It was after noon by the time she woke up, but she felt like she hadn’t even slept. Her head was pounding so hard she gasped. She squinted up at the ceiling, and the two names swam immediately in front of her eyes. She shut them tight, but the image remained.
Something was wrong. Her stomach rolled, and her limbs were heavy and sweaty under the tangled sheets. She knew she had had too much to drink the night before, but this hangover felt different. Her whole body felt achy and bloated, and her stomach was cramping so painfully she had to curl into a ball until the muscles relaxed.
When the pain finally faded, she struggled to her feet and limped down the hallway to the bathroom.
She didn’t even remember leaving the tower — the last thing she could picture was sitting on the couch with Jeremy with so many awful new thoughts running through her head.
When she saw herself in the mirror, she flinched. Her hair was tangled up in the remnants of last night’s elaborate twist, and the makeup had melted off of her face like candle wax. She had thick slashes of black under each eye, and her dark, stained lips looked grotesque against her puffy, pale skin.
She took a long, hot shower, then padded back to her room.
Her phone was buzzing on her desk, and Trix and Gwen both had their pillows folded over their heads. “Make it stop,” one of them moaned.
“Sorry, guys,” Sadie mumbled, picking it up and silencing it. She had three unread texts — all from Jeremy.
“Where’d u go?” the first one said, followed by two more asking if she was okay, and if she had made it home. They were all from after 1 A.M. Her stomach hardened into a knot. She felt terrible.
She typed out a quick response:
“Sorry … did I leave without saying bye? Can’t really remember.”
She lay back on her bed, covering her face with a pillow and willing the pounding in her head to go away. She felt the mattress give as one of the twins bounced onto the bed next to her, and a fresh wave of nausea coursed through her.
“Spill it, Yankee.”
Sadie lowered the pillow to see Trix sitting on her bed, puffy-eyed and sleep-haired. “Spill what?”
Trix rolled her eyes. “You were out even later than we were last night. Come on, don’t hold out on me.” She pouted. “Where were you, and why didn’t you invite us roomies?”
Sadie raised her eyebrows. “I got home at, like, one. You guys have an early night or something?”
Trix giggled and shook her head. “No way. You must have had even more fun than I thought. We got back at three and you still weren’t here.”
Sadie frowned. Jeremy’s texts were from hours before then. Where had she been?
Her phone buzzed and she reached for it. “You completely disappeared. Went to find Thayer and then never came back. Everything okay? I was worried.”
She glanced back at Trix. “Sorry, guess I lost track of time. I was just at Graff.”
“I knew you were more fun than you looked!” Trix grinned and bounced up and down on her bed. “Hey Gwen, did you hear that? I told you she was fun.”
Gwen just groaned and rolled over.
“Uh, thanks,” Sadie said. “Are you sure I wasn’t here until after three?”
Trix nodded. “It was more like five. I know because you were so wasted you tripped over that pile of clothes over there and woke me up. You are one sloppy drunk.”
Sadie paused. She remembered everything before going back to the salon — if anything, she had been too sober to handle everything that had happened. But after she talked to Jeremy, everything just stopped. Four hours were just black.
Trix pointed gleefully to Sadie’s arm. “Look, you even have a bruise. Battle wound!”
Sadie turned over her forearm. There was a dull purple smudge that circled her arm like a bracelet. But it wasn’t from tripping and hitting something. Sadie forced a smile, but inside she was screaming. What the hell happened last night?
“Guess you’re right — sorry I woke you guys up.”
Trix stood up and stretched. “No worries. Just invite me next time.” She strolled back to her bed and collapsed onto it, sending a few items of clothing cascading onto the floor. “And tell your sexy boyfriend I said hi.” She pulled on an eye mask. “He’s a good one. He walked you back to your room and everything.”
“No way, he said — ”
Trix rolled to face the wall. “Don’t bother denying it — I heard a guy’s voice before you came in. No way you would have made it back on your own like that, anyway.”
A guy’s voice. Outside her room, at 5 A.M., four hours after she left Jeremy in the tower. The seasick feeling in her stomach intensified, and she couldn’t shake the dread that was surging over her. What had she done? Her phone buzzed again, and her hand shook as she picked it up. She took a deep breath and opened the message.
