Page 72 of Riot House
Mercy stands still, her eyes lingering on me, full of amusement; a slow, slanted smile spreads across her face. She looks like she’s got a secret. Or rather, sheknowsa secret, and she’s savoring the weight of it on her tongue. If she and Dash are close, then maybe he told her I showed up at Riot House last night. Maybe he told her that I disappeared up to Wren’s room and didn’t come back down until three in the morning. From the way she arches her eyebrow at me, toying with the ends of her hair, she does know and she’s enjoying the fact that I’m squirming like a worm on a hook right now.
Horror coils itself tight around my throat. I need to change the subject. Now. “Who’s Mara?” I ask.
Mercy’s surprise doesn’t look real. She lays it on thick, though. “You don’t know who Mara Bancroft is?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I did.”
Mercy shoots Carina a curious look. “This used to be her room. Before she went missing. She and my brother were…veryclose.”
Carina gets to her feet. “Mercy, please.”
Mercy ignores her. “She was really beautiful wasn’t she, Carrie? All this beautiful long black hair. These big ol’ bright blue eyes. I was surprised when I found out Wren was interested in you, y’know. You’re nothing like her at all.”
She looks at me like I’m some third rate, discount version of this Mara Bancroft girl. Like she has no idea why her brother would even look twice at me. I’m still stunned from the other snippet of information she just dropped, though. “She went missing?”
“Mmm.” Mercy toys with the ends of her hair. “Last June, right after the last party my brother hosted. It was all very suspicious. She was upset about something and left in the middle of a game of beer pong. Just walked into the woods and…poof. Vanished into thin air. The police suspected foul play. They searched for her for days didn’t they, Carrie?”
“What are you hoping to accomplish right now?” Carina snaps. “This is all in the past. Mara’s gone. We all vowed we’d move on.”
Fuck. When I first arrived at Wolf Hall, Pres made a weird comment about girls leaving the academy. Carina had shut her down. Told her to let me settle in here before dredging up all of that. I thought it was strange at the time, but then I completely forgot all about it. And now I’m learning that the girl who used to sleep in this room, my room, fuckingdisappeared?
“Mara loved this room,” Mercy continues. “She had all kinds of hiding places for her little treasures.” It’s a weird thing to just blurt out. Carina tenses, hatred radiating off her like smoke.
“Enough already.”
“This bay window, for example,” Mercy says, running her hand across the white paint of the windowsill. “Mara used to sit up here and write in her journal every night. She’d scribble away for hours, committing her most personal, private thoughts to paper. And when she was done, she’d hide her journal away, putting it in the safest place she could think of.” She runs her hand to the edge of the windowsill, reaching underneath it, and a loud snapping noise fills the room. Mercy takes hold of the painted wood…and justlifts it upin her hands, pulling it away from the wall.
What the…?
“Jesus Christ.” Carina spits out a string of curse words under her breath. “You’ve gotta bekiddingme. The cops searched this room high and low and they didn’t find anything. You knew where she hid her journal, and you didn’t say a word?”
“What, you think I should have just handed it over?” Mercy laughs—a cold, silvery, cruel sound that makes my pulse thump at my temples. “I would have thought you’d be glad I kept my mouth shut. Mara didn’t hold back when she held that pen in her hand. I’m sure there were plenty of things she wrote about you that would have raised a few eyebrows, if her journal fell into the wrong hands.”
I get up, anxiety pulling taut down my spine as I cross the room, toward the bay window. Carina grabs my hand, trying to pull me back. “Elle, really, it’s not worth it. Don’t buy into her bullshit, okay?”
I shake myself free, not listening, needing to see.
I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets. Turns out that I’ve been shut in the dark, all of the students and even the teachers at the academy keeping me on the other side of a locked door that they won’t open. This is the first time I’m learning anything about this girl, and now Ineedto know more.
There’s a space in the bay window, concealed beneath the windowsill—a fairly large hidey-hole that would almost be big enough for a person to crawl into if they were set on doing so. Inside: a black lacquered box with white cherry blossoms painted on the lid; a scrunched-up sweater; a pink and grey stripy folder; and a small, fat little leather-bound book with the initials M. B. stamped in gold foil into the front cover.
“Ohh, would you look at that. I just solved a mystery. Maybe I’ll start up a P.I. firm once I’ve been released from this hellhole.” Mercy’s smug as hell as she drops the windowsill onto the floor at her feet with a loud clatter. “My my. Would you look at the time. Turns out Idohave somewhere to be after all. If you girls will excuse me, I have a hot date in town. Enjoy flicking through the journal, Elle. I think you’ll find it a riveting read.”
Wren’s sister saunters out of the room with a swing in her hips. She doesn’t bother to close the door behind her, but Carina launches off the bed and races across the room, slamming it behind her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her move so quickly. “You don’t need to read anything,” she says. Wow. When she turns to face me, I barely recognize her. She’s ashen, the color drained from her face, and there’s panic carved into the lines of her features. She looks ten years older than she is, and desperately haunted.
I reach into Mara’s hiding place, taking out the leather-bound book. It’s cold and heavy in my hands, fatter than a Bible, its pages wrinkled and dogeared in places, most of them written on. “What’s this about, Carina?” I have to ask. I hate that my words are so hard and clipped, but there’s something clearly going on here that she doesn’t want me to know about. She strides across the room, holding out her hand for the diary.
“Give it to me, Elle. Seriously. This is one mess that you don’t want to get involved in. Can you…can you please just trust me? Haven’t I been looking out for you since you got here?”
The journal feels like an unexploded bomb in my hand. If I crack it open, it’s going to go off, and everything I know, everything IthinkI know about this place will go up in smoke. Is that what I want? For things to become even more complicated? My whole life has been one problematic situation after another, after another, after another. Things with Wren are so complicated, I don’t even knowwhatthe fuck is going on there. But the mystery surrounding the previous occupant of my room seems sketchy. It feels as though it would be dangerous not knowing what happened to the girl, and who was involved with her disappearance. And, I’ll admit it, Carina’s over the top level of panic right now is freaking me out. It’s making her look incredibly guilty—of what, I don’t know—and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do right now.
“Please, Elodie. No good can come from reading that journal, I promise you. We should just hand it over to the cops and let them deal with it.” Carina sets her jaw. She locks up, her shoulders tensing, her back so ramrod straight, she looks like she’s about to salute a four-star general. “It’s been close to a year. Mara’s parents have been worried sick about their daughter this entire time. The police will know what to do with new evidence. Handing it over to them is the right thing to do.”
“Do you know where she went, Carina? Is that why you don’t want me to read this?”
She blinks, her eyelids fluttering rapidly. “No! If I knew where she was, believe me, I’d be telling anyone who’d listen. I’m just trying to keep you out of a situation that’s really fucked up and could put you in danger. You can’t be mad at me for that.”
“Danger? Why would I be indanger?”
