I’m mentally backpedaling, my thoughts spiraling through the thick silence.Now what?
“You’ve looked it up, I assume?” he says, more a statement than a question. His gaze on me is almost unbearable.
“Not much, just a quick search after Maya mentioned it.” I swallow. Glance toward the door.
In that moment, DuPont’s phone rings, the tension between us snapping.
As he turns away to answer, my body slackens with relief. While he’s occupied, slowly, carefully, I back toward the door, hoping to escape.
But when I turn to grip the handle, his voice booms across the space. “Naomi.”
I stop, my heart lurching to my throat.
“If you really want to know what happened, why don’t you ask your sister?” he says, and when I turn around, he’s staring at me intently. “After all, she was one of the last people to see her alive.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Maya
January 2012
On the way to Cecily’sroom at Sterling, I tried to shake the strange feeling I’d had when I’d run into Lila in Professor DuPont’s office. To try to stop wondering how he knew about me and Nate. When I opened the door, Cecily, Daisy, and Kai were in pajamashorts and bras, dancing as they drank and did one another’s makeup for Winter Formal. Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” pulsed from the speakers and masquerade masks lay scattered on the bed and floor next to gowns with labels like Balenciaga, Tom Ford, and Chanel, open bags of Haribo cherry candy, and copies ofVogue.
They looked at me when I walked in, and I feared they could see it on my face: the shame of what I’d done with Nate over winter break. I was a traitor.
“I want to get seriously messed up tonight,” Cecily said, sitting at her desk as she threaded an earring through her earlobe.
“What happened?” Kai asked.
But Cecily dismissed her with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I felt a stab of guilt. Was it about Nate? I had to say something.
I opened my mouth, ready to come clean, but just then there was a knock at the door and Marta popped her head in. “Excuse me, ladies, they would like you to please lower the music.”
“Marta,” Cecily snapped. “Can’t you see we’re getting ready?”
Marta shook her head and muttered something to herself before disappearing once again, but she shut the door hard enough to makethe desk shake and to make Cecily, who’d been holding a mascara wand up to her face, stab herself in the eye. “Damn it.”
“Do you have to talk to her like that?” I said. Marta had been kind to me since I’d joined. She seemed to understand I was different from the others.
“Relax,” Cecily said as Kai handed her a cotton swab to fix her eye. “She’s worked for us for years, she’s like family.”
Kai nodded. “She can pretty much do whatever she wants, and she’s paid more than any housekeeper I’ve ever met.”
—
I tried tocalm my nerves as we put on our masks and wandered down to the party at Sterling. I regretted inviting Nate—it would be the first time all three of us were in the same room. I glanced at Cecily.I’ll talk to her tomorrow.
We paused at the top of the stairs. Below us, the front hall was filled with members and their guests in tuxedos and gowns, flickering candles dancing across their masked faces, feathers, and gold filigree. Around them, every surface was adorned with flowers, decorated for the masquerade theme.
As the four of us descended, a hush fell over the space as heads turned one by one to take us in. A girl at the bottom of the stairs whispered to her date—That’s Cecily St. Clair.
I didn’t rush to find Nate, and half an hour later the champagne had gone to my head and the room was pulsing with a warm glow as we danced. As the four of us swayed to the music, the room and the chandelier and the rest of the party seemed to sway with us.
Later, I found Nate standing alone by the fireplace.
“You look amazing,” he said as I approached. He gave me a hug, and the brush of his fingers on my arm made me shiver.