“Plus, I’m supposed to walk you home after we get wasted in our secret society’s clubhouse after partying at the White House. It’s a pretty key part of every high school boyfriend’s duties.”
Boyfriend. If Sadie hadn’t felt so terrible, she probably would have been jumping up and down. Instead she was just numb.
“Are you sure I left that early? I can’t believe I can’t remember. It’s a little scary.”
After she clicked send, she scrolled back through her texts from last night, praying there would be some clue about what she was doing. She rolled through with a sense of foreboding — she wanted to know, but at the same time, she had a feeling she didn’t. She remembered the image of Olivia passed out on the couch, so limp and defenseless. What if she had cheated on Jeremy? Or worse?
Before Jeremy’s first text was another from a number she didn’t know. The time stamp said 12:55 A.M.
“Portland — meet me in the hall. Have to tell you something.”
She frowned. It had to be from Thayer. But why? Last Sadie remembered seeing her, Thayer was sprawled on a couch with Lillian listening to Fever Stephens on repeat. Plus, she had never even texted Sadie before. Why now?
Sadie glanced at the text again as she snapped the phone shut, and the sight jarred something loose in her memory. The image came over her suddenly, and she sank back down on the bed under the weight of it. It was a hallway, bright and artificially lit, with double doors at one end. The left door had a tiny black rectangle in the center, and she was rushing toward it, faster and faster, until the doors swung open and swallowed her up. Then, just as suddenly, the memory was over.
Sadie blinked, feeling uneasy, like waking from a dream. She couldn’t remember anything else, but the image left her with a feeling that was unmistakable. Fear. She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together to keep them from shaking.
She stood up, pressing a finger to her temples as they pounded even harder. She needed answers, and apparently Thayer was the only person who could give them to her.
She dressed and went downstairs, twisting her wet hair up into a messy bun as she tried to keep the room from spinning all around her. Every step was agony, and she couldn’t believe how much her body hurt.
In the dining room, Sadie filled a cup with coffee, dumping in cream and sugar until it was almost white. She glanced toward the stack of fresh bagels, but even the sight of them made her nauseous. As she waited for the feeling to pass, she heard a voice behind her.
“Good morning to you, too.” She turned around and saw Jess, sitting alone at a table. There was a plate of pancakes in front of her, but it looked untouched.
“Oh, hey.” Sadie brushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “Sorry Jess, I didn’t see you.”
“In a hurry?”
“Actually, yeah.” Sadie shifted her weight awkwardly and waved her bagel toward the door. “I have to talk to Thayer about something.”
“Right. You look like shit, you know that? Where were you last night? We were supposed to go to a movie, remember?”
Sadie closed her eyes. The movie. She had spent the night at a party with Finn and Thayer and completely forgotten about her best friend. She hadn’t even thought to send her a text. What was happening to her?
“God, Jess, I am so sorry. I forgot all about the movie … I, um, I felt sick. I just stayed in my room.” Her head was still pounding, but lying to Jess felt even worse.
She arched an eyebrow. “You seemed fine when I saw you. And I came by your room. You were gone.”
Sadie sighed. “I guess I was in the infirmary then. I don’t know what time I went — I can’t remember.”
Jessica’s face went slack with disappointment.
“Look, I’m sorry I can’t eat with you, but I promise I’ll see you later, okay?”
Jessica sawed off a chunk of pancake with the edge of her fork. “Whatever, Sadie.”
Sadie watched her jam it into her mouth and chew, and a part of her wanted to sit down and explain everything. But she couldn’t deal with that right now. She had so many questions from last night, and Thayer could only answer one of them. She turned and left the dining room, leaving Jessica staring sullenly at the wall.
She pulled out her phone and texted the unknown number. “Can you meet me in the lobby? It’s Sadie — need to ask you something.”
While she waited for a response, she walked down the hall to the computer lab. She logged in, then stopped for a moment, staring at the browser’s blank search field. She had tried to find out more information about her mom so many times, but every search had come up empty. It was like her mother hadn’t even existed before she married her dad, and now she knew why. She had been searching the wrong name.
