Page 34

THIRTY-FOUR

ROSE

“So, I’ve started seeing the school counselor,” Molly says, with the air of someone who’s attempting to drop enormous news as casually as possible to best minimize the reaction. “Also, I’m going to the bathroom.”

Though Florence and Harriet were with us for a while when I first got here, the two of them eventually wandered off, leaving Molly and me together on a couch. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together for any extended period of time since everything, and we’ve lost our rhythm, though we’re both doing our best to regain it through small talk. So far, we’ve covered our homework, the absence of our favorite Ashford boys, the cleaning bill Florence is going to be faced with tomorrow, and now, apparently, our mental health struggles.

“What?” I ask, blindsided, as she gets to her feet. “You’re in therapy?”

“I’m in therapy. And I wanted you to know, but I also don’t want to talk about it yet, so I’m going to the bathroom and then we’re going to change the subject when I get back.”

I stare at her, confused. “Why did you want me to know?”

She looks supremely uncomfortable. “Because I’ve talked about you a little, and she asked me to tell you that her door’s open if you want to try it out, too. And I think you should.”

I can’t help laughing at the absurdity of her delivery. “That’s the most polite way I’ve ever been told to get help.”

“I mean it. We went through a lot last year, and it’s helping me. Plus, it’s free.”

“Well, if it’s free, ” I joke.

Molly is blushing bright red at this point, looking as though she’d rather be anywhere but here. I wave her off. “Fine. Go. I won’t ask you about your therapy sessions.”

“Thank you. Come to therapy.”

“I definitely will not,” I call after her, and she shakes her head as she walks.

Alone, I take the opportunity to drink in my surroundings. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol, of course—even though I do mostly trust the students here, as they’ve never once shared any compromising photos or videos of me over the past several years despite a plethora of opportunities, it’s tempting fate enough to be seen at a party at all. If I was caught with a drink in my hand, I would honestly deserve any headlines that resulted. If it weren’t Florence’s party, I wouldn’t have risked attending at all.

As I scan the room, I notice Eleanor sitting on a nearby couch, drink in hand, talking with Santi. When on earth did that happen? And who is Danni with, then?

I text Molly to let her know I’ve deserted our post, and I take a circuitous tour of the house, with Theodore following me at a distance. I hope Danni has found someone to speak to. I didn’t expect Eleanor to end up otherwise occupied—and, of course, Eleanor was unaware that she was in charge of keeping Danni company while I can’t. If I’d noticed earlier, I would have sent Molly to accompany Danni, and taken myself off elsewhere.

Danni is nowhere to be found in the living room, or the kitchen. Not the hallway, nor the line for the downstairs bathroom. She’s not in the movie theater room, where a slideshow of Florence’s childhood photos is playing on the projector, and she’s not in the coat room.

I call her, and it goes to voicemail, so I keep looking, as my fists clench tighter and tighter. Did she leave? Surely she would have texted me.

There’s no reason to be concerned, is there?

But she’s not in the front yard, and she’s not in the backyard, and I am becoming concerned. Each second she’s nowhere, the feeling that something awful might be happening multiplies. I need to locate her now, before this fear swallows me.

Where on earth is she? Why have I still not found her?

In the backyard, Harriet spies me and approaches at once. “Have you seen Danni?” we ask each other in unison in place of a greeting.

My stomach twists at her words. “Why?” I ask.

Harriet is drunk. Her eyes are red and unfocused, she’s slurring her words, and she smells like beer. It’s really not pleasant interacting with drunk people when you’re not wasted yourself. I finally understand Molly’s constant complaints on the topic. “I’m not sure she’s okay,” she says. “I think you should check on her.”

My blood turns to ice water, scraping against my veins with every pump of my heart. I’ve lived this night before. I already know what comes next, but it’s impossible, because I can’t do this again.

“What did you do to her?” I ask, and the fury and fear in my voice seems to snap Harriet into focus, if only for a moment.

