“Just breathe, Adina. Breathe,” Saint insists, pulling me back onto my feet, but it’s hard to breathe when I know this is what Margaret must have felt, but a thousand times worse.
“You need to wash your hands in case the poison was still active on her skin,” Hawthorne says gently, steering me into the en suite. “Come on, Adina.”
Her words register thirty seconds too late.
“Poison?” I spit through chattering teeth.
“Yes, poison,” Hawthorne says gently. She turns the water on and she grabs one of my arms from Saint, then begins scrubbing viciously at it. Saint does the same to the other, but I squirm in their grip.
“What do you mean poison? We ate all the same things! And that wasn’t food poisoning.”
“No, it definitely was not,” Saint agrees. Her eyes are bright with fury. “You were closest to her, Adina. Did you smell anything?”
“Besides Esme’s heinous Dior perfume—ow!” I shout as my skin raws under Hawthorne’s continued scrubbing.
“Esme was wearing Chanel perfume tonight,” Hawthorne whispers. She looks at me with big brown eyes, like she’s trying to tell me something.
“Esme has never worn Chanel perfume in her life,” I snarl. This I know.
And then my brain short-circuits.
Saint stills. “Now you know why. I knew she was a tricky one.”
The implication of Saint’s words doesn’t go over my head. I jolt forward, turning to gag over the porcelain toilet bowl, jerking away so hard that both of them release me. My heaving echoes in the bathroom over the running water. Closing my eyes, I inhale once. Then exhale.
Standing tall again, hands gripping the sides of the sink, I say, “You think Esme poisoned her? Esme is a bitch. I will be the first one to tell you that, but this isn’t a movie. People our age don’t poison other people.”
Saint frowns at me. “I suppose here they do.” She sounds so blasé about it, but I can see the crease of worry at the downturned corners of her mouth. She shakes her head. “I thought the redhead, Pennywise, would make the first move.”
Hawthorne laughs to herself softly. “Pen? No, Pen wants something, but not what everyone else does.”
And what is that? I can’t bring myself to ask.
“I didn’t expect it to be so… underhanded. Though maybe I should’ve. I don’t know any of you, but from what I’ve seen, Esme Alderidge is the kind of girl who inspires loyalty through fear. She is wealthy, smart, ruthless when she wants to be, charming when she has to be. So I guess it makes sense she wanted to make her dominance clear from the beginning.”
“It’s just girlhood warfare on another level.” Hawthorne pushes. “Getting them before they get you is the only way to win.”
“Stop!” I insist. Both Saint and Hawthorne look at me like I’m the crazy one. “The Finish is just a competition. We’re doing shit like… etiquette and brownnosing and brainteaser shit. We are not combatants in a war.”
Hawthorne snorts. “Oh, hell.”
But Saint has that same expression from before on her face—pity. “You really don’t know.”
“What is there to know?” I retort, pushing back. I want them to say it, to hear how completely insane what they’re alluding to sounds. How completely impossible it is for it to be the truth of this place, even though I can still smell hints of poisonous perfume.
Saint’s defenses spring right back up, that mask of utter control returning, so well constructed that it makes sense that she’s already involved in her family business. Business is just an ocean of sharks, and I see now that Saint is a shark, through and through.
“A lot. I did some digging before I came. In most years, the Finish is a normal thing. Exactly what you said. A competition for power and influence. They take tests. They learn to be ladies—whatever that means in our day and age. They pick the girl who has the best future ahead of her. The one who will reflect well on the Remington name. Who, in interviews, will one day be asked—‘Who was your greatest influence?’ And her answer will be, ‘The Remington Family; they’ve given me everything.’ All perfect publicity to cover up that some years, very specific years…” Saint trails off, and then she looks over at Hawthorne as if waiting for confirmation.
Hawthorne nods and looks at me. “The Finish isn’t about us, Adina. The Finish is about the Remingtons. The Remington men.”
“Of course it’s not about us. We’re tax write-offs. That doesn’t mean we go around killing people for their attention,” I spit, the guttural rage in my chest making me sound unlike myself.
“When someone wants something badly enough, they’ll do anything to get it,” Hawthorne says, her voice going reedy.
I push past her weak insistence. “I get that Esme’s entire family is probably already a step away from prison, but she didn’t have to up the charge from tax evasion and embezzlement to first-degree murder.”
Hawthorne arches her pale eyebrows. “That really isn’t any of your business, is it?”
My terror transforms into venom. “Congratulations on missing the point, Becky.” Hawthorne bristles but I continue my tirade. “Hawthorne, what is going on? And no talking around the real answer. Tell me the truth.”
Hawthorne’s eyes widen, bright like headlights. And then, after she chews on the words, she finally says, “The Finish is about the Remington men, because one of them is the prize. This is part of it. Proving that we’d die to have them. Proving that we’d kill.”
She says it as if violence is an expectation, one fully accepted. When I look at Saint, she doesn’t seem surprised either.
“How did you know?” I spit.
“I’m from the area. My family has been really close to the Remingtons for generations, just like the Bonaviches and the Alderidges. The girls who are invited to Finishes like this usually are close. Makes the whole thing… not cleaner, but easier. The risk is understood. But a Finish like this hasn’t happened for a long time.”
“A Finish like this?”
“The kind where a Remington heir turns eighteen and hosts the Finish, not to further a girl’s opportunities, but to find a wife.”
Her declaration cuts through clear, like a sudden break in the static friction of an old radio. The words sound foreign and they don’t make sense, but also do. A wife.
Strangely enough, all I can think about is icy blond hair and hard eyes and the ringless finger of Dr. Leighton Remington.
“So… Leighton?” I whisper, but neither seems to hear me.
“I suspected,” Saint adds. “But I didn’t know. Not for sure. Hawthorne is right. It’s kept really hushed. Very insular. I did research before I came. Like I said, most years—totally normal. But every year that a Remington heir graduated, no one ever talked about those years. I couldn’t find any of the losers. Only the winner. And there was a pattern. She won. She became his wife.”
I shake my head against Saint’s casual theorizing, because it makes no sense. It can’t.
“What about Leighton?” I demand, voice ringing through the bathroom.