Premeditated (20 page)

I’m sure I nodded that time.

I risked another look out at the audience and tried to focus on the fact that most of the chairs were empty; one class wasn’t enough to fill even a tenth of them. The others were still there, though Dex had given up on Jordan (who was now sitting with her arms crossed over her chest and scowling). Chandi’s smirk was in transition to a full-blown smile of triumph. And Brooks …

Something clicked.

I glanced at Brooks, then back at the pen in my hand. It was no longer just the thing I’d brought with me as an extension of my own nerves. It had weight and heft. The lights caught the silver barrel when I turned it.

“Maybe you should sit back down, Dinah,” Mr. Cavanaugh said.

“No.” My voice was back. “I’m okay, Mr. Cavanaugh. I just get nervous onstage, but I can do it.”

I closed my eyes and imagined myself at fourteen, heartbroken and terrified that my new school, the one that was supposed to be full of new people and new promise, was now a
place that I dreaded. The voices of should-have-been friends were mocking, and their fingers all pointed at me because they knew what had happened.

I became Claire.

“They call it a safety razor,” I said, and held up my pen. “You think that means it can’t hurt you, but like everything else, it’s a lie. Anything can hurt if it’s used right.”

I had to stop and try to get enough spit in my mouth to swallow so I could keep talking.

“The plastic isn’t even very hard to break. You sort of hoped it would be. And then you’re standing there, at the moment before it’s not a choice anymore. You could throw it away, claim the razor got stepped on or that you dropped something on top of it, if anyone saw it in the trash. But who would bother looking in the trash?”

I laid the pen flat across my palm and started playing with the golden bird on the end of its chain while I spoke.

“It doesn’t weigh much. Less than the thought it took to get you this far. It’s so small, you figure: why not? It’s not like you’ve never cut yourself before. You’ve had bumps and bruises and skinned knees … and this time you’ll know it’s coming. How bad could it be?”

My fingers closed around the pen and propped it, hovering, above my opposite wrist.

“The first cut isn’t deep. You’re not sure what you’re doing, or how to do it, or when you decided it’s what needs to be done. The steps don’t matter. What matters is the cold tile under your feet, uneven and biting into your skin where you dig your toes against it. What matters is the flat face staring back at you from the mirror as blank and lifeless as you’ve
become yourself. And what matters is that you don’t want to be that person anymore. People are supposed to feel things beyond cold and flat. Is it so wrong to want that back?”

Heat rose in my face, bringing tears with it. My eyes blurred so I couldn’t see anyone clearly. I ignored both and mimed slashing across my wrist.

“There’s a moment of hesitation before blade meets flesh that makes you question whether you’re doing the right thing after all, but satisfaction overrides reason. You feel the sting, and it’s all worth it. It’s not instant, but close enough that you can call it that and not be a liar. Lying’s bad, you see; it’s one of the rules.”

The rules. Those unofficial and unspoken things we’re meant to conform to if we don’t want to be considered “odd” or “out of place.” The tricky thing about the rules is that no one tells you what they are; you have to figure that part out for yourself. They aren’t the same for everyone, and not everyone adheres to them. Some will expect you to follow their rules, but there’s no sense in asking for details, because they won’t give you any.

“Somewhere between the doubt and the pain comes release, a moment where everything breaks and all the pent-up anger or misery or fear—whatever you’ve tried to pretend doesn’t exist—cuts loose. There’s an odd comfort in the warm trickle, and an impossible fascination as you watch your blood speed down your wrist where your layers of bracelets should be and across your palm that’s never supposed to be a fist, through your fingers that hate playing the piano, and into the sink.”

My stomach clenched there, and I had to stop for a beat.
The image was too clear. I grabbed my fake-slashed wrist to stop the flow of blood that wasn’t there.

“It’s almost poetic, and absolutely hypnotic. You revel in the macabre familiarity of your own life running away from you in a downward spiral … the universe’s dark sense of irony.”

At the time, I didn’t realize the whole auditorium had gone quiet. I’d forgotten they were there.

