Poor Little Dead Girls (28 page)

Sadie closed her eyes. The movie. She had spent the night at a party with Finn and Thayer and completely forgotten about her best friend. She hadn’t even thought to send her a text. What was happening to her?

“God, Jess, I am so sorry. I forgot all about the movie … I, um, I felt sick. I just stayed in my room.” Her head was still pounding, but lying to Jess felt even worse.

She arched an eyebrow. “You seemed fine when I saw you. And I came by your room. You were gone.”

Sadie sighed. “I guess I was in the infirmary then. I don’t know what time I went — I can’t remember.”

Jessica’s face went slack with disappointment.

“Look, I’m sorry I can’t eat with you, but I promise I’ll see you later, okay?”

Jessica sawed off a chunk of pancake with the edge of her fork. “Whatever, Sadie.”

Sadie watched her jam it into her mouth and chew, and a part of her wanted to sit down and explain everything. But she couldn’t deal with that right now. She had so many questions from last night, and Thayer could only answer one of them. She turned and left the dining room, leaving Jessica staring sullenly at the wall.

She pulled out her phone and texted the unknown number. “Can you meet me in the lobby? It’s Sadie — need to ask you something.”

While she waited for a response, she walked down the hall to the computer lab. She logged in, then stopped for a moment, staring at the browser’s blank search field. She had tried to find out more information about her mom so many times, but every search had come up empty. It was like her mother hadn’t even existed before she married her dad, and now she knew why. She had been searching the wrong name.

She put her fingers on the keyboard and typed: Maylynne Ralleigh.

She hit enter and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the screen was filled with headlines from the late ’80s. Her eyes skimmed over the words, each one hitting her like a punch to the gut. “Heiress attempts suicide” … “rumors of depression and substance abuse.” A little further down the page, they started to change. “Estranged heiress disappears” … “Diamond scion deemed runaway” … “Police called off search.” Apparently Sadie wasn’t the only one who didn’t know the whole story about her mother’s life. At some point after she left Keating, the Maylynne Ralleigh everyone else knew simply ceased to exist.

She sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Everything was changing so much. Her mother wasn’t who she thought she was, and if that was true, what did she really know about anyone else? Thayer, Finn, Josh, or Brett? Even Jeremy.

A horrible thought had been playing at the edges of her mind since she woke up, threatening to break through. Again, she pushed it away.

Instead, she leaned forward and typed in a new name. This one came back with even more results.

There were headlines from all the local papers, first about Anna’s disappearance, then some speculating about what had happened to her, everything from a kidnapping to running away. She clicked on one of the pieces and waited as it filled the screen.

She skimmed through it until she got to the last paragraph, when her breath caught in her throat.

Sadie took a deep breath. If no one had any idea who her mother had been, how did Thayer know? How did they even find her? On a whim, she typed in another name.

She watched as the screen filled with headlines of a different sort: society page captions, political puff pieces, and charity function announcements, each accompanied by a photo of him, always smiling. There was one of him shaking President Manning’s hand, and another of him posing with his father at some sort of White House event. In both photos, he was in a crisp navy suit, always with the ubiquitous flag pin politicians wore because they thought it proved something.

In the third photo he had his arm around a petite woman with blonde hair cut in a sharp bob. She read the caption: “White House Chief of Staff Theodore Cranston and wife, Pamela Cranston.” She scrolled through page after page of photos until she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Thayer standing above her, a smirk on her face.

“Doing a little light research?”

“Oh, yeah, just, um, surfing around.” She groaned inwardly as she minimized the window. “Er, you know what I mean.”

“Sure, whatever.” Thayer sat down next to her and leaned in conspiratorially. “How’d last night go? You guys bang or what?”

“Uh, no … wait, why would you ask that? Did someone say we did?”

Thayer’s face fell. “Boring. And no. No offense, but you banging or not banging anyone isn’t exactly scintillating gossip.” She turned away from Sadie and booted up one of the other computers. “Plus, it’s already obvious you guys are going to pick each other, so who cares? It’s only fun when people have to fight for it.”

“What do you mean, pick each other?”

Thayer grinned. “You’ll find out.”

“Um, okay. Well speaking of, uh, gossip … Why’d you text me last night? About having something to tell me?”

Thayer raised her eyebrows without looking away from the screen. “Why would I text you?” She waved a hand. “Again, no offense obviously.”

“I don’t know, but you did.” She held up her phone so Thayer could see the screen.

“Nice try, Portland. That’s not even close to my number. Now leave me alone. I have shit to do.”

Sadie’s breath caught in her throat, and her head was pounding so hard she could feel a sweat breaking out on her temples. “But I just texted you back. How’d you know to meet me down here?”

“Didn’t. Drunk Olivia spilled Red Bull on my laptop last night. Now do you mind? I have a paper due.”

“Oh.” Sadie’s eyes slipped out of focus as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Someone else had texted her pretending to be Thayer — but why? She opened the window back up to close it, but something caught her eye. It was one of the society pages that had come up in her search — a story on some event from earlier that November. She scrolled through the photos of people in suits and fancy gowns. The last image on the page was small, but in it was a woman with brown hair and rosy cheeks. She was holding a little girl’s hand — the girl was only nine or ten, but she was perfectly polished in a blue dress that matched her eyes.

They both looked familiar, and Sadie clicked the photo to enlarge it. As the image filled the screen, something in Sadie’s mind finally cleared.

