Dangerous Girls (3 page)

I don’t understand.

As the guard pulls me to my feet again, Tate is embraced by his parents. He doesn’t turn, not once, as I’m led away, stunned. I catch a glimpse of my father’s face staring after me, hollow and slack-jawed.

I open my mouth to call for him, but I can’t make a sound.

I meet Elise three weeks
into spring semester, junior year. Dad’s company is taking off—new clients flooding in, and talks of buyouts and share offerings—so he moves me from the local public high school to Hillcrest Prep, across the bay. If you’ve ever been the new kid, you know: the meat-market looks and razor-quick judgments are bad enough that first day in September; switching midyear is so much worse. I beg to stay where I am, or wait until senior year, but Dad doesn’t listen. He talks about the new opportunities for me: art, and dance, and drama, and how if I switch now, I’m practically guaranteed an Ivy League spot when I apply to colleges, but we both know the move is as much for his benefit as mine. Hillcrest is the home of Boston’s elite, and Dad’s eyes are fixed
on their investment funds. They aren’t the parents of my future friends, they’re potential clients.

So I switch. And for two weeks, I stay blissfully unnoticed in the crowds of garnet blazers, preppy boys, and perfect girls. I keep my head down, answer only when called on, and eat my lunch alone in the solitude of a study carrel, stationed between Ancient Latin and Anthropology in the huge, wood-beamed library. Nobody notices me, nobody cares.

Not that I mind. The less high school bullshit I have to deal with, the better: the endless popularity contests, the inane gossip. I don’t know what happened—if I was out that one time in elementary school, when everyone learned how to talk about nothing all day and think that it matters, or at least, fake that way—but somehow I never learned the trick. The girls are the worst, acting like empires will rise and fall because someone wore last year’s colored denim, or someone else hooked up with a guy behind his girlfriend’s back. I want to tell them all: The world is bigger than high school.

Sometimes, I get this strange urge, a fierce scream bubbling in my chest; I fantasize about pushing back my chair and howling until my lungs ache and every head turns in my direction. Just to cut through the babble of white noise.

But of course, I never do, and for those first weeks at Hillcrest, I make it my mission to blend into the background. Better unnoticed than the center of all their curious stares, I
decide. I have my routine, my escape routes, my non descript A–/B+ average, and soon, it looks like I can make it to the end of the year without anyone even noticing I’m there at all.

Until I open my gym locker Monday morning and find a heap of rancid clothing.

“Eww!” “Gross!” The cries go up from the locker room as I lift out my shirt, dripping with what looks like curdled milkshake. It’s been left to sit and mold for two days at least over the weekend, and the smell is sour even through the fog of scented body sprays and pink-flowered deodorant. “What is that?” The other girls shriek, gagging and retching like it’s the plague.

My cheeks burn as I search the crowd for the loudest voice; the most wide-eyed look of disgust. There. Lindsay Shaw. I should have guessed. Of all the Hillcrest girls with their perfect ponytails and straight-A grades and shark like stares, Lindsay’s is the most perfect; straightest. Deadly. I’d been called on to debate her in civics the previous week, and had reluctantly offered my arguments as if I was facing a mountain lion: Don’t look it in the eye, no sudden movements, and keep your body language submissive.

Clearly I wasn’t submissive enough.

Lindsay holds my gaze a moment, smug. “You should get that cleaned up,” she tells me in a fake-helpful tone. “Coach Keller is really big on hygiene.”

“Thanks,” I manage. For a moment, I feel that scream bubble up, but I would have to be crazy to take Lindsay on—in front of everyone this time—so I swallow back my anger and the hot flush of shame, and set about cleaning the mess into the trash with damp paper towels so that by the time Coach arrives to usher us off to volleyball, there’s no sign of my ruined gym clothes.

“You.” Coach finds me skulking at the back of the crowd, still in my regular uniform. “What’s your name?”

“Anna,” I mutter, my eyes fixed on the blue linoleum. “Anna Chevalier.”

Coach looks me up and down. “Is there a reason you’re not dressed yet?”

I look around, catching Lindsay’s eye. The challenge in her expression is clear. “I . . . forgot my clothes,” I say, my shoulders hunched in defeat.

