Within ten minutes of Katie opening the box and finding the hand, Amelia House was swarming with campus cops. Tessa wondered who’d show up next. The police chief from Barnard? Dr. Arnold from the cadaver lab? That tired-looking actor from CSI: New York?

Her chin jerked up as the French doors to the den opened, and she realized she’d left someone off her list: the school shrink.

“Dr. Capello, thanks for coming so quickly. The headmaster thought it would be a good idea for you to chat with the girls,” Mrs. Gabbert said as she ushered the psychiatrist into the room where Tessa and Katie had been stashed after the security chief had finished grilling them. For some reason, he hadn’t seemed at all happy with Tessa’s replies.

Do you have any idea who sent the package?

Isn’t it your job to find out?

Do you know why someone would target Miss Barton?

Because she dates that jerk Mark Summers?

Are you aware if Miss Barton has recently received any harassing emails or texts?

Does that include hurl-inducing love notes?

Tessa heard the security chief mumble “Smart-ass” under his breath.

“Can I get you anything, Lisa? Coffee, tea, water?” Mrs. Gabbert rambled on. Her face was red and she kept kneading her hands. She looked on the verge of a heart attack.

“Thanks, Estelle, but I’m good.” Dr. Capello smiled thinly. “I’ll take it from here if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly.” Mrs. Gabbert nodded and left the room.

“How’re you both doing?” Dr. Capello asked, and pulled a chair nearer the sofa where Tessa and Katie sat.

“I’m all right,” Tessa said. “But then I’m not the one with the secret admirer.” She glanced at Katie’s pale face and the tissue she was pulverizing in her lap.

“How about you, Katie?” the doctor asked, sitting down and crossing her legs. Her dark hair was pulled off her face in a ponytail, and she had bangs that made her look more like a Whitney student than a grown-up. She was even wearing a burgundy jacket that was a dead ringer for their school blazers. All that was missing was the crest.

Katie turned teary eyes on the doctor. “I’m pretty freaked out. Who’d do something so twisted?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Capello answered. “Someone who needs help.”

“Someone who needs a padded cell, you mean,” Katie said. Her fingers shook as she shredded the tissue. “What I don’t get is why they’d send something like that to me? The security chief acted like I’d done something to bring it on.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Dr. Capello told her. “You can’t control what other people do. It’s not your fault this happened.”

Katie bit her lip, nodding.

Tessa watched the exchange, keeping quiet. Every time she sat in a room with Dr. Capello she had to remind herself that no matter how caring and nice the shrink seemed, she worked for the headmaster. Everything that anyone told her wound up in a file, property of Whitney Prep.

“How do I explain this to my mom?” Katie asked, and her eyes filled with tears. “How am I ever supposed to feel safe again?”

“No place is safe,” Tessa said, pushing hair behind her ears. “Anyone can find you if they really want to. All they have to do is Google. If you really don’t want to be found, you have to drop off the grid like you don’t exist—”

“Stop, Tessa! You’re only making things worse!” Katie gave her a scathing look.

“Hey, it’s not my fault! Blame Big Brother.”

“It’s completely normal to be afraid after what you’ve gone through,” Dr. Capello said. “But the headmaster has campus security working overtime, and I’m sure the Barnard police will get involved as well.”

“You think they’ll catch whoever did it?” Katie asked.

Dr. Capello nodded. “I do.”

“Get real.” Tessa snorted. “People get away with stuff all the time around here. And if their parents can’t buy them out of it, they just yank them from school and they start all over again somewhere else.”

“You think someone from Whitney cut off that girl’s hand?” Katie asked, looking horrified.

“Why’s that so hard to imagine?” Tessa said, wondering how her friend could be so naive. The school was full of spoiled rich kids who’d been raised by nannies and used as pawns in their parents’ divorces. To say they had issues was an understatement. “It could be anyone, right, Dr. Capello? You know things about us that no one else knows. Everyone tells you their deep, dark secrets. I’ll bet some are even creepier than this.”

The school shrink leveled her gaze on Tessa. “I understand why you’re cynical,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot more than most.”

Maybe Dr. Capello meant to sound sympathetic, but Tessa heard only pity in her voice, and it got her back up.

“So whose hand is it?” she said, sure that Katie was wondering the same thing but was too afraid to ask. “Is it that girl in the sex pic with Mark Summers?”

“Tessa!” Katie turned a shade paler.

But Tessa didn’t quit. “It’s the same rose tattoo, isn’t it?” Did Katie want to pretend that there wasn’t a connection? “Does anyone know her name?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough,” Dr. Capello replied.

Tessa turned to Katie. “Didn’t your boyfriend say she was someone Steve Getty brought to his party?”

“Would you stop dogging Mark!” Katie snapped. “He had nothing to do with this.”

“I didn’t say he did.” Tessa was a little surprised that Katie defended him, especially after what Mark had done to her.

