Underwater, no sky, no idea which way was up.
Thinking was not possible. Instinct made me reach out for air, my lungs desperate for oxygen, and then I felt not air, but ice-cold flesh. Large hands grabbed me and hauled me out of the water. Air detonated in my lungs. I coughed and sputtered, collapsing onto the shore.
I heard my father say my name. “Emma, honey, wake up. Wake up!”
I sat up quickly and latched onto my father’s arms. “It was Mom,” I said. “I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t—”
“Shh,” my dad said, stroking my hair. “It was just a nightmare.”
Just a nightmare. Three words meant to comfort me.
And yet, we both knew they weren’t true.
C
HAPTER
2
M
y dad and I didn’t talk much on the ride to Lockwood even though a thousand unspoken words hovered in the air. We drove down the main drive of campus, lined with scarlet oaks that would flame brilliant crimson in a few weeks. As the trees loomed overhead, I couldn’t help but feel the oppressive weight of everyone’s expectations and judgments weighing on my shoulders.
My dad parked in the visitor lot, and we hauled my bags and suitcases to the dorm. Girls thronged the hallways and music blared while parents made quick getaways. Lockwood girls didn’t like their parents sticking around any longer than necessary, anxious to break out the booze for first-night celebrations.
Elise Fairchild watched the proceedings from a comfortable perch in the lounge. I was surprised to see her alone, un-flanked by the rest of the Fearsome Four. If Elise was top dog around here, Amber Stone was her canine accessory, the Chihuahua in her Prada purse. And then there was Jess Barrister, a sleek Doberman with a lethal stare, and Chelsea Anderson, the least popular of the group and sort of their bait dog.
My dad and I walked past Elise, who barely acknowledged my presence, as we made our way to my room. Michelle was there already, unpacking her clothes while she bopped her head to her music. I threw my bags in a messy jumble on the floor so I could hug her.
“We haven’t seen much of you this summer, Michelle,” my dad said.
“Yeah, I’ve been taking extra classes,” Michelle explained.
“See, Emma, some people have their priorities straight. I’ll bet those summer classes are going to impress the MIT admissions counselors.”
“Dad, she needed the extra credits because her old school didn’t offer calculus.”
“That’s true,” Michelle said, backing me up.
“I’m just saying, it wouldn’t kill you to get a head start on your college planning,” he said. “The binding of that SAT book I bought you hasn’t even been cracked.”
“Dad, some schools don’t even care about SATs anymore. Hampshire College is SAT-optional.”
“SAT-optional?” he said. “What is the world coming to?”
I rolled my eyes at Michelle, who seemed amused by our father-daughter sniping. My dad could be relentless about meeting responsibilities, but I knew he meant well.
“Well,” he said, mercifully giving it a rest, “I should leave you to your unpacking. Have a great year, Michelle.”
I followed my dad out into the hallway, where we both stood staring awkwardly at the floor.
“So, I guess this is it,” he finally said.
“Yep.”
“You know you can call anytime you want.”
“I know.”
“For any reason at all.”
“I will, Dad.”
Then he dipped his head to my level. “Are you sorry I told you? About Mom?”
I shook my head. “No, Dad. Don’t ever think that. I’m glad I know.”
“It’s just, I worry about you. These nightmares you’ve been having . . .”
“Dad, it’s okay,” I said, grabbing his wrists. “You don’t have to worry. I’m fine.” I stood on my tiptoes and gave him a reassuring hug. Then he pulled away quickly and turned to go, not wanting me to notice that his eyes were misty.
When I got back in the room, Aerosmith’s “Dream On” was blasting from the speakers. A suitcase lay open on the floor, and I smiled as I saw the piles of familiar red clothes. Michelle had a slightly unhealthy obsession with the color red. It had been her mother’s favorite color, and after her mom died, Michelle had taken to wearing red almost exclusively.
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said. “I hardly recognize you. You’re almost as brown as I am.”
I laughed. Gray and I had spent so much time outside that my usually pale skin had turned a reddish brown, and my dark hair was burnished gold at the tips. I flopped down on my unmade bed and watched Michelle fill her dresser with clothes. I didn’t feel like unpacking yet. Somehow it meant admitting that I was really back and that Gray was really gone.
