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BFFs.
    I’m going back to that , I thought. All of that. My heartbeat jackhammered; beads of sweat tickled my forehead. I began to breathe too shallowly, and I could feel myself pulling away. I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. No, I thought. Not in front of Troy.
    Unaware, Troy plugged his phone into a charger connected to the cigarette lighter and put the car in reverse. He looked left into the side mirror, and then up to the rearview mirror. And then, he looked at me.
    “I’m sorry,” he murmured, and the soft sadness of his voice seeped into my silent freakout. I held onto those three syllables as if my sanity depended on them.
    Then he brushed my cheek with his lips, and then he kissed me on the side of my mouth. The warm, smooth sensation of contact startled me—tempted me—but I didn’t turn my head toward him, which might—or might not have—led to a full, deep kiss. I wanted him to kiss me like that again, even if it was the last time, even if—
    —No. I was not like that.
    “Okay, on our way,” he said, guiding the T-bird out of the gas station. Then we headed off for Marlwood, and I let the sound of his voice and the touch of his lips warm me like a candle flame.
    The higher we drove on the bumpy road, the more fog tumbled down on Troy’s car, until we were inching along and he was swearing under his breath. It was way after nine. We tried calling Marlwood on both our cell phones to check in, but as we expected, there was no reception. We talked about turning around; we talked about just stopping. But there was a good chance we’d drive off the road into the deep ravine on Troy’s left; the other side hugged the mountain face. Since it was the night before classes, other cars would be trailing behind us. If we stopped, we might get hit.

    COME TO ME, come to me, come to me, come to me. Get the ice pick. Push it into her brain. She will become biddable, and gentle. A lady. An asset to the name of Marl—
    “We’re here,” Troy said to me, jostling me, and I exhaled as I woke up, as if I had had to hold my breath for a long time.
    “Don’t worry about being late,” he said. “They’ll understand.”
    He didn’t know that my headmistress, Dr. Ehrlenbach, had protested my admission into Marlwood. I had no doubt she was looking for any excuse to boot me.
    The fog had thinned very slightly, and I could make out my surroundings. We were in the parking lot next to the creepy three-story Victorian mansion that was the admin building, complete with stone columns and dim lights in a few of the windows. Limos and luxury cars scattered the lot. Golf carts driven by Marlwood staff collected luggage as tired parents and their students walked to their dorms. There were two hundred of us now; there had been two hundred and one last semester. But Kiyoko was dead.
    With dark shiny hair fluffing out over her puffy silver jacket, jeans, and boots rimmed with fur, Shayna Maisel was walking down the incline with a heavily bearded man in a yarmulke. Her dad the rabbi, I supposed. Shayna had once been Kiyoko’s best friend. First her BFF, then her ex-BFF. I had met her in my lit class on my first day at Marlwood, when she’d been trying to get Kiyoko to eat a protein bar. But that was before Kiyoko had crossed over to the dark side and hung with Mandy. Before Kiyoko died.
    Shayna had stuck up for Kiyoko when Mandy had humiliated her with one of her stupid pranks—forcing Kiyoko to skinny-dip in Searle Lake. Shayna had wrapped her freezing, anorexic friend in a blanket down at the shore while Mandy laughed uncontrollably. But Kiyoko had dumped her anyway. Shayna had been Kiyoko’s Heather. There were dark rings under her chocolate brown eyes. Part of me wanted to say something to her—but I didn’t.
    Trailing slightly behind Shayna, Charlotte Davidson, our closest thing to a goth, tapped each of the white horse heads that held oversized white painted chain links in their mouths with the brass tip