Page 13 of The Narrow

“I’ve always wondered what Delphine is like,” she says. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Such a small school, and there’s this girl we don’t know at all.”

“She has to be weird,” Ruth says. She seems the least concerned with the whole thing, but then, Ruth isn’t big on vulnerability. “It’s inevitable, right? Being that isolated? Not even allowed to go outside? She’s got to be at least a little eccentric. I bet she collects dead bugs or something.”

“What, to eat or display?” Diego asks, and she laughs.

“She’s got to be so lonely,” Remi says.

The table goes quiet for a moment.

Then Veronica grabs a piece of bread and tears the middle out of it, tossing the crust down onto her plate. “Well, she won’t be lonely anymore. Now she’s got Eden,” she says. She flings herweight back in her chair, slumping down and tearing into the soft heart of the bread with her perfect white teeth.

After so long, I can read Veronica. I know that the anger in her voice masks the fear in her eyes.

We saw Delphine Fournier die that night. She couldn’t have survived, and yet she did.

And now I’m going to be living in her house.

7

WE GET THROUGHthe usual welcome speeches and hearty if unimaginative food, and by the end of the meal, things seem almost normal. Curfew is early and strict the night before classes, breaking everyone out of the bad habits formed over the past week. Still, it stings that no one suggests I come back to Westmore as we get up from the table and filter outside.

“I’d better head off,” I say.

Zoya nods, and Ruth gives me a jaunty wave, her other hand fitted neatly in Diego’s. I try not to be jealous about it. Ruth and I dated for about ten seconds sophomore year, and it wasn’t my idea to break up. We’ve mostly moved past it, but I still find unexpected raw places now and then. Veronica doesn’t look at me at all.

“See you, then,” I say, throat tight, fighting the sensation that I’m losing them somehow.

“Catch you later,” Remi offers in that bass voice that always makes me imagine him tipping a Stetson.

I swing around and start off, and no one stops me. Is it really that quick? I’m not rooming with them anymore, so I’m out of the girl squad? I tell myself I’m overreacting. That they’re tired, like me, and just want to get back to their rooms, like me, and get ready for the first day of classes. Atwood doesn’t take things easy its first day. The teachers like to toss you in the deep end.

I’ve gotten about fifty feet away when I hear footsteps hustling up behind me.

“Eden, wait,” Veronica says.

“What is it, Veronica?” I ask as I turn, speaking more snappishly than I mean to. My arm hurts like hell, and I’m drowning in the sensation that I’ve made a huge mistake agreeing to Oster’s plan.

“Why did you really say you’d do it?” Veronica asks.

I set my jaw. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters. What we saw...” She bites her lip.

“We don’t know what we saw.”

“Yes, we do,” she whispers. “It was real. It was her. We both know it.”

“She couldn’t have fallen in the Narrow and gotten back out like nothing happened,” I say, but it’s less a denial, more a plea for reassurance.

“Yeah. So, how did she?” Veronica asks. She steps toward me, dropping her voice as a trio of freshmen flit by, giving us awestruck looks. “Something happened.”

“She’s just a sick girl,” I tell her. What we saw was impossible, and so it didn’t happen. It’s as simple as that.

I have learned to lie to myself just as well as I lie to my friends.

“Sometimes I consider your lack of imagination and whimsy a personal failing of mine,” Veronica says with a sigh. “I’m scared, okay? I’m scared for you. And I really need you, Eden, because it’s senior year and you’re my best friend and I need someone to talk to about stuff.”

“Stuff? Like a certain Texan gentleman?” I ask. “You two look pretty happy.”

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