I wildly checked the room as if someone was going to pop out of nowhere horror-movie style, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide. Still, my mind reeled as I clutched the pink paper in my sweaty palm. No one had known I was moving into Pemberly aside from the Billings Girls. Had someone in my old dorm left these here for me? And if so, who? Why? Why was this happening? Why couldn’t whoever was doing these things just leave me alone?
“Well, well. Look who’s slumming it.”
A cold chill raced through me. I whirled around to find Ivy Slade leaning against my open doorway, a satisfied smirk on her witchy face. Instinctively, I backed up until I was blocking her view of the place card and pills. The very sight of her on top of what I’d just found was not good. I suddenly felt light-headed and had to clutch the desk chair behind me to keep from trembling.
“I am just
so
psyched we’re going to be neighbors!” Ivy said with false exuberance.
“What . . . what’re you talking about?” I said, somehow finding my voice.
Ivy took a couple of steps into the room, which left about three feet between us. At least she was toothpick-thin in her skinny jeans and flowy black top, so she didn’t take up much room. As I stood there paralyzed, she looked around, her raven ponytail swinging.
“All year I’ve been pissed off that there was an empty single next door,” she said. “I asked Cromwell to let me have it, like, a dozen times, but he refused.” She paused and her black-eyed gaze flicked over me. “Maybe he knew all along that you’d end up here.”
Inside, I fumed at the comment, but I couldn’t seem to find a comeback nestled among my paranoia and confusion and fear.
“Actually, now that I see it, I’m glad he didn’t give it to me,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “It looks like no one’s cleaned this place in forever. And what’s that smell?” She sniffed and looked me in the eye, her own as black as pitch. “It smells like something
died
in here.”
I almost choked on my own tongue.
Died. Died, died, died. Her eyes continued to bore into mine. Was
it her? Had she left the pills? Was Ivy Slade going to try to kill me just like she’d killed Cheyenne?
“Well, sweet dreams!” she said merrily.
Then she turned and strode out of the room, giving me one last amused look before slamming the door behind her. I couldn’t move. Could hardly even breathe. About two seconds later, loud rock music shook the wall right next to my new bed. The bitch lived right next door. Right. Next. Door. The girl who had committed herself to making my life a living hell. The girl who had snagged the love of my life. The girl who might have just subtly threatened to murder me. Right. Next. Door.
Spurred by a sudden rush of fear-tinged adrenaline, I grabbed my desk chair and shoved it under the doorknob as I had seen done in so many movies. Then I backed away, wiping my sweaty palms together, wondering if there was anything else I could do to protect myself. Even if I was wrong—even if Ivy hadn’t just threatened me and her comment had been a coincidental insult—there was still a killer on campus. A killer who had just left their murder weapon in my room. There was no way I was going to sleep tonight. No way in hell.
Why was this happening to me? Why couldn’t I be safely tucked into my bed in Billings right now, with Sabine just a few feet away? There was safety in numbers, right? And suddenly, I was completely alone.
Finally, the unfairness of it all overcame me. The sadistic unfairness of it all. I sat down on the cold floor, my back up against the
side of my bed. Ivy’s loud, angry music jolted my senses and forced the tears right out of me. I pulled my knees up and buried my face between them, clinging to my legs with both arms as I sobbed. At least with the music on, Ivy couldn’t hear me. At least she wouldn’t know that she’d won.
As predicted, there was no sleep that night. Earlier I had sneaked out of the room for all of one minute to flush the pills and the place card in one of the toilets in the communal bathroom (after all, if the police were going to be investigating a murder, I didn’t want to be caught with the cause of death), but they still haunted me. Every noise I heard—every creak, every whistle of wind, every footfall—brought my heart to a screeching halt and my eyes to the door. And between these excruciating moments, there were too many thoughts swirling in my mind. Too many humiliating memories popping up to replay themselves and make my heart and stomach clench. Too much to regret. Too much to wish away.
I wished I had never started e-mailing with Dash at the beginning of the school year.
I wished I hadn’t had all those drinks at the Legacy.
I wished I had never gone up on that roof.
I wished Josh had never found us.
I wished I had told Noelle the truth from the beginning.
