Page 12 of Riot Act
“Just get to work, asshole,” I growl at myself under my breath. “Sooner you’re done, sooner you can go to sleep.”
I leave my bags by the elevator and venture toward the panel of switches on the wall beside the entryway to the kitchen, where the controls for the penthouse’s temperature/lighting/audio system are located. I hit a series of buttons, and the blinds at each of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows whirr, unfurling like sails, until the iconic view of New York City’s skyscrapers is blotted out.
Thank fuck for that. The taut ball of tension in the center of my chest loosens.
There’s a stack of mail on the kitchen island. The vase on my mother’s favorite console is empty. A few desiccated petals lie on the smooth surface of the mango wood, telling a very distinct story—there were flowers in the vase, but my mother left and she didn’t come back. The flowers rotted. The housekeeper, not knowing any better, threw the bouquet away but didn’t replace them. They also neglected to sweep up the fallen petals—something Meredith would never have done.
Out of habit, I brush the paper-dry petals off the console and into my hand, dumping them in the trash can in the kitchen. In here at least, everything is as it should be. In order. Shipshape.
Amongst many other things—lawyer; art collector; critic; orator; staunch and highly superstitious Catholic—my mother’s a germaphobe. Even the smallest spot on a tablecloth will send her into fits of hysteria. A fingerprint on the bowl of a wine glass? A hair in the sink in her dressing room? Heaven fucking forbid. Of all the areas in the penthouse, the kitchen is Meredith’s largest area of concern. Sometimes, her anxiety over the cleanliness of the countertops is so great that she slams a couple of Xanax and puts herself to bed for three days so she can calm the fuck down.
Today, the stainless-steel appliances are spotless. The subway tiles are immaculate. No dirt or dust in sight. You could eat off the counter, but that would be a bad idea—Meredith wouldknowwhat you’d done and never forgive you for it.
I exit the kitchen, shuddering at the sterility of the place. Down the hall, at the very end, on the right-hand side, the door to the room where I sleep is firmly closed, just like all the others. Meredith calls this my room, but it isn’t. There are a few of my books in here. Some clothes. Some old lenses and camera bodies, and a couple of my notebooks squirreled away in the drawers, but even this room hasn’t escaped Meredith’s OCD. The surfaces of the chest of drawers and the nightstands are free of clutter. The sheets on the king-sized bed are crisp, clean and perfectly wrinkle free. Anything that belongs to me is put away, hidden, secreted out of sight.
Even the stack of black and white prints that I developed last time I was here (that she swore she would not touch) have either been disposed of or buried in a drawer somewhere, out of sight. Color me surprised.
Corsican sand scatters across the polished hardwood when I pull off my shoes. I’m too tired to take off my clothes, so I leave them on and crawl up the bed, grateful that the blinds in the penthouse are excellent at blocking out not only the dizzying height but nearly all daylight as well. I’m asleep before my head hits the pillow.
Tomorrow, I’m supposed to go and visit Meredith.
But fuck that.
Fuck her cancer diagnosis and fuck her for not telling me about it herself.
Tomorrow, I return to Wolf Hall.
3
PAX
Nothing draws a crowd like a dead body.
And murder? A murder can capture the attention of an entire country, especially if it was violent. As I navigate the long, winding road up the mountain toward Wolf Hall, not one but two news vans burn past me, swinging over onto the wrong side of the road in their hurry to get around my Charger. The police must have released new information about my deceased classmate. Awesome. Now the vultures are circling, ready to risk their lives in order to reach ground zero, the scene of the crime, ahead of the competition. As an aspiring photojournalist, I know how important the public’s first reactions are. A dead high school senior’s friend, though? Her teachers? Capturingtheirreaction to whatever macabre tidbit the police have let slip is afatpayday if you can air it before anyone else. You can bet your ass every reporter in a hundred-mile radius is booking it to Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire right now. I must have seen five more news vans in town just now, too—the place is literally crawling with press. They’re like flies swarming around a steaming pile of shit.
And there I was thinking I was going to avoid all of this.
Now, not only do I have to find a way to explain to Wren Jacobi that I destroyed his father’s fancy boat, but I also have to tolerate this bullshit too? Urgh.
Mara Bancroft was not my friend.
I didn’t even like the girl.
She fucked around with the wrong dude—the same dude who’s boat I just sank, coincidentally—and one of our crazy teachers stabbed her thirty-eight times because of it. Mara paid the ultimate price for her infatuation with Wren Jacobi. Now, nearly a full year later, her body’s been discovered and none of us can get any peace because of it.
Riot House, the beautiful three-story architectural masterpiece my friends and I live in—just because we attend a boarding school doesn’t mean we’re lame enough to actuallyboardthere—comes into view, but I don’t stop. I fly right past the turnoff, continuing on, up toward the school. One second, I’m climbing, careening through switchbacks, drifting through the corners, forty-foot trees crowding the road to my left and right, the dense forest begrudgingly receding enough to allow for the narrowest sliver of blacktop, and then there it is: Wolf Hall Academy.
I’m a stubborn, arrogant, grumpy motherfucker, but even I can appreciate just how remarkable the place is. With its gothic turrets, pinnacles, and the crew of gargoyles chilling above the flying buttresses to the east wing of the sprawling structure, there are so many fascinating, unusual elements to the exclusive school. It certainly isn’t the kind of building you’d expect to find at the top of a mountain in the wilds of New fucking Hampshire.
The huge fountain at the bottom of the driveway sprays a light mist of water over the Charger’s windshield as I hang a left and make the final ascent up to the entrance…only to find the turning circle in front of the building choked by news vans. The place is a goddamn circus.
KTY Smile News.
Brookston Beacon.
The Daily Report.
The Dawn Chronicle.
