Page 25 of Riot Rules
I follow the pathway I have seared into my mind, following the memorized lefts and rights without even paying attention where I’m going. And all the while, I’m thinking about Carrie. Fuming about Carrie. Obsessing over Carrie. Burning because of Carrie.
The girl should have stayed the hell away from me. She should have heeded the rumors and done whatever she could to avoid me like the plague, not fuckingfollowme. Now she thinks I’m a fucking heroin addict, and the boys are about to make her life a living hell if I can’t convince them that I don’t give a shit about her, and—
“She’s poison. If you don’t tell her to back off, a gentle word in her ear frommemight persuade her from harassing you.”
I step on the brakes. I’m one right hand turn away from entering the clearing at the center of the maze. There’s a gazebo there, where the boys and I hang out when we have a free period and we can’t be fucked going back to the house. With its open fireplace, comfortably worn furniture, and comfortably worn books, the little many-windowed hangout reminds me very much of my old governess’s sitting room back at Lovett House. Spending time there makes me awkwardly sentimental, but also at ease, which is why I was planning on sulking away the afternoon there. But it looks like somebody already beat me to it.
Another voice breaks the silence. “She’s harmless. I was just fucking with her before,” Wren—I’d know that voice anywhere—states in a bored tone. “You’re starting to sound like a jealous little bitch, y’know. And here I was thinking we were just killing some time.”
The other voice speaks again, so familiar but so out of place that it takes me a second to recognize it. “Downplay it all you want. You like this just as much as I do. Go ahead. Deny it. Thing is, I’ve spent a lot of time watching you act out your little performances. I’m wise to them now. If I stopped calling you—” teasing, breathless, toying, “—you’dstillcome running.”
I shy back, scalded.
What…in the actual…fuck?
No. I’m not hearing this right.
On the other side of the hedge wall, I hear something else that forces me back a step: a zip being lowered. “See,” that voice says. “You like looking, don’t you? It turns you on. You like to watch me touch myself. You like to watch me come.”
I spin and turn back the way I came. As I march away from the center of the maze, taking wrong turn after wrong turn in my confusion, I’m cursing under my breath for an entirely different reason. Not because my friend was back there flirting with a guy, when I’d always assumed, alwaysknownthat he was straight…
…but because my friend was back there flirting withourteacher.
13
CARRIE
Someone’s upat the observatory. From my bed, the warm yellow glow coming from the domed structure’s windows in the distance is hard to miss—bright, like the flame of a struck match burning in a sea of black. Aside from Professor Leidecker, I’m the only person with a key to the place. Should I get up and find out what’s going on? The astronomy club had nothing scheduled for tonight. I’m in charge of the charting schedule, so I would know.
To get to the observatory, you have to hike the steep, slippery goat track that leads up the hillside behind Wolf Hall, though, and the ascent can be treacherous in the dark.
I should make sure the place isn’t being broken into, I supp—
Oh.
The light abruptly extinguishes, plunging the ridgeline into darkness.
That settles that, then.
It was Alderman who taught me about the stars. I wasn’t interested in anything when he first took me in. He tried to teach me math, and English, and history, but all I cared about were the tales he told about the constellations. Eventually, he managed to relate most subjects back to astronomy, and that’s how I learned that I loved math. I didn’t just love math. I was reallygoodat it. Good enough to land myself a scholarship to any private school in Northern America. Alderman chose Wolf Hall, though. Said I’d be safest here. He paid for my full tuition up-front, and I didn’t argue. I was just happy that he was letting me go anywhere at allto mind that the academy was in the middle of nowhere.
On the other side of my tiny room, my watch ticks softly in the hush, marking out the seconds and the minutes that I should be using to sleep. Sleep won’t come, though. All I can think about is an imaginary needle hanging out of Dash’s arm and I can’t handle it. All of that talent, so closely guarded, gone to waste. The thought of never hearing him play again, every Saturday night now an empty vessel, ringing with the silence. Even imagining it is overwhelming to the point of panic. I’ve seen first-hand what that drug can do and it isn’t pretty.
A lot happened in the split second when he laughed and said that, sure, he’d try anything if it made his life more bearable. I was standing back in that filthy living room, my body exposed, and Kevin was prepping a needle for me. I was a living flame of fear, and I was plunging the steel down into his eye.
I wasn’t myself.
I was Hannah Rose Ashford, and I was terrified for my life.
I roll over onto my side, rubbing my fingers against my eyes. Exhaustion pulls at me, but there’s no chance I’ll be able to slip into unconsciousness now. I’m too wired. The ghosts of the past are lurking in the shadows of my room, intent on haunting me until the sun rises. And anyway, if I sleep, I’ll dream, and dreams have a nasty habit of turning into nightmares. I’ve never been good at dragging myself out of them. I—
The sound comes from outside.
In the hallway.
A softshushing sound, and an eeriecreeeeeak.
I’ve been assigned this room for nearly two years. There isn’t a floorboard out in that hallway that I’m unfamiliar with, and the floorboard that creaked just so happens to be the one right outside my bedroom door. My pulse ratchets up a gear, even though there’s no need. People get up to use the bathrooms at the end of the hall every night. It’s common for other girls on my floor moving about in the night. But…this feels different. This isn’t the half-asleep thudding of someone blindly weaving their way in the dark to go and use the bathroom, or the hurried footfall of one of the other Wolf Hall students sneaking into someone’s room to watch Netflix after hours.
