His words set off a bomb. A collective shock ripples through the room, with audible gasps and a smattering of nervous laughter culminating in a flurry of outraged voices as my classmates talk over one another, all of them rushing to clear up Officer Ladge’s blunder. I know what they’re thinking. How could he think she, of all people, was closest to Chace? Brianne stares at me, confusion written across her face.
One prickly voice cuts above the others, like a knife.
“I was his girlfriend. He barely even knew her.”
Officer Ladge looks taken aback, frowning as he glances from me to Lana and back again. I hold my breath. This isn’t happening.
“I apologize, Miss…?”
“Lana Rivera,” Mr. Isaacs murmurs to the officer.
“Miss Rivera. If you’ll come with me, we can speak in private, and I’ll be glad to arrange any help you might need during this difficult time.” The officer’s eyes flick to me again and I shift in my seat, wondering how he knew my name, how he could have guessed about me and Chace.
“I can’t.” Lana’s voice breaks. “I can’t do this, I can’t believe this.”
The officer, clearly trained for horrendous moments such as these, swoops to her side, helping her to her feet. I watch along with the rest of the class as he places a comforting hand on her back and steers her to the door, muttering something to Mr. Isaacs out of the corner of his mouth just before they leave.
“All of you who attended the party this weekend, I expect you to cooperate with the authorities and answer any questions they might have.” Mr. Isaacs wrings his hands, looking hopelessly out of his depth in these murky waters. “In the meantime, please take the day to…to comfort and be good to each other. Grief counselors will be on the premises for the rest of the week, so please do take advantage—”
I feel the bile rising in my throat. Sweat drenches my brow and I know I’m on the verge of being sick, or having a panic attack—or both. I push out of my chair, ignoring Brianne calling after me, and make for the door. But this time it’s Mr. Isaacs blocking my path.
“I’m sorry, Nicole. The officer does still need to talk to you. He asked me to…” My teacher swallows uncomfortably. “To not let you leave.”
The classroom has thinned out, and now it’s down to me and Mr. Isaacs. The other students all received his permission to go back to their dorms, to call their parents, to visit the grief counselors. Only I was forced to stay.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” Brianne had asked, before leaving.
I shook my head, telling her I wanted to be alone. That was true enough. It was the other part I hoped to keep hidden—what the officer must know. What he thinks I know. During the hour waiting for him, I caught my mind descending into thoughts of self-preservation, and they sent a flush of shame to my cheeks, that I even cared about my own stupid life and reputation when Chace was…No. I won’t let myself believe the word dead.
“Miss Morgan.”
My head jerks forward. Officer Ladge is back, but this time he’s joined by a beady-eyed woman in a gray pantsuit, her hair pulled back in a stiff bun.
“This is Detective Jillian Kimble,” Officer Ladge says, gesturing to the woman now looming over my desk.
“We have some questions for you,” Detective Kimble says briskly. “We don’t want to take up any more of your teacher’s time, so we’ll go down to the headmaster’s office to chat.”
This sounds like yet another bad sign in a morning riddled with them. I force myself to get up, to put one wobbly foot in front of the other until I’m in the doorway with them, the third point of a terrifying triangle.
The officer and the detective lead the way out of the classroom and down the two flights of stairs to Headmaster Higgins’s office, as if they’ve taken this route dozens of times. I wonder if I should call my mom, if I can insist on having a parent with me when I talk to these two. Then again, that might make me seem nervous—like I have something to hide.
Headmaster Higgins is sitting at her desk, head in her hands, when we enter the office. She stands quickly when she sees the uniformed pair with me, then wraps me in a hug. I let myself lean on her shoulder for an extra moment.
“Nicole, dear, how are you holding up?”
I can only shake my head. The headmaster turns to the officers.
“I don’t mean to be impertinent, but could you have the wrong student? Nicole Morgan is the last person at Oyster Bay Prep I would have imagined being mixed up in anything like this.”
“We just have a few routine questions,” the detective says in her smooth tone. She pats the empty chair opposite the headmaster’s desk. “Please have a seat, Nicole.”
Once I’m in the chair, she leans forward, peering into my eyes as if trying to catch me in a lie.
“First things first. Were you at Tyler Hemming’s party on Saturday night?”
I shut my eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“Did you see and speak to Chace Porter there?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me about your interaction with him that night?”
No.
“It wasn’t much. We said hi and I congratulated him on the soccer game. That was basically it.”
Detective Kimble narrows her eyes, as if weighing my responses in her mind. Officer Ladge stands behind her, nodding emphatically every time she asks a question, as though Kimble is reading from a script he wrote.