The Lies That Bind (12 page)

In. Out. In. Out.

All other sounds melted away except the whooshing of air in and out of my lungs. I pictured it spilling in like smoke, filling every crevice, and then pouring out again and dissipating. On repeat. The hallway narrowed as I ran, closing in against me, but I fought off the claustrophobia by hanging on to the image of Bethany. If I could only imagine her perfectly—her thick, black hair and olive skin—maybe I’d swing around the corner and bump into
her
this time. She’d act pissed and I’d pretend to be sorry, and this whole mess would be over as quickly as it had started. Like dodging a bullet.

My fingers trailed along the wall as I turned, the hallway opening up as the last few students slipped into their first-period classes with the bell. But none of them was Bethany. Instead, Ms. D. walked the hallway, shooing students out of bathrooms and away from lockers.

“Ms. D.,” I said, jogging to close the space between us. “Did you see her?” I whispered, my eyes darting. It wasn’t until after the words left my mouth that I regretted them. I shouldn’t have admitted seeing anyone, not even to Ms. D. It’d only make things worse. The hallucinations, ghosts—whatever you wanted to call them—were back, and I had to figure out a way to deal with them that didn’t involve tearing around the hallways of my school like some kind of lunatic. Preferably without having to take the awful pink pills that made me feel like I was sleepwalking through my life.

Ms. D. glanced at her watch, wrinkles lining the space between her brows. “First period already started, honey. Not sure who you’re looking for, but it needs to wait.”

I was already in, so I might as well dig deeper. Maybe I wasn’t imagining anything. Maybe she was real. “It was Bethany. I swear I saw her running through the hallways.”

Ms. D.’s face softened then, which made me regret not rushing to get to first period like everyone else. Why was I constantly chasing ghosts? What was wrong with me?

“Kate, I know you and Taylor are worried, but there’s no reason you all need to be involved. Let me handle this.”

I rubbed my tired eyes and wanted so badly to believe her, to let her take over. The radio at her waist crackled to life and she patted my shoulder, called away to some other emergency with the promise that she’d fix everything. I trusted Ms. D., but deep down I knew she was no match for Headmaster Sinclair and the Brotherhood. Turns out trusting and believing are two very different things.

My phone buzzed from my pocket, making me jump about a mile. Normally I kept it tucked in the front of my bag during school hours to avoid demerits, but I must have forgotten. I hesitated before sliding my fingers across the screen to read the incoming text. What if it was another picture of Bethany? What if they had another girl now? What if I was next?

But instead of an unknown number, Liam’s picture popped up on my screen.

We need to talk.

I deleted it almost instantly. He’d been there last night with all of the Brothers. However it had happened, he’d participated in Maddie’s humiliation. And on top of all that, he was probably still pissed at me for ditching him during open period yesterday. So he’d spent all day avoiding me, and then when I caught him red-handed at a Brotherhood-sanctioned event, he suddenly wanted to talk? No thanks.

Defeated, I made my way back to my bag, only to find Taylor Wright standing there imperiously, reading the letter I’d stolen from the headmaster’s office.

“When were you planning on telling me about this?” She spoke with quiet restraint, but the anger in her tone had the same impact as if she’d shouted the words at me.

“I just found it, and then I was in the bathroom and this girl, I’m sure it was…” I paused mid-sentence to consider my words carefully. The reality was that I had a history of seeing people that others didn’t always seem to see. Dr. Prozac claimed it was an emotional response triggered by stressful situations, but I wasn’t so sure. I mean, could an emotional response really run through gardens or the halls of our ancient school? Either way, Ms. D. already thought I was insane. There was absolutely no way I was going to let Taylor join the party. Better to focus on the concrete stuff.

“I found it in the headmaster’s office this morning.” Thank God. I got the words out of my mouth before I could say anything stupid.

“But what does it mean? Who wrote it? Do you think the headmaster is involved somehow?” Taylor quietly fired questions at me, her blue eyes trained carefully on my face, watching for the faintest flicker of a lie.

“I think that’s Ben Montrose’s handwriting. At least, I’m pretty sure.”

