Why can’t they just let me love something?
My chest ached at this memory. And the tears on my face now felt familiar, like they were partly hers from that day.
God sees the heart was Sarah Black’s favorite Bible quote. The student “ghosts” thought, in a twisted way, they were reminding their crueler peers of that. I didn’t know if I believed in God, and I didn’t know if Taylor had, either. We’d never discussed that. But I had seen Taylor’s heart occasionally, when she’d let me. I hoped somehow, since then, she’d seen mine. I hoped she saw that I’d wanted answers for her, and gotten them.
Others would remember Taylor as the girl who filmed Jocelyn Rose. As her friend, I would try to remember her as the girl weeping at the cat shelter, as the girl who put that ridiculous video of me in her trash folder instead of sending it out into the world. And I would know that there had been some warmth hidden inside her—and trust that it maybe would have found its way out, if she had been given more time. Maybe. As Caroline Bromley and Norma Fleming and Lucia Jackson had had a chance to grow past the girls they’d been here, both for better and for worse. And as I had a chance now.
I wondered how long the school would keep this door locked—if they’d ever let another girl sleep here. Pressing my hand to the door once more, fingers outstretched, I held a picture in my head for a moment: Taylor on her bed, scratching behind the ears of the illegal kitten on her chest, both of them closing their eyes for a nap.
I propped my mother’s roses against the bottom of the door and then ran down the stairs, racing against the tears that I knew would recede once I stepped outside of Dearborn’s long shadow.
Acknowledgments
Thank you:
To my family, Ross and Eliza, for support, humor, and love.
To Lisa Walker, Jen Hale, and Emily Stone, for insightful early readings of the manuscript.
To Nicole Moore, for the long chats about boarding school life.
To Laura Langlie, my extraordinarily patient agent, for sticking with me all these years.
To Monica Jean for sharp but sensitive editing.
To Kelsey Horton for graciously taking this book forward.
To Leo Nickolls for the awesome cover art.
About the Author
Emily Arsenault is the author of several mysteries, including In Search of the Rose Notes, a Wall Street Journal Best Mystery of the Year; The Broken Teaglass, a New York Times Notable Crime Book; and The Last Thing I Told You. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and cats. The Leaf Reader, All the Pretty Things, and When All the Girls Are Sleeping are her novels for young adults.
emilyarsenault.com
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.