I Am Her Revenge (18 page)

After a few
hours of staring up at the ceiling, I hear the girls tiptoeing up the stairs. There are only a few of them tonight, probably just Claire, Arabella, and her two minions. One is murmuring, but it’s not the usual giggling type of murmuring. It’s softer, lower, like something’s wrong. I wait for Claire to scurry into the room, but she doesn’t come. The murmuring dies off, and the door to my room remains closed. I hear a quick knock, and someone scampering away. Claire?

Arabella?

I throw off my covers and open the door as softly as possible, peering down the shadowy hall. No one in sight. I pull on jeans and a black sweater, then patter down the hall and the stairs. It’s so dark that I have to feel my way, gliding my hand along the wall and hoping that no one has left anything out for me to stumble over. Jenkins must still be outside on her smoke break.

As soon as I push open the back door, I see her.

Claire lies, limbs strewn out, on the bottom of the cold steps, as if someone has dumped her there. She’s on her back with one arm crossed over her chest and the other flung over her head. Her eyes are closed, and her face looks like the pale surface of a pearl in the moonlight.

I stand frozen for a moment, blinking and unsure, and then run down to her. “Claire!” I yell, shaking her. “Claire, wake up!” Her head rolls, and I stop shaking her, worried I’ll make her hit it against the stone steps.

I bend down. She’s breathing, but it’s so shallow I almost miss it.

I have to do something. But what? If I take her to the nurse, they’ll think I was the one who gave her whatever she’s overdosed on, and I’ll be expelled. Or worse, the administration will look too closely at me and start to unravel all of Mother’s carefully constructed lies. No. I just need to get her better. If I could get her to the hospital, if I could just get her fixed and back to Madigan without anyone noticing . . .

I run straight through the courtyard past Rawlings Hall to the light shining through the fog. Arthur. I sprint to his shed and bang on the door until he opens it. “It’s Claire, please!” I say, not knowing if I’m making any sense. “We have to get her to the hospital.”

“Where is she?” he asks, scanning the darkness.

I run back to Faraday, and he follows. “She’s overdosed on something,” I explain. “She won’t wake up.”

Arthur kneels down and cradles her in his arms, picking her up and moving swiftly across the yard and around his shed. He places Claire carefully in the back of a tiny black car parked there, and I jump into the backseat with her. He’s roaring down the hill before I can get my seatbelt on.

I hold Claire’s head in my hands and beg her over and over to wake up. She answers me with nothing but her shallow, slow breathing.

The nearest hospital is miles away, in a village even farther than Loworth. Arthur goes as fast as he can, speeding in this tiny car with its cracked leather seats through the heavy fog encasing us. But it still doesn’t seem fast enough.

I stare down at Claire’s pale face. I knew she was going out tonight. I knew she was going to take some kind of pill. I knew she had been out on the moors more nights than I could count. I knew G-Man was worried about her, that if I had been a real friend, I would’ve worried about her, too. I knew everything I needed to know to stop this from happening, but I’d done nothing. Because I didn’t think it was my business. Because keeping Claire alive was not part of Mother’s plan.

I feel as if all the blood is draining from my face, leaving me as pale as she is.
I
did this. My inattention, my refusal to acknowledge that Claire had a problem, has led to this night. It’s all my fault.

We pull into the emergency entrance of the tiny hospital, and I jump out of the car. Arthur gathers Claire in his arms as I run into the building.

A distraught mother and three children sit in the white blankness of the waiting room, and they stare at me with wide, hollowed eyes as I run in. I turn to the nurses at the reception desk. “My sister—I think she’s OD’d,” I say with the best British accent I can muster, as Arthur brings Claire in behind me.

The nurses bustle around the desk, calling for a gurney. An orderly takes Claire, her head lolling as she’s transferred from Arthur’s arms.

“Is she going to be okay?” I ask, my messily accented voice a wail in the cold space.

