Very Bad Things (19 page)

T
essa paced like a caged cat.

She had to get out of Amelia House.

She’d been deposited there with a warning to stay put after the campus police had made her repeat her story again and again, once with the headmaster sitting across the table, his face a scary shade of purple. They’d confiscated her cell phone, so she couldn’t call out unless she used the house line, and you never knew if someone else might be listening in. She was a prisoner, trapped in her own dormitory. She’d heard the security chief tell Mrs. Gabbert to keep an eye on her, and campus cops were watching the back and front doors. It was as though she’d committed a crime instead of finally telling the truth.

And it
was
the truth in many ways, or as close as she could get without making a huge sacrifice she wasn’t willing to make.

It wasn’t like Tessa had imagined the headmaster would pat her on the back after she’d accused his son of murder. But she hadn’t figured she’d be treated like
she
was the guilty one. She didn’t think they’d keep her trapped inside without a phone or an easy way out.

And where was Katie during all this? Hardly being a supportive friend. Tessa hadn’t seen her since the blowup at the school shrink’s office. She probably just needed time to cool off, time to think. When the cops found the dead girl’s phone, they’d believe Tessa, at least about getting a call from Rose’s number. Then Katie would have no choice but to believe her, too.

The cops would arrest Mark, wouldn’t they? Tessa had seen more black-and-whites on campus today. Maybe they’d already done it. Unless … unless …

A pang of worry struck her chest.

What if Mark was on the run, hiding in the tunnels? She knew he went there a lot, and not only because Katie had told her. She’d seen him, had followed him to the greenhouse more than once.

If the police were out looking, if they got Katie to mention the tunnels, that could mean big, big trouble. Tessa had to slip out of Amelia House. She couldn’t risk the cops going underground and stumbling upon something they shouldn’t.

Someone they shouldn’t.

She wasn’t worried about herself. It had never been about her. Everything Tessa had ever done—every lie she’d ever told—was to protect the two people she loved the most.

It was the least she could do. They’d both saved her in more ways than one.

She grabbed her key chain with the penlight and stuck it in her blazer pocket. Then she went into the closet and stuffed a bunch of clothes into her laundry bag, even though she’d signed up to do wash two days before so most everything was clean. If anyone asked where she was going, at least she’d have a good explanation.

She ducked down the back stairwell, her shoes clanking on the metal stairs as she took them two by two. Her heart was thumping madly in her chest by the time she reached the basement. She worried that some of the girls would be watching TV, and they were.

So she did something she’d done once before: she opened the electrical box hanging on the wall above one of the washing machines, and she tripped the switch for the basement. One little
click
and the place went dark.

“What’s going on? I can’t see.”

“What if it’s the killer …”

Tessa heard shrieks as the girls who’d been staring at the wide-screen fumbled their way out of the room and toward the stairs. They’d go crying to Mrs. Gabbert, which was all the time Tessa needed.

She left her laundry bag on the floor and hurried through the dark. Her nerves tingling, she pushed open the door to the machine room. She squeezed the penlight and used its tiny glow to guide her toward the loosened grate. Though she was small, she wasn’t weak, and it was easy enough to move
the metal cover aside, allowing her to slip into the old steam tunnels.

She made her way through the passages easily. She’d known about the tunnels even before she’d turned eleven and enrolled at Whitney Prep on scholarship. Though their dad had brought Peter to campus more often than her, Tessa had tagged along on occasion. Peter had discovered the tunnels first. He loved the quiet, dark passages. He’d learned his way around them like a rat through a maze. It wasn’t long before he’d started hiding down there, infuriating their father, who’d been unable to find him. He’d left Peter there a few times, once overnight. Tessa had known exactly where he was when Peter hadn’t come home. When her brother resurfaced and was punished, he didn’t even seem to mind. “When ahm in tunnel no one bug meh. No one yell or call meh names,” he’d told her, talking in the funny way that got him teased at school. But Tessa had no problem understanding. She never had.

But she hadn’t been as fond of the tunnels. She’d had to get used to the dark and that didn’t happen until she was older. Once her parents were dead, once she was out of the foster home and living at Whitney, she began spending more time underground, and she learned to appreciate the things Peter loved most about it. In some ways, it felt easier being down there than anywhere else. There was no one to gossip about her. No one to remark that she wasn’t smart enough or pretty enough. There was just the dark and the chilly air and the noise of footsteps scraping the stone.

As she moved through the tunnels now, they felt so
familiar, her home. She still used the penlight but she knew where to go. It wasn’t long before she felt a presence in the passageway behind her.

She knew who it was without him saying a word. He smelled like the earth, cool and damp. Sometimes he smelled like greenhouse roses.

Tessa wanted to cry with relief. She’d been afraid she might not find him. He wasn’t always where he should be. He’d begun going up more at night, doing things he shouldn’t. That was how he’d gotten into trouble, why he’d called Tessa that night with the dead girl’s phone, begging for help.

