, finds out my new schedule, and learns that I’ll have my own dorm room this year. A private room.
The thing I wanted more than anything last year.
A private room so that Carter and I …
When I finally make it to school, the world feels like a fishbowl. People stare at me every time I leave my dorm. Their whispers aren’t quiet enough to pretend they aren’t talking about me, but I don’t blame them.
Of course they stare. I would, too.
The girl who killed her boyfriend.
People tell stories about him with sad smiles and quiet laughs. About the naked run he organized on campus or the short stories that always made their way into the student newspaper.
Grandee might want me to move my mind, but my body feels like it’s stuck. I lie in my bed and stare at all the places that don’t have Carter in them.
The hooks for my jackets that will never have his next to them. A book on the nightstand that he’ll never take out of my hands so he can cuddle with me. The little Post-it notes he would leave around the room to let me know he had been there, missing.
But there is still so much of Carter in this room that I can’t escape despite him never having been here.
The stain on the corner of my white comforter from when I spilled red wine stares up at me.
I run my hand across it absently. Carter and I were pretending to be grown-ups with a cheap bottle he had stolen from his dad.
We were cuddled together, watching a movie on my laptop and sipping out of mugs instead of glasses. His hands slid—
“Nieve.” Linden stands over my bed, and I wonder how she got there without me noticing. “Are you okay?”
Was the door open?
“Nieve?”
“Hmm?” I know I look confused, but I don’t try to fix it. “I’m fine.”
She lets out a deep sigh. “It’s time for a shower.”
Probably, but I don’t tell her that.
She pulls my comforter back, and on instinct, I curl into a ball. “Not now.”
“Oh, absolutely now. This whole room smells like BO and depression.”
“I’m not depressed. My boyfriend died.” The words come out angry, and I make the mistake of looking at Linden.
She’s smiling as if this is what she wanted the whole time. “Yeah. I’m aware. This might shock you, but one of my best friends died, and I still manage basic hygiene.”
She doesn’t get it. We are not the same. She isn’t responsible for her best friend’s death. He isn’t dead because of her.
“Lucky you,” I say.
Her hands are under my arms, lifting me into a standing position. “I do not feel lucky. I feel like my cousin is going to miss the first days of school because she can’t get out of bed.”
I notice the gold lanyard around her neck that leads down to a green tag that says LINDEN MONROE—FOUNDING FAMILY—INHERITANCE COMMITTEE.
Somewhere she has a matching one for me. Because it’s odd if the kids from the founding family don’t show up to Welcome Week to smile at the new freshmen and chat with alumni about the Legacy of our Great-Great-Grandmother and every other woman in our family who has gone to this school.
“I’ll go. I have almost an hour.” I try to fall back down onto my bed, but she catches me.
“You’ll need that alone to brush your hair.”
She pushes me into the attached bathroom and, somehow, turns on the shower while blocking the door.
Linden makes a frustrated sound when she sees the two boxes of toiletries that are untouched from eight days ago when I officially moved back to campus.
I don’t really feel like this level of disappointment is warranted from her.
“Please tell me you’re at least brushing your teeth?”
“Even better, I’m not eating.” But it’s not true. I wander either down to the vending machines in the middle of the night or to the cafeteria right before it closes.
She rolls her eyes and pulls my shirt over my head like I’m a child. “I can keep going if you want, or I can throw you in there with all your clothes on.”
But I don’t mind. I don’t really care if I have a shower or not, and that’s the problem. I don’t care enough to have an opinion.
Waving my arms at her and shooing her out of the bathroom, I take off the rest of my clothes before stepping into the stall.
The hot water feels good on my skin. Comforting, something I remember being easy.
A shower. I can do this. It’s only after too long that I realize I have no shampoo or soap in here.
“Linny?” I call.
Before I can even ask, she’s handing me what I need through the curtain. I don’t miss that she doesn’t give me a razor.
Between her and Grandee, she’s the one who doesn’t trust me.
“What’s your first class again?”
She wants to see if I know or if I’m going to lie. “Studio.”
