Sadie watched as a poodle in an argyle sweater pranced down the sidewalk outside the window of their old Camry. Its hair was shaved into a pattern of puffy snowballs — its body mostly bare — and the puffs on each ear were dyed the same shade of pink as its owner’s crisp polo shirt. She groaned and looked over at her dad in the driver’s seat. “I mean, seriously. I’m not even sure that lady’s an actual human and not some Stepford robot engineered to look rich and smug.”

He stifled a laugh. “Just remember what a great opportunity this is. If an athletic scholarship to UVA or Northwestern means spending a few years eating tea sandwiches with WASPs who like to humiliate their canines, then so be it.” He grinned, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“And don’t be so judgmental,” he added. “It makes you sound like some hick from Oregon who doesn’t know how to use the right fork during the salad course.”

She rolled her eyes.

“It’s the small one, by the way. That will probably be on a test at some point, so you’re welcome.”

She turned back to the window. When the letter came last spring, inviting her to transfer to the school on a full athletic scholarship for lacrosse, they had sat at the kitchen table for hours, trying to decide how the hell to react. A part of her thought it was a dream come true — Keating had one of the best teams in the country, and there were college scouts at all of their home games. Plus, her mother had gone to Keating, back when she was happy, before she became just a person in a photo whom Sadie could barely remember.

But the rest of her couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong for her the school was. It was incredibly exclusive. The President’s kids had gone there, and they had an airstrip a few miles off campus for private jets. Tuition there cost more than most Ivy Leagues. It was a completely different world, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a part of it. Still, they had eventually decided the scholarship was too good to pass up, and now here she was, driving through a posh Virginia suburb with her dad and her whole life in the back seat.

The houses on either side of them grew bigger as they left the center of town, each one massive and swollen, like each extra wing and balcony was built to accommodate another bulge in its owner’s undoubtedly massive ego. There was no other explanation, she thought, for a house the size of a small shopping mall. They were set far back from the road, each one protected from the unwashed masses by a wide swath of grass so green and manicured it looked like AstroTurf. She saw swimming pools and tennis courts, and she even spotted a few polo players trotting their ponies around in one particularly large field. That was a first. The only polo players she saw in Portland wore goggles and Speedos and constantly complained about the effects of cold water.

The mansions thinned and finally disappeared, and an hour later they were driving through rolling green hills. They turned onto a narrow side road and passed a wooden sign that bore two crests, one for Keating, and one for its nearby brother school, DeGraffenreid Academy. The Keating crest was a shield decorated with what looked like a fox, a bunch of swords, and a knight’s helmet. Sadie rolled her eyes. If it turned out jousting was part of the curriculum, she was going to have some serious second thoughts.

They followed the road for at least ten more miles, weaving through hills and forest until they started to smell the salt in the air. The trees were thicker this close to the coast, and the roads were dark and cool in the dense shade.

As they came around another bend, something on the side of the road caught Sadie’s eye. It was a wooden cross that years in the damp forest had covered with moss. At its base was a single bouquet of roses that was slowly turning to dust. She watched the cross fade away in the Camry’s rear-view mirror, until her dad patted her on the knee.

“You ready for this, kid?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Because I think this is your stop.”

He pointed ahead, and she saw the entrance to Keating Hall, every bit as stately and intimidating as it looked in the brochure. The gate was wrought iron with a heavy arch and stone pillars on either side of the doors. In the center were the initials GLK, for Gerald Leland Keating, the school’s namesake and first headmaster. A stone wall snaked off into the woods on either end of the gate, encircling the campus on three sides.

On her visit to the school last spring, her host Jessica had told her the wall was originally built in the ’20s after the then-headmaster’s daughter had caused a huge scandal by getting pregnant after sneaking through the woods to Graff to see her boyfriend. Supposedly, he had kicked her out of school, sent her to live in a convent in Maine, then built the wall to prevent any future students from shaming the school like she did.

“The only direction we can go now without feeling locked up like a bunch of horny virgins is to the athletic fields or to the beach,” Jessica had joked, rolling her eyes. “I guess the headmaster was worried about us slutting it up, but he wasn’t too concerned about us drowning.” She had grinned, and Sadie had started to think that life at Keating might not be so bad with Jessica around.

She had been so nervous on her way to Virginia to visit — she had fully expected her host to take one look at her mall sweater and dirty green tennis shoes and decide she wasn’t worth ten minutes of her time. But she was so wrong. She had been sitting in the admissions office, staring at the pages of an old
New Yorker
when Jessica had marched in, scanned the room, and started toward Sadie.

