Page 213 of The Blairville Legacies

All those things Grace said every day about the Copelands made no sense at all. It felt like everyone was dangerous if it was up to her or Vivienna’s clique.

Who could you trust if even the director of Vanderwood was a mafia member?

Bay looked at me for a moment, as if she wanted to get something important off her chest, but then looked back down at the lock.

“If you know something, you should tell menow.”

I leaned against the wall and gave my best friend a scrutinizing look.

It was a wonder I’d managed to follow the Adams all the way to Blairville without them seeing me. I’d driven right behind them a good five times, and that was on a motorcycle.

“I don’t know, Larissa, I wouldn’t trust anyone here if I were you. This town is the embodiment of a rumor mill, and maybe not without reason.”

Therewe had it. You couldn’t trust anyone. Still, it was a dull little town. Nothing remarkable.

I could hardly imagine anything being worse than the streets of Sacramento. At least I had a roof over my head now, and a very nice one as well. I didn’t want to go back to that stinking hole, that old life on the streets without a permanent home.

It really felt like a new chapter, as I had had the opportunity to take my best friend with me and leave all the garbage of the past behind me.Jackpotindeed.

It was horrible how hard it had been to get rid of all those toxic relationships and gangs, because they had always found me again. Sacramento had never been safe. Even for someone like me who had been born into it, where mums did drugs, drunk dads beat their kids and disappeared to the cigarette machine, never to return. The place where homeless children struggled on the streets for everything they were denied.

I had already seen a few people die. And I was glad that I had made it this far.

I deeply hoped that everything would change from now on, and I hoped that things would work out with my studies. I simply had no other choice.

Bayla paused and looked at me.

“Larissa...” she began hesitantly. “I wanted to ask you what you think about the idea of getting out of here.” I raised both eyebrows. “I have a packed bag at my mother’s vacation home, and...”

“Wait a second...” I interrupted her, confused. “You want to go back?”

She pressed her lips together as if she was afraid of my reaction.

“This town is weird,” she continued. “Girls disappear from campus here and die in the woods somewhere.”

“You’re not still thinking about that murder...” I murmured, tilting my head with a furrowed brow.

Bay widened her eyes. “Larissa, something like that is horrible!”

“Don’t be so loud,” I warned her in a low voice. “And don’t be like that.” If only she knew that one death was nothing compared to the crowds of people who died every day in big cities because they overdosed, were killed by gangsters or simply starved to death on the street. “We have it really good here. And justbecause the people here are a bit weird doesn’t mean we have to be the same.”

Bay looked down at the ground in despair.

I put my hand on her shoulder.

“You’ve got me, and I won’t leave again, I promise.”

She looked up. Then she nodded, slowly, but still with a desperate expression, and turned back to the lock.

I wondered if I’d ever be ready to talk to Bay about the past, or if she’d judge me the same way Olivia did back in high school.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked Bay, who by now was sliding her hands along the doorframe instead of turning her attention to the lock.

“The lock looks like it’s locked by a certain mechanism... But I don’t understand it... Maybe there’s something on the frame.”

Bayla had a wild imagination when it came to this. She had been writing stories or telling me about her books full of mystery and intrigue since elementary school. We’d spent hours with our flashlights in my old orphanage because Bay had been sure she’d seen a ghost, and at her house, we’d decorated castles of blankets with fairy lights and cuddly blankets so she could read to me late into the night – at least until the renowned spoilsportDianahad turned up and sent us to bed.

“Only you could come up with something like that.”