“No two drops hit the water below in the same place, and in that instant, you think it’s worked. No, you
know
it’s worked. What came out of you is so heavy that it can’t float. Everything you hate sinks to the bottom and drowns.”

Claire was drowning and no one noticed.

“It’s out of you, so you think you’re fine. After a few seconds, the relief kicks in with an endorphin rush, and it seems like it should be over. The water’s turned off, your skin’s clean, and your crashing blood pressure fights with your adrenaline for dominance in a vessel that can’t go both ways at once. If you’re really good at it, no one knows what you’ve done.”

Of all the things for my Cuckoo to keep to herself, she had to pick this one. I guess she knew I’d have told her parents (fooling around with a guy was one thing, but dumping her circulatory system down the bathroom sink … yeah, that I’d have spilled).

“But it’s a lie … 
it’s a lie
. You didn’t get the poison out, because there’s a canker inside you that you can’t see. When you cut, you let off the pressure so it won’t explode, but it just keeps festering and spitting out more bile, and more acid, and it keeps eating you alive from the inside out. And the next time, the release doesn’t come the way it did before, the euphoric
rush isn’t there, and you’re left to wonder when the pain started to hurt.”

I could hear Claire’s voice inside my head even as I spoke the words she never had, and it finally started to make sense. She’d lost her constant. The thing that was in her control crumbled through her fingers. It was confusing, and that made her mad. She felt broken and dirty and didn’t know how to fix it.

“That’s the point when all the shadows you’ve tried to hide in fill up the hole you made for yourself, and now they’re all anyone can see. You’re pale and the smiles don’t come so easy anymore, but you can convince yourself it doesn’t matter because your mind’s drifting out beyond your sight. The whispers of disapproval you imagine fall away like the slowing beat of your heart in your ears. Peace is so close you could wrap it around your cold arms like a comforter, but that’s a lie, too. Even Death turns his back on you and leaves you alone. He doesn’t want you, either.”

I have no idea how long I stood there on that stage, zoned into my own world. It very possibly could have been seconds, with me speaking so fast my voice hit a pitch only mosquitoes could hear. The heaviness in my arms and legs and heart made hours more likely. I dropped my hands to my sides, felt my fingers go slack, so the pen slipped free and pinged on the stage floor.

Mr. Cavanaugh watched from his seat on the piano bench at the far side with a sickening, genuine concern in his eyes. In the audience, they all stared. Abigail-not-Abby wiped her cheek, like she’d been crying. I caught Dex’s eye, but he looked away quickly. Brooks had leaned forward, almost out of his seat, and Chandi … Chandi I couldn’t figure out. She wasn’t
glaring at me anymore; the spiteful grin had left her face. It would have been easy to assume she was shocked or upset that I finished my presentation, but that wasn’t it at all. She chewed nervously on the eraser end of her pencil, then tugged on her sleeves when she realized I was looking her way.

Her shoulders slumped; she ducked her head with a fearful pale creeping into her cheeks. That was all it took for my own body to respond in kind.

One hand tried to hold my lunch in my stomach, while the other clapped over my mouth in case the first one failed. I rushed off the stage, into the wings, and headed toward the closest dressing room, where I promptly threw up in the sink.

What had I done?

How could I have put myself—
Claire
—out there like that?

I looked at myself, wearing Claire’s clothes, with my hair that was blond like Claire’s and the hideous pastel tragedy of the makeup that stopped matching my face the instant red splotches erupted across my cheeks and forehead. I couldn’t do this; I’d been an idiot to think I could. No matter what I did, it made things worse. Exposing Claire’s secrets to the world wasn’t going to help her. At best, I’d humiliate her. It was time to cut my losses and go home, assuming I could figure out where that was.

The water turned on in the sink next to the one I’d made into a vomitorium and someone stuck a damp paper towel under my nose. You’d think a school like Lowry wouldn’t use the same cheap brown towels as your average public school, but there was no mistaking that wet cardboard scent. I glanced up, expecting to see Dex or Abigail-not-Abby—but I was in hell; I should have known I’d see the devil there.

