The Good Girls

Chapter 18

ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, JANE PULLED into the school parking lot and grabbed her phone. She'd been thinking about a certain song the whole drive here—a remix of Rossini and Rihanna, her favorite composer and her favorite guilty pleasure music—and she wanted to watch the YouTube clip again. But when she finally found the email that contained the link, she realized why she might have been thinking about that particular song: Carlos had sent it a few weeks before, when they were sort of seeing each other. Thought you'd like this, he'd written, punctuating the email with an XO.

"Stop!" she said to herself aloud, slamming her hands onto the steering wheel for good measure. She had made up her mind that she wouldn't give Carlos another chance, and she had to stick to that. Why was it so freaking hard?

But maybe there were other reasons she was feeling a little shaky this morning. She'd met with Dr. Smith, the psychological profiler, late yesterday afternoon. Twice Jane had to sit on her hands to keep them from shaking, and three times she'd caught herself humming a Dvořák piece, something she did when she was nervous. Dr. Smith had asked a bunch of benign-sounding questions about Jane's self-esteem, her involvement with Ben (which she'd totally downplayed), whether she'd liked Jay's film studies class, and why she'd felt the need to follow her friends into his house the night he was killed. Jane couldn't even remember what she'd said, she'd been so nervous.

And then, strangely, Dr. Smith had asked her about the other girls. Audrey seemed very tightly wound, the doctor commented—did she seem traumatized about her mother's death? Same with Uma—she lost her brother, that sort of thing had to make her angry, right? And Evie had her troubled homelife, and Mal, well . . . "Sounds like you're involved with some friends who have some serious baggage," the doctor had concluded. "And you know, people who have . . . issues, well, they can act out in other ways."

Jane had stared at her. "You mean by killing people?" she'd asked.

The doctor just blinked. "Of course not," she said. "Unless that's what you think."

Jane didn't know what to think. Should she suspect the others? In some ways, it made sense: They'd all been right there for that conversation in film studies. And if one of them killed Ben, of course she would kill Jay to shut him up—and involve the other girls as unwitting accomplices. Uma hated Ben more than any of the rest of them. Or what about Audrey? Ben had started those awful rumors about her, and Jay had hit on her. Maybe she had a secret violent side.

But then Jane shook off the thought. These were her friends. They weren't killers. Her only hope was that they could get through the interviews without raising more suspicions and questions about their involvement. The last thing she wanted was for Juilliard to find out she was being questioned or for her parents to worry any more than they had to.

Sighing, she got out of the car and started across the parking lot and looked at the other texts on her phone. There was one from Oliver, a simple Are you okay? She winced, not knowing how to respond, and decided not to respond at all.

As she made her way toward her locker, Jane noticed small clusters of kids gathering in the hall. They were whispering to one another, then breaking apart to form new groups and whisper some more. The air was filled with an electric charge. What was going on? Then Jane noticed Chad Charming at his locker, his head down. Maybe that was the reason for all the murmuring—Chad had been accused of murder and spent this week in prison, and now he was back. Even though Jane believed Chad wasn't guilty and was glad, for Audrey's sake, that he'd been cleared, she still felt wary of him. He had called the cops on them.

She opened her locker and began sorting through her books. Freddie Facilier opened her locker a few feet away as she exchanged rapid-fire sentences with Ally. "She's just gone," Jane heard her whispering. "That's what her mom told the police."