It was her — the woman she had recognized last night — and she finally knew where she had seen her before. It was the woman from the hospital who was supposedly a drug addict, one so far below rock bottom she had had to turn to a charitable foundation for help putting her life back together. And here she was in a photo from a charity event two weeks ago, healthy and smiling in a Chanel suit, a glass of champagne clutched casually in one hand.

Sadie read the caption: “Evelyn Cranston, and niece, Cassandra Cranston.” Cranston.

Sadie stood up and backed away from the screen. None of it was real. The little girl’s story, so much like Sadie’s mom’s, but with such a different ending. It was all a setup to convince her to believe in the Optimates and all the good they were supposedly doing.

Sadie pressed her fingers into her temples and willed her stomach to stop rolling and folding in on itself. She knew this all had to be connected — the Sullas, the hospital, the only memory Sadie had from last night. Where had she been for four hours? And if Thayer hadn’t texted her, who had?

“Hey, psycho. Can you take your hangover somewhere else? You’re making it kinda hard to focus.”

“Sorry,” Sadie mumbled. She opened her eyes to see Thayer shaking her head.

“You know, you look like you’re going to hurl. You really need to figure out how to handle your booze.”

Another wave of nausea broke over her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. As she turned and lurched toward the door, knocking her chair over in the process, she heard Thayer call: “Don’t forget to hold back your hair, hon’.”

She made it into the bathroom just in time. She hunched over the toilet and heaved, over and over until her stomach was still. She sank down onto the floor and leaned her head back against the wall, closing her eyes. In that moment of darkness, she finally let the thought that had been nagging her since that morning take shape. There was no way she had been as drunk as Trix said she was, and she remembered every second of her conversation with Josh just minutes before everything went blank. She thought about Olivia, how lifeless she had looked on the couch, and a cold fear spread over her. She put her head in her hands. Stuff like this didn’t happen in real life — it was only on dramatic teen soap operas and cheesy after-school specials about the horrors of binge drinking. But there was no other explanation. She had been drugged.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

Her mind kept sticking on the last thing she remembered before the white hallway: Jeremy, standing with Finn and Josh and arguing about something — just minutes after she had seen them doing whatever they did behind closed doors. Then minutes later, handing her a Coke in a bright red cup. “Drink this,” he had said. “It’ll help you feel better.”

She drew in breath after deep breath, listening to the sound of the water rushing through the pipes behind her. She had underestimated them all — Finn and Josh, for how far they would go to keep her quiet, and Jeremy, for what he would be willing to do for his new brothers. He wasn’t who she thought he was, and for all she knew, this had been part of the plan all along. Maybe this was what the Sullas did, and by the time the girls realized what had happened to them, they were in too deep with their new “family” to tell anyone.

She wanted to cry, but she was so spent she didn’t have any tears left. She sat there, heaving with dry sobs until she finally stopped sweating, and her hands steadied. She dialed Jeremy’s number and waited while it rang. When it went to voice mail, she hung up. Instead, she typed out a text.

“I know what you did.” Her hands shook again as she pressed send, but she was angry now, and with it came a new sense of calm. She stood up, slowly, and washed her face and hands in the sink.

As she glanced at her face in the mirror, she saw the blurred memory once again. The white hallway, clean and tiled and fluorescent. The white double doors with the small, black rectangle, and Sadie rushing toward them until they swallowed her whole. Just like with the woman in the photo, Sadie just knew. She had been there last night. Dawning House.

She didn’t know how the hospital fit into this, but she had to find out. Before she could even dry her hands, she was running toward the dining room and reaching for her phone.

“Thank you for calling Regency livery, can I have your last name, please?”

“Marlowe. First name Sadie.”

“Thank you, Ms. Marlowe. What time will you need to be picked up?”

“Now, please.”

“I’ll have a car out to Keating as soon as possible.”

“Just hurry.”

She clicked the phone shut and dropped it in her purse just as she pushed through the dining hall doors.

“Jess!” she shouted, drawing a stern look from Mrs. Darrow, who was sitting at a table near the door reading a newspaper.

Jessica stood and threw her backpack over her shoulder. “I have a paper to write.”

“Jess, wait. I’m sorry. I know I acted like an ass before, but … I’m in trouble. I really need your help.” Her voice shook, and Jessica’s face instantly changed. “Please?” It came out barely more than a whisper.

Jessica came toward her at a run. “What’s wrong?”

Sadie grabbed her arm and started pulling her toward the door. “I’ll explain everything on the way, okay? We’ll have plenty of time.”

“Where are we going?”

“D.C.”

As soon as they were safely outside the Keating gates, Sadie told her everything. About the first time she was kidnapped by the Sullas, the ceremony with the Fates, and the trip she had taken with Brett to the hospital in D.C. She told her about the woman and the charade the Sullas had put on to convince her to join. When she told her about the helicopter, the expensive clothes, and Thayer’s speech about family, she could see the hurt straining Jessica’s features as she realized she had been passed over. Still, she pushed ahead.

She told her about the bruise she had found on her arm after that first night, and the tiny injection mark that she couldn’t explain. She went over the initiation ceremony after the dance, and Jessica’s jaw dropped as she told her about Jeremy, the other members, and the nameless gallery of elder members that watched from above. She told her about the White House party, about seeing the Cranstons with the President, and the look of fear that she saw in Brett’s eyes before she ran away. Finally, she told her about the text and the fact that she had disappeared for more than four hours last night, with no idea where she had been except for a terrible gut feeling.