He touched her arm. “You have to be careful,” Tessa said. “
Very
careful. More than you’ve ever been.”

She heard a grunt in response as he came up close beside her.

“They can’t find you. They can’t know what you did.”

He slipped the penlight from her fingers and turned it off. Then he reached for her hand and held it firmly. His scarred flesh felt rough and reassuring as he drew her along. By now, he had eyes like a mole’s. He didn’t need light as he moved through the pitch-black.

His breath came noisily. It had ever since the fire. He’d breathed in so much smoke his lungs were probably as scarred as his skin. No matter how he looked, how he sounded, he didn’t scare Tessa. He never had. Why should he when he was the reason she’d lived? If not for him, she wouldn’t be here. She’d be buried in the Barnard cemetery along with her adoptive parents and a boy whose name she’d never even known.

A
t first when Mark saw Charlie, he thought his friend was dead.

He lay so still beneath the white sheet. His skin was beyond pale, like all the blood had been drained from him. He had tubes in his nose for oxygen and an IV taped to his wrist that dripped fluids into his veins.

According to the school’s doctor, Charlie had taken a shit-ton of Ambien. They didn’t think he’d make it at first. Thank God his roommate found him soon after and called the clinic. They’d brought him in and pumped his stomach. He’d flatlined at one point, and they had to paddle his chest, but his heart had started beating again.

“He’s not going anywhere,” the doctor said, patting Mark on the back, “though he’ll feel like hell when he wakes up.”

Mark didn’t even know his dad was at the clinic until he
heard his voice. “They’re moving him to the hospital in Barnard when he’s a little more stable. Dr. Capello’s sticking around to help him deal with things when he wakes up. The police will want to talk to him, too, but not tonight.”

“The police?” Mark pulled his gaze away from Charlie’s face. “Because he tried to kill himself?”

“He left you a note,” his father said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a piece of folded paper. “This is a copy, sorry. The police wanted the original. He’s been keeping secrets, Mark. About you and Steve Getty and that poor girl Rose. He makes it clear you’re not to blame.”

“You read it?” Mark took the page from his dad, feeling sad and angry at once.

“It was with him when he was found. We needed to know if it explained why. I just wish he’d come forward sooner,” his father said.

Then he left Mark alone to read the letter.

Mark’s hands shook as he finished. He glanced at Charlie’s face, at the crooked nose that had been broken and never set, and he thought of how they’d grown up together at Whitney. He thought of all the times they’d studied for exams, all the hockey they’d watched and the games they’d played. And still Charlie hadn’t come to him before he tried to take his own life. It made no sense.

He leaned over his friend and gazed at his eyes closed in sleep, wishing he’d known. Wishing Charlie had talked to him. He couldn’t imagine a secret worth anybody’s life.

“Charlie,” he whispered. “They’ll get him, man. They’ll put him away. He won’t be a threat anymore, not to you, not to me, not to anyone.”

Charlie’s eyelids fluttered.

Mark bent closer. “You awake? You need the doctor?”

“Steve,” Charlie breathed.

Mark nodded down at him. “Yeah, Steve’s going down, dude. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“No,” Charlie exhaled, and wet his lips. “He’s mad … at Katie.…”

“Steve’s mad at Katie? Why?”

“Joelle,” Charlie got out in a whisper, then his eyes slipped closed again.

Mark squeezed his shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise.”

“Sweet.” Charlie went back to sleep.

The fluid dripped into the IV. Oxygen gently hissed. Charlie’s chest rose and fell. He was clearly out of it.

Mark stood up slowly, his heart thudding. He had the letter in his hand, and he had to tell Katie. She’d come into the clinic with him and the psychiatrist but had hung back in the waiting room. He didn’t see her there now. Instead, Joelle was thumbing through an old magazine. When she saw him, she stood up.

“Is Charlie okay?” she asked.

Mark nodded. “He will be. He saw what happened, Jo.” He raised the hand that held the letter. “He said the girl OD’d when she was with Steve. It wasn’t me.”

“I’m glad.” Joelle’s usually perfectly made-up face had smudges beneath the eyes and streaks down her cheeks where she’d wiped away tears. “Steve’s about to get hit with a big damn stick,” she said, and let out a sad laugh. “I already told him I’m not staying quiet any longer … about what he did to me. It wasn’t what you thought,” she said, shaking her head, and the tears starting falling. “I’m ready to talk.”

“I’m sorry, Jo. I really am.” Mark didn’t know what else to say. He felt awful that he hadn’t listened to her.

“I told Steve that Katie was right. If someone didn’t speak up and make him stop, he’d do it again. There’d be another me, another Rose.”

“You told Steve Katie said that?”

Joelle nodded. “Yeah. That girl’s got balls, you know. She’s not the mousy mouse I thought.”