“Oh my God, what do I do?”
Chen Mei shrugged. “Study and see what happens. Maybe you make it, maybe not. Not everybody belongs here,” she said, and walked away.
Aubrey slid down to a sitting position on the floor, too shocked to cry, and stared blankly into the dimly lit hallway with her hand over her mouth. Not everybody belongs here. Aubrey didn’t belong. She’d always known it. There it was in black and white on the paper she held in her hand, so everybody else could know it, too. She felt like she might throw up, and ran to the bathroom, but when she got there, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and stopped dead. Who was that girl, with the lank, dirty hair and paste-white skin? She moved closer, staring into her own eyes, looking for signs of life, but they were flat and colorless. Was she already dead? Had the moments under the blanket been more than pretend? She touched herself, and her skin was cold and clammy. Her face felt rigid, her skin stretched tight over her bones like a drum. She flicked her cheek with her finger and saw her whole face jump. When the pain felt good, she flicked harder. Suddenly she was slapping herself across the face with both hands, hard enough to leave angry red marks. She sank down against the bathtub, wailing. Whipple was an old building with thick walls, and nobody heard her cry. She could put the chain on the door, get in a warm bath, sharpen her penknife, draw it across her wrist, and …
Of all the dangerous things Kate had turned Aubrey on to, suicide was the most intoxicating. You’d think a high-strung, sensitive girl like Aubrey would have read The Bell Jar in high school, and had time to inoculate herself against its siren song before coming to a soul-sucking place like Carlisle. But no, her first encounter was with Kate’s dog-eared copy, two weeks earlier, and the damage was done in two hours flat. She couldn’t manage to do any reading for class, but she’d read The Bell Jar five times since then, and listened over and over again to this one Tom Waits song, where he said the world wasn’t his home, he was just passing through. Words about death got stuck in her brain while everything else poured out. She was obsessed with the inscription on the inside cover of Kate’s copy of The Bell Jar. “M to K with ???—We desire the things that will destroy us in the end.” Aubrey liked to sit and run her fingertip over the girlish handwriting, imagining Kate in her room at Odell, lying across her narrow bed, whispering to Maggie in her breathy voice. Kate gave the book to Aubrey the same night she told her Maggie’s story. In Kate’s telling, it was a romantic tale. Two young girls, closer than sisters, half crazy, at odds with the world, make a pact. They’d show everybody, make them sorry, and in death, they’d be together forever, young and beautiful. One kept her word. The other didn’t, and was left alone, mourning her friend and regretting her cowardice. But it wasn’t too late. Aubrey could step into Maggie’s place. They could still fulfill the promise. Aubrey wanted that—surely Kate wanted it, too. Aubrey was jealous of Maggie, a girl whom she’d never met, dead for years, who held this special place in Kate’s heart. She wanted that place for herself.
Aubrey reached up, grabbed the hard, porcelain edge of the sink, and hauled herself to her feet. She saw the path now. A way to belong at Carlisle once and forever, to lock her fate to Kate’s. She would become a story they would tell for years to come.
Once she saw the answer, there wasn’t a moment to waste. Kate had gone to Shecky’s to meet Lucas. Aubrey would find her and convince her. She had to: her plan made no sense without Kate. It shouldn’t be impossible. Kate was in a bad way herself these days. Her affair with Lucas was spiraling out of control. Griff had finally gotten fed up with her and kicked her off the trust-fund gravy train. Kate’s father seemed to know things about her behavior that he shouldn’t know. Kate believed her profs were spying on her for Keniston, and it made her paranoid and jumpy. She was depressed and sick of the world. All Aubrey needed to do was remind her there was a way out.
Aubrey left a note on Jenny’s bed, right where it couldn’t be missed, along with the letter from the Committee on Academic Standards underneath. Let them know what they’d done to her. Let them see that she and Kate had won in the end, by taking matters into their own hands and settling their fate on their own terms. They might not print her picture in the brochure, but damn it, they wouldn’t forget her.
17
“This place is driving me crazy,” Lucas said, as they sat at the counter at Shecky’s Burger Shack, waiting for the food he’d ordered. It was a warm late-spring evening, perfect for dining al fresco on the lush lawns of Carlisle, and the burger joint buzzed with students ordering takeout. The festive atmosphere was at odds with the dejected look on Lucas’s face.
“Shecky’s?” Kate asked, between sips of a vanilla milkshake.
“No, not Shecky’s. Carlisle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s like this sick social experiment. All these different types of kids. Rich, poor, black, white, smart, jocks, idiots, whack jobs. They throw us in the deep end and expect us to swim. If we drown, that’s actually a good thing as far as Carlisle is concerned. They winnow out the weak links.”
“You can’t blame Carlisle for everybody’s problems. Look at me. I was fucked up before I ever walked through Briggs Gate.”
Even a week or two ago, Lucas would have laughed at that comment, and leaned in for a vanilla-flavored kiss. They would have sat at the counter making out until the manager told them to knock it off or get a room. Now Lucas just stared at her sullenly. He had asked her to meet him here tonight because he had something to tell her. Another girl would worry that he planned to break up. But no guy had ever broken up with Kate Eastman before.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” she asked.
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Look, this term has been hard on me, what with my injury, facing up to the end of my athletic career.”
“At least they’re not taking your money away.”
“No, I mean, it’s an Ivy. The financial aid is mine to keep. But I told you before, hockey’s who I am. Without it, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Babe, you need to relax, take your mind off it. I scored an eight-ball last night. We could go somewhere and snort it and fool around.”
“I don’t want to get high, Kate. It just messes me up worse.”