She put her fingers on the keyboard and typed: Maylynne Ralleigh.
She hit enter and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the screen was filled with headlines from the late ’80s. Her eyes skimmed over the words, each one hitting her like a punch to the gut. “Heiress attempts suicide” … “rumors of depression and substance abuse.” A little further down the page, they started to change. “Estranged heiress disappears” … “Diamond scion deemed runaway” … “Police called off search.” Apparently Sadie wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the whole story about her mother’s life. At some point after she left Keating, the Maylynne Ralleigh everyone else knew simply ceased to exist.
She sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Everything was changing so much. Her mother wasn’t who she thought she was, and if that was true, what did she really know about anyone else? Thayer, Finn, Josh, or Brett? Even Jeremy.
A horrible thought had been playing at the edges of her mind since she woke up, threatening to break through. Again, she pushed it away.
Instead, she leaned forward and typed in a new name. This one came back with even more results.
There were headlines from all the local papers, first about Anna’s disappearance, then some speculating about what had happened to her, everything from a kidnapping to running away. She clicked on one of the pieces and waited as it filled the screen.
She skimmed through it until she got to the last paragraph, when her breath caught in her throat.
Ralleigh’s disappearance is not the first for her family. In an eery coincidence, distant relative Maylynne Ralleigh disappeared shortly after dropping out of Keating Hall in 1988. At the time of her disappearance, Maylynne Ralleigh was heir to a substantial portion of the family’s inheritance. She was eventually deemed a runaway, and her current whereabouts remain unknown.
Sadie took a deep breath. If no one had any idea who her mother had been, how did Thayer know? How did they even find her? On a whim, she typed in another name.
She watched as the screen filled with headlines of a different sort: society page captions, political puff pieces, and charity function announcements, each accompanied by a photo of him, always smiling. There was one of him shaking President Manning’s hand, and another of him posing with his father at some sort of White House event. In both photos, he was in a crisp navy suit, always with the ubiquitous flag pin politicians wore because they thought it proved something.
In the third photo he had his arm around a petite woman with blonde hair cut in a sharp bob. She read the caption: “White House Chief of Staff Theodore Cranston and wife, Pamela Cranston.” She scrolled through page after page of photos until she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Thayer standing above her, a smirk on her face.
“Doing a little light research?”
“Oh, yeah, just, um, surfing around.” She groaned inwardly as she minimized the window. “Er, you know what I mean.”
“Sure, whatever.” Thayer sat down next to her and leaned in conspiratorially. “How’d last night go? You guys bang or what?”
“Uh, no … wait, why would you ask that? Did someone say we did?”
Thayer’s face fell. “Boring. And no. No offense, but you banging or not banging anyone isn’t exactly scintillating gossip.” She turned away from Sadie and booted up one of the other computers. “Plus, it’s already obvious you guys are going to pick each other, so who cares? It’s only fun when people have to fight for it.”
“What do you mean, pick each other?”
Thayer grinned. “You’ll find out.”
“Um, okay. Well speaking of, uh, gossip … Why’d you text me last night? About having something to tell me?”
Thayer raised her eyebrows without looking away from the screen. “Why would I text you?” She waved a hand. “Again, no offense obviously.”
“I don’t know, but you did.” She held up her phone so Thayer could see the screen.
“Nice try, Portland. That’s not even close to my number. Now leave me alone. I have shit to do.”
Sadie’s breath caught in her throat, and her head was pounding so hard she could feel a sweat breaking out on her temples. “But I just texted you back. How’d you know to meet me down here?”
“Didn’t. Drunk Olivia spilled Red Bull on my laptop last night. Now do you mind? I have a paper due.”
“Oh.” Sadie’s eyes slipped out of focus as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Someone else had texted her pretending to be Thayer — but why? She opened the window back up to close it, but something caught her eye. It was one of the society pages that had come up in her search — a story on some event from earlier that November. She scrolled through the photos of people in suits and fancy gowns. The last image on the page was small, but in it was a woman with brown hair and rosy cheeks. She was holding a little girl’s hand — the girl was only nine or ten, but she was perfectly polished in a blue dress that matched her eyes.
