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THREE

DANNI

When Mom and Dennis finally drop me off at Bramppath, I’m surprised at the lump that keeps forming in my throat. I’ve been so busy thinking about what life at Bramppath will hold in store for me, I forgot one of the things that’ll be missing from it. Family.

There aren’t going to be family mealtimes, or family movie nights, or family walks anymore. Now, I’m gonna be doing all that stuff with a group of strangers. Are they strangers who’ll end up feeling like family soon? Will I wish I didn’t have to leave by the time term’s over? Or am I going to be counting down the days until I can escape this place, and the people in it?

I try to remind myself that I already have a good reason to believe it’ll be okay. I know Molly now. And a bunch of my classmates’ last names, to boot.

I’m going to be fine.

Just breathe.

As we walk, Dennis makes a huge deal out of the size of the school. He goes on and on about the turrets and arches on the main building, and the ivy snaking over the windows of the residential halls, and the gray-brick masonry he explains was only used during a certain time period. I ask if he’s sure he doesn’t want to move into my dorm room with Mom, and they laugh, but it’s only sort of a joke.

The wheels of my suitcase scrape over the uneven cobblestone path as we wind through the grounds toward my hall. Dozens of girls and their parents are darting all around us like squirrels setting up for winter, lugging suitcases and decorations, blankets and bags. You wouldn’t think I’d even get noticed in all the chaos, but, oh, they notice me. Over and over again a student or parent will catch sight of me, scan my clothes and my hair and my face and decide that I haven’t made the cut. Then their noses wrinkle, and they raise their eyebrows, and move on with what they were doing without even nodding at me.

Okay, this is what I’d worried Bramppath would be like. If this was my first time seeing any of the students, I probably would’ve made a beeline back to the car and shut myself in the back seat until Mom and Dennis agreed to take me back home.

The fifth-year girls all live in the same building: Dewitt, named after some teacher. Hellene told us in the tour but it was right around the time I was entering full panic mode, so I don’t remember all the details. It’s one of the most centrally located buildings, smack in front of a sprawling marble fountain. The more senior you are, the closer you live to the main entrance, which leaves us with the second-best real estate.

I’m on the ground floor, in room eleven. Bramppath sent me a key card in the mail a couple of weeks ago, and we slot it into the door a few times until the chip’s accepted and the lock flashes green. Dennis whistles again as we head inside. The rooms at Bramppath are all private, and they’ve even managed to squeeze a full bed in here—just. That, a wardrobe and desk—both made of a dark cherrywood—and a leather desk chair, and that’s it for furnishings. The walls are a plain, washed-out cream, and the carpet’s a dark gray color, perfect for hiding stains. I try not to think about what might be camouflaged under my feet right now.

It’s plain, and it’s cramped, and it smells like disinfectant.

I love it.

After a couple of hours we manage to get my room looking less like a fancy prison cell and more like an Ikea display room. After a stern lecture from Mom to keep on top of my piano lessons, followed by a long goodbye that we have to repeat several times because Mom keeps chickening out from leaving the room, suddenly, they’re gone. And I’m alone.

I’m totally alone.

I wander around my room for a bit, folding my arms across my chest. There’s basically nothing familiar here. When Mom offered to take me on a Target shopping spree so I’d have all new things at Bramppath, I jumped at the chance. I figured the more new, glossy stuff I have the better, so I’ll stand out less. But now I’m regretting it. I’d take my old, striped, faded, cat-hair-covered sheets over new and glossy any day.

Besides. Target stuff won’t impress the students here. I was kidding myself.

Before the homesickness has a chance to really get started, I message Molly to tell her I’ve arrived.

It turns out her room is on the next level up, on B-floor, so she’s down in less than a minute. She spends a while politely admiring all the Target stuff, then she plonks on my bed and spreads her body into a starfish position while she bounces. “It’s so good to be in the senior cycle, you have no idea,” she says, patting the bed. “The small doubles we had last year were not okay.”

I straddle the desk chair and lean my chin on its back. “Is that like a twin XL? Because honestly even that would’ve been an upgrade for me from home.”

She props herself up and gives me a pitying look. The kind of look I would probably have taken offense to if I didn’t know Molly meant well. “How did you survive?”

“People survive sleeping on twins every day, Molly.”

I think that’s when she notices how she sounds, because she ducks her head. “Sorry. That was very ‘Rose’ of me.”

I let out a laugh, thinking back to the conversation I had with Princess Rosemary at Molly’s party. She’s far from the meanest person I’ve ever met, but she wasn’t exactly warm, either.

I’m still not sure what I think about our interaction at the party. On the one hand, it was the first time that day I did anything except smile and answer questions politely and panic that I was making a shitty first impression. On the other, I think Rosemary might have just triggered my fight-or-flight response, which is definitely not the same thing as coming out of my shell.

So, what was that all about? Was it my gut instinct recognizing her as the same sort of bully that terrorized me last year? That’s sort of how Maddison and her gang functioned, after all. They’d make little comments that sounded friendly and innocent, like asking my opinion on something, or complimenting my appearance. But then if I took them at face value and answered normally, she and her friends would burst out laughing, like it was hilarious I could’ve thought they were being nice to me. The only safe way to reply to those girls was silence, or coldness. They couldn’t laugh at that. On the other hand, it made me look like a nasty person to anyone in earshot. I could never win, and they wanted it that way.

