trudge up the creaky wooden stairs, worn in their centers by decades of dead girls coming and going. Most of the bedroom doors, which are nine feet tall, intricately molded, and heavy-looking, are closed, but some are ajar just enough that I can hear a girl practicing the violin down by the second-floor bathroom and another girl reciting Shakespeare just across the way. I round the top of the stairs and glance away from Harper, who’s tapping her foot like I couldn’t be more irritating if I tried, to see steam flooding out of the bathroom. It’s Sunday night. Back to school tomorrow. Since the last time I sat in a Cania classroom, everything has changed, yet nothing is different.
“Don’t look so excited. This isn’t the beginning of a lifelong friendship, Murdering Merchant,” Harper says. She points to the door behind her. “We’re in here.”
She saunters into our room ahead of me. I step warily through the open doorway as she grabs a hairbrush from a dresser, flops back on her fluffy duvet, brushes the ends of her red hair, and watches me like I’m some sort of half-trained monkey.
The room is just as I’d expect the room of a privileged daddy’s girl to be, or at least her side of it is; it’s the antithesis of my bedroomgrowing up, which I frankly loved but which was so far removed from this, it could have been a different species. Divided into two sides that are mirror images, though Harper’s side has started creeping into mine, our room is all cream, purple, and sparkling glass. Two chandeliers hang from the coffered ceiling, shedding glimmers of light across the large lavender area rug in the center of the hardwood floor. Harper’s side is closest to the door. Her four-poster bed, puffy with more pillows than we had in our entire house back home, is against the violet-and-cream striped wall in which her closet, packed so full the doors can’t close, is set. Next to her bed are a desk and chair, both of which are in front of a dormer window. On the wall with our door, a marble fireplace sits unlit in the corner near my bed, beside two antique-looking dressers.
“I had it done exactly like my bedroom at home,” she says as she runs the brush through the ends of her hair. A Hermès scarf is draped over her nightstand lamp. Gold-framed affirmations and vision boards make a neat row on her side of the room. I can see from the doorway that she’s filled not only her closet with Tory Burch and Chanel’s latest but half of my closet, too.
I feel her gaze zero in on me as I step into my barren new space. My attic bedroom at Gigi’s was too narrow and slanty to be anything more than the Before shot in a home reno magazine, but at least it was wholly mine. No roommate. Now, on closer inspection, I see that my bed, which has been stripped bare, is paint-chipped; the wall it’s pushed against is stabbed with nail holes and bruised by bare patches left behind by hastily pulled tape. A low stack of pale painting canvases are on my mattress, as are two boxes of my stuff and the flat pillow, thin sheets, and patchwork quilt I used at Gigi’s. The desk under my dormer window is beat up. I look closer: someone’s etched Murdering Merchant into the desktop. Gee, I wonder who could have done that?
“Don’t unpack,” Harper says. “If I have my way, you’ll be back in California before the week’s up.”
“One can hope.” I move the boxes to the floor. “Who used to live here?”
Harper groans. Because evidently the sound of my voice puts her over the edge. I look over my shoulder and wait for her to reply, which, with a huge eye roll, she finally does.
“Tallulah Josey.”
“Your friend?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Tallulah thought she was slyer than a cat in a fish factory. When the teachers were all up in arms today, she took it upon herself to sneak into the front office and call her old boyfriend, who wasn’t even that good-looking. Anyway, she got expelled this afternoon.”
I stop
“Don’t look so excited. This isn’t the beginning of a lifelong friendship, Murdering Merchant,” Harper says. She points to the door behind her. “We’re in here.”
She saunters into our room ahead of me. I step warily through the open doorway as she grabs a hairbrush from a dresser, flops back on her fluffy duvet, brushes the ends of her red hair, and watches me like I’m some sort of half-trained monkey.
The room is just as I’d expect the room of a privileged daddy’s girl to be, or at least her side of it is; it’s the antithesis of my bedroomgrowing up, which I frankly loved but which was so far removed from this, it could have been a different species. Divided into two sides that are mirror images, though Harper’s side has started creeping into mine, our room is all cream, purple, and sparkling glass. Two chandeliers hang from the coffered ceiling, shedding glimmers of light across the large lavender area rug in the center of the hardwood floor. Harper’s side is closest to the door. Her four-poster bed, puffy with more pillows than we had in our entire house back home, is against the violet-and-cream striped wall in which her closet, packed so full the doors can’t close, is set. Next to her bed are a desk and chair, both of which are in front of a dormer window. On the wall with our door, a marble fireplace sits unlit in the corner near my bed, beside two antique-looking dressers.
“I had it done exactly like my bedroom at home,” she says as she runs the brush through the ends of her hair. A Hermès scarf is draped over her nightstand lamp. Gold-framed affirmations and vision boards make a neat row on her side of the room. I can see from the doorway that she’s filled not only her closet with Tory Burch and Chanel’s latest but half of my closet, too.
I feel her gaze zero in on me as I step into my barren new space. My attic bedroom at Gigi’s was too narrow and slanty to be anything more than the Before shot in a home reno magazine, but at least it was wholly mine. No roommate. Now, on closer inspection, I see that my bed, which has been stripped bare, is paint-chipped; the wall it’s pushed against is stabbed with nail holes and bruised by bare patches left behind by hastily pulled tape. A low stack of pale painting canvases are on my mattress, as are two boxes of my stuff and the flat pillow, thin sheets, and patchwork quilt I used at Gigi’s. The desk under my dormer window is beat up. I look closer: someone’s etched Murdering Merchant into the desktop. Gee, I wonder who could have done that?
“Don’t unpack,” Harper says. “If I have my way, you’ll be back in California before the week’s up.”
“One can hope.” I move the boxes to the floor. “Who used to live here?”
Harper groans. Because evidently the sound of my voice puts her over the edge. I look over my shoulder and wait for her to reply, which, with a huge eye roll, she finally does.
“Tallulah Josey.”
“Your friend?”
She arches an eyebrow. “Tallulah thought she was slyer than a cat in a fish factory. When the teachers were all up in arms today, she took it upon herself to sneak into the front office and call her old boyfriend, who wasn’t even that good-looking. Anyway, she got expelled this afternoon.”
I stop
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