“I… don’t really want to… never mind that. Just check on her, okay?”

I try to tell myself Amsterdam isn’t happening again, but it feels far too familiar, and the fear forces its way past my defenses. I can barely breathe. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Last I saw, she went inside, maybe half an hour ago?”

Her words ring in my ears. She’s been missing for half an hour. It’s like last time, just like last time. Every domino is falling exactly as it already did.

I leave Harriet, go back inside the house, and to the stairs. I feel as though I have double vision. Every step is overlayed by the image of a staircase I climbed in my memories. My stomach is twisting and my chest is tightening and my heart is slamming against my chest in more and more insistent thuds.

It’s quiet. Florence asked people not to come up here, and people have respected that. But Danni’s never been one to stay out of off-limits rooms as long as I’ve known her. Theodore lingers back at the beginning of the hallway, and it doesn’t occur to me to ask him to stay close. I’m barely able to form a coherent thought.

The room is only dimly lit when I open the door. A bedside lamp is on, illuminating the prone body on the bed. She’s on her back, her eyes closed, one hand resting near her cheek.

The room tips sideways, and I truly think I’m about to lose consciousness. And I welcome it, because I cannot do this. I can’t. No.

Then her eyes open, and for a moment my confused brain won’t accept it, because how many times have I replayed this scene in my mind, willing Oscar’s eyes to open?

“Rose,” Danni moans, and it spurs me into movement. I fly to her side, and pull her into a sitting position.

“Hey, hey,” I say. Her head lolls to the side, and she surveys me through heavily lidded eyes. “Stay with me. What did you take?”

She makes a face. “Put me back down,” she slurs. “My head.”

“Danni, focus. Did you take something?”

“No.” She flops forward now, and I catch her so she’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her head leaning against my chest. “I don’t steal. Wait, I stole vodka. And wine.”

It takes me a beat longer than I’d like to admit to understand what she means. “ Drugs, ” I say. “Did you take anything?”

“No.”

“Did you leave your drink somewhere?”

Is that what Harriet meant? Did she know something? See something? Why didn’t I force her to come with me? Why didn’t I interrogate her further?

“I drank up here,” Danni grumbles into my chest. “I had Eleanor’s vodka.”

That’s when I notice the mostly empty bottle on the bedside table. Myriad emotions knock me sideways. She hasn’t taken anything. She isn’t overdosing. She’s just awfully drunk. Still not ideal, but not an emergency. Not right now. Not while she’s conscious, and holding a lucid conversation.

Danni lifts her head. “You’re shaking.”

I am, I realize. I can’t control it. My fingertips, my arms, my teeth, my core. There’s a silent scream settled in the back of my throat, pushing to be let out. I clamp my mouth shut to trap it, and then place a trembling hand over my lips. The room’s tilting and spinning, around and around, and I’m about to burst out of my skin. I’m in danger of collapsing under the weight of what I thought was happening, and I can’t shove it down. It’s not working. The more I try to control my breathing, the faster it gets, until I’m panting.

“Rose?” Danni asks, and I try to focus for her.

“What were you doing up here?” I ask. My teeth chatter as I speak, but I force the words out successfully. “Drinking alone?”

Danni shakes her head, then gestures vaguely behind her. On the bed is her phone, and the screen isn’t black. It’s in the middle of a video call with Rachel, who I recognize from Danni’s photos. “I was drinking with Rachel,” she says. “Except she’s drinking soda.”

That’s why I couldn’t reach her.

Suddenly, her shoulders tense. “Oh. Oh no,” she says.

“What?”

“I just remembered why I came here. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m really, really sorry.”

“What?” I demand, my voice near shouting-level. “What happened?”

“I… I was talking to Harriet.”

“And?”

She did take something. And now it’s Russian roulette from here, isn’t it?

“And… I’m sorry, Rose. I didn’t mean to, I swear. I didn’t want to. But we kissed.”

The words make no sense at all.