They both looked familiar, and Sadie clicked the photo to enlarge it. As the image filled the screen, something in Sadie’s mind finally cleared.
It was her — the woman she had recognized last night — and she finally knew where she had seen her before. It was the woman from the hospital who was supposedly a drug addict, one so far below rock bottom she had had to turn to a charitable foundation for help putting her life back together. And here she was in a photo from a charity event two weeks ago, healthy and smiling in a Chanel suit, a glass of champagne clutched casually in one hand.
Sadie read the caption: “Evelyn Cranston, and niece, Cassandra Cranston.” Cranston.
Sadie stood up and backed away from the screen. None of it was real. The little girl’s story, so much like Sadie’s mom’s, but with such a different ending. It was all a setup to convince her to believe in the Optimates and all the good they were supposedly doing.
Sadie pressed her fingers into her temples and willed her stomach to stop rolling and folding in on itself. She knew this all had to be connected — the Sullas, the hospital, the only memory Sadie had from last night. Where had she been for four hours? And if Thayer hadn’t texted her, who had?
“Hey, psycho. Can you take your hangover somewhere else? You’re making it kinda hard to focus.”
“Sorry,” Sadie mumbled. She opened her eyes to see Thayer shaking her head.
“You know, you look like you’re going to hurl. You really need to figure out how to handle your booze.”
Another wave of nausea broke over her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. As she turned and lurched toward the door, knocking her chair over in the process, she heard Thayer call: “Don’t forget to hold back your hair, hon’.”
She made it into the bathroom just in time. She hunched over the toilet and heaved, over and over until her stomach was still. She sank down onto the floor and leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. In that moment of darkness, she finally let the thought that had been nagging her since that morning take shape. There was no way she had been as drunk as Trix said she was, and she remembered every second of her conversation with Josh just minutes before everything went blank. She thought about Olivia, how lifeless she had looked on the couch, and a cold fear spread over her. She put her head in her hands. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life — it was only on dramatic teen soap operas and cheesy after-school specials about the horrors of binge drinking. But there was no other explanation. She had been drugged.
And that wasn’t even the worst part.
Her mind kept sticking on the last thing she remembered before the white hallway: Jeremy, standing with Finn and Josh and arguing about something — just minutes after she had seen them doing whatever they did behind closed doors. Then minutes later, handing her a Coke in a bright red cup. “Drink this,” he had said. “It’ll help you feel better.”
She drew in breath after deep breath, listening to the sound of the water rushing through the pipes behind her. She had underestimated them all — Finn and Josh, for how far they would go to keep her quiet, and Jeremy, for what he would be willing to do for his new brothers. He wasn’t who she thought he was, and for all she knew, this had been part of the plan all along. Maybe this was what the Sullas did, and by the time the girls realized what had happened to them, they were in too deep with their new “family” to tell anyone.
She wanted to cry, but she was so spent she didn’t have any tears left. She sat there, heaving with dry sobs until she finally stopped sweating, and her hands steadied. She dialed Jeremy’s number and waited while it rang. When it went to voice mail, she hung up. Instead, she typed out a text.
“I know what you did.” Her hands shook again as she pressed send, but she was angry now, and with it came a new sense of calm. She stood up, slowly, and washed her face and hands in the sink.
As she glanced at her face in the mirror, she saw the blurred memory once again. The white hallway, clean and tiled and fluorescent. The white double doors with the small, black rectangle, and Sadie rushing toward them until they swallowed her whole. Just like with the woman in the photo, Sadie just knew. She had been there last night. Dawning House.
She didn’t know how the hospital fit into this, but she had to find out. Before she could even dry her hands, she was running toward the dining room and reaching for her phone.
“Thank you for calling Regency livery, can I have your last name, please?”
“Marlowe. First name Sadie.”
“Thank you, Ms. Marlowe. What time will you need to be picked up?”
“Now, please.”
“I’ll have a car out to Keating as soon as possible.”
