I stare at Callahan. Something in his expression niggles at me. If he’s lying about how he got that cut, and he obviously is, I wonder… did he get it Friday night? Doing whatever he did after he snuck off campus?

  “Can I get you anything? Band-Aids? Antiseptic?” Charlotte asks.

  “Don’t bother. It’s fine.” Callahan’s head slumps forward. He must sense my eyes on him, because he gives me half a smile.

  Genevieve purses her lips. “I’m still hungry. I wish I had another fruit tart.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Asif says, and leaves.

  Now might be my chance to ask Callahan where he went Friday night. My lips part in question, but Mikhail shifts across from me, reminding me that although he isn’t looking at us he definitely hears everything we say, and probably reports the interesting bits to the senator. I bite the inside of my cheek, considering. If I ask Callahan where he was going at 3 AM Friday night, Mikhail will know I was also not where I was supposed to be. I shudder to think what the senator would do if he found out about my late night escapade, as well as Callahan’s. I’m not sure what he’d be more mad about, that I was wandering without my bodyguard, or that I was breaking school rules.

  Charlotte takes out her headband, smoothing her hair before sliding it back into place. “I’m so glad I’m done with that paper on economic structures in Europe. Ms. Bates is the most exacting teacher I’ve ever had. It’s such a weight off my shoulders.”

  “Oui. I had trouble finding time to write it over the weekend.” Genevieve pats her forehead in frustration. “I wish I was still in Belgium. The summer went by way too quickly.”

  “Fifteen pages?” I question, wondering how Charlotte herself found enough free hours to write the paper during our busy weekend.

  “Ms. Bates should get a hobby,” Asif chimes in. He holds out a napkin with several of the mini fruit tarts, offering it to us girls.

  “I agree. Merci, Asif.” Genevieve takes one and glares over at where Ricardo is standing huddled with some friends outside in the courtyard. Their confrontation must have put him off, because he hasn’t said much to me since. I’m contemplating another late night visit to the kitchen to make blancmange when Dali leans past me, and her long black braids brush against the shoulder of my uniform jacket.

  “I am not looking forward to that class next year. Ms. Bates gives me nightmares.”

  Charlotte eyes her. “You know, I’ve never heard you talk this much as in the past few weeks.”

  There’s a weighted silence as the two of them lock eyes. What’s that about?

  “Is she, I mean, are you usually pretty quiet?”

  Swiveling toward me, Charlotte answers for her. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

  Dali unzips her backpack and digs around, clearly trying to avoid my eyes.

  Callahan pulls his tablet out of his backpack. “Asif, come on.” He pulls on the boy’s sleeve, and the two of them walk a few steps away before my stepbrother shows Asif the screen. Asif’s response is enthusiastic, taking the device and looking closely at it.

  “You’ll never guess what I just heard.”

  A brown girl with wide-set, deep brown eyes lined with an impeccable cat eye swoop pushes in between Charlotte and Genevieve. She gives me a slow up and down before returning her attention to them.

  “Gul,” Charlotte says, the annoyance clear in her voice. To me, she says, “Daughter of the Pakistani ambassador.”

  If Gul cares about Charlotte’s chilly greeting, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she pulls her long, ebony waves forward over her shoulder and leans in conspiratorially. “I heard that the Chinese consulate was broken into this weekend, and guess where they went, looking for something worth taking?” She pauses to let everything she’s said sink in. “Na’s room.”

  I can’t help it; I gasp. Someone broke into the Chinese consulate? That’s hard to do, right? My heart thuds behind my ribcage, remembering the bloody tableau in the bathroom. Someone broke in here to kill Na.

  Wait… What if they were the same person? I shudder.

  A few feet away, Asif is still looking at whatever’s on Callahan’s tablet, but Callahan has gone still, his body rigid. Is he listening to what Gul is saying? It’s pretty loud in here, but Gul is making up for it by almost shouting her gossip. It’s possible that Callahan can still hear her.

  It’s subtle, but the people around us lower their voices. They’re listening to every word Gul says.

