I skipped lunch.
The Hardwicke administrative building had once been a residence. Now it was a historical landmark. The headmaster’s secretary looked up from her desk when I entered.
“Tess,” she said warmly. “What can I do for you?”
I wasn’t sure that twinset-wearing, cookie-baking Mrs. Perkins had any setting other than warm.
“I’m looking for Emilia Rhodes,” I said. There was a chance that John Thomas had misled me, a chance that Mr. Collins had merely pulled Emilia aside to speak to her himself.
Mrs. Perkins cured me of that notion. “She’s in with the headmaster. You can wait if you’d like.” She tilted her head to the side. “But isn’t it your lunchtime? You really shouldn’t get in the habit of skipping meals, Tess.”
A phone on her desk rang. She answered it, and when she turned to consult her computer, I ducked past her desk and made a beeline for the headmaster’s office.
Adam had said my father had always had a tendency to act with no mind to the consequences. I took that to mean I came by it honestly.
I twisted the knob and pushed the door in just as Headmaster Raleigh was gaining momentum on a very pointed lecture. “You are, I can only assume, well aware of the Hardwicke policy on alcohol and other such substances,” he told Emilia. “While we cannot police your behavior outside these halls, the distribution of this picture reflects poorly on both you as an individual and on this institution—”
“I didn’t distribute it.” Emilia’s voice was steady enough, but I could tell her composure was hard-won.
“Be that as it may,” the headmaster continued, “this is hardly behavior befitting a would-be student-body president. I believe it would be best, for all involved, if you withdrew your name from the race.”
The Emilia I knew would have refused on the spot. The girl sitting in front of the headmaster’s desk did not.
“I understand you intend to apply to Yale next year.” Raleigh hit Emilia exactly where it hurt. “Hardwicke has enough students apply each year that the admissions committee relies heavily on the recommendations of our teachers and staff. You want to put your best foot forward. This”—the headmaster nodded toward a phone he’d placed in front of Emilia—“is hardly your best foot.”
I stepped forward, drawing Raleigh’s attention to me. Emilia didn’t even turn to look, her eyes locked on the front of the headmaster’s desk, her head bowed.
“Ms.—” the headmaster’s voice boomed with disapproval, but he still hesitated when it came to my name.
“Kendrick Keyes,” I supplied. Headmaster Raleigh flinched slightly at each of the names. Ivy Kendrick. William Keyes. Like it or not—and most days I didn’t—those names meant something at this school and in this town.
“This is a private conversation,” the headmaster informed me. “Unless you want to face disciplinary action yourself, I strongly suggest you leave the way you came. Immediately.”
“Just like you’re strongly suggesting Emilia drop out of the student council race?” I asked. “Remind me: Was there alcohol or any kind of illegal substance in that picture? Was Emilia holding a drink?”
“I will not warn you again, young lady.”
“There’s really no way of telling what’s going on in that picture, is there?” I continued. I’d never done well with warnings. “She could have the flu. She could have just pulled an all-nighter. Someone could have slipped something into her nonalcoholic beverage of choice.”
“Stop, Tess.” Emilia’s voice was hoarse. “Please. Just stop.”
The phone on the table buzzed. An instant later, mine did, too. Emilia didn’t move, but the headmaster did. He picked up the phone. A few seconds later, I heard a video start to play.
“Look at her. She’s so wasted! Say ‘wasted,’ Emilia!”
Whatever Emilia said in response was incomprehensible. Her speech was slurred past all recognition.
In the present, Emilia lifted her head. Her shoulders shook. I crossed the room and went for the phone, hitting stop as several boys were snickering offscreen and one nudged her with his foot.
“I’ll step down.” Emilia forced herself to look at Headmaster Raleigh.
“I think that would be wise,” he said quietly.
“And what about the boys in that video?” I asked. “The ones taping a girl without her consent? What about the person who’s sending these texts?”
Now that he’d gotten what he wanted out of Emilia, Headmaster Raleigh seemed less concerned with my presence in the office. “Every effort will be made to find the origin of these texts,” the headmaster promised.
“And if I told you that John Thomas Wilcox told me that he’d sent the picture?” I asked.
Emilia was the one who answered. “It would be your word against his.” She shook her head. “He said, she said.” Robotically, she turned back to the headmaster. “If that’s all, I’d like to do some studying before my next class.”