Breaking Read online

  “My mom’s on the board,” Jack explains.

  “Oh, right,” I say. I think I knew that.

  “Will you be attending the gala this weekend?” Babs asks.

  “I’m not sure,” I say, thinking of my mother’s deadline. I might be in a car back to Manhattan by then. “Maybe.”

  Roseanne stops beside Babs and pours a glass of wine. Babs thanks her and then turns back to me. “Are you interested in medicine as well, Charlotte?”

  It’s such an easy question that my mind goes completely blank.

  Empty, I hear Zoe say. Numb.

  “Start with an easy question, why don’t you?” Jack Sr. roars, laughing. Babs smiles politely.

  “What do you like to do for fun, dear?” she prods after a moment.

  “Um,” I say, but I can’t come up with a single thing. I like to look for clues my best friend left behind before committing suicide, I think. You met her once, remember? You hated her.

  “Our Jack is the star of the track team, from what I hear,” Jack Sr. cuts in when I don’t answer. “Babs and I are looking forward to his first meet. We might have to paint our faces blue and silver!”

  “I’m sure the papers would love to get a photo of that,” Babs says.

  “Why not? I’m proud of my son.”

  I smile politely, wondering where Jack Sr. gets his information. I’ve been to Jack’s track practices. If he isn’t the worst person on the team, he’s a close second.

  Jack reaches for my hand under the table. “Charlotte likes animals,” he says. “She opened the animal shelter last year. I told you about it, remember?”

  “Impressive!” Jack Sr. booms. Everything he says is a boom or a crash. He’s like a human cannon.

  “Thank you,” I say, and Jack squeezes my hand. He thinks I’m nervous, but I’m not nervous. I’m nothing.

  Babs and Jack Sr. politely change the subject to some woman named Mrs. Rodenheim and how it’s such a shame that she won’t be handling the Performing Arts Society gala this spring. After a moment, Jack leans toward me.

  “Knock, knock,” he says under his breath.

  “Jack—” I glance at his parents, but they don’t seem to be paying attention to us.

  “Just answer the door,” Jack says. I look down at my lap, pretending to straighten my napkin.

  “Okay. Who’s there?”

  “Orange.”

  “Orange who?”

  “Orange you glad I brought you to this incredibly boring dinner?”

  I swat his leg with my napkin. “It’s not boring.”

  “It is so boring. But I’m glad you’re here.”

  I lift my eyes to Jack’s face. I used to fantasize about meeting his family. I knew I could do better than Ariel. I could make small talk and wear the right thing and laugh at Jack’s mother’s jokes. I could make them love me. It was the one way I could beat Ariel. The one way I was better than her.

  Now that I’m here, I can’t seem to muster the energy. I could write the rest of this night myself—the compliments on a splendid meal, the casual talk of college and summer jobs, and the careful avoidance of tricky subjects. It’s like watching an elaborate dance. I have the sudden urge to shout something lurid, just to see if I can get them to miss a step.

  I wrap my hands around my fork, my knuckles turning white. Why is this happening now? I’m so close to getting everything I wanted.

  A flash of red hair appears in the hall, vanishing the second I turn my head. I stare into space for a long moment.

  It wasn’t Ariel, I tell myself when nothing appears. Ariel’s dead.

  “Everything okay?” Jack asks. I shift my eyes back to his and fake a smile. I never used to be able to do that, but it’s easy now, like I grew new muscles the day I swallowed the serum.

  “Fine,” I say. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Jack points down the hall, and I excuse myself. My knees shake as I stand, which is strange because I still feel so calm. I stop walking once I’m out of sight of Jack’s family and lean my head against the wall, closing my eyes. My knees knock together, telling me something’s not right. My body’s out of sync with my mind. This is wrong.

  I open my eyes and there’s another flash of red hair. Ariel laughs, the sound breathy and cruel. I turn and stare down the long, dark hallway. No Ariel. The hallway ends in a set of glass doors that open onto a lush backyard mostly hidden in shadow. It’s snowing. White flakes drift down to the earth. They seem to glow in the light of the moon.

