“I want to know what you think of him,” she says, her voice thin.
“I don’t know, I guess he seems fine? I’ve only interacted with him sporadically, though, so I’m not sure I’m really the best judge of his character, if that’s what you’re asking.” I look at her. Why this sudden change of topic? Does he have something to do with her article?
“You know the Hunt article that came out a while back?” Amy asks. “TheTimesfocused on the insider trading and fraud. But…there were some weird emails Professor DuPont sent to Theodore Hunt too. No one was interested in them because they didn’t seem relevant to the financial crimes, but I wanted to keep digging, so theTimeskept me on after my internship. The emails had some details about the Greystone Society. The reporter I’d been working with thought it would be a good story for a Princeton student, elite societies and all that. But I’ve found some other things too…I didn’t know if I could talk to you about it or not since you’re a member…”
My arms prickle. I never told her I was a member.
I pause the movie. “Wait, how do you know?”
“I’ve been working on this for months, Naomi. And frankly, once you know where to look, it’s not that hard to find information.”
“But you said you were working on something about water quality…”
Amy looks down, and my face warms as I fight feeling betrayed. “Why would you lie about that?” I remember the seemingly innocent questions she’d asked over the past months:Where was I going? Who was I seeing?
“So all the questions you asked about—”
“No, it wasn’t like that, I promise.”
I stare at her, furious, and fight to keep my voice even. “So tell me now, then. What’s going on?”
Amy hesitates, takes a deep breath. “Okay…Something happened about ten years ago—one of the Greystone members went missing during a Society ski trip, a girl named Lila Jones.” She swallows. “The official story was that she got lost in a snowstorm, and the next day her body was found in a ravine.”
The air suddenly feels thin.Lila.I know that name. I shudder as I make the connection. I’d heard my sister say it before. I think they’d been friends. But why wouldn’t she tell me she’d had a friend die while she was in college?
“The thing is,” she continues, “the timing is more than a little suspicious. Lila had been suing a member of the Society, but a few days before she died, the case was suddenly dropped.”
“What was she suing for?”
“Assault, apparently.” I go still as Amy continues. “No one else has been willing to talk and it’s been difficult to know who to approach about it, but I got ahold of her brother…”
“What did he say?”
Amy hesitates as if unsure whether to tell me. “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone. I know someone’s life means more to you than any Greystone-inner-circle bullshit, right?”
I lean in. “I promise.”
She nods and lowers her voice. “He said he didn’t believe her death was an accident.”
I sit back as if physically struck. Was I understanding correctly? Lila’s brother thought someone killed her? And if it was while she was on a Society ski trip, it meant he thought someone in Greystone killed her.
I feel lightheaded as I imagine the kind of trouble Amy could be in if this got out. If whoever hurt this girl was still around, they could be dangerous; they could come after her.
My chest seizes with concern. “Amy, why are you doing this?”
“I have to find out what happened,” she says.
“But poking around a potential murder could be dangerous—especially if whoever did it has a lot to lose.”
Amy blinks rapidly and shakes her head, then closes her eyes andbreathes out as if trying to expel the same feeling of dread from her body. Her eyes are huge in the near-dark of our room. She looks scared, yes, but I think I see another emotion too, a flicker of determination. “If it’s dangerous for me to poke around Greystone, don’t you think it’s pretty dangerous for you to belong?” she says pointedly before continuing, “Look, I think it’s likely whoever assaulted her had something to do with her death. But I can’t find a complete public record with the details of the case. I’m going to see if theTimeswill let me petition the court.”
All the blood has left my face, my hands, and has pooled in my gut. There’s nothing I can say to stop her, so instead, I tell her what I know. “My sister was in Greystone ten years ago. With someone named Lila. I think they were one year apart.”
—
I remember beingaround eleven at the time I heard Lila’s name. Maya had brought me to Greenwich the summer after her junior year to meet Cecily’s brother and his wife, John and Margaret, for the first time.
That night, we’d swum in the pool, and I remember feeling so cool and grown up, hanging out with Maya and her friends, in awe of her new life.
