Page 47 of Good Girls Lie

“No, I mean anything...”

“Right. Brilliant.”

“Ash. Stop being dense. I’m talking about rides off campus. The girls use me as their own personal Uber. Here’s my number in case you ever need to get out of here. Plus, you know, I can get other things. I’m your resource. I can help you establish yourself at the school. You could be very popular if you wanted to help me.”

Drugs, he means. Apparently it is the day for propositions. “Oh. Right. I understand. Thanks, but I think I’m okay.”

“You just shout if you need anything.”

He hands over a slip of paper with ten numbers on it. I glance at it, memorizing them, then fold it away.

He takes our cups and disappears into the back of the shop.

The bell on the door tinkles merrily as I leave. The town is still weirdly deserted. I take the arboretum path back to school at a jog. Running away from my past, running toward my future?

Who the hell knows what I’m doing anymore.

But as I cross from the shelter of the trees onto school grounds, I can’t help but think about a young girl, body splayed out on the forest floor, her eyes missing from her head.

And Rumi’s own dark eyes, that spark of light in them as he told me the story.

The glimmer of tears?

Or something else?

PAST

Oxford, England

31

THE FUNERAL

I met her the day of Johnny’s funeral. I shouldn’t say met, I should say saw. Observed. Was made aware of.

We flew back from France the day after he died. Damien wanted to keep things quiet, had fixed it with the Giverny authorities. Sylvia was drugged up on Valium and went where directed without resistance, like a balloon half-filled with helium, listless and fading.

It was incredibly freaky to know his little body was in the hold of the plane, housed in a temporary wooden casket. I asked to go down and sit with him but it was a commercial jet and they wouldn’t allow it. I screamed. I railed. I did all the things a good sister should.

Damien spanked me, told me to stop acting like a child, quit throwing a tantrum, so I subsided. A flight attendant brought me a cranberry juice and a magazine,L’Officiel. I could barely read it but I could look at the pictures, glorious, beautiful French women who seemed to live without care or proper sustenance, smoldering eyes looking vaguely into the cameras.

I wanted to be one of them. Very badly. Even at six, I was aware my life as I knew it was over, and a new one had begun.

We flew west, the flight short, and a hearse met us on the tarmac. I stood there in my little peacoat and waved as they pushed Johnny’s wood-encased body into the back of the long car. Damien saw me and slapped down my hand. Sylvia moaned. She was especially good at moaning.

We buried Johnny in the family graveyard, half a mile into the lands from the estate proper. Foxhunts used to start at the cemetery gates before they were outlawed. It was grouse season; far-off shotgun cracks bled through the thin air. Each one made me jump.

The priest intoned. His words meant nothing to me. Johnny was dead. My little brother, gone. I didn’t miss him, not yet. I drifted, searching the crowd for friendly faces: Cook, or the jolly man who came when we had parties and brought me sweets.

I spotted a strange girl. Her hair was blond, like mine, though long down her back, unlike mine, which was chopped in a ruthless bob at my chin. I suppose my mother didn’t want the bother of putting it up in a braid anymore; she’d cut it right after we came home, with scissors from her sewing kit. I was not used to the feeling of cold air on my neck.

The girl was standing behind the skirt of a woman who wore big sunglasses and wept into a handkerchief; not a sweet, lacy one like my mother’s, but a coarse one, like you’d buy in the shops. The girl looked terribly interested in the proceedings, but as I watched, she glanced up at the sky at a flock of geese flying overhead in a perfect V. She smiled at them, innocent and kind, and I wanted to be her friend.

When the priest was done, the body was put into the ground, gears grinding on the lowering device. The funeral was over.

Mother stood by the grave moaning, Father alongside her, grim-faced and stoic. The girl and her mother approached my parents. There was a brief exchange, then they left. My mother watched their retreat, and I was surprised at the anger on her face. I’d never seen her look at anyone but me that way.

There was a party at our house afterward. I assumed I would see her there, but the woman and her girl never showed.