I wished I had seen Ivy taking that stupid video so that I could have bitch-slapped her right then and there and nipped this whole thing in the bud.
I pulled my pillow over my face and groaned into it. At that moment Ivy’s laugh, clear as day, filled my room. I tossed the pillow aside. It wasn’t just that the walls in Pemberly were paper thin—which they were—but there was a vent right beneath my bed, through which I could hear almost everything Ivy and her roommate, Jillian Crane, said to each other. At least, that is, when they were being loud and I was listening. I glanced at the clock on my desk. It was after midnight. What the hell was Ivy laughing about over there?
Her laugh was followed by a giggle and some quietly murmured words. My hands curled into fists. I recognized that tone. She was talking to a guy. Flirting. And not with just any guy—with
my
guy. Josh was, right now, whispering sweet nothings to cold, evil Ivy.
Suddenly filled with ire, I flung my covers aside and sat up straight. It was still frigid in the room, so I had worn sweatpants, a turtleneck, and a sweatshirt to bed, along with some thick socks, which now protected my feet from the icy floor as I paced in a teeny, tiny circle. I had to think. I had to figure this out once and for all. Several lives might depend on it, including my own.
Okay. Deep breath. Think. What do I actually know?
First, according to the police, Cheyenne was definitely murdered. So what did this mean exactly? It meant the suicide note had
been faked. It meant that
both
suicide notes had been faked. I stopped in my tracks, suddenly seeing it all with a cold clarity. The night she died, Cheyenne hadn’t sent me that haunting “Ignore the note. You did this” e-mail. She hadn’t blamed me for her death. Because she hadn’t intended to die at all. Whoever had sent me that e-mail was the murderer. For some reason, the murderer had wanted me to feel responsible for Cheyenne’s death.
Instantly, this bizarre feeling of relief overcame me. For months I had been walking around feeling guilty, thinking that Cheyenne’s last thoughts before she killed herself had been of me. Thinking that she had gone to her grave cursing me. But it wasn’t true. None of it was true. Cheyenne hadn’t blamed me. The very thought was like a huge boulder being lifted off my shoulders.
But of course the relief was short-lived, replaced instantly by a new and intense fear. Did this mean that my stalker was also the murderer? It made sense. The murderer had sent the e-mail, then backed it up by leaving all of these things around to remind me of Cheyenne. To torture me. To make me feel even more guilty. The pills and the place card weren’t the only thing the murderer had left for me. There had been the Billings black balls, Cheyenne’s pink sweater, her perfume, and all those other awful things.
My stalker was definitely the killer. Had to be. It couldn’t all just be some terrifying coincidence.
I dropped back down on my bed again and clutched my comforter to my chest. The killer had been in my room at Billings several times. Had been in my closet, my drawers, my overnight bag. And he or she
had been in this room too. This very day. Leaving the most horrifying message yet.
Once again I heard Ivy laugh, and my blood ran cold. It had to be her. She’d had opportunity and motive. And now I was living right next door to her—and Josh was
dating
her. I shoved the covers aside, pulled my chair out from under the doorknob, and sat down at my desk. I was not going down without a fight. Hauer wanted evidence? I’d find him some evidence. This bitch was going down.
I whipped a pad and pen out of my bag and wrote Ivy’s name at the top, then jotted down all the reasons I was sure she was the bad guy. Her motive (her grandmother’s stroke), her behavior (trying to exclude us from the Legacy), her not-so-subtle remarks (about hating Billings and Cheyenne). My hands shook the whole time and my writing looked like that of a serial killer—different from one line to the next—but I kept on going. When I was done, I took a deep breath. If I showed this to Hauer, would it be enough?
Probably not. Everyone knew Ivy was dating Josh now. He would probably see these as the psychotic ramblings of a teenage girl who was heartbroken that her boyfriend had moved on.
Which I was, but still.
What could I do to make it look more legit? The answer hit me almost immediately. I needed more suspects. I needed to make it at least appear like I was being fair. Unbiased. I drew my knees up and sat back in my chair to think. Part of me felt it would be a waste of time, but in all honesty, there were a few other potential suspects. Reluctantly, I listed them and their potential motives beneath Ivy’s entry.