“But he is not a Brother. Why would he be stalking Bethany at Obsideo?” Taylor wrung her hands and I noticed her signature ballet-slipper-pink polish, not a chip or smudge in sight. My own nails were bitten down, each painted a different color weeks ago but now chipped almost completely off. I realized then how much fingernails could say without words. Even during the most stressful days, Taylor’s could remain intact, almost perfect. Mine were a hot mess. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

“I have no idea. But that’s exactly what we’re gonna find out,” I said, bending to grab my bag.

• • •

After a lengthy strategy session that took the better part of first and second periods, Taylor and I decided that rather than risk confronting Ben at school, it would be smarter to go to his house. I’d go in alone with the excuse that I had some Chemistry questions, and Taylor would wait outside as backup. Despite my deceptively tough exterior, my stomach had flip-flopped when the bell signaled the end of second period, or more specifically the end of the second class I’d cut.

When Taylor whipped out a very organized folder of crisp, signed late passes, I caught a glimpse of just what the societies had to offer and exactly how deep their connections ran at Pemberly Brown. And they weren’t even operating on all four cylinders anymore. I couldn’t imagine what life must have been like for the Sisterhood when they controlled the tunnels and their posh headquarters held pretty much every vital piece of information Pemberly Brown had to offer. No doubt membership had its perks.

After school, we drove to Taylor’s house in her convertible, and I was mentally brainstorming excuses for my parents as to why I’d need another entire evening out. Ignoring six phone calls the night before hadn’t done much for the trusting parent-daughter relationship we were all trying so hard to fake. I pressed “Mom Work” on my phone at least five times, hanging up each time before it started ringing. It was going to take more than a flimsy excuse about group projects to convince her that I should be allowed to go out on a school night.

“Here,” Taylor said, after turning into an empty parking lot. She plucked the phone from my hand and pressed “Mom Work,” letting the phone actually ring this time.

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach.

“Hi, Mrs. Lowry? No, no, she is fine. This is Taylor Wright, Kate’s classmate at Pemberly Brown. I am the president of Concilium.” She tapped her perfect nails on the leather steering wheel. If I knew my mom like I thought I knew my mom, she was thinking, “
That
Taylor Wright,” right about now. Even parents weren’t immune to Taylor’s far-reaching charms.

“I am not sure if Kate warned you, but tonight is the last night of our spring bake-sale fund-raising preparation. We have at least twenty more signs to make, which Kate is helping out with. I could sure use her help tonight, and my parents said it would be fine if she stayed for dinner.” She paused, rolling her eyes. “She is sitting right next to me.”

“Hi, Mom!” I called, unable to keep the smile from my voice. The girl was
really
good.

“We have pizzas for dinner, and we are going to make a night out of it!” Taylor raised her blond eyebrows at me. “Yes, yes. No problem at all. Do not even worry. I will drop her off when we are finished.” She laughed at something obviously lame my mom said and ended the conversation. And that was that.

But parental consent did absolutely nothing for my nerves. The reality of confronting Ben was starting to hit me, and by the time we pulled into Taylor’s driveway, my stomach was roiling with tension. Her house was set deep in the woods, down a winding driveway off the road. Even though we’d gone to the same school for the past ten years, the only part of her house I’d ever seen was the mailbox. I sat up a little straighter, straining to see out the windows as we carefully maneuvered through the snow and up the driveway. Most of the kids at Pemberly Brown lived in pretty big houses, but Taylor’s was rumored to be obscene.

As it turns out, “obscene” was the perfect word for it. The Wrights’ home was a modern monstrosity on a street where the money was so old that even the nannies wore Chanel No. 5. The entire exterior was constructed primarily of glass windows, and what wasn’t a window was cream stucco. We walked inside and Taylor spun around, shutting the doors behind her and locking them with a click.

A wave of uneasiness settled over me as we shut out the world. The thing about locks was that even though you thought you were locking the bad guys out, there was always the possibility that you might be locking one in. “Um, I thought we were going to Ben’s house?”

“I thought we decided to surprise him,” Taylor said, pulling a bottle of water from her fridge and offering me one.

I shook my head. “Well, yeah…that’s the idea.”