  I walk down the hallway and push the doors open. I’m always cold, but I don’t feel cold tonight. The air is warm as bathwater. The snow kisses my skin. I stare over the white-frosted lawn, my breath forming icy clouds. Some animal left paw prints in the snow. Logically, I know it must be a raccoon, or a neighbor’s dog. But they look like they belong to a wolf.

  A memory surfaces. I think of Ariel sprawled across our secret clearing, her lips sticky with wine.

  “In our next life, let’s be wild,” she said, staring up at the sky. “Let’s be wolves.”

  “What about your boyfriend?” I asked.

  Ariel turned her head toward me, her eyes dull and drunk. “Don’t be silly, Char. Boys don’t fall in love with wolves.”

  I kneel, staring down at the nearest paw print. There’s ice crusted around the edges, making the snow hard.

  Let’s be wolves, Ariel said, and my first thought was of Jack. I couldn’t imagine being a wolf if he was a boy. Why be a wolf when you can be a person? When you can be in love?

  I smell Jack coming before I hear him. He smells like rain and pine trees and something else. Something I can never quite put my finger on. It’s weird, isn’t it? That I can smell him down the hall, through closed doors? I should be disturbed.

  The door behind me creaks open and then closed.

  “Hey.” Jack kneels on the ground, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m not feeling well,” I say. It’s not exactly a lie. I’m not feeling anything, so I can’t be feeling well, can I?

  Jack presses the back of his hand against my forehead. “You’re a little hot. You think it’s a fever?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We could have rescheduled, you know.”

  “I know.” I try to smile, but it feels wrong. Like how someone might smile if they’d only ever read about it in a book. “I wanted your parents to like me.”

  Jack kisses me on the cheek. For a second, the scent of rain and pine trees overwhelms me. “They’ll like you because I like you.”

  “I like you, too,” I say. Jack kisses me again, his lips light against my own. He lingers in front of me, his nose touching mine.

  “Sorry,” I say, pulling away. “I just really don’t feel well.”

  “Wait here,” Jack says, standing. “I’ll see if Dad can call the driver and get you a ride back to school.”

  Jack goes inside, leaving me alone in the snow. I run my fingers along the paw print. It feels hard and slippery to the touch. Like glass.

  Let’s be wolves, Ariel said. Zoe must’ve been right after all. The serum really is changing me. Because if Ariel asked me again, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d exchange my skin for fur, and I wouldn’t spare a single thought for the boy I used to love.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Zoe’s already asleep when I get back to the dorm. I hesitate at the door, watching her chest rise and fall beneath her comforter. A lock of black hair sticks to her cheek, fluttering each time she exhales.

  I kneel beside her. I used to plug Ariel’s nose when she was sleeping. She wouldn’t be able to breathe and would wake up gasping and swatting at my hand. I doubt Zoe and I are close enough for that.

  I jostle her shoulder, and her eyes pop open. She groans, blinking.

  “Well?” she asks, and it’s like we’re finishing the conversation we started in the locker room earlier today. Like no time has passed.

  I pull my headband off and
shake out my hair. “I’ll sneak into the nurse’s office with you,” I say, tossing the headband to the floor. “But we need to get the key.”

  Zoe nods into her pillow. “I have a plan for that.”

  “And we have to hurry.” I don’t say because it’s happening to me, too, but I don’t have to. Zoe’s eyes travel over my face. Her lips curl into something too mean to be a smile.

  “Not a problem,” she says.

  Zoe tosses a ring of keys onto my table the next morning at breakfast.

  “How did you get these?” I ask, picking them up. Only three people have access to the nurse’s office—Dean Rosenthal, Mr. Byron, and Byron’s assistant, a sophomore named Sam or Simon or something else that starts with an S.

  Zoe slides into the chair next to me. “Superpowers,” she says. I raise an eyebrow. “Fine,” she adds with a groan. “Byron’s assistant has a thing for me. All I had to do was ask.”

  I hand the keys back to her. “I feel like we’re in a Bond movie.”

  “I’m not a Bond girl. I’m a femme fatale. Like Rita Hayworth.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  Zoe stares at me for a beat, her gaze withering. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

  “When do you want to do this?” I ask, ignoring her shock.