“Ah.” Now I imagine she’s texting someone she knows that has studio time first thing to see if they can keep an eye on me. If they can make sure I’m okay. “After class, we can go get doughnuts from that place you love.”
No, not me. It’s that place Carter and I loved. God, why did I think I could come back here?
“Okay.” I wipe my tears away and then wash my body and my hair as thoroughly as I can manage. When I step out of the shower, Linden almost looks proud, and I want to throw up. Or get back in bed.
I don’t wear anything fancy—sweats and a T-shirt that belonged to Carter. I throw on shoes that look like slippers and throw my wet hair into a bun. “Done.”
“A vision.” Her words are flat and dry. My cousin breathes out of her nose heavily. “Moisturizer? Sunscreen?”
“I showered. Stop asking for miracles.”
Linden seems to realize this might be the best she’ll get and mercifully lets it go. Before I can stop her, she reaches for my arm and ties pink yarn around it.
Grandee must’ve asked her to. Some kind of superstition that we stopped asking about long ago. I wonder what pink means.
When she looks up, she reads something on my face I don’t remember feeling and rolls her eyes. “She wanted to pack your blanket. Be glad this is all she sent me with.”
My blanket is a sacred thing. Something I’ve been stitching my entire life. It never leaves Grandee’s house. I must be worse than I thought.
Linden ushers me out of my dorm room at the top of Founder’s Tower.
It’s one of three perfectly fine dorm rooms set aside for the descendants of Rachel Monroe, the school’s creator.
Last year, Linden and I had to share a dorm on the main floor because these rooms were being renovated. But now we have our own.
The floors below are set up for the Inheritance Committee members, who end up treating their floor more like a frat house.
With its purple carpets and deep-colored walls, it’s very different from the green of our floor.
And that’s the point. Green for legacies and purple for committee members.
Even the colors point to how important tradition is at Suttleton.
We don’t have frats or a student council; we have the Inheritance Committee: a group of applicants who work on fundraising, curation, and philanthropy.
Just saying you’re a member opens up doors in several prestigious institutions.
Ballet companies across the globe, publishing houses, galleries, and film studios.
It’s the “I went to Harvard” of the art world. And it’s just as pretentious.
I try to move as fast as I can through the building as I follow my cousin, and I don’t stop at the hallway that leads to the room Carter had last year.
Everything about the campus is painfully familiar, but not because of Carter.
Because last year was wonderful. There’s the tree I sat under to read trashy romance novels in the quad.
The outdoor table where Benji and I would gossip and eat sandwiches from the cafeteria.
And the bench I cried on when I got my first D.
The quad is full of memories that belong to only me.
Or the girl I used to be.
Sometimes I wonder if she drowned in the river with Carter that day.
We cross the grass to the giant mixed-media art building. The door to it opens, and the smell of cleaner and epoxy mixed with paint and clay hits me. It used to be something that sent my pulse racing—a promise of creativity.
This space should be comforting. The familiar hallway I walked down almost every day last year, filled with morning light from the large windows that line one side and the laughter of new students.
Instead, a cloud is blocking the sun, and everyone is looking at me.
The students that were here last year stare and whisper.
Even when I keep my gaze on the floor, I can hear the things they say.
In the water.
He followed her.
Two hours to find him.
“Nieve.”
I’ve stopped walking. My cousin is looking back at me from a few feet away. She’s a mixture of surprised and resigned. I’m standing in the middle of the entryway already, but I can’t do this. I’m not ready.
“Nieve.” She says my name again, but I don’t want people to stare at me. To whisper about me.
Even if no one is, my mind tells me they are.
But when my eyes move past her, I see someone who is looking.
Max stands in the doorway to the studio. Just on the other side of him is where my safe place is supposed to be, but like Cerberus guarding the underworld, he stands in front of my peace.
With a frown.
His chest rises and falls, and the gold on his wrist flashes as his hands clench. The judgment is all over his face. He thinks I killed Carter. He doesn’t have to say it.