“You realize this is the guys’ dressing room?” Brooks said. He just stood there with that wet paper towel dangling from his fingers, waiting for me to take it, but I couldn’t let go of the sink. After all that, after letting him hear what he’d done to Claire and after letting him see it break me, if I let go, I’d fall.

“You realize that standing there means I throw up on you if it happens again?” I asked.

“That’s why God invented dry cleaners.”

He put the paper towel in my hand, then soaked another and laid it on the back of my neck while I leaned over the sink and let him.

“I’m sure Chandi will love riding home in a car that smells like puke.”

“Chandi has her own car.”

Brooks went to a cabinet on the wall and rummaged a bit before coming back with two paper cups and a bottle of Scope.

“One for water,” he said. “One for the mouthwash.” He set the cups and bottle out on the counter. “Cavanaugh won’t care if you want to stay in here the rest of class. You’ll be able to hear the bell when it rings.”

He nodded toward the speaker over the door.

“Thanks,” I said. I took the mouthwash and started playing with the cap.

“I can stay in here if you want—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “I think one round of public humiliation more than makes my quota for the day.”

“Dinah, that was amazing,” he said. “I don’t know where it came from, but I can promise you no one’s laughing out there.”

“I can’t do this.” I put my back to the wall and slid down to
sit on the floor between the sinks. “I didn’t think it would be this hard.”

Revenge was supposed to be cold and hard and completely detached. There weren’t supposed to be any emotions involved. I wasn’t supposed to let Lowry, or the people in it, get to me. But the further I got from the instant surge that had come when I’d first learned what happened to Claire, the more the fury cooled, and it wasn’t so easy to keep up the constant desire for vengeance. Then I’d do or see or say something, like what had happened on the stage, and it would all roar back with that same intensity. I’d hate myself for doubting the course I’d set, all the while wondering if I hadn’t made some massive mistake.

Brooks sat down on the floor, too, facing me with one arm propped across his knee.

“Do you know why there’s a diamond on the school’s crest?” he asked.

“Because rich people like diamonds?”

“Because Eleanor Lowry’s family owned a diamond mine—
accidentally
. Her father won it in a game of cards. That’s how they made their money.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

“Not really. Most people think of mining as something glamorous, like in the movies. Guys go underground with lanterns and a canary in a cage to let them know if they hit a gas pocket. But it’s not like that at all. It’s dirty, and dangerous, and hard work, and in the end, the miners don’t even get to keep what they find. The people who put in the most effort aren’t always the ones who get the biggest payoffs—and it’s a lot more like this school than the Lowrys probably realized.”

The hard-work part was obvious, and Claire was evidence of
the danger; Dex and Abigail-not-Abby spoke to how little someone got out of the deal when they worked harder than anyone else. I wasn’t so sure about the dirty part of it, but the rest was spot-on.

“People get all excited about the classes and the campus, or what putting Lowry on an application can do for their chances of getting into a university, but this place can eat you alive. That’s the part they don’t put in the brochure: the amount of pressure it takes to make a diamond will destroy anything else. All it takes is one flaw.”

“I’ve got a lot more than one,” I said.

“We all do, but around here, you’re supposed to pretend you don’t. That’s all you have to remember. We don’t just act in drama class.”

It was happening again. Whatever magic Brooks could work on people without their notice was dulling my aversion to his presence. My self-loathing for what I’d just done, and the fear of being a public spectacle, began to lift, venting out the room as a dissipating fog.

It was so tempting, with only the two of us there in that room, in the relative safety of the school, to confront him. To tell him the truth and demand to know why he’d used Claire the way he had. I just couldn’t shake the fear that he’d have something to say that might make sense.

Brooks stood up. The water turned on again, and when it stopped, he handed me a small stack of damp paper towels.

“I’ll put your stuff back in your bag and leave it on the stage,” he said. “You can wait to leave until the room clears.”

That was the point I realized that Claire must have been an anomaly. Summer had truncated his act, and he’d had to work
faster to get what he wanted, because he hadn’t known she’d be there when school started. During the school year, he could go slower and really make someone twist. There’s a reason “con” is short for “confidence,” and this was all one masterfully crafted step in a long-term con game.