Chapter 109: No Phone

POV: Georgia

I don’t sleep much after the article. Every time I close my eyes, I see that small gray line at the bottom of the page, the name in the footer of every email Rosethorne has ever sent me. By five in the morning I give up, pull on my sweatpants, and head for the one place in this school where nobody will find me.

The dance studio on the second floor of the arts building sits empty at that hour. Nobody uses it before seven. It has a wall of mirrors, a scuffed wooden floor, and a long barre running along the windows. I took a key from the front desk last week and told them it was for my physical therapy. They didn’t ask any questions. Nobody at Rosethorne ever does.

I sit on the floor in the corner, my back against the cold wall, and let my mind circle the same name over and over. Calloway & Wren. A PR firm scrubbing witness statements, rewriting a hockey game into something safe and forgettable. If they could erase Puck’s impossible speed from the public record, what else had they buried? How many of the smiling faces around this school were being managed, too, the way Mollie used to manage mine?

Outside the tall windows, the sky hangs the color of dishwater, and the forest is just starting to separate itself from the dark.

I’m still turning it over, the firm’s name, the deleted quotes, the quiet machinery of a school that erases its own history, when the door creaks.

I freeze. In the mirror across from me, a figure stands just inside the doorway, one hand still on the knob. It takes me a second to recognize her, because she’s wearing a plain gray hoodie with the hood pulled up and no makeup at all.

"Bella?"

She steps inside and shuts the door behind her, slowly, like she’s trying not to make any noise. Then she turns and leans against it. Her chest rises and falls fast. She’s been walking quickly, maybe running.

I push myself up. "How did you know I was here?"

"I didn’t." She swallows. "I looked everywhere. The library, the greenhouse, your dorm. I went to the dining hall at four thirty and the lights weren’t even on yet." She pushes her hood back. Her hair is tied up in a loose braid, strands escaping at the temples. The purple smudges under her eyes look worse than yesterday. "Then I saw the light under this door."

"You’ve been searching since four thirty?"

"I had to find you alone." Her voice comes out hoarse. "It’s the only way."

I look at her hands. They’re trembling again, but she holds them still at her sides, fists tight, like she’s forcing them. There’s no phone in either one. No bulge in her hoodie pocket. Nothing.

"Where’s your phone?" I ask.

"In my room. In the back of my sock drawer, under three pairs of winter socks." She lets out a short, shaky breath that’s almost a laugh. "I turned it off first. I know it doesn’t matter, she’d still know, but it made me feel better. Thank you for leaving it at the desk yesterday. I got it back."

"You didn’t have to come all this way to say thank you."

"I’m not here for that."

I wait. This time, I don’t need to try to be patient. I already know how it works with Bella. If I push, she’ll run. So I stay where I am, and I let the silence settle between us like dust.

The radiator under the window ticks. A pigeon coos on the ledge outside. Down in the courtyard, a door slams, and Bella flinches so hard her shoulder hits the wood behind her.

"It’s just the kitchen staff," I say. "They get in early."

"I know." She presses her lips together, then pushes away from the door and takes two steps toward me, then three. Her sneakers squeak on the floor. She stops about six feet away and stands there, a thin gray figure reflected a dozen times in the mirrors behind her.

She starts to speak. Her mouth opens, and her chest tightens. Then she closes it again, and her eyes squeeze shut.

"Take your time," I say softly.

"I’ve been taking my time for weeks." A tear slides down her cheek, and she wipes it away angrily with the back of her hand. "That’s the problem. Every day I tell myself tomorrow. Every night I lie there and think, I’ll say it in the morning. And then I see her at breakfast, and she smiles at me, and I just..." She shakes her head. "I’m so tired, Georgia. I’m so tired of being scared of my own sister."

My heart beats hard, but I keep my face calm. I don’t want to scare her off.

"What are you scared she’ll do?" I ask.

"Everything." Bella laughs, small and awful. "Nothing. I don’t know. She doesn’t have to do anything. She just has to look at me." Her shoulders shake. "But I can’t carry it anymore. It’s crushing me. Every morning I wake up and it’s sitting on my chest, and I can’t get a full breath until I see her at breakfast and swallow it back down."

The night of the Classic.

Something cold begins to move in my stomach. I think of the blade slipping under my weight. The looseness. The way my ankle rolled. I think of Bianca’s voice through the door, low and sharp. It has to look like an accident.

Bella opens her eyes. They’re red and wet, but steady now, steadier than I’ve ever seen them. She looks right at me, and I can see the exact moment she makes up her mind.

"I need to tell you about your skates," she says.

Every muscle in my body goes still.

It’s a strange, total stillness. My lungs stop moving. My fingers freeze against my knees. The pigeon keeps cooing at the window, and the radiator keeps ticking, but they sound far away, like they’re coming from the other side of thick glass. My whole body listens.

"Okay," I whisper. "Tell me."

Bella steps closer. She takes a breath so deep it lifts her shoulders. Her lips part.

"It was..."

The door opens.

It doesn’t slam. It doesn’t even creak this time. It swings inward on silent hinges, smooth and unhurried, and cold air from the hallway slides across the floor and touches my ankles.

Bianca stands in the doorway.

She wears her school uniform, pressed and perfect, her hair smoothed back into a flawless knot. Her hands are folded in front of her. She isn’t breathing hard or looking around. She doesn’t seem surprised to see us, and she doesn’t seem angry. Her face is a smooth, pale blank, like a mask nobody has painted yet.

Her gaze moves over me, slow and unhurried. Then it settles on her sister.

"Bella," she says, her voice quiet and even. "Walk with me."

"No." I’m on my feet before I decide to stand. "She’s in the middle of talking to me. Whatever this is, it can wait."

Bianca doesn’t look at me. Her eyes stay on Bella, and for a moment it’s as if I haven’t spoken at all.

"This isn’t your business, Georgia," she says, still mild, still smooth. "This is a family matter."

"She came to me." My voice shakes, but I push through it. "She’s allowed to finish a sentence."

Bianca’s gaze finally slides to me, and something flickers there, brief and cold, gone before I can name it. She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t have to. "Bella will finish it some other time."

I watch the color leave Bella’s face. It goes in a wave, from her forehead down to her chin, until she’s as white as the paper in my notebook. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t say a word. She just turns, her braid swinging, and walks across the floor with her arms stiff at her sides, like a girl heading to a place she’s been before.

"Bella, wait." I take a step after her, but my bad ankle buckles slightly, and the half-second it costs me is enough. "You don’t have to go with her."

Nobody answers me. Bella doesn’t even slow down.

At the door, she stops. Bianca doesn’t move.

Bella looks back at me over her shoulder. Her eyes are huge. There’s a tear on her cheek, and her mouth is shaped around words she isn’t allowed to say. It’s the most desperate look I’ve ever seen on anyone’s face, and underneath it, clear as anything, is a single, silent apology.

Then Bianca steps aside, and Bella walks out, and the door closes behind them without a sound.

I stand alone in the middle of the studio, fists clenched so hard my nails bite into my palms, and I want to scream. I want to chase them into the hallway and tear the truth out of Bianca with my bare hands. Instead I just stand there, shaking, surrounded by a dozen mirrored versions of a girl who couldn’t do a single thing to stop it.