  Zoe shakes her head, and mutters something under her breath that sounds like “Americans.” She snags a piece of bacon off my plate, standing.

  “Now,” she says, nodding for me to follow her. I grab my tray of otherwise untouched food and cross the room, dumping it in the trash before ducking through the double doors. Dusty sunlight pours in through the windows lining the walls. The door falls shut behind me, muffling the cafeteria noise. Zoe raises a finger to her lips, and we walk down the hallway in silence.

  “Byron never gets in before nine,” Zoe explains once we’re too far from the cafeteria to be overheard. I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and check the time: 8:43.

  I angle the screen so Zoe can see. “Cutting it close.”

  “You said you wanted to hurry.”

  I put the phone back into my pocket. “Fair.”

  The nurse’s office is down a flight of stairs, on the basement level. There are narrow windows just below the ceiling looking out onto grass and rocks and people’s feet. The floors haven’t been polished in a while, and the paint on the walls looks dull. No one would dare call the basement level shabby, but it’s not as lavishly maintained as the upper floors, either. It feels like a subtle hint that coming down here denotes weakness. Those who dare to get sick at Weston don’t deserve gleaming wood and fresh paint.

  Zoe removes the keys from the pocket of her plaid skirt. She dangles them from one finger.

  “Nervous?” she asks. I raise an eyebrow, and she snickers. “Yeah, me neither. Too bad. I bet being nervous makes you sneakier.”

  There was something about the way she said that word. Nervous. Like she already knew the answer was going to be no.

  “Do you feel anything anymore?” I ask.

  The corner of Zoe’s thickly lined eye twitches. She cuts both eyes toward me. “I’m trying to figure out how long I have left till …” She draws a finger across her throat and makes a vulgar noise. I cringe and look away.

  “You don’t know that the serum made them commit suicide,” I say. “Correlation doesn’t equal causation.”

  “Thank you, doctor.” A bell rings somewhere above us, the sound echoing down through the ceiling. Zoe squeezes her shoulders toward her ears and releases them again. “What about you? Dead inside yet?”

  Part of me wants to ignore her, like she ignored me. But I’m tired of trying to figure this out on my own.

  “It kind of … flickers,” I say. “Sometimes I’m fine, but then …” I think of being in the supply closet with Jack. Feeling so complete, then so empty.

  Zoe stares for a moment. Something flashes in her eyes. It could be emotion, or else just a trick of the dim lights. “Yeah,” she says finally. “It was like that for me, too. For a while.”

  We stop in front of the door to Mr. Byron’s office. Zoe fits a key into the lock. It clicks open.

  There’s enough sun streaming in through the ceiling windows to illuminate the space, so I don’t bother switching on the light. The room is fairly standard as far as nurse’s offices go—bookshelves to the left, computer to the right, two narrow cots in the middle. There’s another door on the other side of the computer desk, probably a closet or a bathroom, and a replica of a human skeleton stands between the two cots, one arm curved over its head in a strangely enthusiastic wave. A poster showing how to do the Heimlich maneuver hangs on the wall behind it.

  I close the door with a soft click. “What are we looking for?”

  Zoe sits in front of the computer and drops her hand onto the mouse. The screen blinks to life. “I don’t know. Clues.”

  “Thank you, Sherlock.”

  Zoe swivels around in her chair, saying something in French that sounds suspiciously like an insult. “I’m not a spy,” she says. “I don’t know how to do this. Why do you think I wanted you to help me?”

  I glare at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Please. You think the rest of us didn’t know that you, Ariel, and Devon snuck out practically every night? The dorm walls aren’t that thick, genius. The other girls thought you were involved in some sort of drug ring, but I figured you just liked to explore places you didn’t belong.” Zoe raps her knuckles on the back of her chair. “I don’t have that kind of experience. Before the serum, I was just a nerd with a sword.”

  “We weren’t involved in a drug ring,” I say. But given Ariel’s reputation, I can’t blame whoever started the rumor. I pinch the bridge of my nose, thinking. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what happened when you first came down here.”