“Oh my god, I so wish I was wearing jeans right now,” she had said, and her words had echoed loudly against the vaulted ceiling. “So cute, by the way — are they Tate Denim? Love that super dark wash.” Before Sadie could answer, she rambled on.

“This effing uniform skirt is so uncomfortable. They always brag about how they’re designer, or whatever, but please — we all walk around here looking like we’re wearing, like, the least sexy, sexy schoolgirl costume, ever.” She made an exaggerated curtsy and showed off her conservative knee-length plaid skirt, navy blazer, white socks, and flat loafers. “Hot, right?” She had smiled and held out her hand.

“I’m Jessica. I’m on the lacrosse team, so Coach asked me to show you around and stuff. I’m from Illinois, so she thought we would get along — you know, not being east coasters and all. I don’t think she realizes everything west of Virginia isn’t just one big cornfield where everyone knows each other, but whatevs.” She spread her arms wide. “Welcome to Keating.”

They had talked all day as Sadie followed her from class to class, and by lunch she felt like they had known each other for years. Jessica was petite and pretty, with light brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a splatter of freckles across her nose, the kind of girl who looked like she was born to be a summer camp counselor and was probably really good at gymnastics. They had stayed up late in Jessica’s dorm room, gossiping about guys (“Graff guys are terrible — they’re like mini corrupt politicians in training”), teachers, and the other girls on the team (“Thayer’s a bitch, but she’s the best middie, like, ever, which makes it a little easier to deal with having her around”). By the time her dad had picked her up at the airport the next day, the idea of coming to Keating sounded almost tolerable. She had traded e-mails and texts with Jessica all summer, and Sadie was excited to see her again.

They pulled up to the gate and gave a uniformed guard their names. After a series of beeps, the doors swung open and they started the drive through campus.

Keating and Graff were some of the oldest schools in the country, and according to the brochure, Graff’s original buildings had been occupied by Union troops during the Civil War. There was even an old military fort near the school’s campus that overlooked the water. Keating had been built up a lot since then, and with all its red brick and dramatic columns, it looked like a sprawling Jeffersonian castle, tucked away on the Atlantic coast.

They drove through the grounds, passing first by the headmaster’s house, a New England–style mansion with black shutters and a widow’s walk on the shingled roof. There was a flashy yellow sports car parked in the driveway, and it looked so out of place next to the grand old house, it was like someone had pasted a full-color magazine cutout onto an old sepia photograph. As they made their way into the quad, her dad let out a low whistle.

“This place is incredible,” he murmured, a little accusingly. “You just said it was ‘nice.’”

Sadie sighed. It was beautiful, but it just didn’t feel like somewhere she belonged. It was too perfect — so immaculate and contrived it was almost creepy.

The quad was a big oval of green grass dotted with shady oak trees and surrounded by the school’s main buildings. At the center of one side was Sadie’s dorm, a hulking mansion called Ashby that would house all of the junior and senior girls. In front of it, paths snaked across the grass, and everywhere there were small benches, lining walkways or tucked into little coves shaded with flowering vines. Each one was different, some iron, some stone, and branded with a little engraved plaque.

Jessica had explained they were all graduation gifts from former students. Some seniors gave money or rare books to the library, but others donated benches so the students who came after them would have somewhere to sit and stalk people online between classes. When she graduated, Sadie was hoping a card would suffice.

As they circled the drive, one bench caught Sadie’s eye. It was small and concrete — more like a simple park bench than the legacy of some rich oil baron’s daughter — but there was a huge bouquet of wilting calla lilies at its base. She thought of the sad little cross outside the main gates, and a chill rippled across her shoulder blades. Either dead flowers were another part of rich-people etiquette she just didn’t understand, or the students at Keating were really big on memorials.

In front of Sadie’s dorm, girls were already flitting back and forth from their cars to the front doors, stopping to hug one another, screeching like mating hyenas, and politely shaking parents’ hands. Most of the cars were sleek black limos being dutifully unpacked by their uniformed drivers, and the rest were imposing SUVs in black or silver. They pulled up behind a Mercedes SUV with dealer plates and stopped the car, the Camry making its usual slow, sighing death rattle as the engine cut off. Her dad turned to look at her, his face expressionless.

“You know, it’s not too late, Sadie May. We can turn this car around and drive all the way back to Portland.” He paused, and a smile played at the edges of his mouth. “I might not even make you pay me back for gas.”

She tried not to smile and let her head fall to the side. “Dad, I’m staying. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

He broke into a wide grin. “All right, just checking. Let’s unpack this luxury ride, shall we?”

Half an hour later, she stood next to the car and tried not to cry like a little kid getting dropped off at sleepaway camp.

BOOK: Poor Little Dead Girls

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