They wheel her away, leaving us alone with a stocky nurse who reaches a hand out to pat my shoulder, her eyes kind and comforting. “They’ll do their best. Now what did she take?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of pill, I think. I overheard her talking about it on the phone. I wasn’t supposed to hear, she hates me eavesdropping.” I try to look beyond the nurse to see if I can get a glimpse of Claire.

“You didn’t hear what kind?” she asks.

I shake my head, focusing back on her. “No. All she said was that her friends had scored some pills, and she was going to try them.”

“Okay, that’s fine, dear. We’ll sort it out. Now what about your parents?”

“Business trip,” I say quickly. “I’ve been calling, but I can’t reach them.”

She pats my shoulder again. “How about you take a seat here,” she says, gesturing to the waiting room, “and we’ll start getting your sister better.”

“Thank you,” I murmur. I settle into a seat as far away from the distraught family as possible. I can’t let their worry and stress melt into my own.

Arthur sits beside me as the seconds drip by, his face tense and motionless. The fluorescent light buzzes above, nearly drowning out the howl of the wind outside. The nurses refuse to look at me. No one is telling me anything. I try not to picture Claire’s pale face, the lifeless weight of her body, but I can think of nothing else.

A doctor comes out, and I straighten up in my chair, but he heads for the family. He says something to them, and then they’re crying.

I reach for Arthur’s hand on the armrest beside me, needing something to hold on to.

For a moment, he freezes and lets my fingers intertwine with his, lets my palm graze against the calluses of his much bigger palm. His thumb brushes a half circle on the back of my hand, but instead of calming me, it feels like sparks burning into my skin. And then he takes a sharp breath in, pulls his hand away, and stands. I drop my hand back in my lap.

“I’ll go get some tea,” he says without looking at me.

I don’t know what’s come over me. I bury my head in my hands. I’m alone with the crying family, and the seconds seem to move backward now. I wish Ben were here. He would hold my hand as long as I needed him to.

But his hand would never feel like sparks against mine.

Another doctor enters the waiting room, and she heads right toward me. “You’re Claire’s sister?” she asks.

I nod.

“We’ve eliminated the oxycodone from her system. She’s sedated, unconscious, and we won’t know anything until she wakes up.”

I can hardly breathe, but I force my voice out. “Can I see her?”

She nods with a sad smile. “Yes, but only for a few minutes. She needs to rest.”

I nod, thoroughly obedient as always. The doctor leads me down the hall and points to a room. I take a deep breath, staring at the door for a second before I twist the handle and push it open.

At first all I see is her hair. Everything else is covered in wires and tubes. I look away quickly. One of the machines beeps a monotonous rhythm, but the room feels still and silent. Like a tomb. I am underground with the dead, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to get out.

I shake my head, trying to get the strange thoughts out. Claire is right here on the bed, and she is going to be fine. I know it. She’s too happy, too precious and pretty a thing to be destroyed by something like this. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to good people. It happens to people like me.

For a moment, I wish I were the one lying on that bed instead. I wish it so hard that my knees nearly collapse under the weight of my wishing. I stare at her a few more minutes, not daring to move closer.

My fault. All my fault.

I need air. I leave without another glance at Claire.

I close the door behind me and lean back against it, my knees still threatening to buckle underneath me. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, desperate to loosen the tightness in my chest.

When I open them, I realize I’m not alone in this hallway. And someone—a much too familiar someone—is staring at me.

Arabella.

She stands outside the room huddled with Headmaster Harriford and a couple of policemen, and I’m so tired that it takes a moment to realize that there is a shiver running down my spine. This tableau in front of me signals nothing but danger.

The cops barely glance at me, until Arabella raises her finger. “That’s her,” she says.

I look to Harriford, my ally. Only now he’s staring at me not with the care and devotion that he used to show me, but with something more like revulsion.

“What? What is it?” I ask. “Whatever she’s told you, it’s not the truth. She’s lying. She hates me!”

