I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. There were only so many combinations of words I could plug into Google involving Sinclair’s name and his sordid past. I’d read all the articles, examined all the pictures, saved all the information. It was dark. It was late. I’d have to wait.
So I paced. And my parents yelled at me to turn off the light. To sleep. They might as well have screamed at me to be normal. So I did what any other normal teenager with faded blue hair would do when there was entirely too much night left.
I decided to go red. Blood red. The color of revenge.
As I rinsed my hair, the water a watery pink and the strands bright between my fingertips, I felt whole again, completed by the promise of tomorrow, of uncovering new information with a new look. The shock of it all only added to the fire I felt in my gut.
The red definitely worked.
By the time light spilled into my room between my closed blinds, my hair wasn’t the only thing burning. My eyes felt scratchy and deprived, my head cloudy with exhaustion. But it was time to work.
“You look tired,” my dad said over his newspaper, trying to disguise a flash of wide eyes and failing miserably. I tried to tell myself he wasn’t trying to sound like one of the concerned parents on an ABC Family show. “And redder.” He tried to make a joke, but it fell about as flat as a bike tire with a nail in it.
“Thanks.”
“No, I just…what I’m trying to say is that I’m worried about you.” I looked over at him with his graying hair and his straight nose. He looked like the perfect dad. But a perfect dad wouldn’t keep his eyes trained on the words in front of him. The perfect dad would know how to talk to his daughter, or at least know better than to tell her she looked tired.
When I sat with my cereal, he turned and looked at me. Really looked at me for the first time in as long as I could remember. My hands flew to my brand-new hair as if he wouldn’t notice it quite so much if it was covered by my fingers.
“Kate, I have no idea what you’re going through, but my guess is that it’s not easy to see another student at your school die so suddenly and under such tragic circumstances. Talk to me.” The look in his eyes broke my heart a little. It was the same way he’d looked at me after I skinned both my knees on my roller skates. The same look he’d given me when I’d cried my eyes out after I found out Grace and Maddie had a sleepover without me in fifth grade. It was the same look I caught through my eyelashes when I pretended to be sleeping in the days, weeks, months after Grace died.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything to finally make my father stop looking at me like that.
But I turned back to my cereal instead, shoveling a spoonful in my mouth. And his attention turned back to the paper.
“I’m fine,” I said between bites. I’d said the same two words over and over again for the past year and a half. Two magic words that left no room for discussion, no room for feelings, no room for parenting. God, I loved those two little words.
My dad dropped the paper and brought his plate to the sink, let the water run as he bent over the basin, his eyes fixed on the yard beyond.
“Gotta go.” I cleared my dish, sure that if I caught that look on his face again, I’d spend the rest of the morning telling him everything that was going on.
“What?” His head shook and his eyes cleared as though he’d been dreaming standing up. “Oh, right. Okay.” He reached out to pat my shoulder. “I love you. You know that, right?”
I just nodded and rushed to the garage door. In spite of my parents’ long hours and complete cluelessness when it came to my life, I knew my dad was telling the truth. They did love me, and if I were a different person or maybe even if I’d led a different life, we’d probably have some amazing ABC Family-worthy relationship.
But I am who I am. My life is what it is. And my parents are well-intentioned but mostly useless. I had come to terms with this a long time ago, and the fact that I was questioning it at 7:42 on a Tuesday morning was more indicative of my need for a cup of coffee than family therapy.
I made it to school and slapped the bronze plaque at Station 1 as I walked through the main doors of Pemberly Brown. Aut disce aut discede. “Either learn or leave.” My eyes scanned the hallway for Bradley as my boots clicked on the dark hardwood floor to my locker. I couldn’t ditch class again, but there was no reason why the two of us couldn’t stop by Sinclair’s office during Open period.
I’d debated about calling Bradley last night to discuss the latest development, but I just wasn’t up for the conversation. Part of me knew he’d want to pick me up and go to Sinclair’s house, and I was too tired. I needed more time to process the ex-headmaster’s involvement. More time to try to figure out what it all meant.
“Nice of you to show up.” Maddie’s smile was forced, and her uniform shirt was once again pulled tight across her chest. She looked so much like the Maddie before Grace died, before she’d starved herself to fit in with the Sisterhood, before she punished her body for her role in Grace’s death, that I had to stop and look around the hallway to ground myself in the here and now. She pressed her books over her boobs and worked hard not to mention my hair. I appreciated the effort, but it annoyed me at the same time.
“You look tired,” she finally said. The comment didn’t earn her any points, even though I deserved everything she said after the way I’d been treating her.
“So I’ve heard.” I started walking again. Maddie followed a couple of steps behind me and I tried to slow down, but then she sped up. We were off pace, as usual. As hard as we tried, we couldn’t seem to figure out how to be friends in the after-Grace. Grace had been the third leg of our stool, and now that it was just the two of us, we kept falling down.
