New Girl - By Paige Harbison Page 0,21

clearly not built with comfort or extended sitting in mind. They were all stiff, and some of them were mysteriously itchy. The rotunda itself was pretty noisy, what with the entrance hall directly beneath us, but it was better than my room.

My hot chocolate looked thin and watery, but it was deceptively delicious. I turned to see Blake putting a piece of bread in the toaster.

I summoned the nerve and then said, “Hey, Blake.”

She looked up, and took a second to register. “Oh, hey! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

“That’s okay, I just walked up.”

She smiled kindly. “I’m just taking this up to my room or I’d sit with you.”

“Oh, me, too,” I said, not wanting her to think I was desperate. “I’m just getting some of this and then reading a little for English.”

“I suggest reading on the second floor of the library. Have you been up there yet?”

“Not yet.”

“There are some spiral stairs near the back of the library that lead up to a bunch of study rooms. Go into the room right across from the landing.”

“What is it? Am I allowed?”

She giggled. “Yes, it’s the senior study room. There’s a gas fire in there, and a bunch of armchairs. It’s really nice. It’s empty a lot at night. Most of these kids do their homework right after classes.”

“I’ll go check it out, thanks.” I brought my hot chocolate to my lips.

“Oh, and hey,” she added quickly, “we’re going down to the boathouse tonight, you want to come?”

“Um…” I scrunched up my face in consideration.

“I know you can. Harper Lee can wait until tomorrow.” She looked knowingly at me. “You just don’t want to go. Well, look, it’ll be better this time. Last time you went, it was just a little weird. The last party we had last year was the one when…Becca went missing. Not only that, but she was the one who kind of…started the parties down there.”

“Oh…” Then the question I’d been waiting to ask all week fell from my lips like an anvil. “What…what happened to her?”

Blake’s toast popped up in the toaster. She removed it and concentrated on smothering it in butter and jelly. “She and Max got into a fight about something to do with Johnny…and it was right after Dana and she’d had a fight…and then the next thing we knew she was just gone. So was the training sailboat.” Her hand slowed on the knife. “It was really strange. There was a horrible storm brewing, so it doesn’t make sense for her to think she could go out in the boat…that would be suicide. But maybe that’s what it was…or maybe she was pushed out onto the boat. Or maybe she just left, and the boat thing was a coincidence. It’s really not clear what happened.”

Blake went silent, and it was clear to me that she’d spent a lot of energy trying to figure this out.

“That’s awful.”

“It was also the last night though, so she might have just called a cab and left for the summer. She had her purse on her. And her family is incredibly rich. I don’t know… It just doesn’t make sense. I’m sure you’ve heard all of the talk about it. All the theories.”

I shook my head. “No, not really. People talk about her a lot, but…what do you mean by theories?”

She sighed and took a bite of her toast. “She’s been missing for so many months now that it’s kind of…the longer she’s missing, the more likely it is she won’t come back.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“So I guess…” Blake went on, “I guess people are starting to wonder if she was killed.”

“Killed? Really? By someone—by a student?”

She nodded somberly. “Yeah. It’s hard to believe, but the whole thing is so surreal.”

“Who do they think did it?”

“You know how it is—everyone became a suspect at one time or another, really. Rumors are like that. Since she and Max were a thing, he became the most consistent rumor....”

I felt like my blood had frozen. I pictured Johnny, asking me to play beer pong, and smiling at me with blond hair almost touching his bright eyes. I thought of Dana, so deep in mourning she couldn’t seem to see straight.

And of Max. Max looking into my eyes. I’d looked into his, too. He wasn’t capable of murder; surely I would have seen it. I knew that wasn’t true—I didn’t even know him. But still, I couldn’t imagine it.

“But she’s