  Gul cocks her head, assessing me. “Anyway… Apparently Ambassador Li and his wife were away from the consulate for the weekend, and that’s when it happened. They aren’t sure if it was Friday or Saturday night, and the weird part? It doesn’t look like the thief took anything. Na’s jewelry was still there, and so were all of her clothes and shoes. Strange, right?”

  My heart is pounding. Friday or Saturday night? I look toward Callahan and Asif, but they’re striding away. Callahan looks back once, his expression unreadable.

  Did he hear what Gul said about the Chinese consulate? Is that why he looks so spooked?

  It only takes one period for the entire school to start buzzing about the break-in. Speculation about what the thief could have been trying to steal from Na’s room runs rampant through the halls. I’ve heard guesses ranging from a secret burn book Na was keeping (posited by Dali) to confidential information about the Chinese government (Genevieve) to that fabulous designer bag she carried all last year (Gul).

  At lunch, Callahan cuts the pork and cheese pupusas on his plate into tiny bits, not taking any bites. Beside him, Asif eats a large, eclectic salad with careful stabs of his fork.

  I sit, winding one of my auburn ringlets around my finger. Where did Callahan go Friday night?

  The question rattles around in my head, and I have to fight to keep my gaze from continually straying toward where my stepbrother is sitting kitty corner to me.

  He lets out a loud sigh and stands abruptly. “I’m done. You coming?” With a glance at Asif, he picks up his plate and carts it over to the conveyor belt for dirty plates and cups without waiting for a response.

  “Uh, yeah,” Asif says, more to himself than any of us, and follows Callahan out.

  “Is Callahan okay?” I ask Charlotte. “Should we try to talk to him?”

  Charlotte snorts. “Yeah, right. He doesn’t talk to me about anything, and there’s no way in hell he’ll confide in you. You’re far too sweet and innocuous. No offense.”

  “None taken?” I say, my eyebrows scrunched up. The words she used to describe me were not unkind, but her tone suggested she didn’t mean them as a compliment. “Innocuous?” I mouth to Dali, who snuffles into her hand.

  Across the room, Ricardo gets up to put his tray away. Yes, I noticed, even though I’m trying not to think about him.

  Dali asks Genevieve about a ban on fossil fuels in France, and the ensuing push for more sustainable energy sources, but I have trouble following.

  Genevieve, however, is undaunted by the question. She goes into a long explanation of her president’s exploration of different sources of energy that makes my eyes glaze over. What strikes me the most is the casual way she says her president’s first name, like they’re good friends. Instead of focusing on her words, I find myself listening to her accent and repeating certain words in my head.

  “And how is your repast, chouchou?”

  I jump, surprised that Ricardo is actually speaking to me while I’m sitting with Genevieve. He slides into the chair next to mine and takes a black olive from my plate. Popping it into his mouth, he grins at me.

  My eyes widen in shock. “Don’t touch my food.” In this case, the harsh looks Charlotte and Genevieve are giving him are justified.

  He laughs. “I assure you my hygiene is impeccable.” Propping his elbows on the table, he leans closer to me. “I’d like to take you out this weekend. We could leave campus, get some delicious edibles, and take a walking tour of embassy row. I can show you all of the best secret spots, if you want.”

  There’s a confused flutter in the vicinity of my heart. On the one hand, I’ve never gone on an actual date, and the way he’s looking at me with his amber eyes is making me kind of want to. But on the other hand, I do not want to ever be in a position to reenact the scene that played out between him and Genevieve.

  Across the table, Charlotte is shooting daggers at the boy sitting next to me. Frowning, Genevieve gets up and retreats to the coffee station.

  Dali shakes her head, which Ricardo ignores. He fixes his eyes on my face and watches as my cheeks turn rosy pink. Stupid face.

  Ricardo’s smile widens. “Ahh, you’re blushing. So, Friday night?”

  “No,” Charlotte grinds out.

  I put on a placating smile. “I have plans Friday night.”

  “Saturday night?”

  “Nope, sorry.”

  “Ha,” Charlotte exclaims.