  “When Byron gave us the serum?” Zoe purses her lips. “Byron’s assistant, Simon, found me in first period and handed me a note saying I was supposed to come to the nurse’s office. Ariel and Devon were already here when I got down.”

  “Anyone else? Besides Byron, I mean?”

  Zoe starts to shake her head, then stops. “Wait—Dean Rosenthal was here, too, but just for a second.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “The dean was here?”

  “She was on her way out the door. I passed her in the hall.”

  “Do you think she knew what Byron was doing?”

  Zoe shakes her head. “She never said anything to me about it, so I don’t know.”

  I lean against Byron’s desk, the wood digging hard into my hip. “What about consent forms? Did they talk to your parents?”

  Even as I’m saying it, I realize—Devon and Ariel had their birthdays over the summer.

  “No need,” Zoe adds, confirming my suspicion. “I turned eighteen in September.”

  “So they chose you three so they wouldn’t have to deal with parents.” I drum my fingers against the desktop. “That makes sense, I guess. And you just took the serum once, right? You didn’t come down for a second dose or anything?”

  “Just once. We had a follow-up appointment a month later, but after that, Mr. Byron told us we didn’t need to come in again. He said the supplement had left our system, and that the effects hadn’t been as dramatic as they’d hoped.” Zoe shrugs her lazy shrug. “I thought that meant it hadn’t worked.”

  I nod. It sounds to me like Byron was trying to cover a mistake.

  “Try looking for health records.” I lean over Zoe’s shoulder, staring at the computer screen. “If he had you come in for a follow-up appointment, maybe he took notes about what he found.”

  Zoe clicks on a document icon on the computer and scrolls down to a folder labeled “Student Records.” She clicks again, and a dialogue box pops up.

  Password?

  “Do you know it?” I ask.

  Zoe scrunches up her nose. “No, but Mr. Byron’s the kind of guy who’d write it down on a Post-it. Look aroun
d.”

  She lifts the keyboard and looks beneath. I pick up a pad of paper and flip through it, but every page is blank. Zoe swears in French and starts paging through a word-a-day calendar.

  “Should we—” Zoe pauses. “Do you hear that?”

  I listen. I hear the clock ticking from above the door, and the shallow sound of Zoe’s breathing. And then—

  Footsteps. Someone’s coming down the stairs.

  Zoe grabs my arm.

  “Hide,” she whispers. She pushes her chair back and ducks below the desk, curling herself into a ball. I yank open the door next to the bookcase—it’s a closet, thank God. I crouch beneath the row of hanging coats, my arms wrapped around my knees. A key scrapes against the lock.

  I’m still pulling the closet door shut when a light switches on. Shit.

  I leave the door where it is and scoot beneath the coats. Mr. Byron hums to himself as he steps into his office. He’s old, his skin deeply wrinkled, his hair graying. I study him through the crack in the door, wondering if he’s the mastermind behind the serum. If he’s the reason Ariel and Devon had to die.

  He looks up abruptly, and his eyes flicker to the open closet door. For a fraction of a second, he stares right at me. I curl a fist near my mouth to muffle the sound of my breathing.

  Don’t see me, I pray. Please, please don’t see me.

  Mr. Byron shrugs off his coat and starts toward the closet. His footsteps vibrate through the floor, making the door tremble. One by one, my nerves prick to life. I shrink farther into the closet, waiting for him to open the door …

  He drops his coat over the desk chair, inches from where Zoe’s hiding.

  I exhale silently, my body slumping in relief. Something jabs into my back.

  Frowning, I reach deeper into the closet, my hand groping against the wall before finding a small leather briefcase. I hesitate, my eyes shifting back to the door. The low humming tells me that Mr. Byron is still bustling around his office, oblivious to the girls hiding under his desk and inside his closet. As quietly as I can, I pull the briefcase onto my lap and open it.

  The briefcase is empty. Its walls are lined with thick, spongy foam, and six hollowed-out spaces tell me that whatever had been stored inside is long gone now. I trace the spaces with one finger, imagining six tiny serum bottles nestled in the foam. They would just fit.