After we’d dried off and had dinner, Maya and her friends disappeared into Cecily’s room. I was a kid, so I didn’t expect they’d invite me, but I felt left out downstairs by the fire. So, encouraged by Margaret’s knowing wink, I did what any younger sibling would do: I crept upstairs and peered in through the crack in the door.
That was when I first learned about Greystone Society.
They’d kept their voices low, and I could hear what I’d thought was excitement in their whispers, could feel the frenetic energy running through the room, but when I saw their faces, I knew the tremor in their voices was fear.
I leaned into the door, and what I heard next would stay with me forever—We have to remember Lila left on her own. It was an accident—and they swore to one another they would never speak about it again.
—
My mind spinsnow as I make the connection, but as hard as I try, I can’t remember which one of them had said it. “My sister mentioned her once,” I tell Amy now. “I think it must have been the summer after she died.”
Amy nods. “My theory is that Lila and Professor DuPont might have been having an affair. Last week in the library I overheard a couple of girls saying he’s been divorced twice because his wives always leave him when they find out about his affairs. I’d been digging into everyone involved in Greystone in 2012 trying to figure out who Lila was suing. Well, it turns out Matthew’s wife filed for divorce just a few months after the ski trip. And that’s when the total lack of news coverage on Lila’s death started to make more sense—if she’d been suing someone involved on the admin side of Greystone, rather than a student, it would be easier for them to shut it down. I even dug up the police report on her death. It claims she died of hypothermia, but they found her miles away from the cabin where she was staying. So my question is: Why was she out there alone to begin with?”
I take a deep breath, ignoring the chill running through me, trying to steady myself enough to think. “Okay, so what now? Your article comes out and names Professor DuPont as a suspect, and then what? Isn’t there some kind of statute of limitations?”
Amy’s eyes are locked on mine as she says, “Not for murder.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maya
November 2011
From that point on, Ifelt different. Iwasdifferent. Something changed in the way I carried myself, looked people in the eye. Heads turned when Daisy and I walked into a room, and I knew they were watching us with envy.
In the weeks following initiation, we spent languid days wandering to and from class, nights cross-legged on someone’s dorm room floor spilling secrets by candlelight until our lips were stained purple with wine. We laughed hysterically, danced until sunrise, drank and studied and ate at Sterling, absorbed into her womb.
We had Greystone Society meetings every Sunday, the location and time of which would vary, where all twenty-one of us would gather around candlelit dinners in a sheltered corner of campus to discuss poetry, art, and politics, and ways in which we could benefit the Society. There was a hum running through everything, then. A feeling like we were living in a world within a world within a world, one to which only we had access.
Most important, I’d been able to send money to Naomi. My plan was to do whatever it took to make it, for her, for us. And Greystone Society was the start of it.
Still, at night when I was drifting to sleep, the question lingered—Why had they chosen me?—and because I couldn’t answer, this new life felt temporary. I suspected one day it would vanish, and I’d wake up and realize it had been nothing but a dream.
—
One night afterdinner, Daisy and I were walking back to her dorm when the sound of tires on gravel came up behind us. We turned to see Cecily and Kai in a decked-out golf cart.
“Get in, nerds, we’re going out,” Cecily said with a glint in her eyes. A thrill shot through me as we jumped in the backseat.
“Where’d you get the golf cart?” I asked as she whipped around a corner, streamers attached to the roof of the cart trailing in the wind.
“Nearly broke my leg doing a stupid keg stand at TI the other night,” Cecily said, jutting a chin at her crutches, which were stacked beside her in the front seat. I pictured Cecily doing a keg stand and laughed inwardly.
Daisy shrieked. “Cecily St. Clair doing a keg stand? I’d pay to see that.”
“She was trying to impress some guy,” Kai said.
“Oh my god, did you sleep with him? What’s his name? Nate?” Daisy asked, teasingly. Of course, I hadn’t known Nate at the time, so the significance of this didn’t register until it was too late.
“I was not trying to impress some guy,” Cecily said, suddenly defensive. “I just wanted to prove I could do it.” She shrugged, annoyed. “Anyway, can we not?”
Daisy shot me a wry look, and I suppressed a laugh as Kai turned up the music on the portable speaker.
We held on tightly as Cecily sped down toward a field at the south end of campus. The uneven ground threw us from our seats multiple times as Cecily spun donuts in the wet grass.
Once we’d slowed, Kai pulled out a tube from her bag and handed it to me. “Will you do the honors?”
I gazed down, confused, at the strange object in my hands. It wasn’t until she passed me a lighter that I realized what it was. A firework.
