Chapter 22

“Callie!” I hear a girl’s voice call. I look up: Julia is headed straight for my bench. A lemon yellow sweater hangs from her shoulders by the arms, brightening the dull navy blazer of her uniform. She looks perfectly preppy with her matching headband and scarf. If I wore something like that, I’d look deranged.

“You okay?” she asks, concerned. “You’re a lot paler than usual.”

See? Lemon yellow on a girl? I would look ill.

“Way to raise my self-esteem,” I say but I add a smile. “I’m good.”

“Going back to the dorm for dinner?”

“Already?” Wow, how long was I in Mrs. Gibson’s office?

I flip open my cell phone to check the time and as I do so, catch my reflection in the mirrored cover. I can’t help it: I feel relief when I see my face looking back at me.

“Callie?”

“Hmmm?”

Julia points at my phone. “The time?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Dinner’s in five minutes.”

She rolls her eyes dramatically and then tucks her arm under my elbow. “I’m starving, if you know what I mean.” And she winks at me.

“Starving? Should I ask what you were doing to build up an appetite?”

My roommate peels back her scarf to display a red hickey on the side of her neck.

“Classy,” I say. “Does he have a matching one?”

“Oh god, no. His coach would kill him.”

“Not a good look for an aspiring Olympian, I guess.”

Julia laughs lightly, as if she hasn’t got a care in the world. And she doesn’t have one, does she? There is nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, in her perfect world.

I force a laugh and resist the urge to throw off the hand on my arm. Even that is placed perfectly, I notice.

“Mack sneaked me into the boys’ locker room at the field house when no one was there,” Julia is saying. Her voice sounds like it’s coming through a sponge, muffled and moist.

What? What is she saying?

Her arm propels me through the campus, toward our dorm, guiding me, pushing me in the direction she wants to go. Well, of course, we should go where she wants to go. She’s Julia Poole, she’s Miss Perfect, she’s the one everyone wants to be friends with. She’s Mack’s girlfriend.

Isn’t she the most specialist person ever in the history of Darby Prep?

“Way back in the corner of the field house is this little room…” she goes on.

Am I supposed to giggle and smirk with her too as she coos over her make-out session with her boyfriend? Am I supposed to be the cheerleader giving her supportive props for having a massive hickey on her neck?

She finally lets go of my arm and skips ahead of me to the door but does she offer up her own key card to enter? No, that’s my job. I’m the one to open the door for her.

I grit my teeth and search my backpack for my card. I know I put it in here, in the special pocket on the side, after I left lunch but I can’t find it.

Meanwhile, on and on Julia chatters.

“…Mackenzie works out, like, every day now and oh my god, his muscles!”

Where the hell is it? I know I put it in here.

“Erin! Erin! Hey!” Julia calls across the front lawn of the dorm. “After dinner? The Rat?”

An afternoon with her boyfriend, an evening with her girlfriends…notice she didn’t invite me. What am I, a turd on the bottom of her shoe?

And where in the goddamn hell is my key?

A torrent of anger and jealousy flood my veins and form a churning twister inside my chest. My ribs feel like they’re about to separate; my lungs like they will explode if I don’t get this under control.

What is wrong with me? Where is this coming from?

I swallow hard, determined to get in the dorm and away from Julia before I—

“Callie? You need some help?”

I shove my backpack at her, pens and loose notebook paper fall out and onto the porch. “You find it!”

Startled, Julia nevertheless manages to stay composed. “It’s right here,” she says, picking up my card from beneath one of the papers on the ground. And just as she’s about to whisk it through the reader, the door opens and two girls from the first floor pop out.

“Oh hey, Jules.”

“Hi, Julia!”

Julia greets them both with a big smile. “Hi there, sweeties! Not staying for dinner?”

“We ate,” one says.

“Gotta hit the stacks,” says the other.

They all toodle their fingers at each other.

Like they’re in a club. And you’re not.

Where did that come from?

And then I hear Trey’s voice: "I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member."

Trey? What is Trey doing in my head? But it’s more than him. There’s his voice and mine and someone else’s and another and another, constantly changing. A bit from here, a bit from there.

“Guess we don’t need this now,” Julia says as she hands me back my card and backpack.

“Thanks,” I mumble. “See ya.” I head up the stairs, taking them two at a time, putting distance between myself and my roommate but she hurries in my wake.

“Wait up, Callie.”

I turn to look at her but continue up the stairs without pause. “Why aren’t you going to dinner?”

“I want to change,” she says.

“You look fine.”

“I need a different sweater.”

You need to stay away from me, I think. Because I don’t know what’s going on inside my head.

We get to our room and I toss my bag onto my bed. The book from Mrs. Gibson partially slides out of the open zipper and I quickly throw my blazer on top to hide it.

“You know, I was kind of worried about Mack,” Julia says, utterly oblivious to everything that doesn’t directly relate to her.

“He said something about us getting together last week but I don’t remember it,” she goes on. Her back is to me at her wardrobe as she swaps her lemon yellow sweater for a pink one.

“Do you think he’s hooking up with another girl?” she asks.

Yes, me!

“Someone else?”

Julia glances over her shoulder at me. “Do you think?”

Is she completely blind to what must be written in massive letters across my face?

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no one but you.”

And there wasn’t that night, was there? It was always Julia, it could never have been me.

But why not? Why not me?

The voices warring inside my head are shouting now, each one trying to top the other. I don’t know who to listen to.

Stop it!

“I guess not, but it was so weird,” Julia is saying. She’s changing her clothes now, standing at her closet in her bra and uniform skirt. Even that is a perfect look for her.