“You kissed… Harriet?” I repeat numbly.

“She kissed me,” Danni says. “But I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t realize what was happening until we’d already kissed, and some guys saw us. I’m so sorry, Rose. I didn’t—”

“Rose!” someone says from the doorway.

Molly, Eleanor, and Harriet are gathered, looking in on us. I can see from the look on Molly’s face that her fears echo mine. As soon as Danni looks over at them, Molly relaxes.

“Are you okay?” Harriet asks Danni.

“So that’s where my vodka went,” Eleanor says, craning her neck.

I zero in on Harriet. She kissed Danni. She kissed my very drunk girlfriend, against her will.

The fear from the last few minutes swirls and spirals and suddenly explodes, and I’m untangling myself from Danni and advancing on Harriet. She steps backward in alarm.

“I asked you what you did to her,” I hiss. Eleanor and Molly spring away from Harriet, wearing identical expressions of concern.

Harriet’s eyes widen. “I—I told you I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, you didn’t want to explain to me why you thought it was okay to force yourself on my—friend?”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“She can’t even hold herself up!” I cry, throwing my arm backward to where Danni lies on the bed.

“She wasn’t that drunk when we kissed.”

“When you kissed her, ” I shout.

“Rose, keep your voice down,” Molly urges.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I cry, ignoring Molly.

Theodore has arrived to see what all the shouting is about. He makes eye contact with me in a silent question, while Harriet holds her hands up in surrender. I reel on her, wanting to slap them down. “I’m sorry!” she cries.

“No, you’re not. You don’t even know what sorry is. I’m going to make you so fucking sorry, you’re going to spend the rest of your life recounting tonight to your therapist.”

“Rose,” Molly says in horror.

But I can’t stop. The anger has a mind of its own, and it feels so wonderfully cathartic, I give myself over to it. “You’re done. You won’t sit with us, you won’t look at us, you won’t have the audacity to speak to us. Any of us. You can find new friends to harass and sexually assault, and whoever has the misfortune to inherit you is not going to hear a word from you about what you did to her. If anyone asks why you’re suddenly alone, I want you to tell them we grew tired of your endless inane questions, and your humiliating lack of boundaries, and your insistence upon over-explaining concepts everyone understood the first time.”

I watch with vicious satisfaction as Harriet transitions from wounded, to devastated, to furious. I want to goad her further, to find the insult that lands just right. To tip her over the edge, so she snaps at me, and gives me a good reason to properly snap back. I want to rip her apart for touching Danni. I want to destroy her.

“Rose,” she says, very slowly. “Calm down. Your girlfriend didn’t kiss me back.”

Several things happen at once. I spring forward, finally losing control of myself altogether, at the same moment Eleanor leaps to hold me in place with all her body weight. Theodore places himself swiftly between me and Harriet, while Molly whirls on Harriet and shoves her, firmly, out of the room, whispering something unintelligible but jagged-sounding as she does. And behind me, Danni calls out urgently. “ Rose. ”

At the sound of Danni’s voice, I fall limp in Eleanor’s grip.

Molly is staring at me with something akin to horror. Or perhaps it could better be described as unrecognizing. She’s closed the door behind her and is standing pressed against it, almost as though she’s trying to put as much space between us as she can. When Eleanor releases me, I discover she’s looking at me in much the same way.

“Where did that come from?” Molly asks me, and I don’t have an answer.

I’ve never lost control before. I’ve never even allowed myself to feel enough of anything to come close.

Not anger, not sadness, and certainly not fear. Not like that.

Wordlessly, I wrench my eyes away from them and go to Danni.

She’s squeezing her eyes closed, and breathing heavily. “Rose,” she whispers. “I just want to go home. Can you take me home, please?”

“To school?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Of course.” Grunting, I help her sit up, and she takes a second to catch her breath, looking up at me pitifully.

“We have to go past people at the party,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Don’t leave me, though. Please?”

