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Whispers swirl around me. They start as a faint buzz – like a fly trapped in the room – but soon swell to a steady drone of gossip. I catch snatches of their conversation as I hunt for the main office.
“—can’t believe that’s Mackenzie Malloy. I thought her whole family disappeared without a trace—”
“—on a Caribbean island, and she’s been living in that creepy mansion all by herself—”
“—I heard she’s actually a vampire, and she’s been sleeping in a coffin in the Malloy’s basement all these years—”
This is a bad idea.
I spent the last week re-reading my diaries and searching through every object in my childhood bedroom. I needed to know I could pull this off with only snatches of memory from before the coffin, before my life became a living nightmare. What I read filled me with confidence – not a single birthday card from a friend or photo of me at a beach with another kid. Mackenzie Malloy had no childhood friends. I was a stone-cold bitch back then, and I’ll be that same stone-cold bitch now. It’s the only way to protect myself.
It’s the only way for Antony and I to get what we need.
The office door looms ahead. The voices rise to a crescendo around me. After so many years fighting against the silence, all this noise is disorienting. I reach for the handle.
It’s not too late to turn around and go home. You don’t know for a fact what that officer might do if he doesn’t see you enrolled in school. You can get Antony to put the shits up him. Problem solved.
Problem not solved.
My parents are still dead. I’m still a ghost. Brutus is still out there being a smug bastard, thinking he’s won.
I turn the handle. My mind flies to my father’s favorite quote from Julius Caesar – the words he spoke when he crossed the Rubicon and started a civil war.
Alea iacta est.
Let the die be cast.
Welcome to Stonehurst fucking Prep.
Eli
“—track tryouts are next Thursday, so maybe we could meet after school and run through some drills? I know I have a weak finish in the 400m and—”
Noah runs his fingers through his perfect hair as he drones on about tryouts. We’ve been friends for so long – since our parents started holidaying together in Nantucket when we were four years old – that I know his tics. Noah touches his hair when he’s nervous, and he’s nervous as fuck about track.
I’m not gonna be the one to tell him, but Noah shouldn’t even be going out for track. For as long as I’ve known him, Noah’s sport has been swimming. He has a whole wall in his room covered in trophies from state swim meets. His older brother, Felix, was the track star. So three years ago Noah decides he has to be a track star, too, which means he’s on my ass constantly to train with him. As if I don’t have my own shit to deal with – being friends with perfectionist assholes like Noah Marlowe is hard fucking work.
I listen to Noah with half an ear as I toss my books into my locker. Around us, students yell and laugh as they catch up after summer break. I hear snatches of conversation about film sets and meditation retreats in Tulum and beaches in Majorca. Stonehurst is that kind of school.
A hand claps on my shoulder. “Did you see Melinda Perez’s new nose?” A familiar British voice coos in my ear. “More’s the pity, her glorious arse is smaller now.”
“Gabe?” I whirl around. Standing before me, a leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder and the faint smell of weed clinging to his clothes, is Gabriel Fallen in all his glory. He looks like he just stepped off his tour bus, complete with his rumpled hair, eyes rimmed in dark shadows, and cheeky grin. “What are you doing here?”
“Causing all ladies’ underthings within a mile radius to simultaneously combust.” Gabriel breaks my gaze to flash his smile at two junior girls who are staring at him from across the hall. They break into giggles, because Gabriel Fallen has that effect on people. “I’m taking time off from the band to finish senior year.”
“What happened to ‘diplomas are for wankers who don’t have groupies’?” I quote Gabriel’s final words when he left at the beginning of summer for his European tour. My mockery of his British accent gets the hint of a smile from Noah.
“Please. I don’t sound as posh as all that. All your lectures on ‘rock music won’t provide for your future’ rubbed off on me, Hart.” Gabriel shrugs, and there’s a whole world inside that shrug. I know what happened. He might not have answered my texts, but he knows I know what happened. Everyone at Stonehurst has followed the headlines – DRUMMER OF OCTAVIA’S RUIN OVERDOSES IN HOTEL BATHROOM. As much as he’s trying to pretend he’s fine, the very fact Gabriel’s back at Stonehurst and not holed up in a studio in Switzerland recording a chart-topping album of grief music suggests otherwise.
Yet another problem that will fall on my shoulders this year. I almost have it in me to smooth over Noah’s intensity, but add in Gabe’s unpredictability, and I will not get a moment of peace. But still… senior year would not have been the same without Gabriel. I wrap my arms around him, patting his back, relieved that he’s here and at least… somewhat sober.
“Oof, since when did you become the Incredible Hulk?” In true British tradition, Gabriel finds physical expressions of joy disconcerting. He gazes around the corridor as if looking for a line to join to restore his equilibrium, then grabs my books from my hands. He frowns at the cover of my AP Calculus textbook. “Just reading these titles gives me a splitting headache.”
I grab my books from Gabe’s hands. “You’d better be back here to focus on schoolwork, not party and drink yourself into a stupor like last year, because Noah and I refuse to tutor you.”
That evil grin again. “I passed my SATs, didn’t I?”
“You passed because you slept with the test assessor.”
