LITMIR.BIZ

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you.”

      Becca crouched at the side of the couch. She was painfully beautiful, the ideal kind of pretty that doesn’t fear a magnified mirror. She didn’t seem to have any flaws at all. Not an eyelash was out of place. Her teeth were toothpaste-ad white. Under her eyes there were no circles. She wafted the scent of alcohol and menthol cigarettes in my direction, but it mingled with her perfume and made her whole image tie together in some kind of strange, unusual beauty. It was like she waited for me to notice these things before moving on.

      “I want to ask you … what made you think you could have him?” She smiled a little, and briefly allowed a line to come between her eyebrows. “Haven’t you heard everyone? Max is in love with me. He’s in love with me. I’m that one he’ll never forget. I’m the one he let get away. I am the girl that boys never, ever get over. If I don’t come back or want him back and he marries someone else, even, his future wife will have to come to terms with the fact that he’s never going to get over me. Sure he might continue living, but I—” she bit her lip “—I am what made him live. I am his light. I am his excitement. I was the bells, the light, the darkness and the melody in his life. You? You could only ever hope to be—” her nose wrinkled as she tried to think of what I could hope to be “—a butter knife. You might be practical and useful, but you’re just a blank, dull, staring thing that’s there to serve a purpose. And any reflection of me that might be in you is distorted and ugly. You are nothing more.”

      My heart pounded, and my face was hot. My body trembled. I could hear the ocean. When I noticed it, she did, too, and held up a finger.

      “You hear that? The water? No one knows if it ate me alive or not.” She said it with a singsong voice like she was keeping a secret from a child, saying the last few words with a seductive, dripping relish. It was like the whole thing was a game to her. “Doesn’t that already make me more interesting than you? If or when I come back … can you imagine it?” She rocked backward onto her heels, a smile stretching across her face. “I could walk up there right now, take back Max, and have a world of people who know me and love me thrilled to see my pretty face again.”

      I was colder than ever, and her words were making my head spin. I felt like I was being hypnotized.

      “And what will that mean for you?” she went on. “No one here likes you. They all whisper about you. Not because you’re interesting, mind you, but because you’re just this sad little thing who wishes she was better. Everyone can see that.” She suddenly adopted a look of sympathy. “Your friends back home don’t even miss you, do they? You’ve barely heard from them, I bet. Is that right?”

      I had thought this before but refused to believe it.

      “Well,” she went on, “it looks like no one really needs you at all, do they?”

      She laughed, and as she did, chills ran from my toes to the back of my neck. I could hear voices. Becca looked up, toward the door. The light went out. I gasped, and finally felt in control of my body again. I heard the door slam open. My heart pounded. I was sitting up and the blanket had fallen and gathered at my feet on the dusty floor, and I didn’t even know since when.

      The ocean was crashing outside, and my ears filled with the pounding of that and my heartbeat. I felt paralyzed, unable to stop my fingernails from digging painfully into the rough upholstery of the couch.

      Noise was still coming from somewhere by the door, but I had no idea of its source. Then, quite suddenly, the light came back on.

      And beneath the bulb stood Max.

      chapter 13 me

      NOTHING WAS MAKING SENSE.

      He saw me, and I watched as he inhaled sharply with surprise. “What are you doing down here? I went up to your room, but you weren’t there—I looked in the study room … why did you come down here?”

      I could hardly speak. “I came down here to … I was just … I had to get out of my room and … and—what are you doing here?”

      Words were tumbling fast from my mouth before I could form them. I stood, on weak legs, and looked around for Becca. She was nowhere. I glanced at the floor, where Becca had stamped out her cigarette. There it was. I resisted the urge to pick it up and see if it was still hot.

      “We just wanted to come down and hang out I guess … are you okay?”

      “What?” I whispered to myself as I looked at it. I looked helplessly back at Max.

      His expression became one of concern, and he stepped back to open the door. He spoke to someone outside. “Just one second, I think I see a rat.”

      I heard a few girls shriek. Max walked over to me. “I’m really sorry about earlier, Blake told me she told you …” He trailed off, as he saw the expression on my face. “What’s going on? Something else is wrong.”

      “I don’t kn-know, I just … I can’t. I—” I was trying to gain control of myself, but I couldn’t breathe. It was like that feeling you get when you’re sobbing so hard that your lungs take in breaths you’re not prepared for.

      “Come with me.”

      And I did. He put his hand on my lower back and guided me.

      I trusted him. I didn’t care where we were going or who was outside, I felt better that he was there. That was crazy, since I didn’t even know him, but it’s how I felt.

      My static breathing slowed some, and I could take deep breaths. I coughed some of the dust out of my lungs as I walked outside. The usual people were there—Madison and Julia, clutching each other’s arms as I walked out hand in hand with Max, Blake, wearing a glittering tiara, and Cam in a gold crown. There must have been some kind of king and queen thing like at homecoming. They both looked at me with concern, and then to Max. Johnny also looked at him and asked, “She okay?”

      I gave an embarrassed shrug and waved away their concern. “I’m fine. Not feeling well.” Other people whose names I kept forgetting were there, all talking to each other and looking at me like I’d just been dragged from the sand beneath their feet. I couldn’t look at them. I realized, as I looked ashamedly down at my feet, that they were bare. I didn’t remember when I’d taken off my shoes. I remembered Becca’s words about how everyone talked about me because I was just a “sad little thing.” This was a perfect example, I supposed.

      Lonely, friendless, barefoot new girl, with no identity more specific than that. They’d never see me as anything but that. And I was really starting to fear that maybe that’s all I was. I’d always been the star of my own story. But not at Manderley.

      Max said nothing, only giving a nod to the others, and then directing me firmly up the stairs.

      “You’re freezing,” he said, when his warm hands touched my cold skin. He put his coat around my shoulders. “Not to be too cliché or anything.”

      I clutched the jacket closer and summoned a faint smile but said nothing. He led me inside and to the library, which was open.

      “This was locked earlier, that’s the whole reason I went down to the boathouse.”

      “Shouldn’t have been. But I don’t know, I’ve never tried to break into the library in the middle of a ball before.” Max gave me a small smile and gestured for me to go in.

      He led me to the senior study room, and then turned on the fire.

      “You want to sit?”

      I nodded and sat on the couch. He sat across from me in a chair.

      “So …” he said. “What happened down there? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

      I cringed and stared into the flames. “I didn’t even think about whether anyone would be going there tonight.”

      “How long were you down there?”

      I shrugged. I really didn’t know.

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