They Never Learn, page 22
I vaguely remember Drew mentioning this, complaining that Rafael wanted to go out dancing like they were still in their twenties. I figured they’d both decided against it.
Surely they’re not trying to drag Drew into this, of all people. But if he was alone all night on Halloween, just around the corner from the scene of the crime…
“When did you and Professor Torres first become acquainted?” Abbott asks.
“My first term teaching at Gorman.”
“That was about seven years ago, correct? You were hired right after you got your PhD?”
“Yes.”
“And you like it here?”
I nod. Abbott sounds almost bored now, staring at something on her laptop. Flynn focuses on it too, peering over her shoulder, and they share a conspiratorial look.
“I guess you must,” Flynn says. “To come back to the same place you went to school.”
My stomach drops.
Abbott turns the laptop around. “This is you, right? Scarlett Christina Schiller.”
On Detective Abbott’s laptop screen is a picture of my old Gorman University student ID. My former self, with the frizzy dark hair and the long dour face, my eyes too big for the rest of my features.
“Did you know Dr. Kinnear when you were a student here?” Abbott asks.
There’s no point in lying; if they know who I really am, they can look up my transcripts. Maybe they already have. “I had one class with him.”
“Did he recognize you? When you came back to interview for a job?”
My undergraduate degree is from Swarthmore. My CV omits the single semester I spent at Gorman, and my staff records contain no trace of my original surname. Which means they dug deeper than that—but how deep?
“I’m not sure I would have. You look so different now.” Abbott gestures at the photo. “We stared at this for such a long time, didn’t we?” She looks up at Flynn, smiling; he smiles too, like this is all some enormous joke. “Trying to figure out if it was really you.”
I can’t stand it, the sad, sullen expression on Carly Schiller’s face, the overwhelming fear in her eyes. I’m not that person anymore.
That girl is dead.
Abbott isn’t even pretending to look at her notes anymore. “Clark, that’s your mother’s maiden name, right?”
“That’s right.” The response comes out shaky, the way I used to speak all the time.
“And you both started using the name shortly after your father’s death.” Abbott fixes her bird-of-prey gaze on me again. “How did he die, exactly?”
“He… it was a heart attack.” My hands are shaking too; I press them against my thighs to still them. I feel like I’ve been plunged right back into my old anxiety-ridden body, where everything was too intense, too much.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Flynn says. “It must have been hard on you and your mother.”
On my mother, yes. She never got over it. Never forgave me, even though she couldn’t prove I was responsible. She still doesn’t know what I did, how I swapped out his heart meds, slowly, methodically, over the several months I spent living at home between dropping out of Gorman and transferring to Swarthmore. But she saw the satisfied expression on my face when he was lying on the kitchen floor, clutching at his chest, gasping for his last few breaths, and that was enough.
The detectives wouldn’t have looked so thoroughly into my past unless they had strong suspicions about me. But they also haven’t arrested me yet. For that, they’ll need much more than sordid rumors and unflattering old photos. If they had anything real, I’d be handcuffed in a police interrogation room, not sitting in my dead boss’s office having a casual chat about my college days.
If they try to pin the crime on Drew, though… I can’t let him take the fall for what I did. I’d have no choice but to turn myself in and confess everything. Unless they decide we were in on it together. I remember the look in Abbott’s eyes when she saw Drew and me in my office, celebrating my call from Judith Winters. Smiling and laughing and embracing each other less than twenty-four hours after Kinnear’s funeral.
“Well.” Abbott lays her hands flat on the desk. “This has certainly been enlightening. But we don’t want to drag you too far down memory lane. We know how busy you must be.”
She stays seated while Flynn ushers me to the door and holds it open for me. What a fucking gentleman.
“Thank you for your time,” Flynn says. “Dr. Schiller.”
I flinch visibly when he uses my old name—which, I’m sure, is exactly the reaction he was hoping for. A violent fantasy flashes across my mind: driving my knuckles into the bridge of his nose until I hit raw cartilage. I blink it away, but not fast enough.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Flynn smiles. “Dr. Clark.”
50 CARLY
Alex’s eyes sweep around the room, and I could swear he lingers on me longer than the other students. “I think we have time for one more.”
This time I don’t look away, praying he’ll ignore me, the way I usually do. This time I stick my hand straight up.
Alex looks as surprised as everyone else that I’m volunteering to read my work. “What do you have for us today, Ms. Schiller?”
“It’s a new piece.” I pick up the stapled printout. “Just a work in progress, but…”
I spent all night working on this, typing away while Allison tossed and turned on the other side of the room. Like Alex promised, the words had poured out of me. But not like water. More like molten lava.
I clear my throat and start reading. “ ‘He wasn’t afraid of me. That was his first mistake.’ ”
I’m surprised by how calm and confident I sound. It’s safer somehow, because it’s my character’s voice, not mine. Maybe this is why Allison loves acting so much.
