Don’t miss Simone St. James’s new novel of suspense. . . .
Four lonely teenage girls become friends at a boarding school in Vermont in the 1950s. . . . In the present day, a journalist covering the restoration of the school uncovers a crime—and a haunting—that has long been buried and has disturbing echoes of the tragedy in her own life.
THE BROKEN GIRLS
Available in April 2017 from Berkley in trade paperback and as an e-book.
PROLOGUE
BARRONS, VERMONT — NOVEMBER 1950
The sun vanished below the horizon as the girl crested the rise of Old Barrons Road. Night, and she still had three miles to go.
The air here went blue at dusk, purplish and cold, a light that blurred details as if looking through smoke. The girl cast a glance back at the road where it climbed the rise behind her. She squinted, with the breeze tousling her hair and creeping through the thin fabric of her collar, but no one that she could see was following.
Still: Faster, she thought.
She hurried down the slope, her thick schoolgirl’s shoes pelting stones onto the broken road, her long legs moving like a foal’s as she kept her balance. She’d outgrown the gray wool skirt she wore—it hung above her knees now—but there was nothing to be done about it. She carried her uniform skirt in the suitcase that banged against her legs, and she’d be putting it back on soon enough.
If I’m lucky.
Stop it, stupid. Stupid.
Faster.
Her palms were sweaty against the suitcase handle. She’d nearly dropped the case as she’d wrestled it off the bus in haste, perspiration stinging her back and armpits as she glanced up at the bus’s black windows.
Everything all right? the driver had asked, something about the panic in a teenage girl’s face penetrating his disinterest.
Yes, yes— She’d given him a ghastly smile and a wave and turned away, the case banging her knees, as if she were bustling off down a busy city street and not making slow progress across a cracked stretch of pavement known only as the North Road. The shadows had grown long, and she’d glanced back as the door closed and again as the bus drew away.
No one else had gotten off the bus. The scrape of her shoes and the far-off call of a crow were the only sounds. She was alone.
No one had followed.
Not yet.
She reached the bottom of the slope of Old Barrons Road, panting in her haste. She made herself keep her gaze forward. To look back would be to tempt it. If she only looked forward, it would stay away.
The cold wind blew up again, freezing her sweat to ice. She bent, pushed her body faster. If she cut through the trees, she’d travel an exact diagonal that would land her in the sports field, where at least she had a chance she’d meet someone on the way to her dorm. A shorter route than this one, which circled around the woods to the front gates of Idlewild Hall. But that meant leaving the road, walking through the trees in the dark. She could lose direction. She couldn’t decide.
Her heart gave a quick stutter behind her rib cage, then returned to its pounding. Exertion always did this to her, as did fear. The toxic mix of both made her light-headed for a minute, unable to think. Her body still wasn’t quite right. Though she was fifteen, her breasts were small, and she’d only started bleeding last year. The doctor had warned her there would be a delay, perfectly normal, a biological aftereffect of malnutrition. You’re young and you’ll recover, he’d said, but it’s hell on the body. The phrase had echoed with her for a while, sifting past the jumble of her thoughts. Hell on the body. It was darkly funny, even. When her distant relatives had peered at her afterward and asked what the doctor had said, she’d found herself replying: He said it’s hell on the body. At the bemused looks that followed, she’d tried to say something comforting: At least I still have all my teeth. They’d looked away then, these Americans who didn’t understand what an achievement it was to keep all your teeth. She’d been quiet after that.