“Just hurry.”
She clicked the phone shut and dropped it in her purse just as she pushed through the dining hall doors.
“Jess!” she shouted, drawing a stern look from Mrs. Darrow, who was sitting at a table near the door reading a newspaper.
Jessica stood and threw her backpack over her shoulder. “I have a paper to write.”
“Jess, wait. I’m sorry. I know I acted like an ass before, but … I’m in trouble. I really need your help.” Her voice shook, and Jessica’s face instantly changed. “Please?” It came out barely more than a whisper.
Jessica came toward her at a run. “What’s wrong?”
Sadie grabbed her arm and started pulling her toward the door. “I’ll explain everything on the way, okay? We’ll have plenty of time.”
“Where are we going?”
“D.C.”
As soon as they were safely outside the Keating gates, Sadie told her everything. About the first time she was kidnapped by the Sullas, the ceremony with the Fates, and the trip she had taken with Brett to the hospital in D.C. She told her about the woman and the charade the Sullas had put on to convince her to join. When she told her about the helicopter, the expensive clothes, and Thayer’s speech about family, she could see the hurt straining Jessica’s features as she realized she had been passed over. Still, she pushed ahead.
She told her about the bruise she had found on her arm after that first night, and the tiny injection mark that she couldn’t explain. She went over the initiation ceremony after the dance, and Jessica’s jaw dropped as she told her about Jeremy, the other members, and the nameless gallery of elder members that watched from above. She told her about the White House party, about seeing the Cranstons with the President, and the look of fear that she saw in Brett’s eyes before she ran away. Finally, she told her about the text and the fact that she had disappeared for more than four hours last night, with no idea where she had been except for a terrible gut feeling.
When she finished, Jessica just stared at Sadie for a full minute, opening and closing her mouth like a fish. When she finally formed a question, it was a simple one.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you telling me all of this? I mean, these people sound completely insane … won’t you get in trouble for telling someone who doesn’t belong?”
Sadie eyed the driver in the front seat and lowered her voice.
“Like I said, I needed your help. And also … I left something out.”
Jessica shifted uneasily, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear anything else.
“I think there’s something else going on, something way bigger than charities and parties and making connections. I have this memory — not even a memory really, almost like a scene from a dream that I can’t really grasp. I’m rushing down a hospital hallway toward a white door.”
“A nightmare?”
Sadie shook her head. “It was more than that. I think they took me somewhere last night, and” — her voice broke — “I have to find out what they did to me.”
Jessica gazed out the window for a moment, then suddenly her eyes cleared. She leaned toward Sadie.
“What do you need me to do?”
They split up at the door, Sadie tucking herself into the shadows on the porch and Jessica breezing through.
“Hi there, I’m hoping you can help me with something,” Sadie heard Jessica say in her best future-president-of-the-Junior-League voice. “I was walking by the grounds just now, and I saw one of your patients drop this on the lawn.”
Sadie peeked through the doorway as Jessica held up the diamond pendant she had been wearing just a few minutes earlier. “I was hoping to get it back to her.”
The woman at the front desk tapped away on her keyboard while looking up at Jessica and smiling. “What did the patient look like?”
“Oh, I got a great look,” Jessica said. “She was brunette, maybe mid-thirties, and she was wearing a white robe over a hospital gown.”
The woman’s smile faltered a bit and she stopped typing. “Well, all of our patients do wear the same gowns. Do you have a name?”
“No, sorry. But I did hear her say something about a daughter named Cassie. You must have names of family members in there, right?”
Sadie held her breath. If she was wrong about all of this, she would never hear the end of it.
The woman looked up at Jessica, her mouth a grim line. “I’m sorry, we don’t have any patients matching that description.” She held up one index finger. “Can you stay here for a moment please?” She started dialing her phone, her eyes never leaving Jessica.
Shit. Sadie hadn’t even thought about what would happen if the staff members knew about what the Sullas had done during her visit. Now, Jess, she thought. Do it now!
Sadie heard a crash as a silver cup filled with pens teetered off the desk and clattered to the floor.