The story isn’t about her and Bash. It’s about a woman who’s catcalled by the same man every day on her way to work—until she can’t take it anymore and decides to murder him. At first she’s planning to kill him quickly, cutting his throat with a butcher knife. But she can’t let him get off that easy, not after he’s harassed her for years on end. So first she lures him into an abandoned building, ties him to a chair, and puts duct tape over his mouth to muffle his screams while she peels his fingernails off one by one. Then she pulls out the knife.
“ ‘The weapon felt good in her hand,’ ” I read. “ ‘Heavy, grounding. The blade was so sharp, it would only take one stroke to—’ ”
“Oh my God.”
Along with the rest of the class, I turn to look at the girl who spoke.
Mallory Russell, the senior girl who questioned my presence here on the very first day. She hasn’t gotten much friendlier in the intervening months.
Mallory glares at me, her oversize purple eyeglasses making her look like a judgmental beetle. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
My cheeks heat, but I’m not blushing this time. I’m not embarrassed; I’m furious. I’d love to see the look on Mallory’s face if she knew Alex personally asked me to write this story.
“Mallory,” Alex says. “You know we always hold our feedback until the end; let’s just let Carly—”
“We shouldn’t have to sit here and listen to this. It’s sick!”
Mallory looks to our classmates for support. A couple of them nod—though they seem a little scared. Of her or of me, I’m not sure. Wes shoots me a small smile, trying to be supportive. But even he can’t quite look me in the eye.
She turns back to me. “I mean, Jesus. Are you a straight-up sociopath, or—”
“Hey,” Wes says. “It’s just a story. Fiction. It’s not fair to assume it says anything about the author.”
Mallory scoffs. “No way. Only someone with serious mental problems could write something like that.”
“Yeah?” My fist closes around the pages. “Well, only someone with massive daddy issues could write the shit you do, Mallory.”
Her mouth snaps shut, eyes already filling with tears. Clearly I’ve struck a nerve. She looks at Alex, but he’s totally at a loss for how to wrest back control of the class.
Wes takes it upon himself to try to play peacemaker instead. “Why don’t we all take a—”
“Save it,” I snap, and Wes flinches like a kicked puppy. “I can stand up for myself.”
“That’s enough.” Alex is smiling, and I want to slap him. This was his goddamn idea in the first place. But he cares more about everyone liking him than about standing up for me. “Let’s pick back up next time, shall we?”
The other students file out, giving my seat a wide berth. I try to catch Wes’s eye—I know it was wrong to bite his head off like that—but he ducks out with his notebook clutched against his chest like a shield.
Mallory bumps my desk with her hip as she passes. “Freak,” she mutters—just loud enough for me, but not Alex, to hear.
I shoot to my feet, chair legs screeching against the floor. Alex catches me by the elbow, holding me back.
“See you next week, Ms. Russell,” he says, and Mallory practically runs for the exit. She looks terrified of me.
That feels even better than writing the story did.
Once we’re alone, Alex shuts the door. “That was…” He trails off, folding his arms across his chest. “Very creative.”
I bristle. “I was just doing what you told me to do, you said—”
“You’re right,” he says.
He sits in the chair right next to mine. Alex doesn’t look mad at all, and I’m almost disappointed. I wanted the excuse to argue with him, to stoke the fire of my anger. The rage is already burning off, tears rushing in to replace it, turning me back into my usual weak and pathetic self.
“I don’t want to censor your self-expression.” Alex leans forward, elbows on his knees. “But we have to be considerate of the other students. Make sure this is a safe space for everyone.”
Fury flares in my chest again, chasing the tears away. Nowhere is safe, not while guys like Bash are out there taking whatever they want from whoever they want, with no one to stand up to them. My story was fiction, but it was about how the world should be—how it would be, if we could turn men’s actions back on them. Make them fear us instead.
But Alex can’t understand that. Even if he tries his best to be sensitive and caring, he’s still a man. He’ll never know what it’s like.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll write something more upbeat for next week.”
“Hey, you can write whatever you want. Whatever you need to write.” Alex pauses, thinking it over. “But maybe it would be best if you took a break from class.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late in the semester, I can’t—”
“You’re one of my best students, you’re not in any danger of failing. I thought we could meet privately for a little while during my office hours. What do you think?”
“Every week?” I ask.
“As often as you want.” He leans even closer. “As dark as the subject matter was, you lit up while reading that story. I’ve never seen you like that. So much fire in your eyes.”
His eyes rove over my face, and just like at the bar, it seems as if he’s on the verge of touching me. The difference is, now I’m sure I want him to.
I slide to the edge of my seat, so my knee nudges into his. “I already started writing my next story. I can bring it to you on Thursday?”
Alex smiles. “I’m looking forward to it, Ms. Schiller.”
51 SCARLETT
This can’t be happening. I want to peel off my skin, step out of it like an unzipped dress.
As soon as Flynn shuts the door, I take off down the hallway. I’m on autopilot, heading back to the lecture hall, but it’s empty, the lights turned out. My chest hurts, a squeezing sensation over my sternum like a fist closing. Mina and the police each have parts of the puzzle, and soon they’ll put the whole picture together.
Mikayla. I still need to find Mikayla. Not to discipline her for her outburst in class, but to make sure she’s okay. But first I have to get out of this building. The walls are too close, the ceilings too low, I can’t breathe.