The cops look at each other as I protest, and then one of them approaches. He spins me around and traps my wrists in handcuffs, snapping them shut so quickly that one of them scratches my skin.

“Vivian Foster, you are under arrest for the possession and sale of illegal narcotics.”

“What?” I ask. “I didn’t do anything! I just found her!”

He continues to talk over me. “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

Arthur comes running toward me. He takes in the scene, then tells me urgently, “Viv, don’t say anything. We’ll get you out of this, just don’t say anything.”

I keep my mouth shut as the cop pulls me down the hall and out into the waiting car.

They’ve put me
in an interrogation room, a box of concrete and harsh fluorescent light. They leave me in here alone for what feels like hours, though it may be only minutes. It’s long enough for me to curse Arabella and picture all the ways I can exact my revenge on her.

I don’t think she’s cruel enough to make Claire overdose. I’m sure Claire did that all on her own. But Arabella took advantage of the situation and told them that I provided the pills. And she must have convinced the others to leave Claire on the steps and knock on my door so I would be the one to discover her and implicate myself in her overdose.
She
left her on those steps. To die.

I want to scream, take the shiny metal chair I’m sitting on and throw it against the wall, beat my fists against the concrete. Instead, I let my head sink into my hands and try to regulate my breathing.

A cop I haven’t seen before walks in. He isn’t in uniform, but his straight posture and cold smile give him away. “We usually don’t have this much trouble with Madigan students, even the American ones,” he says by way of introduction. He’s letting me know that he knows everything about me. Or at least he thinks he does.

“Let’s make this easy, yeah?” he says, settling down in a chair across the table from me. “You tell me everything, and we can call it a day.”

I stare at him, my face blank. He will get nothing from me.

His cold smile fades, and he looks down at the folder in his hands. “You’ve been accused of possessing illegal drugs and selling them to your roommate, Claire Templeton. You gave her so much that she overdosed, and you brought her to the hospital for medical attention.” He pauses, looking at me. “At least you did the right thing, in the end,” he sniffs.

I stare into his icy blue eyes and show absolutely no emotion.

It seems to unsettle him, as it should. I know I look less than human with this blank stare in my eyes.

“You’re facing several years in jail, Vivian. And if your friend doesn’t wake up, you could be charged with manslaughter. You’re eighteen, so you’ll be tried as an adult.” He’s becoming more frantic in his quest to elicit emotion from me. “She might not make it through the night, and then you’ll have to live with her death on your conscience for the rest of your life. How does that make you feel?”

When I say nothing, he slumps in his chair. “Do you have any questions?”

“Am I allowed a phone call?” I ask. My voice is dead, frozen, desolate.

He nods, slamming the folder down and standing up. “Come with me.”

I follow him into the next room, the main room of the station. There are only three desks, each one piled with messy stacks of paper. No one else seems to be here.

He points me to a phone on the wall. “You get only one call,” he says.

I nod, close my eyes, and take a deep breath. My fingers fly across the familiar numbers before I can think any more about it.

“What?” Mother answers, that brittle voice resounding in my ear.

“I’ve been arrested,” I say. The cop crosses his arms and watches me, showing he has no intention of giving me any privacy.

“For what?” Her voice is low. A deadly calm.

“They’re accusing me of possessing and selling drugs. My roommate overdosed, and Arabella’s framed me.”

The cop raises his eyebrows and then grins, telling me clearly that he doesn’t believe me.

“He is in London,” Mother says, meaning Helper. “Tell me where the jail is, and he will come get you out.”

I shiver as I tell her, though I try not to let the cop see.

“Vivian?” Mother adds. “You know what happens when I am disappointed in you.”

There’s a bang as she slams the phone down, and the line goes dead.

The cop puts me in a cell by myself. It has a cot, a toilet I have no intention of using, and metal bars that are supposed to intimidate me.