“Oh, I am so sorry! That was so clumsy of me,” Jessica cried. “Here, let me help.”
“Stay there, please. Miss,” the woman snapped. “I’ve got it.” She sighed loudly and ducked behind the desk to collect the silver ballpoint pens that were rolling in every direction on the floor. Silently, Sadie made her move.
Jessica turned and saluted, grinning, as Sadie ran past her, taking the stairs two at a time.
Just as Sadie reached the landing, the woman’s head popped up.
“Did someone just come in? I thought I heard footsteps.”
“No ma’am,” Jessica said, her eyes wide and innocent. She casually leaned a hand on the desk and sent a stack of files crashing to the floor. “Oh, gosh,” she said, putting her hands over her face. Sadie heard the flutter of papers settling on the floor as she slipped through the doorway and onto the second floor.
She combed each of the four floors, walking hallway after hallway, but she still couldn’t find the door. Everything felt wrong, too — the hallways too wide and the ceiling too high. She stopped at a window and rested her forehead on the glass. Maybe she had been wrong about everything? The thought made her feel crazy, like she belonged inside one of these rooms instead of out roaming the halls.
She decided to do one more sweep, and when she emerged on the ground floor, she walked slowly, trying to take in every detail. This floor was less polished than the rest, like a staging area for the rest of the hospital. She didn’t see any patients, and most of the doors led to broom closets, or offices filled with old filing cabinets. The lights were dimmer down here, and it was colder, too. Sadie pulled her sleeves down over her hands and hugged her arms close to her body. She could feel goose bumps rising on her skin.
In the middle of the long hallway, there was a long white curtain that hung from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. She paused. It was odd — a curtain covering a wall — and on a hunch, she walked closer. As she watched, a slow breeze passed behind the curtain, ruffling the heavy fabric so that it rolled like waves.
Sadie took a deep breath and looked behind her, but the hallway was quiet. Quickly, she slipped behind the curtain and waited for her eyes to adjust.
She had expected to see a door, or maybe another long hallway, but instead she was on a small landing. A staircase descended down a few feet in front of her, growing darker and dimmer with each step. With a flash, she remembered her first visit to the hospital. The woman in the garden’s voice echoed in her head. “Don’t let them take you into the basement.” She exhaled, willing her nerves to stop screaming, and climbed down.
There was another door at the bottom of the stairs, and she didn’t even hesitate. The knob turned easily, and she stepped into a bright hallway, a smaller version of those on the upper floors. It was pristine, and the floor gleamed like glass. Against the far wall, at least fifty yards away, was a small white door, unmarked, except for a small black rectangle in the center.
Sadie swayed on her feet and leaned back against the wall for support. It was all real. She had been here last night.
Before she could calm down, she saw the door at the end of the hallway start to open. She ducked back into the stairwell and pulled the door shut just as a pair of men in white lab coats emerged into the hallway.
She watched through a crack in the door, listening for wisps of their conversation, but she couldn’t make anything out. As they neared the door she was forced to retreat back up the stairs. She hovered in the darkness just inside the curtain and stood completely still as the door opened. If they looked up, it would all be over.
They paused. “I’ll notify the boss — let him know the procedure was successful,” one said.
The other gave him a mock salute and grinned. “Let him know that if he happens to keep sending us hot ones, that’s just fine with us. Maybe a brunette next time, though.”
They both laughed, and Sadie’s stomach felt like it was filled with ice water. Barely breathing, she stumbled back through the curtain.
“Hey, what was that?” she heard the taller one say behind her.
She ran. She didn’t care that patients were staring, or that one of the doctors tried to stop her as she passed. She just ran and ran until she was flying through the foyer, ignoring the woman at the front desk, and pushing her way out the front door.
When Jessica saw her face, she started running too, and they didn’t stop until they got to the front gate and then two blocks down the street, where Sadie finally collapsed into a heap on the curb.
They sat there for what felt like an hour. She told Jessica what she had heard, and how she still had no idea what she was dealing with. Now, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
When the sky started getting darker, they finally stood up. “I didn’t want to mention it before, but our car left us,” Jessica said.