I took out a photo Barbara had taken of Gray and me and set it on my dresser. Gray’s arm was around me, and we were both wearing exaggerated smiles for Barbara’s benefit. We looked goofy but happy.
“You miss him?” Michelle said.
“So much.”
“Are you guys in
luvvv?
” she teased.
“I think we are.”
“I knew it.” She made the universal symbol for “Gag me!” and threw some rolled socks at me. “You’re so in love you’re actually glowing. Either that or you’re pregnant.”
“Impossible,” I said.
“Oh, really?” she said, studying my face. “So you guys haven’t . . . you know? Taken the plunge.”
I blushed furiously and shook my head. “First of all, that’s a horrible euphemism, but no, we haven’t ‘taken the plunge.’ We thought about it. But it never seemed like the right time.” I tossed the socks back at her. “What about you and Owen?”
“No,” she said. “In fact . . .”
She let the silence hang over us until I couldn’t stand it any longer. “What?”
She dropped the T-shirt she was folding and came to sit next to me on my bed. Her voice grew hushed even though there was no one else in the room. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“You have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Okay. But you’re freaking me out here. What’s going on?”
She took a deep breath and then she blurted out, “I cheated on Owen this summer.”
My eyes popped wide. “You what?”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
“What do you mean, you cheated on him? With who? When?”
“Someone I met this summer.”
“What? Just some random guy?”
“Something like that.”
I could tell she was seeking my approval. “So you kissed another guy?”
She chewed her lip. “It was a little more than kissing,” she said. “Well, a lot more.” Now my eyes bugged from my skull. “Emma, I had to tell someone. It’s been eating me up inside.”
“Well, sure,” I said.
For a few seconds, I just stared straight ahead of me, taking it all in. I could tell Michelle was waiting for me to say something that would absolve her from her guilt.
“You don’t have to seem so shocked,” Michelle said quietly, clearly disappointed by my reaction.
But I was shocked. I had always thought of Michelle and Owen as the perfect couple—they had kind of an “opposites attract” thing going. And Owen was a complete sweetheart and didn’t deserve this.
“Look, I know you’re good friends with Owen,” she said, “but you can’t tell him.”
“I won’t. But don’t you think you should?”
“No. It’ll only hurt him. Besides, it was a one-time thing. It’s over.”
“Are you sure? I mean, who is this guy? What’s his name?”
She looked at the ground, unable to meet my eyes. “You don’t know him. Besides, it’s . . . complicated.”
“Yeah, because you have a boyfriend.”
“God, Emma. You’re so judgmental. It happened, and I don’t regret it. And if you could stop being Little Miss Perfect for a second, you might understand why.”
She lurched off my bed and continued unpacking her suitcase, leaving me no choice but to do the same. But for some reason, the conversation had made me feel incredibly lonely. I suddenly felt like I was rooming with a stranger.
When the first day of classes rolled around, I was reminded of everything I hated about Lockwood. AP Bio was going to be my toughest course, as it would require fifty pages of reading a week and a dissection of a cat at the end of the year. Biology had always been taught by Ms. Brewster, the oldest and most crotchety member of Lockwood’s staff, who was, therefore, likely to live forever. On the upside, she seemed to loathe Elise Fairchild almost as much as I did.
“Ms. Fairchild,” she said when Elise showed up ten minutes late for class. “I understand that your father endows the school with enough money to fund a third world country, but you’re still required to follow the most basic rules of the classroom, one of which is punctuality. I assume you have a compelling excuse?”
“Bad hair day?” Elise said, eliciting a few chuckles from the class. Then she went to take a seat, and I was surprised that she didn’t sit with her friends. Amber and Chelsea were huddled together whispering on the other side of the room, and Jess Barrister was sitting by herself in the back.
I almost didn’t recognize Jess. Last year, she had worn her chestnut hair long and sleek and had showcased an array of expensive tailored outfits that made her look like a Calvin Klein model. But now her hair was dyed black and cut in a chunky shag that partially obscured her face. She was sporting a stretchy black-and-white-striped shirt over black skinny jeans with black Converse high-tops. Michelle was staring at her, too, evidently as perplexed by the change as I was.
