I Am Her Revenge (17 page)

The day after
Ben tells me he loves me, I head to the nurse’s office. I’ve taken care not to go there, since Mother told them I have some kind of heart condition that I barely understand to get me out of the sports requirement. I don’t want an interrogation.

But there’s something I have to know. Something that has been plucking at the back of my mind since I met Emily and learned that her EpiPen had gone missing around the time Mother was trying to get rid of her. And now, with the memory of Ben’s confession and the feel of his kiss on my lips, I can’t stop this one doubt from breaking through.

The nurse, a thin woman with a brisk smile, looks up when I walk in. “Can I help you?” Her dark blouse and pants stand out against the sterile whiteness of the room.

I smile broadly, though my stomach feels like it’s flipping over on itself. “I’m doing a research project on allergies, and I was wondering if you had an EpiPen I could look at? Just so I have a better sense of what it does.”

“Well, we do,” the nurse says, standing from her chair and rummaging through her shelves of supplies.

“You do!” I say, a little too enthusiastically.

She hands me a plastic case with a needle inside that I pretend to find fascinating.

I can feel her watching me, and I wonder how long I need to examine this needle to make my story convincing. “You’re lucky,” she says finally. “We ran out of these a few months ago. Had to get a new shipment in November.”

My throat grows dry, and I clear it. “You ran out?”

“Yes. The computer system said we had three left, so we didn’t check. Can’t trust computers.”

I shake my head. “No,” I say, my heart pounding so loudly that I can hardly hear myself. I hand the case back, my hands trembling. “Thanks so much. That should do it.”

I escape before she has a chance to stop me.

I’m running to Arthur’s shed before I even realize it. I need to make sense of all this, and he’s the only one I can talk to. He’s the only one who can help sort out all the questions that are screaming in my head.

I slam my fist on the rough wood of his door until he opens it. His eyes, full of confusion, sweep the landscape behind me as he pulls me inside. “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks once we’re out of sight.

“Was she going to kill Emily?” I ask. My voice is high-pitched and panicked, and I try to take a deep breath, but it gets caught in my chest.

The anger in his eyes fades into uncertainty, but only for a moment. “Sit down,” he growls. “Breathe.”

I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “Was she?”

“Are you telling me you really didn’t know?” he asks. He hasn’t moved away, and there’s less than a foot of space between us. He’s close enough to see every emotion flashing across my face, emotions I can’t stop.

I shake my head. “I didn’t think—I didn’t think she would do something like that.” I finally get a good deep breath and breathe out slowly. I need control.

“Of course she would. Revenge is the only thing that matters to her. I would have helped Emily deny those rumors about her and the teacher, somehow, but I knew if I interfered, my father would kill her. I had to watch her get expelled, knowing that you would come soon to take her place.” He steps closer to me, his tall frame filling my field of vision. “I didn’t want you to come here. I was naïve enough to think I could spare you from all of this.” His voice is low and raw.

“It’s what I was raised to do,” I remind him. “Nothing could spare me from it.”

“Your mother was ready to kill an innocent girl just to get you a spot at this school. How can you act like you don’t care?” He reaches his hand out and nearly brushes my shoulder before he draws it back.

Another deep breath. “She won’t kill me.” I say it with as much conviction as I can muster, but I can’t look up to meet his eyes.

“You really think that?”

I nod firmly, trying to clear my face of all emotion. “She’s my mother. She needs me.”

He steps forward. “Don’t you know what she did to her own mother?”

I freeze, not even daring to breathe, my eyes fixed on a knot on the wooden wall, not on him. I don’t want to hear this.

“She had my father cut the brakes on her car. Her mother kicked her out of the house for having you, so she got my father to make her murder look like an accident.”

I force myself to look at him, searching for any sign of deception, any flicker of untruth. But in his dark stare, all I see is the boy I’ve always known.

“Why would he agree to do that?” I ask, grasping for anything that might make this story fall apart. “Why would he kill someone for her?”

“Because he’s in love with her. Because she manipulates him just like she trained you to manipulate everyone.”

“But it really could’ve just been an accident.”

He sighs, shoving a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t. I overheard your mother once. She was ranting at the portrait of her mother, you know, the one over the fireplace? She was muttering, ‘What mother kicks her own daughter out?’ Over and over, until she threw her drink at the painting. And on top of that, my father once showed me how to cut the brakes in a car.”

“So?” I ask, brightening. “That’s it? It’s just a coincidence. Just because your father knows how to cut someone’s brakes doesn’t mean he killed Mother’s mother.”

“You know I’m right, Viv.” His words are soft and regretful and more hurtful than if he had shouted them. He thinks he’s telling me the truth.

I picture the portrait of Mother’s mother that hangs over the fireplace in the den back in upstate New York. That woman with her diamond necklace and haughty expression. “No, it’s not true. It can’t be true. She always, always told me that family is the most important thing. She loved her mother, even if she disowned her. The car wreck was just an accident.” I try to find comfort in the words, but the room is spinning. I close my eyes.

Suddenly, Arthur’s hands are firebrands on my shoulders, and my eyes fly open. His dark stare flashes with anger. “Do you still not see what she’s turned you into? You can’t keep playing her game.”