“Drop it, okay?” Katie went to the window, pushing back the drape. There was a swirl of red and blue lights as a police car pulled up out front. “Will the cops take the box with them?”

“Yes,” Dr. Capello said. “They’ll need to examine it to find answers. I’m sure they’ll piece everything together soon enough.”

“Piece together, huh?” Katie dropped the drape. “Where’s the rest of her?” she asked, a pained expression on her face. “She wasn’t alive when her hand was cut off, was she?” Katie swallowed. “Whoever she is, she’s dead, right?”

Dr. Capello didn’t answer. “I’m just very sorry you have to deal with something as horrible as this,” she said.

Tessa wanted to laugh. What a lame reply! Katie had to know the girl was dead. Otherwise, there’d be a zombie chick walking around without a hand. That was the problem with everyone at Whitney. They liked to pretend bad things didn’t happen. They acted like everything was picture perfect inside the gates.

Only Tessa knew better than anyone that it wasn’t true. Bad things happened to everyone, everywhere. They were just easier to hide when you had money.

“Campus security will keep an eye on Amelia House, and if you’re afraid to go somewhere by yourself, an officer will tag along, okay?” Dr. Capello was saying. “If you need to talk any time, day or night, call me.” She gave Katie a pat on the arm.

Katie nodded.

“You too, Tessa.” The shrink turned her dark eyes on Tessa.

“Right.”

Tessa just wanted everyone to go away and leave them alone.

But even after the school shrink took off and the Barnard police had removed “that nasty parcel,” as she’d heard Mrs. Gabbert refer to it, the campus cops hung around Amelia House. Mrs. G. was so skittish she offered to let one of the cops sleep on the couch in the den. Tessa found that kind of funny since the Whitney rule book noted that Boys are not allowed beyond the foyer in the girls’ dormitories and may only remain there so long as the housemother is present.

She guessed rules went out the window when a student got a box with a severed hand. Though Mrs. G. was hardly the only one flipping out.

Tessa couldn’t even get Katie to leave their room for the rest of the day. The headmaster had given them permission to play hooky, and Tessa wanted to get outside once the rain stopped. “Let’s hit the student center,” she said. “Grab a cup of coffee and a stale doughnut. You’ll feel better if we just do normal things.”

“You think coffee will make me feel normal?” Katie frowned, hugging a ragged stuffed bear that she’d brought to boarding school with her. “What if the psycho’s there, watching me?”

“So you’re never going to leave the dorm?”

“I will when they catch him,” Katie said, looking at her like she was nuts.

Katie wouldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself, and she made Tessa stand guard when she took a shower that night. Even though Tessa didn’t let anyone near her, Katie emerged white-faced and scared. She claimed she’d seen shadows outside the frosted glass door, like someone had walked past it, though Tessa assured her that no one had been anywhere near.

At bedtime, Katie insisted they leave the closet light on or she couldn’t go to sleep. It had been such a long day and Tessa was pretty bleary-eyed, so she went along with it. She wasn’t sure when they’d finally drifted off. Katie hadn’t gotten off the phone with her Mom until midnight, and then she’d spent another hour texting Mark. It was still dark outside when Tessa heard Katie’s whimpers.

“Tessa,” her friend called, her voice quavering. “Tessa!”

“I’m right here,” she said, flying across the room and grabbing Katie’s trembling hands. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right.”

“No.” Katie shook her head, hair falling in her face. Her eyes welled with tears. “I smelled roses again. Someone was in the room.”

“No one’s here but us.”

“They stood by my bed, Tess!”

“Okay, okay, let me look around.”

Tessa got up and made a big show of peering into the hallway and checking their closet. She even got down on all fours and peeked beneath the beds. “I swear, no one’s hiding,” she said, and sat down beside Katie. She brushed dark hair from Katie’s face, hating the fear she saw in her friend’s eyes. “Scoot over,” she told her. “I’ll stay here so you can get some sleep.”

Katie moved nearer the wall and Tessa settled into the twin bed beside her. She turned her face so their foreheads almost touched. “You’ll protect me from the psycho?”

“Like a pit bull in Joe Boxer.”

Katie cracked a smile. “More like a Chihuahua.”

“Ha,” Tessa said. “Now go to sleep.”

“Okay.” Katie found Tessa’s hand beneath the covers and squeezed.

Tessa didn’t dare move for the longest time, not until Katie closed her eyes and her breathing became slow and deep. Tessa’s heart still beat too quickly. She would never admit it, but she was shaken, too. Bad things were happening that she couldn’t control, like before, with the fire.

You were just a child, the school shrink kept telling her. You’re not responsible for what happened.

But Tessa knew differently. She was responsible, and she had to live with the aftermath every day of her life. Yeah, she’d been a child, but she’d done nothing to stop it. She’d known something was wrong, and she’d never spoken up. Wasn’t keeping quiet sometimes a very bad thing by itself?

Katie sighed in her sleep, and Tessa whispered, “I’ll be more careful this time. I can’t lose anyone else.”

She’d lost too much already.