First, Trey Prescott. He was an incredible guy, and I seriously doubted he was capable of hurting a fruit fly, but he had been so angry at Cheyenne at the beginning of the year. Why had they broken up over the summer? Maybe it was something worth killing over.
Then, of course, I had to consider the other girls in Billings. They always say the people closest to the victim are the prime suspects. All the classic murder motives—jealousy, passion, anger—are stronger with people you’re close to. Just look at Ariana and Thomas. She had loved him. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t think of many girls with real motives for killing Cheyenne. She had been a total dictator, but most of the girls in Billings kind of liked that. The only girls with any kind of motive were the three she had targeted—the three she had wanted to kick out.
Sabine, Constance, and Lorna.
Of course I disregarded Sabine and Constance right away. They were two of my best friends and were both totally guileless, sweet, and honest. And Lorna was too big of a wuss to murder anyone, let alone spend weeks stalking me. Unless she had help from Missy, her best friend. Missy was a hell of a lot stronger than Lorna, plus she hated me. What if she had helped out Lorna by offing Cheyenne, then decided to get her own jollies by stalking me? It made a twisted kind of sense. I added “Missy/Lorna ???” to my list.
After much thought I also added Astrid. It pained me to do it, but the girl was kind of an enigma. No one knew why she had been kicked out of Barton School last year. She had told me she’d been caught smoking, but would that really get a person kicked out of school?
Maybe it had been for some insidious crime. Plus she had known Cheyenne forever. Maybe, like the drama Ivy and Cheyenne had at Ivy’s grandmother’s house, there was something in their shared past that had set Astrid off. They had definitely been at odds with each other at the beginning of the year, and I had assumed it was because Astrid refused to fall in line with Cheyenne’s plans to keep Constance, Sabine, and Lorna out of Billings. But who knew? Maybe it had been something larger than that. Still, I put two extra question marks next to Astrid’s name. I didn’t want it to be her. Not remotely.
I looked over my list and took a deep breath, feeling calmer now that I was taking some sort of action. Tomorrow morning, after everyone had left for breakfast, I was going to search Ivy’s room for something concrete. I knew it was risky, but I didn’t care. If I could prove that Ivy was the murderer, that she had been working to destroy me for months, at least I might actually be able to sleep at night. Then I could concentrate on earning Noelle’s forgiveness for what I’d done, getting back into Billings, and maybe even winning Josh back too.
I could concentrate on reclaiming my life.
“Thank you so much for fixing my computer last night,” Jillian said as she and Ivy walked out of their room on Monday morning. I listened from the other side of my door, my breath coming quick and shallow. “I thought the thing was fritzed, and I totally forgot to back up my world civ paper.”
“Not a problem,” Ivy replied. They were in the hallway now, passing just outside my door. “But how many times have I told you,
always
back up
everything
?”
“I know, I know, Bill Gates,” Jillian said with a laugh. “I promise I will never again question your computer geek ways.”
“I prefer computer diva,” Ivy joked.
I closed my eyes as a wave of realization came over me. Ivy, a computer geek? No wonder she’d been able to rig Cheyenne’s e-mail to keep sending me that suicide note over and over and over again. No wonder she’d been able to get through to my accounts no matter how I
tried to block her or how many times I changed my address. The more I learned about the girl, the more certain I was that she was my tormentor. I made a mental note to add this new bit of info to my suspect list.
The moment I heard the elevator ping and Ivy and Jillian’s laughter fade, I slipped out of my room. It was getting late, and the hallway was deserted. Taking a deep breath and saying a quick prayer that Ivy and Jillian wouldn’t double back for anything, I grasped the cold bronze doorknob and pushed. Ten million times I had cursed the powers that be for deciding we didn’t need locks on our dorm room doors. For once, I couldn’t have been more grateful.
Ivy and Jillian’s room was about twice the size of mine, and they had made it cozy by draping colorful scarves across the ceiling to hide the ugly stucco. The walls were papered with full-size posters, magazine tear sheets, and framed photographs; not an inch of graying white paint peeked through anywhere. Their beds, pushed against opposite walls, were littered with throw pillows, and their desks stood back-to-back in front of the window so that they could both see out when they were studying. And so that they couldn’t see each other and get distracted. Not a bad little system. I’d have to remember that if I ever had a roommate again.