“It’s okay, we’ll just call another one.” Sadie flipped open her phone. She had six unread messages from Jeremy. She erased them all without reading a word.
Jessica looked uneasy. “I don’t know — it’ll take them a long time to get out here, and we’re supposed to be back on campus in,” — she glanced at her watch — “two hours.”
Sadie shook her head, picturing the twins as they stumbled into the room at four A.M. “Trust me, curfew is not an issue.”
Jessica raised her eyebrows. “The faculty is in on this thing too?”
“I don’t know. Either that or they just look the other way. I just know that last night I didn’t get home until five, and no one said anything.”
“Well, we still have to get back eventually. Want me to call Regency?”
Sadie shook her head. “I have a better idea.”
While they waited for the twins’ driver to pick them up, Sadie flipped open her phone. She had learned so much about her mom in the last week, and now truth and lies had all blurred together. She wasn’t sure she could believe any of what Thayer had told her anymore, or even what she had read online. She had to talk to someone she could trust.
“Hey, kiddo.” Her dad sounded so happy, she felt terrible. “I’m so glad you called — I missed you last week.”
She pounded her fist against her forehead in frustration. “I’m really sorry, Dad. I was just so busy with homework I didn’t have time.”
“Hey, that’s okay. You’ve got to keep up with the kids whose private tutors do all their work for them, right?”
She laughed weakly, then winced. Even she could hear how half-assed it was.
“Hey Sadie May, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing really. I’m just tired.”
“Ah. Big night last night? Did you go into town with Jessica and Brett?”
“Yeah, we saw a double feature,” she lied. “Ate too much popcorn and then stayed up way too late.”
She hesitated, trying to decide how to bring it up, but her brain was so fried she couldn’t think.
“Dad, I know about Mom’s family.”
The phone was silent.
“Oh. Well … ” He trailed off and sighed. “I knew eventually someone at Keating would mention that to you, but I was hoping it would be later rather than sooner.”
She didn’t respond, and eventually he continued.
“You have to understand, Sadie. This was your mother’s choice. By the time you knew her, she didn’t want to be Maylynne Ralleigh, the heiress, anymore. She wanted to be May. My wife, your mother, her own person. That’s the mom she wanted you to know, and it’s never been my place to change that.”
Sadie wasn’t convinced. “But they were her family. How could she just leave them behind like that?” Like she left us? She bit her lip to stop the tears from flowing.
“I know it’s hard to understand, but the Ralleighs are a powerful family — you must know by now what they do, the business with the diamonds — and your mom didn’t agree with any of it. She was an idealist, and their business takes a certain … hardness. I really don’t know the details about what happened between them. May didn’t like to talk about it, and it made her sad so I didn’t push it. I just know they had some kind of falling-out after she figured out where the diamonds came from, and when she turned eighteen they disowned her and she them. After that she didn’t consider herself one of them anymore. I never met her parents or the rest of her family, not even on our wedding day.”
Sadie took a deep breath as she felt her eyes start to well up. Jessica put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, and the tears spilled over. She cried for who her mom was and what she had been through, and for her own failures — falling for this whole scheme and convincing herself that belonging to this group was important. She had been neglecting everyone who actually mattered — her dad, Jessica, her friends back in Portland — all for people she couldn’t even trust. Just because they had given her a taste of things she had never even thought she wanted: wealth, power, status.
“Are you there, Sadie? Talk to me.”
“I’m here, Dad. Sorry — I’m really, really glad you told me. I just needed to hear the truth.”
She paused, not sure how far she was ready to take this yet. “There’s something else, too.”
“Anything. Nothing but the truth from now on, I promise.”
“I … ” she stalled, trying to figure out how to make sure he didn’t immediately hang up and call the psych ward. “Some weird things have been happening.”
“Like what?”
The rest tumbled out in a rush. “I met some people. They knew mom when she was in school, and there are all these creepy coincidences — like a girl who was related to mom died last year and she committed suicide too. And things have been happening that made me think these people — the ones who knew her — might have had something to do with her death. I don’t really have proof yet, but I just don’t trust them — ”
He cut her off. “Whoa, Sadie, slow down, okay? I’m not quite following.”
