“Tonight?” Orchid fairly leaped away from the desk. “I have homework.”
“Right.” Scarlett did not. Half of her classes were being taught by subs. They’d watched a Shakespeare adaptation on television in English today. And not even a good one.
Scarlett had no idea what her parents’ tuition money was presently going toward. Probably shoveling the muck out of the girls’ dorm. Or the lawsuits. There must be a ton of lawsuits. Scarlett had figured her own parents would mount one, but they’d chosen a “wait and see” approach. As in, wait and see if what happened had any bearing on her grades or her college prospects.
Or her test scores. She looked down at the 780-that-was-really-630.
If she didn’t get into the Ivy of all their dreams, maybe then they’d sue. But in order to get the ball rolling on all that, she’d have to actually tell them that she wasn’t scoring 800. Even in verbal.
And the last time she’d admitted that to anyone hadn’t gone so great.
It was Scarlett’s own fault, really. That new school counselor, Perry Winkle, had been so adamant that everyone in the Murder Crew meet with him to discuss the “traumatic events” of last fall.
Never show weakness. Scarlett was supposed to know that better than anyone. But one tiny mention of a less-than-impressive showing on a practice test, and the man had suggested getting a tutor.
“A tutor?” Scarlett had sneered. “I don’t get tutors. I am a tutor. I’m actually the head of the Student Tutor Alliance, so . . .”
“Everybody needs help sometimes,” Mr. Winkle had said.
Not Scarlett Mistry. And if this pathetic counselor couldn’t understand something as fundamental as that, then there really was nothing he could do for her.
She’d just have to find another answer.
“Hey,” she said to Orchid. “Did you go talk to that counselor yet?”
“Winkle?” Orchid was already packing up her supplies. “Not yet. I was just talking to Vaughn about him.”
Now, there was a boy who needed actual help.
“And, you know, I did go to my therapist in California over the break.”
“You have a therapist at home?” Scarlett asked. “One who . . . knows the truth about you?”
“Of course,” said Orchid. “I needed someone I could talk to. Everyone needs a little help sometimes.”
Scarlett snapped her pencil in two. “Oh God, not you, too.”
Orchid seemed to realize that she’d crossed a line. “Let’s go get dinner.”
“You mean the latest microwaved feast?” Scarlett rolled her eyes. That was another thing that had deteriorated since the storm. The new interim headmaster, Dr. Brown, had decreed that one kitchen was more than sufficient to feed all remaining students, including those at Tudor House. So instead of Mrs. White’s delicious, vegetarian, home-cooked meals, Scarlett was left picking through a limp salad bar at Blackbrook’s main dining hall.
The trade-off, she supposed, was that she wasn’t being fed by a murderer. But it was a pain in the butt to hike down to campus through the frigid Maine evenings. Most nights, she just made herself a frozen dinner in the Tudor House kitchen.
But Mrs. White seemed to haunt every corner of that space.
It was strange, Scarlett thought as they exited into the hall and she saw Orchid do her usual move of averting her eyes. Most of the students hated the hall—the spot where Headmaster Boddy had died. And the administration had sealed off the conservatory, where his corpse had been stored that long, awful day, as well as all four entrances to the secret passages they’d discovered as they searched for the headmaster’s killer.
But it wasn’t the memory of Mr. Boddy’s lifeless form that bothered Scarlett. The headmaster was dead. There were no such things as ghosts, and the house had been thoroughly cleaned. No, it was everything else. The storm and its aftermath had revealed all sorts of problems to Scarlett.
Her best friend was a liar. Her housemate was hiding a huge secret. Her resident proctor was a murderer. And, somehow, she hadn’t picked up on any of it. She’d tried to track down the killer and hadn’t come close. Her instincts were way off.
Scarlett feared that she didn’t have a clue.
She wasn’t making the right choices, and that was evident long before she had a number two pencil in her hands. Maybe the bad test scores had nothing at all to do with the trauma of the storm and the murder and the stress of being back on this wreck of a campus.
Maybe Scarlett was just doomed to fail.
The kitchen was already occupied by two of the other girls—both new to Tudor. Though Scarlett’s friends and former housemates Nisha and Atherton had transferred to schools without murderers on staff, the school had managed to fill not only their rooms but even half the downstairs rooms, which had formerly been common areas, due to the current lack of non-flooded residential options. Scarlett and Orchid’s new housemates included interim headmaster Dr. Brown; Rosa Navarro, a new transfer student who mightn’t have known about the house’s history; and one of the Murder Crew’s own: Beth “Peacock” Picach.
Peacock stood at the counter now, six feet tall but seeming even larger, the dyed streaks in her blond hair faded somewhat from her signature teal blue to a pale mint. She wore yoga pants and a cutoff sweatshirt emblazoned with a bright blue mandala and was chopping kale to add to a suspicious-looking collection in the pitcher of the house blender.
“Scarlett! Orchid!” Peacock called as she scooped the kale into the blender. “You’re just in time. Do you want to try some of this energy smoothie? It’s a new formula my life coach, Ash, made up for me. Rosa’s having one.”
They looked over at the new girl, who was in a chair by the tiny kitchen table, reading a textbook and watching the others with wary eyes. Maybe she’d finally gotten the download on who her housemates were. “I said I’d taste it.”
“What’s in it?” Orchid asked.
“Kale”—Peacock was adding more as she spoke—“apple, pineapple, some ginger, and this new protein powder Ash got for me. He’s from California. You can tell me how authentic it is.” She slopped in some milk, popped on the top of the blender, and revved the engine.
“If it’s got kale,” said Orchid dryly, “that’s pretty authentic. Any avocados on hand?”
Peacock frowned. “It’s not in the recipe . . .”
“I was joking,” Orchid said, sliding into the spare kitchen chair across from Rosa. “I long ago gave up on finding avocados in Rocky Point.”
Peacock started pouring her concoction, which was a dark green color, into glasses. “It’s supposed to help me with my Ayurvedic detox. I’m trying to incorporate more plant-based meals into my diet. We’re working on unlocking my energy from my solar plexus chakra.” She presented a glass to Scarlett. “You can tell me how I’m doing.”
Scarlett blinked at her. “I can tell you that nothing that just came out of your mouth made the remotest bit of sense. That’s not how any of this works.”
“Well, I’m still really new,” Peacock said, looking sheepish. She pressed the smoothie into Scarlett’s hands. “But how does it taste?”