Coach tuts impatiently. “Don’t think you’re getting a free study pass. I want an essay on the importance of preparation on my desk by the end of the period.”

I nod, trying to ignore Lindsay’s victorious grin as the rest of the girls file out, leaving me alone in the locker room with a faintly rancid scent in the air.

•  •  •

The essay is easy enough. I settle into a plastic chair in the Coach’s office down the hall, and soon I’m back to scribbling
lyrics in my battered red journal and wondering what other fresh hells Lindsay has in store for me this semester.

“Hey.”

I turn. A blond girl is in the doorway, pressed and precise in her polo shirt and sports skirt. Elise, I remember from French class. She looks around cautiously at the mess of lacrosse sticks and yoga mats. “Are we supposed to wait in here till the end of class?”

I nod, quickly tucking my notebook away. Not quickly enough.

“ ‘You want a revelation’ . . . That’s Florence and the Machine, right?” Elise asks, seeing the lyrics scribbled on the cover.

I don’t answer. She’s friends with Lindsay, or at least part of that clique—I’ve seen them around school, their ponytails swishing in unison. Elise is one of the quiet ones. She didn’t join their teasing in the locker room before, but she didn’t stand up for me either.

“She played a show here last month, but nobody else likes them, and my parents wouldn’t let me go alone.” Elise looks rueful.

“I went,” I tell her, remembering the night I snuck out for hours and nobody even noticed I was gone. “She played two hours, it was amazing.”

“No way!” Elise’s reply is the sound of pure longing. She wanders closer. “You’re Anna, right? Did you just move here?”

“No,” I answer, still careful. “Transferred. From Quincy.”

“Oh.” Elise looks at me curiously, and I feel myself tense up, waiting for a cutting remark or some bitchy fake advice, but instead she looks almost sympathetic. “You’re lucky,” she finally offers. “A girl last year, Lindsay, used tuna fish. Stunk out the whole place. Guys were saying . . . Well, you know.” Elise shrugs. “I think she transferred in the end.”

“Sure,” I agree, sarcastic. “I’m lucky.”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” Elise looks quickly toward the door before adding, “She’s a bitch.”

I don’t take the bait. I know how this works: Anything I say now could be used against me later, spun and filtered through the high school gossip chain until I’m the one attacking poor, innocent Lindsay.

“It’s okay,” Elise adds, as if reading my mind. “We’re not friends. I mean, we hang out, but . . . you know.”

I give another vague shrug. “What about you?” I change the subject. “Why are you sitting out?”

“I have a midterm after lunch.” Elise wanders restlessly over to the window. She pulls herself up to sit on the wide ledge, looking out over the neat lawn. “I figured, if I lay the groundwork now, it looks more convincing when I get out sick.”

“Smart.”

She shrugs, swinging her legs to tap out a staccato rhythm against the wall. “If I don’t get an A, my parents will send me
back into tutoring.” She sighs, looking out the window again. “Because a B in American Lit will really wreck my entire life.”

I don’t reply, and pull out my math textbook, but after a few moments, I can still feel Elise’s stare burning into me. I look up. “What?”

“Nothing, I just . . .” Elise bites her lip and glances again toward the door before asking, “You want to get out of here?”

“Where to?”

“Downtown, maybe? We could take the T, get a coffee. We’d be back by the end of lunch.”

“I thought only seniors were allowed off-campus.”

“We wouldn’t get caught,” Elise promises, her eyes bright now. “Everyone does it.”

“Have you?” I ask.

There’s a pause, then she shakes her head. “Not yet. But that’s only because they won’t go with me,” she adds quickly. “Lindsay never breaks the rules. Except, you know, the ones about being a decent human being,” she says with a slight grin.

“I don’t know. . . .” I’m still suspicious, looking for her angle, but Elise hops down from the window ledge.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. And if they ask where you were, just say you were helping me. The teachers here love me, I never do anything wrong.” Her voice twists on the last words, something almost like regret, and the familiar sound is enough to make me pause. I never do anything wrong either—I’ve never
taken the chance. Other girls skip out for shopping trips, and birthdays at the beach, loudly planning their exploits right beside my locker without a second glance. But me? I’m too careful for that. I’ve never skipped so much as a study period in my life.

