And Veronica catches my right arm. She pulls, and I stumble forward into her arms. Into Atwood’s embrace.
“You made it,” she says, eyes gleaming with pleasure.
Finally it feels true. I’m here. I’m home.
Everything is going to be all right.
2
“HOLY CRAP, EDEN, you almost died,” Ruth admonishes me.
The raw panic of the moment lingers, a tightness in my throat and on my skin, but it’s fading fast. I crack a smile. “I didn’t almost die. I almost landed on my butt in front of a bunch of Lower School students, permanently damaging my air of cool. Which, if you think about it, is worse,” I say, each laughing word a brick in the wall between me and that instant of gut-churning fear.
“If you had died, you would be a legend,” Zoya points out. Everyone is flaking off toward the bridge now, us included.
“It would have been really impressive if you managed to fall in when no one else ever has,” Ruth agrees, walking backward so she can smirk at me.
“People have fallen in,” I object.
“Tourists,” Ruth says dismissively.
“Not just tourists. There was that guy from town a few years ago,” Zoya says.
“And the Drowning Girl,” Veronica says. Ruth makes ghost noises; Veronica rolls her eyes. “Just because you’re a boring skeptic doesn’t mean you get to make fun of the rest of us.”
“I’m not making fun. I find your mysticism endearing,” Ruth assures her. “I hate that story, though. It’s so . . . unfeminist.”
“I think it’s romantic,” Veronica protests.
“Throwing yourself into a river because your boyfriend stood you up isn’t romantic, it’s idiotic,” Zoya says.
“What do you think, Eden?” Veronica asks, but I’m distracted as we pass a group of girls whispering to each other. I catch the name Aubrey and Did you hear what happened? before we’re out of earshot. I glance back with a frown, but Veronica links her arm in mine, and I don’t slow down.
The legend of the Narrow is probably exaggerated, but enough people drown—one or two every decade or so—to make it clear it isn’t all talk. And it’s true that, often, the bodies are never found. A few corpses do wash up downstream or near town where the river empties into the Atlantic, though that doesn’t make as good a story.
And it isn’t true that no one has ever survived falling in. But we never talk about what happened that first night we made the jump.
“White! Hey, Eden White!” a voice calls just as we’re nearing the path back up to campus. It’s a sophomore girl I vaguely recognize—Martha or Mary or something old-fashioned. She’s picking her way along the edge of the trail, dodging bodies. When she spots me, she stops, planting a foot on a tree root. “Oster wants to see you,” she informs me, a tad breathlessly.
Geoffrey Oster is Atwood’s dean. I’ve spoken to him maybe three times in the last six years. As much as it is possible to blend in at a school with fifty students to a class, I do. I’m not an Instagram star like Zoya or an artistic prodigy like Veronica or a future Olympian like Ruth. I’m not like most of the Atwood students—I didn’t come here because of long family tradition, for the access to influence, the leg up on getting into the Ivies. I came because it was a matter of survival.
I can’t imagine what Geoffrey Oster wants with me.
“You’ve been back for like ten minutes, and you’re already in trouble?” Veronica says lightly.
“He wants to see you immediately,” maybe-Martha says, and I shift uneasily.
“We’ll see you at the room?” Zoya suggests.
“Yeah. I’ll meet you there when I’m done,” I say, feigning a lack of concern.
Could Oster know about what happened this summer? The only people who could have told him are my parents, and there’s no way they would.
The dean’s office is in the main administration building, a piece of neoclassical architecture utterly devoid of imagination. A few white columns stand in a plodding row and a clumsy frieze depicts an unspecified scholar above the main entry. Inside, things are tidy and functional, with stately wood paneling enlivened with modern art on the walls.
The door to Oster’s office is open, the man himself standing in front of his desk with his back to me. He holds his glasses in one hand and is staring at nothing in particular. I knock on the doorframe.
“Miss White,” he says in acknowledgment, turning. “Good. Please come in, will you? And shut the door behind you.”
I obey, and Oster moves around to sit behind his desk. I take a seat, memories of the last time I sat in this room echoing in my mind.
It would only be for one night. I have a very important meeting in the morning that I absolutely cannot miss.
I’ve barely sat down when there’s a knock at the door behind me, and gray-haired Edith Clarke enters, a manila folder in one hand. I catch a glimpse of the letters Whi on the tab, the rest of my name hidden under her hand.
“Edith, thank you for joining us,” Oster says. He puts his glasses on, and I resist the urge to fidget. He’s a big man, with short white hair and lively eyes. He was the youngest dean in Atwood’s history when he was hired, but that was nearly forty years ago, and now his face is lined with deep wrinkles, his scalp flecked with liver spots. I don’t know much about him other than the fact that he’s friends with Veronica’s parents.
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” I ask.
“Should you be?” he asks in turn, brows lifted.
“I know a trap when I hear one,” I reply, and he chuckles. But honestly, I can’t think of anything. Sure, I break a few rules here and there. But I’ve never done anything that required being summoned in front of the dean.
Mrs. Clarke has adjusted the other chair so she’s sitting off to the side. Suddenly, the significance of her presence hits me. Edith Clarke is the bursar—in charge of tuition and financial aid. I’ve never had to talk to her myself, but Ruth is on partial scholarship, and I’ve walked with her to Clarke’s office a few times over the years when she had to drop off a form or something.
“Miss White, I’m afraid we have a situation regarding your enrollment,” Oster says, drawing my attention back to him. His hands are neatly folded on the tabletop. I find myself staring at the hair on the back of his fingers. “Tuition must be paid in full before the first day of classes. Yours has not been paid, and despite repeated attempts, we have been unable to get in touch with your parents.”
My heart drops, and a sour taste floods my mouth. “It hasn’t been paid? At all?”