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Authors: Kara Taylor
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of the screen with my phone.
“Did you do this?” The receptionist holds up the detached lever.
I muster up my best who, me? look. “It was an accident.”
The receptionist shakes his head and lifts up a ruined magazine from a basket on the floor. The entire waiting area carpet is soaking wet. I do feel kind of bad about that. Shame to waste a perfectly good Vogue.
“Maybe I should come back later?”
“That would probably be best,” he snaps, before heading back into the office.
As I head down the hall, I pull up the photo I took of the screen.
Caroline Marie Cormier-Frey, born February 8, 1987. Class of 2005. Current address: 65 Sugar Maple Lane, Weston, Massachusetts.
I’ve almost ditched the building when a very tall woman in tweed sidesteps me.
“Anne,” Dean Tierney says. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”
I settle into the red leather chair across from her desk. The last time I was in here, Tierney threw me out. I may have accused her of not caring that Lee Andersen was stalking Isabella, which is pretty messed up considering that Tierney’s own sister was Vanessa Reardon—the girl who woke up in Matt Weaver’s bed after a party and didn’t remember getting there.
So the bright spot is that it would be hard for this meeting to get worse than that.
“We need to talk about getting you back on track.” Tierney already has my file pulled. The woman doesn’t beat around the bush; I’ll give her that. “Your situation isn’t ideal, but some of your teachers from last year have agreed to boost your grades half a mark if you do an extra credit assignment of their choosing.”
I’m stunned. “Why would they do that?”
“There are people at this school who believe in you.” Tierney gives me a hard look that lets me know she’s not one of them. She passes me a stack of papers, divided by different-colored paper clips. “These are the assignments. I’d suggest you start them now, before classes begin and you find yourself overwhelmed.”
My stomach sinks as I flip through the assignments. A book report, an article review … I’m never going to finish all these when I have to spend all day at orientation. I’m barely going to be able to find the time to track down Caroline Cormier as it is.
“I’ll try,” I say.
“Try isn’t good enough.” Tierney’s voice is sharp. “Someone took a leap of faith for you. Don’t pull the rug out from under them.”
I eye the extra-credit assignments, trying to see the point in all of this. Best-case scenario, I can pull my GPA up to a 3.0. If I get all A’s this semester. In prep school world, a 3.0 may as well be a 2.0. There’s no way I’d get into my first choice college if I even had one.
I screwed up at St. Bernadette’s. All the SAT prep classes I blew off didn’t matter as much before I burned part of the auditorium down, but now every bad mistake I ever made is coming back to haunt me. Every skipped class. Every extracurricular I lost interest in.
I’m a trust fund fuck-up, and doing my homework and going to class on time like a good girl isn’t going to make me a Wheatley kid.
I have a chance to do something that matters here. I can find Dr. Muller’s killer, and I can get answers to what happened to Natalie. The truth is what matters—not the lie I’d be telling myself by trying to be the person my parents expected me to be.
“Don’t let yourself down, Anne,” Tierney says. She shuffles the files on her desk. I catch her hesitate and motion to cover a file on her desk with mine.
But she’s not fast enough—I catch the label on the file.
N ATALIE B ARNES. EXPELLED.
CHAPTER
TEN
Tierney knows that Ms. C is really Natalie Barnes. Is that why she had to leave? Tierney busted her as a fraud and she slipped away in the night before anyone else could find out?
And I’ve got to find out what the folder on Tierney’s desk means before she figures out that I know the truth about Ms. C,
“Did you do this?” The receptionist holds up the detached lever.
I muster up my best who, me? look. “It was an accident.”
The receptionist shakes his head and lifts up a ruined magazine from a basket on the floor. The entire waiting area carpet is soaking wet. I do feel kind of bad about that. Shame to waste a perfectly good Vogue.
“Maybe I should come back later?”
“That would probably be best,” he snaps, before heading back into the office.
As I head down the hall, I pull up the photo I took of the screen.
Caroline Marie Cormier-Frey, born February 8, 1987. Class of 2005. Current address: 65 Sugar Maple Lane, Weston, Massachusetts.
I’ve almost ditched the building when a very tall woman in tweed sidesteps me.
“Anne,” Dean Tierney says. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”
I settle into the red leather chair across from her desk. The last time I was in here, Tierney threw me out. I may have accused her of not caring that Lee Andersen was stalking Isabella, which is pretty messed up considering that Tierney’s own sister was Vanessa Reardon—the girl who woke up in Matt Weaver’s bed after a party and didn’t remember getting there.
So the bright spot is that it would be hard for this meeting to get worse than that.
“We need to talk about getting you back on track.” Tierney already has my file pulled. The woman doesn’t beat around the bush; I’ll give her that. “Your situation isn’t ideal, but some of your teachers from last year have agreed to boost your grades half a mark if you do an extra credit assignment of their choosing.”
I’m stunned. “Why would they do that?”
“There are people at this school who believe in you.” Tierney gives me a hard look that lets me know she’s not one of them. She passes me a stack of papers, divided by different-colored paper clips. “These are the assignments. I’d suggest you start them now, before classes begin and you find yourself overwhelmed.”
My stomach sinks as I flip through the assignments. A book report, an article review … I’m never going to finish all these when I have to spend all day at orientation. I’m barely going to be able to find the time to track down Caroline Cormier as it is.
“I’ll try,” I say.
“Try isn’t good enough.” Tierney’s voice is sharp. “Someone took a leap of faith for you. Don’t pull the rug out from under them.”
I eye the extra-credit assignments, trying to see the point in all of this. Best-case scenario, I can pull my GPA up to a 3.0. If I get all A’s this semester. In prep school world, a 3.0 may as well be a 2.0. There’s no way I’d get into my first choice college if I even had one.
I screwed up at St. Bernadette’s. All the SAT prep classes I blew off didn’t matter as much before I burned part of the auditorium down, but now every bad mistake I ever made is coming back to haunt me. Every skipped class. Every extracurricular I lost interest in.
I’m a trust fund fuck-up, and doing my homework and going to class on time like a good girl isn’t going to make me a Wheatley kid.
I have a chance to do something that matters here. I can find Dr. Muller’s killer, and I can get answers to what happened to Natalie. The truth is what matters—not the lie I’d be telling myself by trying to be the person my parents expected me to be.
“Don’t let yourself down, Anne,” Tierney says. She shuffles the files on her desk. I catch her hesitate and motion to cover a file on her desk with mine.
But she’s not fast enough—I catch the label on the file.
N ATALIE B ARNES. EXPELLED.
CHAPTER
TEN
Tierney knows that Ms. C is really Natalie Barnes. Is that why she had to leave? Tierney busted her as a fraud and she slipped away in the night before anyone else could find out?
And I’ve got to find out what the folder on Tierney’s desk means before she figures out that I know the truth about Ms. C,
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