“I mean, can you imagine hearing your boyfriend telling you about making out with you and how amazing it was and sexy and how he wants to do it again and—”

“Stop it! Stop talking!” I lunge at my roommate, tackling her from behind and shoving her into her closet. She falls headfirst through the clothes, smacking her forehead against the back of the wall with a dull thud, and collapsing gracelessly among her boxes of shoes.

“Ow! Fuck!”

She struggles to stand, using her shoes to push herself up off the floor, grabbing onto the robe which hangs from a hook on the inside of the closet.

“What the hell, Callie?”

She is not yet angry, only shocked, but I can see that surprise slowly change as I come at her, my arms outstretched, my hands reaching for her throat.

“Callie!”

Part of me wonders what I’m doing, what Callie is doing, while another part charges at Julia with a fury I can’t contain.

My roommate, however, is a fighter. She doesn’t passively cower or run away but instead draws one fist back and swings at my head. I duck and she missed and her whole body twists with the force of her arm. She stumbles forward a couple of steps but catches herself before her chest hits the corner of her desk.

Now there is anger in her eyes and her lips tighten to a grim line. She has no awareness that she’s fighting me in her bra, that her arm will be sore tomorrow, that there will be a giant welt on her forehead. She readies herself for my attack.

I tear at her again, feeling no pain when I trip over the end of the bed and hit my bare shin against the metal frame. I reach for Julia’s long blonde hair, the hair I have always wanted and grab as hard as I can.

She screams and I push her again into the closet.

Why isn’t anyone coming? Where are the students, Julia’s friends, Mrs. Duncan?

And then I remember: it’s dinner time and everyone is downstairs.

Plus I have my hand over Julia’s mouth and am pressing down on it as hard as I can, muffling her cries for help.

What is going on, Callie? What are you doing?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know but I can’t stop.

“Callie!” I hear.

Is that in my head? Is that coming from Julia? Is it real?

Two hands grab my shoulder, pulling me up, and my hands release Julia who tumbles back onto the floor of her wardrobe. She pulls her robe down off the hook and wraps herself in it and her eyes register relief and profound gratitude.

“What is going on?”

I turn to the voice, to the person whose firm hands still have me in their grip: Trey.

“Trey….what…?”

He looks from me to my roommate. “Are you all right?” he asks Julia.

Julia’s head bobs up and down. “Yeah,” but her voice is shaky.

“I’m…” I start to say. I look at her, watch her crawl her way up off the floor.

I did that? Oh my lord!

“Julia, I’m so sorry,” I say. But that is lame. And even lamer is my excuse. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess…”

What? What on earth could be the right answer? I have nothing to add.

“I’m really, really sorry. Oh god, Jules—” I cover my mouth with my hand and am not surprised to feel it trembling.

Julia stares at me as if she doesn’t recognize me. Did I shift? I glance at the mirror between our dressers and see my face reflected back. I’m Callie now but was I always? Did I shift during our fight?

Oh my god.

“I think I’m going to see Mrs. Duncan now,” Julia says.

I reach for her arm but she shrinks from me. “Please don’t say anything! I swear this will never happen again. I don’t even know why it happened this time.” I wonder if I sound as bewildered as I feel. It’s like I’m waking from an afternoon nap, a time when you’re not supposed to be sleeping, when you struggle to remember where you are.

I look over at Trey for support, for confirmation that I’m not the horrible person Julia thinks I am but he glances away. His sympathies clearly lie with my roommate.

“Do you need any help?” he asks her kindly but she waves him away.

“I’m fine.” She rushes out without another word to me and I am left alone with Trey.

He finally lets me go but continues to stare at me. I feel like something is crawling on my skin and I rub my arms absently.

“I don’t know, Trey. One minute we were walking from the quad and talking about dinner and then…” My mind whirs, thinking back to meeting Julia just a little while ago.

“What happened before that? Were you in class?”

I shake my head. “I was coming from Mrs. Gibson’s office,” I tell Trey. “We chatted over tea and she gave me the book and then…then I saw Julia.”

I was so jealous of all that she had, all that she is. All I could think about was how much better her life is than mine, how much more she has than me – and how much I didn’t want her to have it anymore.

Who was that person? Who thought those things? Was it me?

Or someone else?

There’s no doubt in my mind that Fiona is a competitive girl. She considers herself Queen Bee of Darby Prep, an Untouchable. Does she envy her best friend so much that she would want to hurt her?

Trey takes my hands in his. “Your hands are freezing,” he says.

“Are they…”

“And your whole body is shaking.”

Down the corridor, I hear a door open followed instantly by a screeching exclamation: Julia has found Mrs. Duncan.

“We have to leave,” I tell Trey. “We have to get out of here.” I grab my jacket and backpack from the bed and push Trey out the door ahead of me; it helps that he’s a few inches taller and wider than me, giving me a little extra cover as we exit the dorm.

I slide my arms into my coat as wee hurry to the visitors’ parking lot. We both stand in an empty space and glance around, me more so than him since I have no idea what car I should be looking for.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Your car, where is it?”

“I don’t have a car—”

“Truck, car, Vespa, whatever,” I add impatiently.

Trey shakes his head. “Don’t have one.”

“What? How did you get here?”

“Same as you. Took the bus.”

I rrrr through my teeth. I’m not certain but I’m willing to bet the punishment for attacking one’s roommate is mighty harsh. Best case scenario for me is to disappear for a little while and let Julia cool off. Maybe once the cruel light of immediacy has waned, and I can offer a proper apology, I won’t get expelled forever.

Then again, who honestly cares about this place? Not like I wanted to be here.

I shake that thought out of my head. I just need to get someplace where I can calmly and rationally sort things out.

The chapel? That’s a refuge, isn’t it? But it’s so close to the quad which is the center of the campus.

The field house? Julia told me there are plenty of rooms no one goes into. That’s a possibility except it might take too long to get up there…

Through the woods! That’s it! We can hide out in the woods.