  Ignoring my stepsister, Ricardo concedes. “Maybe next weekend, then.” Winking, he pretends to take another olive from my plate, only revealing his empty hand when I begin to protest. “I won’t steal any more of your food, chouchou, without your permission.” And he swaggers out of the eatery, hands slung in his pockets.

  I’m suddenly relieved that Charlotte asked me to go off campus with her Friday night, even though she refused to tell me where we’re going. Mikhail will be with us, though, which is good, because after the murder and the burglary, I’m starting to think the senator’s idea to hire us a bodyguard wasn’t so bad after all.

  13

  Dali and I are alone in my darkened room, watching a swoony teen show and stuffing our faces with popcorn and chocolate candies. We started the evening in Charlotte’s room, and I was just about to ask her about the photo of her with Callahan and Na when she got a mysterious phone call and practically shoved us out into the hallway. So we moved to my room.

  On the screen, a teen couple is wandering the halls of their school after hours when an eerie rustling comes from a closet.

  My legs are jiggling in anticipation as I try to remain focused, but there are so many bits of information swirling around my head that I can hardly remember the plot.

  Dali, however, is enraptured. The closet door starts to open. One of them screams…

  I pause the video.

  “Hey! I was watching that.” Dali’s hand moves toward the laptop.

  “Hold on. I have to know what’s going on with everyone at this school. What was up with Callahan and Na? And Ricardo and Genevieve? Please tell me.”

  “Just a sec.” She looks out into the hallway. Charlotte’s voice goes quieter.

  “I’ll be a couple more minutes,” she says to Dali, who closes the door with a gentle hand.

  “Okay, I guess I’ve got time.” She sinks down beside me and takes a handful of chocolate candies, tossing them into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

  “Well?”

  Swallowing, she looks at me. “You already know that Callahan and Na dated, and that she dumped him? It was a total surprise when they started dating last year, because Callahan is so quiet and withdrawn, and Na was… not.”

  I whisper, hoping it won’t sound so harsh at a lower volume. “So, she was loud and mean?”

  Dali shifts in her seat. “Something like that. How’d you guess?”

  I bite the inside of my cheek, not feeling great about speaking ill of a dead girl, but forge ahead since I’m not planning on smearing her all over school... “I ran into her, literally, when I was moving in, and again the first day of school. She was vicious. I admit, I should have been watching where I was going, but yeah.” I picture the dark look Na leveled at me, and the warm coffee running down the front of her blouse.

  Dali shakes her head. “Before she and Callahan got together, she was even worse. There was this one girl. Na picked on her constantly. Her clothes, her typing speed, everything. I felt so bad for her. I wanted to say something, but Na scared me. I tried to stay out of her way. But when Na and Callahan came back from Christmas break saying they were dating, Na stopped torturing that girl. And Na and Callahan were even kind of cute together, if you could forget their totally opposite personalities. It kept going until this summer, when Charlotte told me they’d broken up. No one could figure out why, and neither of them were talking. It was bad. Callahan kept posting on her social media, asking her to at least talk to him, but she ignored him. Charlotte was furious. They’d been friendly, you know, before. Except whenever Na picked on that girl, she told her to knock it off.” Dali takes a slow sip of her drink.

  I chew on this. So, Charlotte and Na were friends. It explains the photo, but I’m still not sure why Callahan would be interested in a girl who was so obviously a brat. “When did they break up?”

  “I don’t remember, exactly. Let me see.” Taking out her phone, she opens her social media app and navigates to Na’s profile. It’s full of glamorous, perfectly filtered images. One of Na at a party catches my eye. The painting over her shoulder looks familiar. Maybe a reproduction of a famous piece.

  She clicks on one. “Early July. See?” She shows me Callahan’s comments below the image. He asks Na to talk to him about some vague fight they’d had that had caused her to end things. But she never responds. Not one time.

  “What happened to her? The girl Na was bullying?”

  Dali shrugs. “She didn’t come back this year.” She leans forward and starts the video again. Apparently, she’s done talking.

  Almost immediately, the show goes to a commercial.