Ms. Brewster stared at Elise imperiously and said, “You’ll have more than enough time to think of a real excuse this afternoon at detention.”
My eyes went wide. Ms. Brewster’s detentions were notorious for being two hours long and requiring a complete cleaning of the dissection closet, among other odious tasks. Moreover, she’d given a detention on the first day. To Elise Fairchild.
It was comforting to know there was at least one adult at Lockwood who refused to bow down to Princess Elise.
Unfortunately, this person was not our headmaster, Dr. Overbrook, who was teaching our AP American History class this year. Overbrook loved Elise, mostly because her father was on the school board and gave tons of money to the school. Unfortunately, Overbrook resented people like me and Michelle, who siphoned money away from the school in the form of scholarships. Last year we’d gotten caught up in a big scandal over a fire at the stables, and Overbrook had cobbled together some lame evidence that implicated Michelle in the fire. In a closed hearing before members of the Disciplinary Committee, Michelle and I testified against Elise, saying we had seen her smoking marijuana with her friends in the stables. As you can imagine, this went over really well with Overbrook and the school board. In the end, there wasn’t enough evidence to find Michelle or Elise guilty of the fire, but the damage had been done to our reputations.
When I entered the classroom, Overbrook’s large forehead gleamed in all its bald majesty, highlighting the strange purple birthmark shaped like Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
. My stomach began to roil, whether from Overbrook’s detestable face, Elise’s presence, or the cafeteria’s eggs Benedict, I wasn’t sure.
“Greetings, young scholars,” Overbrook said. His rasping voice had the effect of nails on a chalkboard. “I trust you’ve all completed your summer reading. In order to give you an opportunity to impart all that wisdom you’ve no doubt acquired, I’m going to give you a pop quiz.” A wave of uneasiness swept the room. I wasn’t too worried, as I’d done the reading back in June, but still, a pop quiz on the first day of school was mean-spirited, even for Overbrook.
He passed out the quizzes, and I quickly ran through the multiple-choice questions, which rehashed the conquest of Florida by the Spaniards, the history of Jamestown and Virginia, Pocahontas and John Smith, the
Mayflower
and Plymouth Colony.
After the quiz, Overbrook began his lecture on seventeenth-century Salem, informing us that we’d be spending extra time this fall focusing on Salem in honor of the three hundredth anniversary of the Salem Witch Trial acquittals. Apparently, our campus had been built on old plantation lands once owned by Thomas Danforth, the deputy governor who sentenced nineteen innocent people to hang during the Salem Witch Trials. Our main administrative building, Easty Hall, was named after Isaac Easty, the man responsible for reversing the court’s judgment and restoring the good names of those condemned. In fact, Danforth himself later reversed his position and was believed to have run a sort of underground railroad for escaped witches, hiding them in caves that lay somewhere on this land.
“Mr. Gallagher will be directing a production of
The Crucible
at the end of October to commemorate the anniversary,” Overbrook said. “I trust some of you will try out.”
The mention of Mr. Gallagher’s name sent nervous flutters through my stomach. I’d been infatuated with my English teacher ever since my first day at Lockwood two years ago. And even though I’d put that juvenile crush behind me last year, I had so many lingering feelings for him now—confusion, disappointment, and a tiny remnant of that old adoration.
I knew it was silly. I had the world’s hottest Coast Guardian as my boyfriend. And Mr. Gallagher had basically hung us out to dry last year during the arson investigation. But as I walked into AP English and saw him at the front the classroom adjusting his glasses, I had a minor regressive episode. Despite everything, he was still handsome—lean and tall with a rugged face and wild dark hair. He looked like the hero of a Gothic novel. In fact, I’d made him exactly that in my dreams last year.
“Over the next few weeks,” he began, “we will be immersing ourselves in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter,
which I’m sure you all read diligently this summer.” The class groaned, and Gallagher pretended to clutch a knife out of his chest. “Come on, people.
The Scarlet Letter
is the ultimate forbidden love story. Sex. Adultery. Secrets. I know the writing style is difficult, but what did you think of the story?”
The class fell into a treacherous silence that meant Gallagher was going to call on someone at random. “Ms. Stone,” he said.