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He stares down at me, a god observing a pathetic little ant.
“Forget your little mission here. Leave now. Go home before anyone else gets hurt.”
Theo doesn’t even give me a chance to respond to this; the clicking of heels echoes down the hallway, the sound heading toward us, and Theo turns around, casually sauntering off toward a narrow staircase to the right.
“Miss Voss?” With her bright floral print dress and her colorful jewelry, Principal Ford is a vibrant pop of life against the cool pastels of Toussaint. I figured she’d left with Beth but apparently not. “Are you lost, Sorrell? This place can be a bit of a maze at first. Come on. Let me show you to your next class.” She arrives next to me but rather than stopping, she swoops me up, wrapping one arm around my shoulder, and I’m carried along in her momentum as she bustles down the hall.
It takes me a moment to notice that the place is deserted—that the hallways cleared of all life the second that Theo Merchant showed up.
5
SORRELL
Rats can sense danger.Cockroaches. I mean, dogs and cats can, too. Horses are especially sensitive to people’s emotions, as well as the weather. It’s nothing special for complex organisms to perceive something or someone as a threat and react accordingly in order to preserve their own existence. People are a little more complicated. We’re self-aware, and arrogant; we get sidetracked by our own egos.
Ahh, that storm’s nothing. I can handle it.
I can take that guy. I’m way bigger than him.
I know what I’m doing, okay? I can make the damn jump!
Not one person stayed to linger in that hallway when Theo Merchant showed up. Down to a man, they fled the scene like rats fleeing a sinking ship, and I didn’t notice because I was too busy reeling from the fact that the motherfuckerremembered me from the party.
I’m fucked. I’m seriously fucking fucked.
The rest of the day speeds past in a blur of shuffling feet, and stuffy, airless classrooms, but I don’t take any of it in. My racing thoughts make it impossible to focus on anything but this one devastating piece of information.
Theo knows who I am, and if he knows that, then whatelsedoes he know? At eight, once I’m done with dinner, eating alone at a table in the dining hall, slowly forking food into my mouth, tasting nothing but ash and silently screaming inside, I finally lock myself away in my room and call Ruth.
“Jesus, Sorrell. Stop this nonsense. So he remembers you from the party. It doesn’t mean anything.” She isn’t remotely concerned when I’m done explaining my panic to her. “Stay the course. If you shit the bed now, all of this has been for nothing.”
“I’m not shitting the bed,” I hiss. “I’mnotoverreacting. He. Knows. Who. I. Am—”
“And what’s he going to do about it? Burst into your room and point a finger at you, screaming that you came to Toussaint just to murder him in his sleep?”
“Uhh,yes?”
“You’re being ridiculous. Get some sleep. Wait for me to contact you before you take any action against him. I’ll tell you when the time’s right.”
“And in the meantime? What am I supposed to do?”
“Just go to school, Sorrell! Do your work. Keep your head down.”
“Ruth, this—”
“Wouldn’t Rachel have done this for you?”
This statement, well-honed and deadly sharp, stops me dead in my tracks. It’s a cold and evil thing to say to me, but Ruth knows me well. Rachel would absolutely have come here to avenge me. She’d stay the course, no matter what. She’d be single-minded in her task until she’d accomplished her goal and Theo Merchant was dead.
I let out a tense, shaky breath. “All right. Fine. I’ll move forward. But I’m telling you now, Ruth—”
The line goes dead.
I sit on the edge of my bed for a long time, clutching my cell phone in my hands, staring at a chip in the paintwork on the skirting board opposite me, unable to think straight. I figured Ruth would flip the fuck out when I told her what happened. I thought she’d send a car for me, immediately rethinking how we were going to deal with our Merchant problem. In the very least, I thought she was going to turn the air blue with her cursing. But no. Nothing. She was irritated atme—that I’d worry over such a small, inconsequential turn of events.
I want to go home. Nothing about this situation makes sense to me right now. If Theo does know who I am and why I came here, then what’s the point in staying? Once the element of surprise is lost, then there’s no way to catch a mark off-guard. And who knows who he’s talked to. If he’s gone to any of the teachers, or even talked to his friends about me, and then something happens to him, I’m basically fucked. I’ll be carted off in handcuffs before you can say ‘premeditated murder.’I was all bravado about going to prison yesterday with Gaynor, but I always planned to bail and disappear once Theo was dealt with. I never actuallyintendedon going to prison…
A cold, tight knot forms in my stomach over the next few hours. I unpack the suitcase I brought with me from Falcon House, thrown off by the greys, reds, greens and blues of the skirts and dresses and tops that I carefully put away, feeling wrong that only one or two items of the clothes I’ve been given to wear are black. I make sure to put the photos of the fake family Gaynor had framed for me out on the nightstand. I arrange the little knickknacks and keepsakes Ruth said would be important to a regular high school senior around the room, feeling like a fucking fraud as I do it. These pointless little baubles mean nothing to me. I don’t understand how they could be important to anyone. A threadbare, worn little stuffed rabbit. One half of a gold heart on a fine filigree chain. A stack of polaroid photos, and the camera to go along with them. A little box full of movie stubs, with names written on the backs in neat little black block letters:
