NOW

To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu

From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com

Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion

Dear Ambrosia Wellington,

You never ended the night early back then—why start now? Make your way to Andrus to dance under the stars at our annual All-Campus Party. We hear the dance floor will be killer, and we expect to see (almost) everyone there!

Sincerely,

Your Alumni Committee

“Where are they?” I ask Ella. “Where did they go?”

She raises a glass of wine to her lips, clearly savoring my stress. “How should I know? Sloane said something about not feeling well. Adrian said he’d make sure she got back to your room. She had, like, five glasses of wine and didn’t eat a thing. Just like back then. Of course she feels sick.”

Adrian’s suit jacket is gone. If he took his jacket, it means he doesn’t plan on coming back. “I need to go.”

“You should stay.” She drops her voice. “Sorry if I was harsh earlier. I didn’t want to go into this weekend with any grudges.”

“You did this.” I pick up the vote curled in my hand. “You wrote my name.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ella says, laughing. “I voted for you for that reality TV one. Since drama seems to follow you everywhere you go.”

“Did you send this?” I unclasp my clutch, rummage around inside for the note, but it isn’t there. It’s in my cross-body bag, back at the Nics. I have no evidence. And now I notice that something else is missing, too. My phone.

“Send what?” She arches her eyebrow.

“The notes. You know what I’m talking about. You stayed home sick that night—” You figured it out. I know I sound crazy.

“I didn’t send you any notes.” Her raised voice elicits a giggle from Lauren. “The only person I send mail to is my grandma. She’s ninety-four. Seriously, what’s up with you?”

“I’m fine,” I say. Sully killed Flora and now she’s with my husband.

“I had a feeling this weekend would end in some kind of drama,” she says. “You and Sloane rooming together. Whose idea was that, anyway?”

I get up, then sit back down in a dizzying rush. I should have figured it out earlier, when she showed up at our door. She knows where to find us.

“How did you know we were rooming together?”

Ella shrugs. “I don’t know. Someone must have mentioned it to me. Oh. It was Poppy. She wanted to meet you guys, then you both bailed at the dedication.”

I cup my hand over my mouth. My palm comes back smeared with red.

Poppy Banning, the closest thing the world has left to Flora. She wanted to meet us. Poppy wants to come for a visit, Flora told me, the two of us sipping from our mugs. I told her all about you.

“What?” Ella says, annoyed with my drama. But I don’t answer her—I can’t—so I get up and weave my way through the tables. I need to find Adrian and get us out of here. Flora couldn’t come back to haunt us, since ghosts don’t exist. But sisters do.

I come face-to-face with Flora in the lobby. For once, I read the fine print on her poster. If I’d paid attention two days ago, I would have been home by now. Because the fine print is in calligraphy—Poppy’s neat hand. The Flora Banning Memorial Foundation. Created by Poppy’s Pretty Pen.

Flora’s pride, when we were trading details about our sisters. She’s super artistic. I saw Poppy, a gangly kid whose artwork covered a hulking stainless steel fridge. Not this. The notes. The lipstick. The scroll. The ballot box, stuffed with my name. How long has she been waiting to strike? Flora died almost fourteen years ago. Poppy shares at least one of her qualities. Patience.

Chairs scrape and people brush past me. Dinner is over and everyone will be heading to Andrus for the All-Campus Party. Maybe I should follow them and lose myself in the crowd, where I’ll be safe. But I’m not safe anywhere. And Adrian isn’t safe as long as he’s with Sully. I’m not sure what’s worse: that I know what Sully is capable of, or that I don’t know the same about Poppy.

I take off my heels and start to run, up Wyllys, past the white tents set up on Andrus, past laughter and music. I run until I’m at the entrance to the Nics, where I notice the plume of smoke. The shadowy figure it leads to.

“Looks like you’re trying to find someone,” Felty says.

I rattle the door, then remember that my key card is missing. I’m not afraid of Felty. He’s just a man with a theory that nobody could prove. I almost want to tell him about Sully, about the blackened truth I finally unmasked tonight. But he has no reason to believe me, and I would just end up implicating myself.

“I haven’t given up,” he says to my back. “One day I’ll get a confession out of one of you.”

“Amb.” I whip my head around and see a figure sprinting across the grass, long dress hitched up. Sully slams to a halt beside me, hair wild and face white. “I think somebody was just following me. Let’s get inside.”

“Where’s Adrian?” I’m both glad she isn’t with him and afraid of where he could be. When her bare shoulder brushes mine, I recoil.

“I have no idea. I haven’t seen him. But I think something happened to Kevin.”

“Don’t—” I say as dread thunders in my ears. She hasn’t seen Felty yet, glowering in the darkness. I can’t get the rest of the words out. Don’t say anything else.

“I keep calling him. He’s not picking up, and he wouldn’t have just left.”

Felty steps forward. Sully must see his shoes, not the body attached to them. She looks up and I can tell she wants to fall apart, the same way my limbs push to deconstruct. This is it, I realize, a static shock. This is our reckoning.

Sully doesn’t try to think up an excuse. Instead, she rises to her full height, puts her hand on Felty’s arm. “We’re being threatened. We got these notes—me and Amb. And things have been happening.”

Felty clears his throat and pulls his arm away. He has us where he wants us, cornered and scared. “Where is Kevin McArthur?”

Sully narrows her eyes, obviously realizing that Felty is immune to her charm. “Did you not hear what I said? Amb and I are being threatened. Kevin’s missing. We all got these notes.”

Felty rolls an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “Unless he has been off the grid for twenty-four hours, he can’t be considered a missing person. And a note doesn’t exactly sound like a murder weapon. Although I suppose people do get creative with words.” He glares pointedly at me.

“She’s telling the truth,” I say. “Somebody wants to hurt us.” It’s ridiculous that I’m saying us. I shouldn’t care what happens to Sully. She’s a murderer. But I can’t shake the thought that I’m just as bad. That I suspected what she did the entire time and absorbed the knowledge into my skin. That I chose to live with it, because what Sully did meant somebody cared enough about me to eliminate the person I saw as my enemy.

“Are you ready to tell me what really happened that night?” Felty says. “If you’re ready to tell me, I’ll go check on Kevin myself. I’ll even bring you with me. How does that sound?”

Sully sets her jaw. “We already told you everything we know.”

We’re we again, now that she needs my help.

Felty’s expression is somewhere between amused and annoyed. “If you girls let me protect you, we can sit down and have a conversation and talk about what happened.”

“No,” I say. Sully may be more dangerous than Felty, but she’s not as dangerous to me. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have done it by now. “Sully, let’s go. Where’s your key card?”

She hands me her purse, wordlessly, and I rummage through it, grabbing the card and swiping it against the door. Felty watches us walk in.

“Goodbye, girls,” he says. It almost sounds like a threat.