“Why is it so hard for you accept the fact that
those people
are my friends?” I shot back.
I loved Josh, but one thing about him that always irked me was his venomous disapproval of the Billings Girls. Even though in this case I understood where he was coming from, he didn’t have to act as though they were so predictable and so awful all the time. And I hated the fact that he tended to lump them all in together—as if good people like Constance, Sabine, Tiffany, and Rose were somehow just as evil as Ariana Osgood had turned out to be the year before. Maybe sometimes their priorities weren’t always the same as ours, but that didn’t make them bad people. There was still a lot of good in them—good he refused to see. And they were my friends. Most of them, anyway. I was sick of him attacking them at every turn.
Josh sighed and looked down at his bare feet, gripping a few brushes in both hands. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s just . . . Imagine what Cheyenne would think. How she would feel if she knew that this was what her friends were talking about four days after she died?”
Just hearing him express compassion for Cheyenne’s feelings stung. I know it’s petty, but less than two weeks ago I’d found the two of them getting hot and heavy in the art cemetery on the very day we’d both said “I love you” for the first time. It had turned out that Cheyenne had drugged Josh to get him in the mood, so to speak, and I’d forgiven him. And yes, the girl was dead now. But none of that made the
memory of her straddling him half naked, of the way he was looking at her like she was some kind of bodacious sex goddess, hurt any less.
“Honestly? I think she’d be proud,” I said, lifting my chin slightly. Even though I hadn’t voiced my agreement at the time, Portia’s argument at the library had been the only one that made sense to me. Cheyenne would have hated to be remembered as the girl who had torpedoed the Legacy. If anyone else in our circle had died, Cheyenne would have certainly taken a “the party must go on” stance.
Josh’s face screwed up in consternation. “Proud?”
“Yeah. Cheyenne was all about Easton and tradition. She
loved
being one of the longest legacies on campus,” I told him. “I think she’d want the Legacy to go on, and I think she’d be upset that her dad canceled it. You knew Cheyenne pretty well, and I’m just trying to think like her,” I said, trying to hide my disgust, once again, at the thought of the two of them. “Don’t you think that’s true?”
“Wow,” Josh said, staring at me.
“What?” I replied, feeling uncertain.
“They’ve totally brainwashed you over there,” he replied.
My mouth dropped open. Considering how he felt about them, lumping me in with the Billings Girls in his mind was pretty much the worst insult he could lob at me.
“I’m going to go now,” I said, grabbing my keys.
“Reed. Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did,” I replied.
Then I yanked open the door and put an end to our not-so-romantic night.
I stared at the ceiling in my room at Billings that night, listening to Sabine’s light breathing, unable to even fathom sleep. During the day I could sometimes ignore it, sometimes shove it aside—distract myself with other things. But when the lights were out and I was alone, the thoughts came, and I couldn’t stop them.
How does a person decide to die? Isn’t it the thing we’re all most afraid of? I mean, when you think about it . . . when you really think about it . . . it’s the one thing about life that you simply cannot imagine. Because no one knows what it’s really like. No one knows where you go. You can’t just take it back once it’s done and be hanging out with your friends a couple of days later and say, “So, was it totally weird when I died?” That’s just it. Even if there is an afterlife, life as you know it is just over.
Cheyenne was just over.
I sat straight up in bed, my heart pounding. It was the night before
Cheyenne’s memorial service, and I hadn’t slept in two days. Every time I even started to close my eyes, I would see her pretty, pert face and would suddenly jolt awake. I couldn’t take much more of this. It had taken months for the nightmares and unbidden daydreams about Thomas to peter out. How long would it take before Cheyenne’s suicide stopped haunting me? Would it ever?
The lines of her e-mail were burned indelibly into my brain. She had blamed me for her death. Blamed
me.
How could that ever be okay?
I shoved the covers aside and cool air rushed over my hot legs. My hair was plastered to the back of my head with sweat. I had to do something to distract myself. E-mail my brother. Or Natasha Crenshaw, my roommate from last year. Something. Glancing at Sabine’s bed, I got up and opened my laptop, then pulled the chair back from the desk as quietly as I could. Out of habit, I opened my inbox first. There was a message from Dash right at the top. My heart pounding for a whole new reason, I clicked it open.