“I have it on good authority that his parents will be home until they will be called out for an urgent meeting at the Shaker Nature Center at eight. Would you believe that someone took a chainsaw to the center’s prized rose garden?”

“But how…”

Taylor put up a hand to silence my question, and she was right. Did I really want to know how she’d managed to destroy one of our city’s most revered landmarks? Yet another uneasy reminder of the power the Sisterhood still wielded, not only at our school but also in our community.

The floor-to-ceiling windows might have seemed impressive from the outside, the afternoon sun making them sparkle like enormous diamonds, but from inside they were sort of terrifying. The back of my neck pricked with the sensation that someone was following our journey through the bright white hallway into the even brighter kitchen. The house was bathed in sunlight so bright that I reached my forearm up to shield my eyes.

The kitchen was all hard edges and clean lines. There weren’t any nooks and crannies or hiding spots. My stomach unclenched a little at the idea that there weren’t very many places for someone to hide.

“I can’t believe you live here.” The words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I mean, I pictured you living in a typical mansion, you know? Bricks, ivy, traditional.”

Taylor laughed a little. “Tell me about it. The neighbors tried to sue my father when he tore down the house that used to be here.” Her phone looked out of place on the pristine, white marble countertop. “His company was going green, and he insisted that we live in a house that reflected their priorities. Mother refused to leave the neighborhood, so…” She shrugged.

“Are you here alone a lot?” The thought of spending the night by myself in this glass monstrosity made me shiver.

“It depends. When Tinsley and Teagan are home on break, it’s not so bad. And we have Dee here sometimes.” She pushed a series of buttons on a computer monitor, and I heard the shrill beep of an alarm turning on. “I still miss our old house, though.”

Taylor led me through the foyer, her ballet-slipper flats barely making a sound on the bamboo floors while the heels of my riding boots clicked and left a trail of glimmering footprints in their wake.

“Oh, crap. I should have taken my shoes off.”

Taylor waved a hand and kept walking. “Never mind. Dee will take care of it tomorrow.”

As Taylor led me through the maze of white, I kept catching my reflection in the windows that lined the walls. My blue hair was pulled back into a knot on top of my head, but tiny hairs had escaped during the chaos of the day and now curled around my hairline. I kept doing double takes because the blue-haired girl walking next to the Homecoming queen didn’t look like me. In fact, every time I caught a look at myself I felt like turning on my heel and heading back home to the safety of my medium-sized, non-glass house, complete with my ginger neighbor in the tree house outside.

Taylor led me into her bedroom. It was huge, but I was prepared for huge. What I wasn’t prepared for was everything else. I guess I’d always assumed that the high priestess of popularity would live in a frilly pink kingdom, complete with a canopy bed and ruffled pink drapes, but I was
so
wrong. Nothing new there.

“Wow.” It was the only word I could manage with my jaw hanging so low it practically touched my chest.

Taylor laughed. It was pretty and tinkling and sounded strange coming from her mouth. I realized that I’d never heard her laugh before. “Is that a good wow or a bad wow?”

“Um, a good one.” Taylor’s room was amazing. The far wall was a full-sized, black-and-white photograph of a ballerina practicing at her bar. But the wall closest to me was covered with vinyl records sheathed in plastic. She had everything from Mozart to the Beatles. I ran my hands over the cover of Cat Stevens’s
Tea
for
the
Tillerman
. “These albums. You must have hundreds. They’re amazing.”

“Music sounds different on a record player.” She shrugged. “I learned that when I used to dance.”

The rest of her room was an exercise in contradictions. A rustic-looking, white bed frame covered by a fluorescent pink bedspread over black sheets. A gorgeous vanity that looked like it had been painted with a million different shades of nail polish.

“I spilled a bottle of Vermillionaire and the rest is history,” she explained as I ran my fingers over the glossy finish.

But the most amazing part of her room was that there were really only three walls. The fourth was nothing but a huge window overlooking the immense woods that surrounded the estate. In architecture magazines that wall would occupy a full-page spread, light sifting through the glass and spilling onto her dark hardwood floors. But something about the way the afternoon sun bounced off the snow-covered lawn made me feel like an actress overcome with stage fright and stuck in the spotlight. My skin crawled with the uncomfortable feeling of being watched again.