I’m still wavering when another girl bursts in, breathless and flushed. “Elise, oh my god, are you okay? Coach wouldn’t let me check on you until we’d run laps.”

Elise laughs. “Relax, Mel, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure?” Melanie’s eyes are wide with concern. She’s petite, with glossy dark hair and delicate features, and she reaches up to test Elise’s temperature. Elise ducks away,

“Mel, I’m fine! I was just faking to get out of the Lit test.”

“Oh.” Melanie pauses. “Right!”

“Me and Anna are going to ditch, go get a coffee downtown,” Elise tells her before I can object. “Want to come?”

For the first time, Melanie’s gaze slides over to me. She blinks, as if trying to place me, even though we’ve had at least six classes together since I arrived. “But we’re not allowed.”

“So?” Elise beams.

“But we’ll get in trouble!” Melanie whines.

“Then stay here.” Elise scoops up her bag. “Cover for us, okay?” She turns back to me. “Coming, Anna?”

The chaplain in prison loves
to talk about turning points. The moment we chose the wrong path; the point of no return. It’s supposed to help us, to take us back to the place it all started. We’re supposed to know better now, you see, understand the error of our ways. So, we pick over our past, tracking back crimes and consequences through our short lives until we find the lynchpin. That one decision that could have changed everything.

This was mine.

I can see it as clear as the moment I was standing there myself: the three of us in the jumbled athletics office; midday sun through the windows and the sounds of the lacrosse match drifting in from outside. An invitation. An adventure.
Elise’s eyes, bright with friendship and possibility. Melanie’s round face guarded with jealousy. And me, wavering there between them.

If I’d said no that would have been the end of it. Elise would have gone back to hovering quietly in the folds of her shiny, perfect clique, and I’d have eaten lunch alone in the library, been tormented by Lindsay until graduation. Our worlds would probably never have collided again, merely passed in the hallways and spun off on our different orbits, to college and first jobs, white-confetti weddings, and babies nestled, safe and gurgling on our hips.

She’d be alive. I wouldn’t be accused of her murder.

My cell is ten feet
by twelve. It has bare concrete floors, and chalky whitewashed walls, and orange paint peeling from the bars.

I’ve been here twenty-two days.

There are two hard bunkbeds set with thin mattresses, and a metal toilet in the corner bolted to the wall that makes me ill with the smell. Everything’s bolted down, smooth, too; no sharp edges to catch accidentally against our clothing or wrists. I have a thin blanket, and sheets that make me itch, but it’s still too hot and I still can’t sleep, surrounded by the strange, ragged pace of other people’s breathing.

Their names are Keely and Freja and Divonne. They’re older, or maybe just look that way, and after the first stare-down,
have paid me little attention at all. They strut around the place with their shirts tied high and contraband lipstick on their faces, bumping fists and calling to cellmates across the aisle. They’ve been here a while, and will be for some time, bantering and laughing with each other in their foreign tongue. I don’t understand a thing except the bitter note in their voices, and the suspicious looks they send my way when they’re talking about me and my many terrible crimes.

I never thought I’d miss the pounding silence of isolation, but some nights, I do.

They wake us at six for bed-check, then herd us to showers, and then the dining hall. We line up for trays of flavorless oatmeal and bruised fruit, eat at long metal tables. “Like school,” the young assistant from the American consulate told me during our weekly visit, trying to sound cheerful. Not mine. Hillcrest had salad bars and off-campus privileges; my group would gather at the far right table in the cafeteria, reigning over for all to see.

I’ve lost at least ten pounds. There was a time I’d think that was an achievement.

After breakfast is free time, then lines in the dining hall again for lunch, and dinner—so many lines, I half expect us all to join hands, like the crocodiles in nursery school, snaking across the playground. I’ve been told I’m lucky there’s no work duty, just long days I fill by watching TV, reading the
dog-eared paperback books in the makeshift library, and trying not to catch someone’s eye in the rec room. I walk for hours in the yellowed grass of the exercise pen, trying to memorize the sprawl of blue sky to take back inside the cell at night. The prison is set on the edge of a cliff: the stretch of blue ocean beyond the walls on one side, an expanse of barren earth separating us from the rest of the island on the other. But we can see neither, of course, just the solid walls and barbed wire penning us in, and the guard towers stationed, always watching.