“I thought I could understand what you were going through, thought maybe I could help this time, but you keep pushing me away and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m just, I mean we’re all kind of worried about you. It’s just hard to see you like this…” She twisted one of her springy curls around her index finger. “I mean, I know I wasn’t there for you last time. After Grace, I mean. And everything that’s going on, it just… I don’t know. It’s like losing her all over again. Kids are crying in the hallways. Therapists are talking in homeroom. You know?”
I did know. But I also knew I couldn’t talk to Maddie about any of this. She had no idea that I’d joined the Sisterhood. And after what they’d done to her, she’d never forgive me if she found out. Plus, she was totally Team Liam with the whole “Kate should stay the hell away from the crazy secret societies and learn to deal with her grief like a normal person” scenario. The two of them should get T-shirts made up.
So I had no choice but to “I’m fine” her. I wished I could grab Maddie’s arm and drag her into the nearest bathroom stall and tell her everything, but those days were long gone. At least until I’d figured out who killed Alistair and put an end to the Sisterhood. Surely, justice had to come before girl talk.
“Guess who, Sis?” a voice rasped from behind me as two large hands covered my eyes.
“How could she possibly guess?” Maddie hissed. This game was universally hated and only amplified with Bethany “Beefany” Giordano’s paws pressed over my eyes.
She roughly spun me around. “How’s my baby Sister doing?” Her sticky sweet voice was directed at me, but her huge brown eyes were locked on Maddie.
Maddie gave me a long look and then turned back to Bethany. I knew the minute she figured out what was going on, because her eyes got squinty and her lips went thin. It was the face she made right before she started crying. Without another word, she turned and began walking down the hallway at warp speed.
“Wait! Maddie! I can explain!”
“Explain what? That you’re one of us now?” Bethany batted her eyelashes and smiled triumphantly at Maddie’s back.
I closed my eyes for a minute and tried to collect myself before I laid into my new “Sister” and got myself kicked out of the stupid society I was trying to infiltrate.
“I was going to tell her eventually. You didn’t have to do that.”
“What does it matter? You’re with us now, right? You’re not going to have time for losers like her. Not with us around.” Bethany looked down at me and gave me her most syrupy smile. While Taylor had always been eager for me to join the Sisterhood’s ranks, Bethany was never quite so sure. She didn’t trust me; I didn’t trust her. It was kind of our thing.
After Grace died, I knew Taylor felt bad about what had happened. She was eaten alive with grief like the rest of us. But Bethany was a different story, and more and more it felt like she was the one pulling the strings. I knew it was her idea to stage her disappearance to get the Brotherhood kicked out. Taylor went along with it because she thought it was what was best for the society, but she never would have come up with it on her own.
And now, as if she was trying to prove that it was all worthwhile, Taylor was hell bent on creating a new and improved Sisterhood. And apparently I was part of her vision. I’m sure it was partly her guilty conscience, but I didn’t care. Being a Sister was my only chance to end them for good.
Unfortunately, it seemed like Bethany was on to me.
“So, what have you been up to since initiation? There are all sorts of rumors flying around about you and Bradley.”
“Can’t believe everything you hear,” I retorted.
“No, I just believe what I see. And I saw you holding hands at the funeral yesterday.”
“Do you even hear yourself? Holding hands at his best friend’s funeral isn’t exactly a hot date. His best friend is dead and I might be the only person who has even the slightest clue of what he’s going through, so yeah, I held his freaking hand.”
“Easy there. No need to jump down my throat.” Bethany raised her long fingers and pretended to cower in front of me.
God, I hated her. She was intentionally trying to get me fired up, and it worked. And now it was time for her grand finale.
“Honestly, the only reason I asked is because I’m curious about Liam.”
I choked on air.
“Liam?” She had to be joking.
“Yeah, is he,” she ran her fingers through her long hair, “is he, like, available?”
I rolled my eyes at her. There was no chance in hell that Liam would ever go for a girl like Bethany.
“Totally. All yours. He’s a free man. Bet he’s just been waiting for the chance to get it on with you after you told the entire school that he has herpes and blackmailed him for months about what he saw the night Grace died. Good luck with that, B.” I gave her one last parting smile, slammed my locker shut, and started toward class.
“Good to know! I was hoping you’d say that.” Bethany flipped her long hair and adjusted the books in her arms. “Nice hair, by the way. Wherever do you get your color done?”
But she didn’t wait around for an answer. I heard her snicker as she walked away. Bitch.
I slid into my homeroom desk right before the bell rang. As Verbum began, the morning announcements read by two kids I recognized from Concilium, I slipped my phone out of my backpack and sent a quick text to Bradley. Screw Bethany. I was on a mission.
1:12. Stacks.
I had a little over six hours to plan out exactly what we were supposed to do with this information about Headmaster Sinclair. Six hours to decide whether or not I should let Bradley hold my hand again. Six hours.