I push through the front doors but don’t realize I’m running until I stumble on the last step, tripping onto the sidewalk. It’s cold—too cold to be outside without a coat, but I’m on fire, sweat pouring between my shoulder blades.
“Dr. Clark. Where are you headed in such a hurry?”
Stright. Fucking perfect. He was lounging on the steps, smoking a cigarette. He stands up to greet me with a smile, but it’s far from friendly.
“Have you seen Mikayla Atwell?” My voice still sounds shaky and strangled. I hate asking him for anything, but maybe he can be of use in this one instance.
He blows out a plume of smoke. “Not since my office hours last Friday.”
So he was meeting with her privately again. Her absence from class on Friday, the way she acted today, it all makes sense. I should have known he was to blame.
“She’s a smart one, isn’t she?” Stright says.
I don’t answer. I’m imagining ripping the cigarette out of his mouth and holding it against his skin until he screams. It’s the only thing keeping me from screaming myself.
“Maybe too smart for her own good.” He laughs and takes another drag. “No wonder you like her so much.”
“Shut the fuck up, Stright.”
I didn’t mean to say that. But at least my voice has returned to its usual lower register, so I sound like myself again rather than Carly Schiller.
“What the hell is your problem with me, Scarlett?” Stright drops his cigarette. The end smolders orange between our feet. “What did I ever do to you?”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” I say. “You told the detectives Kinnear and I were sleeping together.”
“Were you sleeping together?” Stright asks.
My lips curl with disgust. “Absolutely not.”
“You fucking wanted him, though.” Stright leers at me, the shadows distorting his handsome features. “I saw the way you stared at him. Like some freshman with a crush.”
My surroundings fade into nothing. All I can see is Stright’s face, the infuriating smile twisting his lips. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him right here on the steps of Miller Hall. I should have killed him the night of the bonfire, before he’d ever laid a hand on Mikayla.
He steps toward me, and my rage slithers out, coils around him like a snake.
Yes. Come closer. Give me a reason.
I fix him with a poisonous smile. “You don’t know anything about me, Patrick.”
Stright is looming over me—or attempting to, anyway. He’s not much taller than I am, but he’s trying his damnedest to make me feel small, threatened. He’s so far into my space, I’d barely have to reach out to hit him. To keep hitting him until he’s bloodied and disoriented, until he goes down and I’m the one looming, raising my heel to crush his skull into the sidewalk.
“Always a pleasure, Dr. Clark.”
Stright smiles as he turns to go inside, and this might be the worst part: letting him believe, even for a moment, that he’s won. He stops on the top step to toss one more comment over his shoulder.
“I’ll tell Mikayla you were looking for her.”
52 CARLY
When the spotlight hits Allison, the rest of the theater falls away.
She’s alone onstage, singing into a standing microphone, a black feather boa dripping off her shoulders.
Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky…
I’ve heard her sing this song countless times before—under her breath while she’s sprawled across her bed studying, at the top of her lungs in the shower stall next to mine—but I never really heard it, not until this moment.
Something’s bound to begin…
She cups the microphone tenderly, like a lover’s caress, black hair and green fingernails glinting under the bright stage lights. But her other hand is gripping the stand, white-knuckled. She looks right into my eyes, and it feels like she singing just for me.
Allison belts out the last lyric, throwing her head back so I can see the sweat gathered in the hollow of her throat. As the final note fades, everyone in the audience bursts into applause. It’s not until I bring my own hands up to clap that I realize I’ve been gripping the armrests of my seat, leaving marks in the vinyl.
The rest of the musical rushes by in a blur. I manage to mostly ignore Bash as he slinks around the stage warbling song after song in a cartoonish German accent. When he grabs Allison’s hand as they take their bows, I twist toward the back of the theater. I can barely see Wes in the little window of the sound booth—the top of his shaggy hair, the lights reflecting off his glasses.
We haven’t spoken since writing class on Monday. He and Allison have both been busy with the musical, but I know he’s avoiding me—and I know I deserve it. I can’t get his kicked-puppy expression out of my mind.
I know my way around the theater well enough by now to sidestep the crowd in the lobby and slip downstairs to the dressing rooms via the tucked-away stairwell the actors use. The basement of Riffenburg Hall is filled with cast members laughing, hugging each other, the stench of sweat and hair spray thick in the air.
I don’t see Allison, so I keep walking, head down, until I get to the last dressing room, which she shares with a couple of the female dancers. Sure enough, she’s in there—alone—staring at herself in the mirror. She’s already changed out of her costume, though the lace-trimmed black dress she has on looks like something Sally Bowles might wear too.
She doesn’t notice me at first. I watch as she tucks her sleek dark hair behind her ears. Her nail polish is already chipped, a big chunk missing from the right thumb. Onstage she was magnetic, mesmerizing—but now her eyes look lost and blank. The same way they did the week after Halloween.
As soon as she sees me standing in the doorway, though, Allison switches back on, her face lighting up with an exaggerated smile. “So?” she asks. “What did you think?”