“I don’t think she killed herself, Dad. I think someone hurt her. Or at least, something happened to her when she was at Keating that messed with her head.”
The line was silent for a moment, and she held her breath.
“Sadie, I’m so sorry. I knew sending you to that school was a bad idea, but you were so excited. I don’t blame you for having these feelings, it must be so strange to be somewhere where she had such a history. But I think you need to know the whole story.
“Your mom was troubled. You know about her drug abuse and her depression, but what you don’t know is that day at the hospital — it wasn’t the first time she tried to commit suicide. She was sick when I met her. I knew it, but I loved her anyway.”
“But, they must have done something to her — to make her sick — ”
“Sadie, stop. You can’t let yourself get too wrapped up in this. I understand how you’re feeling, because I went through it too. But she had a disease, one that ended with her attempting to take her own life, and not for the first time. It’s not your fault, Sadie, and nothing we do now will change what happened.”
Sadie was stunned. “When? When was the first time?”
“Promise me you won’t read too much into this?”
Sadie nodded inanely.
“It was while she was at Keating.”
Sadie felt like the pavement was falling away from her, and she put her head down between her knees. She felt Jessica hugging her shoulders, and she leaned into her.
Her mom had tried to commit suicide at Keating, just like Anna Ralleigh.
She heard the nurse’s voice in her head. She got too close to the rocks near that old tower. Nearly got crushed by the waves. It was too much of a coincidence. Two Ralleighs, two members of the Optimates, and two suicide attempts. It was all too much.
She sat up.
“I think I need some time, Dad … I’ll call you in a few days, okay?”
“Okay, sweetheart. Please call me, though. I need to know you’re okay. I know this is a lot to take in.”
“I will Dad. ’Bye.”
She hung up, and Jessica’s eyes widened.
“What was that about? Is everything okay?”
Before she could explain, a black limo pulled up and one window rolled down. Trix stuck a cigarette out the window and yelled, “Get in, hookers.”
“I’ll tell you on the way. You’re going to want to be sitting down.”
Jessica raised her eyebrows. “What about the twins?”
“I’m telling them too. We’re going to need more help if we’re going to have any shot at doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Finding out what they did to me. And making sure they never do it again.”
To their credit, the twins took it a lot better than Jessica had.
“Bloody Americans, always trying to copy everything we do,” Trix muttered between guffaws. “We were doing secret societies before your big old shopping mall of a country was even invented.”
Gwen just rolled her eyes. “So this secret group — they’re how old?”
Jessica leaned forward. “Like, two hundred years or something. Isn’t that crazy?”
The twins looked at each other and shrugged. “Call me when they get to an even five,” Gwen said.
Sadie felt anger flare up in the pit of her stomach. The whole idea might sound stupid — and to someone who grew up hearing legends about Freemasons and the Knights Templar, it probably was. But this group wasn’t a joke. They might be killing people.
“Look, are you guys going to help or not? I’m not really in the mood to be laughed at. They took me last night, and they can’t just do that. I don’t even know what I was doing for four hours … they could have … those men … ”
She couldn’t even say it. She didn’t want to. She turned to the window and bit her lip, hard, to force back the tears.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Sadie.” She turned to see Gwen, her face settled in smooth lines.
“We’re sorry — it’s just … it’s a lot. If this were coming from anyone else at this school, I wouldn’t believe it. But I believe you.”
Sadie frowned. “Why?”
Gwen shrugged. “Every other roommate we’ve had has tried to use that status to get something. Money, or attention, or favor with our family. But you didn’t even suck up to Ellen. You’re a good roomie, even if your accent sounds like you’re talking through a mouth full of nacho cheese.”
She set her mouth into a hard line. “Now whatever you need, we’ll do it.” She glanced at Trix, who gave a small, almost imperceptible, nod.
“We happen to know a little about what it’s like to not have complete control over your life, but we know a lot more about how to handle it.”
Sadie raised her eyebrows. “And how’s that?”
One corner of Gwen’s mouth curled up into a smile. “By getting the bastards to back the fuck off.”