The St. Ambrose School for Girls(75)

“It’s not going to go down like that.”

“Yes, it is. It has to. I’m smart. I’ll find a way to prove to them it was her. I’ll make this right!”

“I gotta go talk to Keisha,” Strots murmurs. “I just… I gotta go talk to her. They’re coming for you, by the way. Right now.”

“Strots, I’m going to tell the truth. About everything Greta’s done to me. All of it. Then they’ll understand why you did what you did.”

“Do you really think it’s that simple or that that’s an excuse they’re going to buy?”

“Greta’s won too many times,” I say. “She can’t get away with this.”

Strots stares into my face. “None of it is your fault. Just remember that. I don’t want you to blame yourself and do something stupid, okay?”

“It’s not either of our faults, Strots. All of it’s on Greta, and it’s time people know what kind of person she is.”

Strots reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Promise. After the dust settles, promise me you won’t do something stupid.”

My body goes still. As we stare into each other’s eyes, I find myself thinking of all the times I’ve lied to protect my internal reality, attempting, and often succeeding, to derail my mother, my doctor, the nurses, from what’s really going on inside my head. Phil the Pharmacist. Our residential advisor. The divide between adult and teenager has always made the falsifying easier, a fact that I was unaware of until right this moment.

Meeting Strots’s steady regard, I find myself wavering away from the kind of smooth lie I’ve used on my elders. I’ve never before had a peer confront me like this, as someone my age who cares deeply for me and worries about my future. Strots really is my first true friend. And for this reason, the consequences, if I can’t make this vow and stick to it, seem very real, more real than even the ruination I’d bring to my own mother. After all, we as children aren’t responsible for the well-being of adults—the system is set up to be the other way around. Friends are not the same as the adults we love, however. I know I cannot let Strots down.

“I promise,” I say.

Strots nods, gives my shoulder a squeeze, and then leaves.

After her departure, I stay where I stood in front of her. A toilet flushes on the other side of our wall. I hear distant voices.

Down below in the parking area, someone pulls in—no, they’re pulling out, their engine sounds fading rather than being cut off sharply.

I look around our room. Then I go over to Strots’s bed. I lift her pillow. Her cigarettes and lighter are right where she keeps them. I have a thought that I should run after her and bring them to her. If there’s ever a situation that calls for nicotine, it’s now, and besides, I want to do something, anything, to ease the burden she’s under.

She says this is not my fault, but I’m very confident that if she hadn’t been paired randomly with me as her roommate, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

Ultimately, I decide to leave her pack of Marlboros and her red Bic where they are for fear of interrupting a private moment between her and Keisha upstairs. As I feel like a sitting duck doing nothing while I wait for whatever administrator is coming for me, I open our door and lean out into the hall. I frown. Greta’s door is open, and I see her moving around in her room. She’s talking to someone, her back toward me, her blond hair swinging loose at waist level, the ends curling up in a pretty fashion. She’s wearing her pink silk robe. When she laughs to whomever she is speaking with, my blood goes cold, and I close Strots’s and my door quickly.

My heart speeds up and my mouth goes dry.

My brain, which is both my best and my worst asset, does a lightning-fast calculation of the entire situation. There are many ways this can go, and none of them are good news for Strots.

There’s a knock on the door. I brace myself and reopen things. There is a man I do not recognize standing out in the hall, and he looks annoyed.

“Sarah?” he says to me. “Sarah Taylor?”

As if this is the front door of my house and he has a delivery for me. Or, given the suit he’s wearing and his pinched, unkind face, an official summons of some sort.

“Yes,” I reply.

“I’m Mr. Anthony Pasture, the dean of students. I need you to come talk to me down at my office. Now.”

Over his left shoulder, I see Greta. She’s twisted around and is staring at both me and the administrator. Her lip is swollen and the red marks around her neck are transitioning to a purply rose. The injuries are not what I focus on. It’s the look in her eyes.

She’s got the same one she had as she came down to the bottom of the stairs and smiled at me yesterday afternoon.

She’s triumphant.

And once again, I want to vomit.

“I just need to change,” I blurt out. “Can I have a minute?”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”

This is spoken in a dire tone, as a warning in case I decide to try to leap out my second-story window and run. I briefly entertain the idea that there’s a gun somewhere under his suit, one that he’ll point at me and pull the trigger of, perhaps even if I do not try to escape his authority. I don’t believe he’ll be the one who tracks me as a fugitive, however. In spite of his official capacity, one that would, I imagine, include some kind of training with regard to students with mental and emotional challenges, he seems not to want to be anywhere near me, as if I’m diseased in a communicable fashion.