Page 89 of Good Girls Lie
The whispering chatter at the adjacent table begins anew, drawing me back. What does Rumi have to do with Camille? I’ve seen nothing, nothing, to indicate they even knew each other. Hell, Camille warned me away, said he was dangerous. A pedophile.
I can hardly believe that was yesterday. Yesterday, Camille was alive and warning me away from Rumi. Yesterday, Becca and I were friends. Yesterday, I was still protected. Safe.
I can’t do this. I can’t sit and eat and pretend it’s all okay. Can’t gossip and can’t laugh. But to get up and leave now will draw every eye in the place.
Camille did this to herself. So why do I feel so very responsible?
53
THE AFTERMATH
Some of the girls see the counselors, others sit in circles crying in jags, bemoaning the loss of a friend, but most just congregate in the sewing circle to tell lies about Camille and her suicide. Word of the abortion has spread, and speculation runs rampant. There are no secrets in a school as small as Goode, and with Camille gone, it seems all intimacies she shared are now fair game.
Vanessa and Piper act shell-shocked enough, keeping to themselves in their room, but how else did word of Camille’s indiscretions get out? I didn’t say anything. Maybe Becca, she was there. But I can’t help but think it was Vanessa and Piper who leaked the news. It makes them seem important, ties them to the tragedy. It helps the school make sense of why Camille died.
Alone, I finally get in a nap, then pop in my earbuds, select my most hard-core London ’80s punk scene playlist, and try to read a book by a programmer named Peter Seibel, a collection of interviews with famous coders. Dr. Medea handed it to me last week and suggested it might be a fun read, offered extra credit for a report. In normal circumstances, I’d agree and already be outlining the paper. But today, the text is dry as dust, the interviews boring and repetitive. I’m not in the mood.
The room feels so empty. My thoughts stray to Camille, looking for any signs that she either was depressed or truly hated me enough to sabotage my life at Goode, and finding none that stand out in my memories, I turn them, inevitably, to Becca.
Even though none of the Swallows had been with their Falconers this morning, I can’t help but wonder...was the banishment this morning because I missed my appointment, or was it because I didn’t jump right into Becca’s bed last night?
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
My mum said that to me once, a very long time ago.
I try out some adjectives ahead of the noun: hell hath no fury like a privileged, spoiled, imperious, conceited, false girl scorned.
Had I scorned her, though? No, not really. I was honest in my surprise and confusion. Surely Becca won’t hold this against me.
I’ve never had a serious boyfriend—or a girlfriend—before. Becca wasn’t my first kiss, far from it, but I’m still a virgin in all the ways that count. That I’d shy away from an encounter isn’t an indictment of Becca, it’s simply my own inexperience with these things.Sex. The word issex, Ash.
I have no real objections to having sex with Becca. But I’d also like to have sex with Rumi, and that’s what’s confusing. Maybe I just need to try it with both of them and see which one works the best for me.
But now is not the time. Sex equates to intimacy, closeness, secrets. And I’m not willing to give my body in place of my safety.
I open my laptop and check my intranet Goode email. Assignments. More assignments. An invitation to Dr. Asolo’s house for a supper party and discussion of Virginia Woolf four evenings hence. I look at the other addresses on the email; it’s been sent to everyone in the class. All eight of us. And the dean.
I RSVP yes, then scroll through the Goode-approved websites online for a while, which are excruciatingly boring—how many turns around National Geographic is a girl supposed to take? I finally activate my VPN and override the system. I haven’t looked to the outside world in weeks. I check my external email, the one I had before moving to America. Junk. Junk. Junk. I delete everything.
There is a draft email in the folder. What’s this? I think back to the nasty surprise from Vanessa last night, that Camille was spying on me. I don’t remember writing and saving any emails. Did Camille manage to get into my email, too?
I click on the draft but the second I do, I hear the onomatopoeic triggeringwhooshthat means the email has been sent. As Pavlovian as it gets, these notifications. I should talk to Dr. Medea about this. What a great study it would be. Can we shift perceptions with sounds, recode the world? AOL did it. Apple followed. Perhaps Ash Carlisle can, too.
I click on Sent emails, but the program crashes.
“Oh, bugger me.” I reboot, which means I have to go through all of the steps again, activate the VPN, override the system, log in to my email, but the Sent folder shows nothing recent. Weird. There must have been an old email stuck in the outbox from the last time I logged out. Its date would correlate to when I originally sent the message. Who knows what it was?
Still, I delete this email account entirely. No reason to have it anymore, this last vestige of my old life. It’s not like I’ve received anything except ads for new trainers and knickers in weeks. Nothing of worth. Nothing personal.
I have another account for that, like any good hacker. But there’s no way anyone can access it, nor can it be tied to me in any way. It’s totally encrypted, completely anonymous.
Just this small action makes me feel more in control. Good thing I haven’t done too many illicit online activities from my laptop, or I could have really gotten myself in trouble. Even though I’ve already wiped the computer, I double-check everything. Yes, it’s all gone. Besides, Camille couldn’t have found out much. Her knowledge came from outside the school. Her parents, undoubtedly. The prosecutor and the ambassador.
I give them both a cursory search online. Nothing leaps out. There is a small piece in theWashington Postabout Camille’s death, but it’s more an announcement than a story.
I move on to theMarchburg Free Pressarchives and plug in the nameRumi Reynolds.
Nothing.