My stomach sinks. I place a hand on the side of her face, wishing I could take back leaving her in the first place. “Never again.”

It takes Theodore and me working together to get Danni down the stairs, but after that she’s able to walk by herself, if shakily. As far as I can see, no one at the party even notices us.

“Are you mad at me?” Danni asks when we pass the front gate.

I hug my hands around my chest and shiver against the wet wind. “Of course not. Not at all.”

“You got so angry. I’ve never seen you angry.” She stumbles as she narrowly misses a tree on the sidewalk, and I shoot out a hand to steady her.

“You’re extremely drunk, and you didn’t want to kiss her,” I say. “She’s lucky I wasn’t there when she did it. We might have seen how angry I can really get.”

Danni giggles. Oh, she thinks I’m joking.

“You,” she says, turning her face to me, “are my favorite person. Do you know that? My favorite person in the world.”

I wipe away a rivulet of rain running down her cheek with my thumb. “Walk faster,” I say, hiding my smile. “It’s freezing.”

When we reach Bramppath I place a finger to my lips and hold tightly to Danni as we steal through the courtyard. Despite the fact that half the school is at the party, officially, we’re not meant to be out nearly this late. Although I’m sure the headmaster is resigned to the fact that the party would be running late, and he can’t exactly suspend half the student body, I don’t intend to find out what happens if he catches Danni and me alone, laid on a platter to be made examples of.

As soon as we make it to the top of the staircase, with Theodore’s help once more, Cora, my residential assistant, pokes her head around her door to check on the source of all the creaking. I remember Harriet mentioning earlier she gave Cora her phone, which means Cora is responsible for both floors tonight. I anticipate she’ll have a busy night ahead of her.

“God, she’s in a right state isn’t she?” she says, nodding at Danni, who lets out an impatient sigh. It would seem Cora is greatly inconveniencing her. The same Cora who is helpfully pretending not to notice the fact that we’ve clearly returned after a night of underage drinking, well past curfew.

“Danni,” I scold. “Shh.”

“I am being quiet. You’re… the… being loud.”

“Oh dear.” Cora grins.

I give Cora my best pleading look. “Do you mind if I look after her tonight?” I ask. It’s absolutely pushing our luck, given sleepovers are strictly forbidden, but I can’t not ask. Frankly, even if Cora says no, I’ll simply sneak into Danni’s room the moment she’s vanished; however, I would like her permission all the same.

Cora holds up her hands. “Hey, it’s one less person for me to worry about. Just don’t let her choke on her vomit.”

Once we’re inside my room, I help Danni out of her jacket, then she collapses on my bed. I gently take her shoes off, and then cover her with the blanket before retrieving a bottle of water for her from my mini-fridge. “Drink as much as you can,” I urge her. “You’ll thank me in the morning.”

She gives it a try, but keeps missing her mouth with the water, which drips right down her neck to pool on the sheets. With a disgusted scoff, she passes the bottle back to me.

I kneel in front of the bed and methodically stroke her hair. I remember the sensation of being far too drunk well; the nausea as the world tips and keeps tipping. The roaring in my ears, and the unquenchable dryness in my mouth.

“Take deep breaths,” I say. “How are you feeling?”

“Ugh.”

I turn off the bedside lamp, plunging us into darkness. Then, I climb onto the bed and lie behind her, our bodies running parallel with only an inch between us.

“You should have come to find me,” I whisper, running my fingers through her soft hair. “Why did you go off alone?”

“I was fine. And I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Danni, I…” I sigh. “You could never bother me. Promise me you’ll always come to me if you need me. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know that, right?”

When she replies, it’s surprisingly lucid. “No,” she murmurs. “But that’s okay. It’s enough.”

Frowning, I rub her back in a slow, steady pattern. Her breathing becomes gradually steadier and deeper, until I’m sure she’s asleep.

I’m quite certain, I realize as I look down at her rising and falling shoulders, that I’ve never hated myself as much as I do in this very moment.