Dear Reed,
I heard about Cheyenne’s memorial service. I really wish I could go, but I can’t make it. I feel awful, considering how long I’ve known Cheyenne, but I have this massive paper due on Monday, and unfortunately, funeral services for casual friends don’t merit an extension here at Yale. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be fine. It’ll suck, don’t get me wrong, but you’ll get through it. I know your Billings friends
will be there for you, and I’m sure you’ll keep yourself busy being there for them as well. You’ve always been good at that—being there for your friends no matter what.
If it does get tough, just know that I’ll be thinking about you all day . . . wishing I was there with you.
Love,
Dash
There was no air in the room. I read the e-mail over three times and my heart felt full. That line about me and my Billings friends—how he knew we’d be there for one another—I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Dash understood. He knew what my friends meant to me. He knew what Billings meant. Not like Josh. Josh, who felt the need to bash my housemates at every available opportunity. Dash understood, and it made me feel validated. Proud. Happy.
And then there was that final line.
I’ll be thinking about you . . . wishing I was there with you.
There was no misreading that. And he’d signed the e-mail “Love.”
Love, Dash.
In one e-mail, everything between us had changed. It had just gotten interesting.
And dangerous. And wrong.
Josh was my boyfriend. And Noelle was one of my best friends.
So why couldn’t I stop smiling?
Fingers trembling, I rested my fingers lightly on the keys. Everything hinged on what I typed back. I could tell him I’d be thinking of
him, too. Could take this thing, whatever it was, to the next level. Or I could ignore what he’d said. I could be cold and distant and loyal to Josh. Dash would get the hint. He wasn’t a dumb guy.
That was what I should do. Obviously that was what I should do. Things had been strained between me and Josh tonight, sure, but it didn’t matter. It was going to get better eventually. I loved him. He loved me. I couldn’t jeopardize that for an e-mail flirtation with a guy who lived hundreds of miles away. Even if he had just made me feel infinitely better with one e-mail, while earlier tonight Josh had made me feel like crap.
My face flushed hot, remembering Josh’s obstinacy. I didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to dwell on the negative. I wanted to dwell on this new, calm, validated feeling. I typed back. . . .
Dash,
I’ll be wishing you were there with me too.
Sabine shifted in her bed, letting out a sigh. My hands jumped from the keyboard as if the keys had just turned white hot. I glanced over my shoulder tremulously, but Sabine had simply rolled over. She wasn’t glaring at me in admonishment. Even if she knew whom I was e-mailing, she wouldn’t know that it was wrong. And was it wrong, really? Dash was my friend. Plus, I needed a distraction from everything. The weirdness with Josh, the confusion over Cheyenne—I needed something light to get me through all the dark.
I took a deep breath, signed the e-mail “Love, Reed,” and sent it
on its way. And I didn’t even feel guilty. All I felt was tired. Excruciatingly, permanent-yawn-in-the-back-of-my-throat tired. I closed the “mail sent” window, and my inbox automatically popped up. There was a new e-mail at the top of the list. I did a double take. My heart was sucked right out of my body, and I gripped the desk as I buckled forward.
The e-mail was from Cheyenne.
No. No, no, no, no, no. This was not possible. What the hell was going on here?
Delete it. Just delete it. It’s not really there anyway. You’re just hallucinating. Imagining things. You’re exhausted. Delusional. Delete it and go to sleep.
But how could I? It was a week to the day the first e-mail had been sent. A week since she’d died. I had to open it. I had to know.
Holding my breath, feeling like I was about to shake apart at the seams, I clicked open the message.
Ignore the note. You did this to me. You ruined my life.
Every cell in my body went cold. I couldn’t breathe. I gripped the edge of my desk to keep myself from fainting or reeling—just to feel something solid and real. Because this . . . this e-mail . . . it couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be happening. It was the same message I’d received last weekend. Cheyenne’s last e-mail. How had it been re-sent? Had someone sneaked into her room? Was someone on her computer, messing with me?
With a sudden surge of adrenaline, I shoved myself away from my
desk and tiptoed to the door. Every inch of me quaked as I slipped out into the hallway. Cheyenne’s room was just a few doors down. I looked for the glow of a light under the door, but there was none. Still, that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone inside. Sitting at her computer. Having a bit of fun at my expense. I took a deep breath, held it, and started to walk.