I should want to stay in here forever. I know what’s waiting for me as soon as I step outside the security of these bars.

As the hours melt on, I realize I have no concept of time. I can’t tell if the world outside is sunny or dark. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. But I want a window. I want something that will assure me that I’m not back in the closet at home, locked away for days, that Mother’s cold gray eyes won’t be waiting for me on the other side of this cell.

I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, trying to brush off the claustrophobia. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine. This is all just a misunderstanding, and Mother will come to see that. It won’t harm my chances with Ben, which I know is what she’s afraid of. It may even help them.

I hear footsteps approaching, and I open my eyes and hold my breath.

Helper and the cop who questioned me stand before my cell, wearing twin looks of disapproval, though for very different reasons. Helper grips his cane so tightly that he looks pained, his mouth in a deep frown.

The cop unlocks the cell. “Come on,” he tells me. I follow him and Helper down the hall and back into the interrogation room.

“We don’t have enough evidence to hold you,” the cop says. “You’re released.”

I swallow as I look up into Helper’s flashing eyes. I’ve never seen him look so emotional—I’ve never seen him not looking cold and calm—and I know it doesn’t bode well for me.

I hope with everything that I am that Arthur stays away from the police station.

“I’ll go get the release paperwork,” the cop says. “You two stay in here.”

Helper continues to stare at me as the cop closes the door, sealing the two of us off. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he asks, his voice low and deadly.

I swallow and look up at the corners of the room. “Don’t they have cameras in here?”

He shakes his head slowly. “Not in a middle-of-nowhere station like this. And how about you let me do the talking?”

I bow my head.

“Why didn’t you call your mother if you had suspicions about this girl?”

“I thought I could handle it on my own,” I say, refusing to meet his gaze. “I didn’t think she would go to such lengths.”

“Well, she did, didn’t she?” he says, his voice quiet but brutal. It’s the kind of quiet that fills up the room, and I wish he would just yell instead. My knees go weak. “You’re ruining
everything
.” He steps forward, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me. “You can’t marry him if you’re expelled before you’ve even convinced him to run away.”

“
Marry
him?” I ask before I can stop myself. Helper finally stops shaking me.

“Yes, marry him. It’s what your mother needs. Otherwise this is all for nothing. You convince him to run away, and then you get him to marry you.”

Marry me? That’s been her goal all along? The money. She wants the Collingsworth money, which I can access through Ben, but that’s only guaranteed if I marry him. Of course. But what teenage guy wants to get married?

“Your mother is on her way,” he says, “to take matters into her own hands. And you are going to pay for your incompetence.”

I feel myself go slack as he digs his fingers into my shoulders.

She will kill me.

I can see it in his face, the way his eyes fill with rage as he watches me. If I fail, she will kill me, just as Arthur said. Just as she would have killed Emily, if her plan to get her expelled hadn’t worked.

I didn’t want to see it before. I thought that she was too weak for that, that those nights she spent weeping in her room meant she would never really hurt me. I thought that she needed me. She was my mother, and she relied on me. But now I see that she doesn’t care about me. If I don’t do the one thing I was born to do, she won’t need me anymore. She will have to kill me to make sure her secrets stay secret. And she won’t care. Just like she didn’t care when she had her own mother killed. I can’t ignore the truth, not when it’s screaming at me like a banshee trapped in my head. She had her mother killed, and she will kill me.

There is a rustle at the door that draws Helper’s attention away. I turn and see Ben standing in the doorway, fury etched onto his face. But it’s not directed at me. It’s all for my tormentor.

“She didn’t do it,” Ben snaps. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but you can’t talk to her like that.”

Helper seems to have been struck speechless as he watches Ben come to my defense so strongly. His grip on my shoulder loosens, and I step out of his grasp.

His emotionless face is back. “I’ll go see about those release papers,” he says.

“What are you doing here?” I ask Ben as soon as Helper leaves.

