Page 5 of The Narrow

I’m rubbing my thumb across my upper arm. I pull my hand away, force it into my lap, hoping no one noticed. The bruises there are long gone, but I swear I can still feel them. “Is there financial aid or something? A scholarship?”

“We have a select number of merit scholarships, as you know, but they’ve been dispersed,” Mrs.Clarke says, not unkindly. “And with your parents’ income, you wouldn’t qualify for need-based aid.”

“Right,” I say numbly.

“There is another option,” Oster says.

Mrs.Clarke makes a noise, almost inaudible. It might be disapproval or merely acknowledgment.

“What other option?” I ask, hope fluttering in my chest.

“There is a parent at Atwood who pays the tuition of another student in full each year,” Oster says.

“Like a scholarship?” I ask.

“Not exactly,” he says delicately. “I’m talking about Madelyn Fournier.”

Madelyn Fournier. As in Delphine Fournier’s mother.

My fingers wrap tightly around the arm of the chair. Delphine was in our year. Still is, I suppose.

Delphine was a prim, delicate thing, dressed like a doll. We were assigned as roommates our first year, and from the start, I resented her presence—resented her intruding on me and Veronica, on our private world. I’d wished, fervently, that she would just go away.

In a sense, she did.

Only a day after becoming my roommate, Delphine got sick. Now she lives in isolation in her carefully climate-controlled suite, the only way she can stay healthy. She has her coursework delivered, and teachers tutor her one-on-one outside of class hours. In return, at least as far as the rumor mill goes, Madelyn Fournier shovels money into the school coffers.

Delphine Fournier might as well be a ghost. She has haunted me for six years—the memory of her face, of her pale white hand slipping from mine.

We have never spoken about what happened that night, Veronica and I, but I have thought of it every day since.

“Ms.Fournier has generously offered to pay the tuition of one student in return for their residence in Abigail House,” Oster says. “You would serve as a sort of companion to Delphine.”

It sounds so Victorian. The Delphine of my imagination is a waiflike girl in stays and a white lace nightgown, carrying a candle. I’ve seen her at her window a few times since she got sick—the pale oval of her face, her coppery red hair spilling over one shoulder.

“I thought that Aubrey Cantwell was already at Abigail House,” I say. My voice breaks.

Oster’s eyes jag left. Mrs.Clarke’s chin twitches toward him, but she focuses on me. “Aubrey will be finishing her senior year at her local school back home,” Oster says.

I don’t know Aubrey well. She started at the Upper School—we weren’t Littles together—and she spends most of her free time at Abigail House, which makes sense, since that’s more or less herjob.Washer job. Staying there means everyone knows you’re a scholarship student.

At the beginning of our freshman year, Aubrey came across as a bit brash, boisterous and energetic. I don’t remember whether it changed all at once or bit by bit, but the Aubrey of later years was closed off. She did her work and vanished back to Abigail House. Sometimes I’d catch her staring off toward the woods, her mouth pressed into a hard line.

I remember suddenly the words I heard whispered on the path. “Did something happen to Aubrey?” I ask.

“There was an accident,” Oster says.

Mrs.Clarke shifts in her chair.

“Is she all right? She’s not—she’s not dead, is she?”

“No, nothing like that,” Oster says, though his pinched expression suggests the truth is serious enough. “I’m sure you’ll hear rumors, so I might as well tell you that she nearly drowned.”

The worddrownedmakes me jolt. “In the Narrow?” I ask immediately, though, of course, that is impossible. No onenearlydrowns in the Narrow.Except, I think, and shove the thought away.

“No. Good lord, we would be planning a funeral then. No student has fallen in the Narrow in decades,” Oster says gravely. “It was the pool. She was out for a walk at night and fell in. Luckily, one of the security guards saw her and was able to revive her.”

“Thank God,” Mrs.Clarke murmurs. There is something oddly rehearsed about the speech and about the haste with which Oster moves on, and it sends a prickle down my spine.

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