Ripping open the plastic shell around one of those flimsy bars of complimentary soap, I scrubbed my hands, my face, my knees and thighs. Red bubbles slid across the tiles. With the blood gone, I could see the cuts across my palms and thighs.
What in the world?
It didn’t matter. I just had to fix this, and then I would never think about last night again. I’d never do anything wrong for as long as I lived, to make up for all the things I couldn’t remember.
When I was done, I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my body, took another and scrubbed my hair, trying to squeeze out all the water. I opened the towel. The faintest red stains marked the white.
In a flash, a vision: torn blond hair, sticky and red, matted against white sheets.
No—where had that come from? It was painful—terrifying—and I shoved it away.
Movement caught my eye. In the row of lockers, a tall, athletic girl laid her gym clothes on the bench and disappeared into a bathroom. I darted over, glanced around, and snatched her clothes, pulling on the too-large shirt and baggy shorts as fast as I could, smelling the mix of unfamiliar laundry detergent and deodorant. I shoved my bloody dress and towels to the bottom of the trash can, and then I fled, out the gym and down a block, trying not to think about the people staring. Finally, I forced myself to slow. It was a long walk across campus to Bishop Hall, and I couldn’t run the whole way, as much as I wanted to. It would look too strange. I had to act normal.
I steadied my breathing. Everything was going to be okay. I was covered in cuts, so that was clearly how I’d come to be awash in blood. How I’d gotten those cuts, I had no idea, but I wouldn’t think about it now. I’d bury the night, and whatever bad choices I’d made. Everything was going to be okay. I said it to myself over and over, like a spell, true if repeated enough times.
I’d get back to my suite, tell Heather and Caro I was going to sleep, and then I’d really do it, even if they whined about the Sweetheart Ball and all the gossip they wanted to dissect, or if Heather brought up the fellowship, wanting to talk more about where she’d go next year. I’d close the door to our room and hide under the covers and sleep until it all disappeared, no matter how long that took—a week, a month, ten years.
Everything was going to be okay.
Chapter 33
Now
I ran, streaking across campus, legs pumping hard and fast. All the crimson-clad people—students and alumni—stared in shock at the girl sprinting, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting somewhere safe, outpacing the angry mob that was surely only steps behind me.
It was all so clear now, so terrifyingly obvious. I was the villain; I always had been. It explained everything—why I’d never gotten what I wanted, no matter how hard I’d tried. It wasn’t because life was unfair, or not working the way it should. I’d had it backwards my whole life: I wasn’t the princess, set upon by misfortune; I was the witch. And life had unfolded the way it was supposed to, giving me what I deserved.
I ran with all my strength past the people and into the trees, the famous Duquette forest, carving a path where there wasn’t one.
Did you kill my sister?
The truth I’d resisted for ten years now rang through my head.
I could have.
It was possible. That night I’d hated Heather so fiercely, so violently. And, if I was finally being honest, I’d hated her long before then, since freshman year, when I first saw that everything came so easily to her, when she got Chi O and I had to watch her celebrate with Courtney in the gym.
Branches whipped my cheeks, but I pressed faster, faster, looking for somewhere safe.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, though they were too late. I’d tried so hard to be good, to use the love I had for her to stifle the hate I sometimes felt. But it had always simmered underneath. It had simmered until the night it boiled over, the night she stole the one thing that was most important, the one thing that should have been impossible for her to take.
I’d probably killed her. That’s what the blackout was hiding. Blackout, black hole, two defense mechanisms. Like the memory of my father telling me he hated his life when I was eight that my mind kept safely tucked away for fourteen years—even if the poison had seeped out over time, slowly shaping me.
It all made sense. The cuts and blood all over me the next morning. The strange certainty I’d done something unforgivable. Well, here it was, the truth finally exhumed out of the dark.
I’d killed her.
It became clear where I needed to go. I’d run through campus, desperate and blinded by tears, once before: Junior year, Parents’ Weekend, the day Heather got her BMW and I got my red envelope.