  Dali hisses, but I no longer care about the show. Why would I even bother to watch television when we have so much real, and scary, stuff going on at the academy? Someone has been killed, and so far the police have been pretty tight-lipped about their investigation. Do they even have leads? Or are they closing in on the killer, and keeping mum until they catch them?

  I risk a furtive glance toward Dali. The bluish tinge of the screen makes her look ghostly in the low light. Dare I ask about the other thing? I take a couple of the candies, munching on them one at a time to make them last. Then I pause the show again.

  “Hey! You’ve got to stop doing that.”

  I bow my head. “Sorry, but what about Ricardo and Genevieve?” My voice shrinks as I speak, as if the mere mention of their names will bring Charlotte barreling into the room to knock some sense into me. She probably would do it, too.

  “There’s not a lot to tell. Like Charlotte said, he usually goes after the new girls, but once he convinces them to like him, go on a few dates, he gets bored and drops them. Genevieve was the new girl last year.” She shrugs, her eyes flicking to me before gravitating back to the laptop.

  “And they never broke up?”

  Dali bares her teeth. “I don’t think they were ever together, together. I’ve known Ricardo for years, and he’s never had an actual girlfriend, not for want of girls trying to pin him down.”

  “And you think since I’m the new girl, he’s just having a little fun with me?”

  “Well, yeah. Sorry.”

  I breathe out in disappointment. “Let’s just watch the show.” I push play.

  Charlotte bursts through the door, beaming. Reaching down, she swats at the laptop to stop the video. “He’s coming Friday night!”

  “Why?” Dali moans, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

  Charlotte shoots her a cold look.

  “Not that. This.” She gestures toward the screen. “We’re never going to get through this episode.”

  “I’ll fill you in. The shadowy killer murders the boyfriend, the girl huddles against the wall crying, knowing she’s next, but when she looks the killer is gone. At the end of the episode it’s revealed that the killer is the best friend, who was tired of being picked on by the boyfriend. Predictable.”

  Dali covers her ears. “Ahh. Spoilers!”

  Charlotte rolls her eyes as she sinks onto the carpet beside me, sitting with her legs tucked to one side. She helps herself to a handful of the candies, eating them in color order: yellow, orange, red, green, blue, brown. “I’m so excited. It’s going to be great.”

  “So, who’s coming, exactly?”

  Charlotte’s ocean blue eyes sparkle as she looks at me. “My secret boyfriend, Kenneth.”

  A cloak of white shrouds the sky, hinting at a change in the season as September melts into October. The leaves on the oak trees are beginning their transformation from shades of basil and parsley to curry, turmeric, and paprika. The window in my dorm room is icy to the touch each morning, a further reminder that cozy winter is encroaching.

  Friday night, after Ms. Poppin has walked the hall to make sure all the girls in the dorm are accounted for, I find myself made up, dressed to the nines (in a sparkling sheath that Charlotte finagled from Gul, who is closer to my size than my willowy stepsister), and hiding in the shadows near the stairs.

  We wait until the security guard moves away on his rounds, and then we run down barefoot, holding our dancing shoes. I look over my shoulder to make sure the guard doesn’t spot us, and my eyes land on Ricardo. He’s leaning over the fifth floor balcony, watching me intently. When my eyes meet his, he quirks his mouth upward.

  “Adrienne,” Charlotte whisper-shouts, yanking on my arm. “Watch where you’re going.”

  I don’t have time to wave back before my stepsister drags me down the remaining stairs. In the quiet that envelops us, every sound is magnified. A chuckle comes from above. Ricardo.

  Charlotte, who is perfectly calm, leads us down the hall that runs past the kitchen, and I realize where we’re going. The courtyard with its locked gate. My mind starts to race. How are we going to get over the wall in these dresses? Mine is pretty snug. There’s no way I’ll be able to climb it without hiking the fabric up to my waist. No, thank you.

  Once we reach the door, Charlotte scans the hallway one more time for any sign of life before pushing it open and beckoning us to follow her outside.

  The autumn air is sharp, making goosebumps prickle my flesh. I wrap my hands around my upper arms, wishing I’d brought the sweater Charlotte insisted I wouldn’t need.

 

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