Page 2 of No Place Left to Hide

No, thank you.

I lift my coat from the hook and slide my arms into it, checking my hair in the gold magnetic mirror stuck to the inside of the door. I take a breath. Goodwins don’t show stress either. We’re always composed. I slam the locker and smile at everyone who makes eye contact on my way out of the school, like I’m super chill. Like I don’t have a care in the world. Like I’m expecting today to be the day my dreams come true.

I push through the glass doors and shield my eyes. It’s weirdly bright outside.

This is probably the first time I’ve left school on time since senior year began. Between dance team practices, student council meetings, prom committee planning, and helping the principal—my mom—with the food drive, I’ve been here most days until after seven. Today is blissfully obligation-free, and I can’t tell if that’s a good omen or a bad one. My heelsclick-clackdown the stone stairs, and I don’t lose my stride.

In another life, Waldorf Prep used to be an old textile factory. Thebenefactors bought it and renovated the massive brick building into a sprawling educational masterpiece with two library outbuildings, manicured athletic fields, and more immaculate lawns and landscaping than any other building in Salem. The best students in the Pacific Northwest go here. Which is why so many of us have a stake in today—and why there’s an entire party devoted to Ivy acceptances. Waldorf prepared us for Ivy League lives, but it’s on us if we don’t get the answer we want.

I cross from hundred-year-old pavers to the sparkling white concrete sidewalks bordering the school, and head for the smaller parking lot on the side of the building that’s reserved for those of us in student government. There are perks to being president.

I try my best not to glance at the soccer field as I pass it. I hear them though. The guys whoop and laugh as they gather on the grass, and I know Dylan’s out there somewhere. Leading the team. Looking hot. Always just out of reach. I adjust my posture, glad I wore my shorter Waldorf skirt, the black fabric rustling around the middle of my thighs, almost perfectly aligned with the bottom of my peacoat.

Before I turn behind the library, my resolve cracks. I glance over my shoulder at the team and find several of them staring at me. They all turn away when I catch them.

Except Dylan, standing in the middle, running warm-ups.

He’s fun to look at in his Waldorf suit and tie, but Dylan on the soccer field? His slightly-too-long dark hair brushed out of his face as he dominates a game in Waldorf Blue? Forget it.

He smiles wide and waves, and I realize I’ve stopped to stare at him.

I feel a blush working its way up my neck, but I throw back a quick wave and walk until I’m safely out of sight behind the library.

Get ahold of yourself, Brooke.

I catch myself wondering if he’ll be at the party tonight before Iremember I’m one hundred percent not going. Even if he smiled at me. Even if I’ve been trying to earn his smiles since he moved here from Florida three years ago.

It’s simply not an option. Not anymore.

I’m halfway across the parking lot before I see them.

I jerk to a stop.What the actual fuck.

My car is covered in newspapers. At least a hundred of them, still folded up, their weight keeping them from blowing away in the breeze. I look around to see if anyone’s watching, but not only am I the only one in the parking lot, all the other student government cars are still here. I’m the first out of the school.

I speed walk to my Subaru in the end spot and I snatch one off the bright red hood.

January 7th

Lake Drowning of Local Teenager Ruled

An Accident by Special Investigation

Below the headline are two photos: the lake and the girl.

I don’t look at the photo of her. I can’t. Not when I’m already digesting a stomach full of anxiety. Why today? Of all days, why does this have to happentoday?

At least my tires aren’t slashed this time, so I can still get out of here. But I have to get rid of these newspapers before anyone else sees them, otherwise it’ll be all over the Waldorf text chain before I even make it home.

I drop my bag on the ground and fill my arms with as many newspapers as I can carry and chuck them into the recycling bin on the sidewalk. This is going to take so many trips. Someone’s going to catchme doing this; then there’ll be questions. People finally stopped talking about—

“What the hell?”

I freeze halfway to reaching for another armful and spin around, but it’s only Felix, huffing and puffing in his soccer uniform.

Felix Aguilar is student body vice president, Jena’s on-again-off-again boyfriend of two years, and the third leg in our exclusive little group of perfectionists. We’ve known each other since long before the pressure of our future became all we could think about—alsolong before he was the six-foot-three soccer prodigy he is now. He was the gangliest little kid in middle school. His carefully-styled mop of curls is the one thing that hasn’t changed about him over the years.

Felix plucks a newspaper from my hands with a frown, and I watch his eyes skim the headline with a lead stomach.

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