But that was last year, and there was no group of girls laughing at me at Molly’s party. So, I have to give Rosemary the benefit of the doubt for now, right? Just because she’s got a prickly sense of humor doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve met my new future-bully. I hope not, anyway.

Meanwhile, Molly has shifted. Her jaw and fists seem to be competing over which can clench the tightest. Her fists are winning, for the record.

I noticed the same tense body language when Molly spoke to Rosemary that day. So, while we’re talking about her, I decide to ask Molly the question that’s been bugging me since her party. “Hey, um, when we were at your house, people kept asking you about Rosemary.”

She nods and starts rolling her shoulders, stretching her neck as she does.

“It sort of sounded like everyone thinks you’re friends,” I say. “Like, good ones. But I don’t get that vibe from you.”

Molly pretends to look shocked. “You don’t ?”

“I know, don’t freak out, I’m just super observant,” I say dryly. I’m smiling at the joke, but also with relief. If Rose does turn out to be a piece of work, I’ll want to stay out of her way, which might be kind of tough if she’s best friends with my only friend.

“Yeah. It’s a long story. Rose and I were best friends, but now we’re… I don’t know.”

“Did something happen?” I ask. “Or is she just, like, a shitty person?”

I figure even as I’m asking it that it might be too personal, and Molly proves me right by shaking her head. “Yeah, look, some stuff happened, but it’s… a lot. I’ll tell you another time. If you don’t find… anyway. She’s not a shit person. She’s just… look. The thing you need to know about Rose is, she’s the princess, and everything comes second to that. And I mean everything. You can see how that might become toxic, yeah?”

“Sure.”

“We have a lot of friends in common, so I don’t want to start an all-out war or anything. I’m just trying to keep my distance a bit these days, you know?”

So when Molly said I’d be giving her a good excuse to avoid people at her party, she didn’t really mean people. She meant Rosemary.

“Anyway,” Molly says, perking up. “Can we get a quick moving-in photo for my story?”

Molly kneels beside me and I pose for the camera, and then she gets to work on editing the photo. “What’s your handle?” she asks. “I’ll tag you.”

A few seconds later my phone buzzes with the notification. I click on her profile, ready to add her as a friend, but I catch sight of her follower count and I’m so shocked I forget what I’m doing completely. For a second, I swear my eyes aren’t working right. There’s way too many digits.

“That’s why I prefer texting,” she says when she notices my face. “My DMs can get a little crowded.”

“Whoa. What are you, an influencer?” I ask, flipping through her profile. It doesn’t look like anything special. Just your run-of-the-mill mix of selfies, scenery, and activity photos. It all looks pretty unstructured and casual. Or maybe it’s carefully curated to look that way. It’s hard to tell.

“I hate that word,” she says. “If I ever call myself an influencer unironically, you have my permission to roast me until I screw my head back on.”

“But you are one,” I say, tipping my phone screen to her like she needs the evidence or something.

She shrugs reluctantly, her cheeks reddening. “My dad was the prime minister when I was a kid, and he used to take me to press conferences and stuff. He passed away before he finished his term—no, it was years ago, Danni, don’t look all sad for me, and please don’t tell me you’re sorry. Anyway, the media got kind of obsessed with me in the fallout. I guess people know me from that; I don’t have any talents or anything.”

Well, I am sorry to hear about Molly’s dad, but she asked me not to say so, so I breeze past it. “You obviously put a lot of work in,” I say instead. “I’ve made, like, twenty posts in my lifetime. I’m impressed.”

“Not really. Mostly I just post videos from my day, or giving my opinion on whatever I’m thinking about. I’m never going to be the type of person who has a proper setup or a brand or anything. Honestly, I only do it because it pays well and I don’t get a lot of pocket money.”

After half an hour or so of hanging out in my room, Molly offers to give me a tour of Dewitt. She tells me which shower stall to use in the bathroom (“The middle ones always get hot faster.”), the unofficial rule around door etiquette (“If you leave your door ajar it’s implying you’re open to people swinging past to chat.”), and the bulletin board by the entrance (“You play piano, right? You can sign up for performance evenings here.”).

I study the board, which is already filled with notices regarding clubs and camps. In its center is a giant drug-use PSA poster, stating LIFE’S HIGHS DON’T NEED CHEMICAL TIES with a cringey illustration of a group of teenagers skipping away from a smoking joint in a field. “I remember seeing something about snow trips,” I say hopefully, searching for a possible sign-up sheet. Winter’s coming up, after all.

“That’s only for fourth and sixth years, unfortunately. Rose tried to drag me along with her last year, but it’s not my thing.” She says it with a laugh, but it vanishes as soon as she remembers who she’s talking about. Tucking shiny black hair behind her ear, Molly changes the subject. “I’ll come by and grab you for breakfast in the morning. You’ll need to be ready at ten past seven at the latest. It’s first in, best dressed, so if we get there too late we won’t get a seat with the rest of the girls.”

I say thank you, but the words don’t seem big enough for how freaking grateful I am. What would I be doing tomorrow morning if I hadn’t met her? Heading on over at 7:13 and awkwardly hanging out at the end of a table full of girls who’d grown up together, had never met me, and wouldn’t want me there?

But I did meet her. And if the whole reason Molly got to know me in the first place was to fill a vacant spot left by Princess Rosemary? Then I owe her one.

Whatever the hell she did to lose Molly as a friend, her loss is my gain.