He crosses the room and enfolds me in his arms. I’m still trembling from the realization of how precarious my situation really is, and he hugs me tighter.

“It’s all around school,” he explains, rubbing slow circles on my back.

“I didn’t do it,” I say.

He stops me before I can keep defending myself. “I know. I know you wouldn’t do that to Claire.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. Even though he knows I have ample access to drugs, he doesn’t believe I could be that twisted or careless. Nothing will make him doubt me. He doesn’t know how dangerous I am.

I bite my lip.

“People are saying you’ve been expelled,” he says softly.

I shake my head and nestle it back on his shoulder. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Headmaster Harriford seemed furious. He’ll probably send me back on the first plane to America.”

“You can’t go home with him!” Ben shouts, stepping out of the hug and gesturing at the door to show he’s referring to Helper. “You can’t go back to your mother and let her rule your life.”

“What am I supposed to do? If they expel me, I have nowhere else to go.”

He takes a deep breath, looking at the floor for a moment before looking back up at me. “Run away with me.”

There it is. I’ve done it. For a moment, that’s all I can think. He’s mine, completely. He is mine to ruin.

I’m so relieved that I want to sink down onto the floor and weep, but then there’s another part of me. . . . I look into those hazel eyes and see complete trust and love and care. And I wish that I had actually earned those things.

I nod and let him pull me close. I can’t speak.

“We’ll get out of here, okay? We’ll go where my father and your mother can’t find us. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The door opens, and the grim cop stands there with the papers in his hands. “You’re free to go,” he says. “For now. You’ll need to stay close in case we charge you.”

I catch Helper’s eye over the cop’s shoulder. I try to stop shaking, to look confident and in control. “I just need a moment alone with Ben,” I tell him. Helper nods.

I let Ben walk me out of the room, out of the station. I know Helper is watching us, even though I can’t see him. He never misses anything.

“I’ll withdraw as much money as I can out of my bank account before my father notices,” Ben says as soon as we reach the bright sunlight of the world outside. “And we can go to Oxford—I have a mate there who can put us up for a while. We’ll be safe, okay?”

He cups my head in his hands, and I know I have to look at him. I have to reassure him that this is what I want. That he is what I want.

But before I can look at him, I realize something that I’ve been trying to deny for months: I don’t want this boy to ruin his life for me. I want him to run far away from me, to the ends of the earth, where I can’t reach him. I care about him too much.

I care about him.

The shock of that thought nearly undoes me.

Everything is so confusing and happening so fast. I can’t catch my breath. I feel it growing shallower and shallower in my chest, and then I’m falling, actually falling to the ground, my knees hitting the hard cobblestones of the sidewalk.

Ben has a strong hand on my back. “Breathe,” he tells me. “Just breathe.”

He draws in a long breath, encouraging me to do the same. I try, but it catches. Finally, I get a good one, and I expel it just as slowly. I close my eyes, feeling my heart rate slow. I wipe away the tears that have escaped.

If I let this opportunity slip away, she will kill me. That thought comes to me again with startling clarity. She will have no more use for me, and I know too many of her secrets to be allowed to escape.

Arthur’s face flashes across my mind. He escaped. Helper has never been able to find him, though I know he’s tried. He could help me.

But he won’t. He doesn’t trust me, doesn’t care about me. He’s made that clear.

What I need to do is get Ben to run away with me and marry me. And then what? Will Mother feel content with her revenge? Will she let me let him go? Or will something happen to him? Will something happen to him if I don’t marry him?

Arthur was right all along. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into. I don’t know where it will all end.

I shiver, looking into Ben’s trusting hazel eyes. I have to make a decision about who I can trust: Arthur or Mother. I remember what Helper said, that Mother is coming to take matters into her own hands. I know who I have to trust. There’s no other way.

Ben must see my face brightening, because he lets out a sigh of relief and steps back. “Are you okay?” he asks.