Dangerous Girls

“And you object?”

“Yes, your honor.” The police investigator is a short brute of a man, lights gleaming off his bald head. I’ve spent hours locked in small rooms with that reflection, as he yelled and cajoled and yelled some more, demanding a confession to crimes too awful to contemplate.

I hate him.

“Given the serious nature of the crime, and the defendants’ status as foreign nationals, we urge the court to remand them into custody and avoid a flight situation. These people are a risk to the public.” He turns to glare at me, and again, I try to stare him down, unflinching.

“Do you have anything to counter these concerns?” The judge asks Ellingham.

One of the associates from behind us leans forward, and he and Ellingham confer, their voices low. After a moment, Ellingham pulls away. “May I approach?”

She nods, and Ellingham and the police investigator move forward to talk with her at the front of the room.

“Hey,” I whisper again, using the distraction to reach over to Tate. I touch his arm lightly, and he flinches. “Tay, are you okay?”

He looks up and swallows. “I will be,” he replies softly, his eyes on mine. “When we get out of here.”

“Everything’s going to be okay.” I repeat what my dad told me. He nods. “We just have to be strong, and stick together.”

Tate manages a faint smile, and my panic ebbs. We’ll be okay. We have to be.

Ellingham finishes talking up front, and returns to stand between us. The judge shuffles some papers around.

“I’ve been informed that the Dempsey family has rented a house on the island and will be remaining here with their son until trial. Given those assurances, I am setting Mr. Dempsey’s bond at five million dollars, and releasing him to the custody of his parents.”

Tate deflates in a great gasp of relief, and there’s a sob from his mother behind us. My heartbeat thunders. Thank God.

“However, my concern for Miss Chevalier remains.” The judge peers at me, her eyes like ice. “Her family can offer no such assurances, and so I agree with the investigator. The defendant is a flight risk, charged with a violent crime of the highest degree, and will therefore be remanded to the Aruba Correctional Institute awaiting trial for the murder of Elise Warren. Hearing adjourned.” She bangs her gavel.

I don’t understand.

As the guard pulls me to my feet again, Tate is embraced by his parents. He doesn’t turn, not once, as I’m led away, stunned. I catch a glimpse of my father’s face staring after me, hollow and slack-jawed.

I open my mouth to call for him, but I can’t make a sound.

THE BEGINNING

I meet Elise three weeks into spring semester, junior year. Dad’s company is taking off—new clients flooding in, and talks of buyouts and share offerings—so he moves me from the local public high school to Hillcrest Prep, across the bay. If you’ve ever been the new kid, you know: the meat-market looks and razor-quick judgments are bad enough that first day in September; switching midyear is so much worse. I beg to stay where I am, or wait until senior year, but Dad doesn’t listen. He talks about the new opportunities for me: art, and dance, and drama, and how if I switch now, I’m practically guaranteed an Ivy League spot when I apply to colleges, but we both know the move is as much for his benefit as mine. Hillcrest is the home of Boston’s elite, and Dad’s eyes are fixed on their investment funds. They aren’t the parents of my future friends, they’re potential clients.

So I switch. And for two weeks, I stay blissfully unnoticed in the crowds of garnet blazers, preppy boys, and perfect girls. I keep my head down, answer only when called on, and eat my lunch alone in the solitude of a study carrel, stationed between Ancient Latin and Anthropology in the huge, wood-beamed library. Nobody notices me, nobody cares.

Not that I mind. The less high school bullshit I have to deal with, the better: the endless popularity contests, the inane gossip. I don’t know what happened—if I was out that one time in elementary school, when everyone learned how to talk about nothing all day and think that it matters, or at least, fake that way—but somehow I never learned the trick. The girls are the worst, acting like empires will rise and fall because someone wore last year’s colored denim, or someone else hooked up with a guy behind his girlfriend’s back. I want to tell them all: The world is bigger than high school.

Sometimes, I get this strange urge, a fierce scream bubbling in my chest; I fantasize about pushing back my chair and howling until my lungs ache and every head turns in my direction. Just to cut through the babble of white noise.

But of course, I never do, and for those first weeks at Hillcrest, I make it my mission to blend into the background. Better unnoticed than the center of all their curious stares, I decide. I have my routine, my escape routes, my non descript A–/B+ average, and soon, it looks like I can make it to the end of the year without anyone even noticing I’m there at all.

Until I open my gym locker Monday morning and find a heap of rancid clothing.

“Eww!” “Gross!” The cries go up from the locker room as I lift out my shirt, dripping with what looks like curdled milkshake. It’s been left to sit and mold for two days at least over the weekend, and the smell is sour even through the fog of scented body sprays and pink-flowered deodorant. “What is that?” The other girls shriek, gagging and retching like it’s the plague.

My cheeks burn as I search the crowd for the loudest voice; the most wide-eyed look of disgust. There. Lindsay Shaw. I should have guessed. Of all the Hillcrest girls with their perfect ponytails and straight-A grades and shark like stares, Lindsay’s is the most perfect; straightest. Deadly. I’d been called on to debate her in civics the previous week, and had reluctantly offered my arguments as if I was facing a mountain lion: Don’t look it in the eye, no sudden movements, and keep your body language submissive.

Clearly I wasn’t submissive enough.

Lindsay holds my gaze a moment, smug. “You should get that cleaned up,” she tells me in a fake-helpful tone. “Coach Keller is really big on hygiene.”

“Thanks,” I manage. For a moment, I feel that scream bubble up, but I would have to be crazy to take Lindsay on—in front of everyone this time—so I swallow back my anger and the hot flush of shame, and set about cleaning the mess into the trash with damp paper towels so that by the time Coach arrives to usher us off to volleyball, there’s no sign of my ruined gym clothes.