Page 80 of The Narrow

“I’ll try,” I say.

She gives me a look.

“I will,” I amend, and she waves a hand to let me go.

All the way across campus, my mind wanders back through weeks and months and years, snagging briefly on moments—Veronica’s birthday last year when we filled her whole room with balloons so she couldn’t even find her bed; when Ruth won goldat the state championships and we screamed so loudly for her that I lost my voice for a week; the quiet nights when Zoya and I sat up together, painting each other’s toenails while she taught me how to thank her grandmother for the cookies in only slightly butchered Russian.

Maybe I don’t have their talent and poise and ambition, but Zoya’s right. They’ve never given me a single reason to think I’m not really their friend. They’ve never suggested I have to achieve some milestone to earn my place. I’ve been there for them, and they’ve been there for me—when I let them.

I don’t know how to make that be enough. I don’t know how to believe what I know to be true, when my mind keeps insisting that I am alone. That Ishouldbe alone.

Zoya said it so casually:You’re depressed.Is that the name for this feeling? This endless drowning deep?

As I approach Abigail House, I slow. Madelyn Fournier’s car is parked outside. Madelyn herself is standing in front of the house, face creased with something like worry.

She is talking to Dean Oster.

She looks up and spots me. Her face goes still for a moment, and then she says something to Oster and turns away, stepping briskly up the stairs and into Abigail House.

Oster looks my way. I approach with leaden steps. He is forty years older now, but there’s no mistaking that he’s the same man who stood by the Narrow and told Maeve that she and Grace couldn’t be together.

Those wrinkled, liver-spotted hands were strong and youthfulwhen they shoved her hard in the back. Did he really think he was protecting Grace? Does he realize now what a monster he was?

I set my jaw as I approach. “Dean Oster,” I say, perfectly polite. “Excuse me.”

“Miss White,” Oster says. “We need to talk.”

I’m well out of reach and it’s the middle of the day, but I still feel a kick of fear being this close to him.It was him it was him it was him, my thudding heart seems to say.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Ms.Fournier and I have been talking,” Oster says. “We feel it’s time you return to your original housing arrangement. You don’t need to worry about the tuition; we’ve gotten things sorted out with your parents.”

“You talked to my parents?”

“We were able to arrange a payment plan,” Oster says.

“But why does that mean I have to leave?” I ask.

“It’s what’s best for everyone involved.”

“The best for who, exactly? Delphine? Or you?” I ask. I feel knocked off balance, rage and fear swirling through me. “I know what happened to Maeve. I know what you did.”

“I did nothing to Maeve Fairchild,” Oster says. His face is shuttered. “I do not know what this obsession with Maeve is, Miss White, but it certainly has nothing to do with the present situation. Your things will be brought to Westmore. You should head back there now.”

“You can’t stop me from at least talking to Delphine,” I say, and now my panic is growing.

“Of course you can talk to her. But right now, you need to go back to your friends,” Oster says. He’s still standing between me and the door.

“You can’t,” I say, and stop. I feel like I’m going to vomit. My hands curl into futile fists. “This is exactly what you did before. You’re keeping me away from Delphine just like you kept Maeve away from Grace.”

“This is nothing like that,” Oster barks, and the anger in his voice makes me snap. “Maeve was a deeply troubled young woman.”

“Like me, apparently,” I say. “Where is Grace Carpenter, Dean Oster? What happened to her?”

“Go back to Westmore,” he orders.

I dodge past him. Forty years on, he’s slower than he used to be. I’m at the door before he even turns around, putting in the code—but the light flashes red. I try again, with the same result.

---