on the Ivies for you. Specifically, I got Seth to spill.”
Acid pushes up my throat as Ethan throws me a solemn look. Then he turns to his laptop and pulls up our tracking document. Next to Seth’s name and under Margot, Avery, and Emma’s columns he writes Catfished.
Relief floods through me as I release a breath. He’s pinned it on the other girls. He doesn’t know it was me. Now it’s time to play dumb.
“Catfished?”
“Seth thought he’d met a girl named Ingrid from Wheatford Prep on a subreddit. They DMed, emailed, texted for months, including some pretty intense sexting.” Ethan grimaces. “He showed me and everything. So, Ingrid insists on meeting for the first time in person to…you know, and it has to be the Saturday of some huge FIRST Robotics competition. Seth chooses love over academics and then gets stood up, and Emma ends up team captain. Once Ingrid stopped returning any of his messages, Seth pieced together that she’d had an uncanny habit of keeping him busy during FIRST building sessions…so that’s why he hates you guys. I get it, though. If someone did that to me…”
It’s surreal to hear my own sabotage told to me like a story. Only I know that Ethan and Seth are missing a few pieces. Yeah, Emma put Seth on the board, but Avery and I created Ingrid together. We’re the writers in the group. Ingrid was like my own personal smutty RPG. I burn red hot to think Ethan read some of my sexts.
“You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve been drinking. I think it’s catching up with me.” Wine will excuse my flush, surely.
“Wish you’d brought some over. After plumbing the depths of humanity today, I could use it.”
“Ha, no way I could sneak off with any of Avery’s private store. She takes her French reserves very seriously.”
“Speaking of, how did it go? Find anything out from Avery?”
“Not much, honestly. It felt normal. Maybe too normal? I can’t tell anymore, though, looking at that.” I gesture at the Ivies’ ledger. It’s beginning to fill up. “Maybe I never could.”
Ethan points to a single word hovering under Avery’s name at the bottom of the sheet. “Who did she get expelled? I know it wasn’t Emma, but that’s a damn good motive for murder.”
I squirm under Ethan’s too-earnest gaze. This one has been bugging me. “It’s Kaila Montgomery,” I say. “She got expelled sophomore year, but it had nothing to do with Avery. Kaila called in a fake bomb threat to get out of exams.”
Ethan arches his eyebrows. “That sounds oddly similar to the Ivies’ tactics.”
“Well, I know that now,” I mumble. “It just seems extreme, is all. The only thing I could come up with that Avery benefited from with Kaila’s leaving was that she had been the runner-up in the student body elections. So, technically, it’s how Avery became junior class president.”
“That’s it, then!” Ethan lights up.
“Getting someone expelled for a club position is a bit much, even for Avery,” I say. “Besides, Kaila went off the deep end. I saw it. She was ranting, paranoid, and she punched Emma in the face….” I trail off. Ethan’s giving me a look. Though I have trouble connecting cheese puff–dusted, wine-drunk Avery with something so diabolical…he’s right. “Fine, put Kaila on that list.”
“Under Avery and Emma,” Ethan says, typing out fake bomb threat under both. “You don’t get a fist to the face unless you did something. Could Kaila have come back to campus to get revenge?”
“She couldn’t have hurt Emma.” I shake my head. “They sent her to a wilderness reform program. It’s where rich kids with expulsions go while their parents work to get them into a different boarding school.” Despite my denials, I try to remember whether Kaila was local. Would she have a reason to be back in Massachusetts this close to the holidays? Could she have gotten onto campus last Wednesday?
“So, you’re seeing what I’m seeing?” Ethan’s eyes rake over the list. “Motives. I know you’re set on Avery, but the Harvard thing is weak, I think. A few of these, though, are serious reasons to kill someone.”
“But Emma only did a few of these.”
“The overwhelming pattern from talking to people is that they don’t like any of you. And no one is completely certain who did what.” Ethan goes quiet for a moment. Then he says to his hands, “I’m glad you didn’t know about any