didn’t know, honestly.” Emma grips my forearm so tightly that I fear it might break. “You’re a triple legacy; I was so sure you would get in, especially with that SAT score!” Emma throws her a beseeching look. Avery scowls harder. “I wanted to see if I was good enough, and I wanted to maybe go together.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you!” Avery screeches. “I could kill you!”
I’m struck with a sickening déjà vu, an out-of-body sensation. It’s like Avery’s screaming at me. My secret turns acrid in the pit of my stomach.
Avery isn’t done. Her voice drops lower, her murderous focus on Emma more intent. “Don’t think I don’t know how you did this, you little snake. Does Tyler know? Maybe I’ll tell the whole school.”
Emma retreats as Avery advances, forcing me to step back as well. I can feel Em shaking. From fear or rage, I can’t tell.
“Hey, Aves, let’s go outside for a minute. Get some air,” Margot cuts in, touching tentative fingers to Avery’s arm, then gripping more firmly when Avery doesn’t haul off and hit her. “And maybe you should leave, Em.”
Emma shoots Margot an et tu Brute look. Then something in her shifts. She hardens like steel.
“I don’t have to go anywhere. I didn’t do anything wrong. Just ’cause someone wasn’t good enough to get in doesn’t mean I have to feel bad.”
Everything happens quickly. Avery grabs a Solo cup from a girl in the crowd, hurls it at Emma. Emma’s reflexes are on point, but I’m a second too late. I take a full cup of booze to the face and torso.
“Shit!” I yell, partly because it’s cold and partly because I’m pissed that my favorite dress is ruined. Sticky brown liquid stains my chest and drips down my body and onto the floor.
Avery doesn’t even apologize. She giggles. Then she grabs Margot by the arm, and they make a hasty exit.
“Liv, I’m so sorry—”
I cut Emma off. “Just stop. I told you this would happen. Listen to me next time.”
Her eyes go as dead as Avery’s did a moment before. “Fuck you, Liv.” And then she storms off, Tyler following after her, and I’m left alone in the middle of a goddamn crowd, the lights of their phones already eating up my humiliation. Screw this party. I push my way back into the kitchen and locate my coat and purse in the cupboard where Emma and I stashed them earlier. Stupid Emma. She’s tossed a bomb into our friendship circle, and now mine will have to remain inside my chest, ticking away until it blows up and probably kills me.
“You okay, Olivia? Want me to walk you home?”
Of course it’s Ethan. Of course he saw that. And now he’s staring at my chest, which makes my entire body heat from head to toe. It’s all far too embarrassing.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks for offering. See you tomorrow.” I swipe the vodka bottle, now only a quarter full, and make a hasty exit through the back corridor before Ethan can protest. He doesn’t follow me, and a swoop of disappointment stirs in the pit of my stomach. I fill it with another swig of booze.
The crisp coldness of pitch-black December nights is one of my favorite things in the universe. Claflin is two hours from any big city, which means brighter stars, darker nights. Immediately, I feel a degree calmer. The party is behind me, the din fading with every step. I tilt my head up as I walk the winding path around the back of Whitley, until I rejoin the main gravel thoroughfare that cuts through campus.
The path here is better lit, though the towering lights are positioned strategically and regulated by a timer so as not to disturb dorm residents’ sleep. Every two hundred feet or so there’s a pole with a blue box affixed to it—the campus blue phones. Pick up the receiver on any of them and you’re connected directly to campus security or can dial out to the police in town. It’s a relic of the pre–cell phone days, though who hasn’t had their battery die on them, so I guess the blue phones are still good to have.
Their gentle glow is comforting. Every few feet, I step out into the next pool of blue light. I count my steps in the blackness between them—one, two, three, four. I reach the mid-thirties before I start over again. It calms me down. On the way, I