“She needs me,” I repeat. “She won’t kill me.”

“And what happens if Ben doesn’t want to run away with you? Do you think she’ll just let you go back to New York? Or that she’ll set you free?” He steps even closer to me, just a fraction, as if trying to read my eyes.

“The plan
will
work,” I say fiercely, my eyebrows contracting as I stare him down. “And I’ll be fine.”

The anger finally slips from his eyes, and all that is left there is pity. And it nearly breaks me.

I turn away and set my shoulders as I open the door and walk away from him. I don’t need his pity. I
will
be fine.

It’s March fifth, two days before Ben’s eighteenth birthday. I spend most of the evening in the art room, filling reams of paper with black lines of desperation. I draw a woman’s back, hunched in grief. She’s staring into a dying fire, a portrait of her disapproving mother above her. Then I draw that same woman, a black shadow overtaking the viewer, undefined except for her eyes, which are wide with rage and revenge. I sketch a boy with eyes full of trust and love. Then a boy—a man—reaching his hand out to me, trying to save me.

I hide the last two sketches from Ms. Elling when she walks by. She rests a hand on my shoulder, trying to be reassuring. She can see the shadows enveloping me.

When I head back to the dorm, the gas lamps lining the courtyard are straining against the darkness. I’m staring blankly at my feet, lost in my head, when a gust of wind blows through and rips away some sheets of loose paper sticking out of my bag. They’re the sheets I tore out, the portraits of Ben and Arthur that I didn’t want Ms. Elling to see, and they scatter across the yard.

I mutter a curse under my breath and hurry to gather them.

He’s too quick for me, though. Before I can stop him, Arthur snatches one of the sketches and holds it up to the light.

I run to his side. “It’s not what you think!” I cry, sure he has found the portrait of himself.

When I look down at the paper in his hands, though, I see Ben. One where I was trying to capture the way he looked at me when he told me he loved me. I wanted to show the hope in his eyes, the mixture of certainty and uncertainty as he poured his heart out to me.

“You’ve drawn him like you’re in love with him,” Arthur says softly. He brings his eyes up to mine, and my breath stutters in my throat.

I rip the sheet from his hands. I can’t think of anything to say, so I hurry off without a word. I can feel his eyes on my back as I march resolutely to Faraday Hall.

By the time
I reach my room, I’m shaking, and it takes a great deal of effort for me not to slam the door. I’m angry, though at whom I don’t know. Claire must see it in my face, because she looks up from the book she’s reading and then looks quickly back down again.

I take a deep breath and try to clear my face of emotion.

I go to the dresser in search of a hair tie so that I can pull my hair back. Really, I’m just looking for something to occupy my hands.

But when I open up the top drawer, I notice something’s off. I usually keep everything in neat, ordered rows: my makeup brushes, my nail polish, my hair clips. But now everything is jumbled. Maybe I pulled the drawer open too hard and bounced everything around?

I check the next drawer down to find my sweaters and jeans crumpled and mixed together, and my heart starts beating faster.

“Did you go through my drawers?” I ask Claire.

She looks up. “No. Why?”

I examine her face. Her brow is scrunched in genuine confusion, and I know she’s not a good enough liar to fake it. “They look disorganized, that’s all. Like someone messed with them.”

“The door was locked all day. Only Mrs. Hallie has the key.”

I nod. “I must have just messed them up myself this morning and forgotten about it,” I murmur.

I think of Mrs. Hallie being in the room and nearly start to panic. As soon as Claire leaves for the library, I lunge for the box under my bed where I’ve stashed the yearbook I took from the student lounge and my meager mementos from childhood. The packet of Molly that I bought from G-Man is still there, still half-full since Ben has been using less and less.

Nothing else in the room could have gotten me in trouble. But the box looked a little askew when I first reached for it, like it had been shoved back under my bed hastily. Had I done that? I’ve always been so careful.

A shiver runs through me. Something has happened—
is
happening. I just have no idea what it is.

When Claire comes back from the library two hours later, I’m sitting on my bed staring at the wall. I’m scouring my mind for clues, trying to figure out why someone would search my room but take nothing. Someone might have been looking for the pills, but if they found them, they left them there on purpose. Why?

“You have to come out with us tonight!” Claire says as soon as she walks in. “Everyone’s going out on the moors, and you haven’t been in ages. I mean, with someone other than Ben.”

“It’s not really my crowd, Claire,” I say with a grimace. “It doesn’t sound fun.”

“It’s going to be brilliant,” she says, ignoring me. “Someone’s scored a stash of pills that are supposed to blow your mind. I probably shouldn’t keep going, honestly, but this stuff is going to be really good. You have to come try it.”

“Sorry.” I turn back to my textbook.

She shrugs, but I know I’ve hurt her. She feels like I’m judging her. She doesn’t know about the packet of pills beneath my bed, the pills I have to get rid of immediately.

As soon as Claire and the others sneak out at midnight, I grab the bag of pills and head for the bathroom, where I flush everything down the toilet.

That night, I can’t fall asleep. I wait in my bed, watching the fingers of moonlight play across the ceiling, trying to sort out what I know and what I speculate.

And right now there’s only one name jumping out at me: Arabella. She might be a more vicious enemy than I’d anticipated.