The hallway had never felt so wide, so frigid, so silent. As I passed by the grainy photos of Easton Academy through the years, I felt as if someone was watching me. As if at any moment cold hands would reach out and grab me. Clearly, I had seen too many horror movies. I had to get a grip. When I made it to Cheyenne’s room, I pressed my palms into the wood trim around the door and breathed.
Someone’s in there. Someone has to be in there. I’m not crazy. That e-mail did not send itself.
Squelching the fear that threatened to overcome me, I held my breath and opened the door.
It swung wide and fast, as if propelled by a burst of wind. The room was empty, the computer dark.
No one was there.
For a long moment I stood alone, disbelieving. If no one had sent it, how had it shown up in my inbox? How could it possibly have happened? No answer miraculously came to me, and the longer I stood there, the more the room in front of me came into focus. I started to notice things. Things I hadn’t noticed the last time I had been there—that morning when we found Cheyenne.
Like the suitcases, three of them, open on the floor near the far wall. There were sweaters piled into one, stacks of neatly folded
lingerie in another. Cheyenne had started to pack that night. Had been getting ready to go.
At what point had she stopped? At what point had she decided that she was not, in fact, ever going to leave Billings? At least not alive.
I would never know.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I stepped into the room and closed the door quietly behind me. On her dresser was her makeup case, filled to the brim with Shiseido and Laura Mercier. Next to it sat a small silver box with ornate etching on the lid. Beautiful. Taking a closer look, I saw that there was a monogram worked into the swirling design.
VMS
, the letters all the same size. Why would Cheyenne Martin have a box with the initials
VMS
etched into it? Tentatively, I opened the box and froze. Inside, sitting on the black lining, was Cheyenne’s diamond
B
necklace. I couldn’t believe she had ever taken it off. This necklace symbolized everything important to her. Then I saw that something was wrong with the chain. It hadn’t been unclasped. It had, in fact, been snapped. How? Why? Had she torn it off in the midst of a fit over being expelled?
Another thing I would never know.
Spooked by the violent image, I clicked the box closed and placed it right back where it had been. Right next to the pieces of the cell phone I had shattered against the wall above her bed in the midst of our Josh confrontation. She had gotten a new one the very next day, so why had she kept the remnants of the old one?
One more unanswered question.
Then I looked at her computer. She had sent that e-mail from this
machine. Had used that keyboard to type her final message. Was it still in her system? If she’d sent it from here, it still had to be coming from here, didn’t it? It had to be.
And then it hit me. Maybe she had set it up to be a repeating e-mail. Maybe she had set her server to send me her suicide note every Friday for the rest of my life. The very thought made the room tilt before me, and I grasped the desk.
Was she that sadistic? That angry? That unhinged? It couldn’t be. But if it was set up that way . . . if it was, I had to stop it. If it was, I had to make it go away.
Before I could rethink my actions, I sat down in Cheyenne’s pink upholstered desk chair and powered up her computer. It seemed to take forever to whir to life, and when it did I was faced with her desktop wallpaper, a photo of all of us taken last year in front of Billings on the last day of school. The sight of all those smiling, unsuspecting faces—Cheyenne’s dead center—made my eyes sting. I quickly double clicked the Easton crest at the top right of the page, and the Easton e-mail system popped open.
That was when I froze. It was, of course, asking for her password.
Dammit. Damn all the damn security. How was I ever going to figure out Cheyenne Martin’s password? Feeling as if I couldn’t give up now, I typed a few obvious things. “Billings.” Nope. “Easton.” Nope. “Josh” and “Hollis.” Nope. Thank God. But I was at a loss. Last year, when Dash and I had broken into Ms. Lewis-Hanneman’s computer, he had used some universal password that Lance Reagan had cracked, but I had no idea what it was. I could have called Dash or Lance or Josh
or any of the guys in Ketlar, all of whom, apparently, had been granted this information, but whoever I asked would want to know why I wanted it. It was no good. I was going to have to abort this mission. It was all I could do to keep from picking the monitor up and slamming it to the floor in frustration. But that, surely, would be loud enough to attract some attention.