5

“Yes, Dean?”

“Alex will be rooming with you this semester. I’ll have his things sent up.”

“Very well, Dean.”

“And Alex,” he says, before finally letting us go, “do try your best to stay out of any more trouble. Wouldn’t be fitting for Bleakwood’s first scholarship recipient to go and get himself expelled, now would it?”

Rafael starts pacing across the room as soon as the door shuts behind us.

It’s a surprisingly spacious dorm. Two long diamond-paned windows look out on the drive leading up to the school. From all the way up here, it’s a wonder I made it up to Bleakwood for the last of orientation at all. Though even still … I can’t decide if turning down a ride from this so-called Brotherhood was the wrong thing to do.

“What … was … that? Were those ashes?”

“The urn? Oh, no. Not anymore. They stopped putting real ashes in those ages ago.”

Rafael stops what he’s doing and lets out one of his trademark sighs. “What are you even doing here, Alex?”

I stop mid-sentence, stricken. I shouldn’t feel offended, but I do.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means … ” he drawls, “you don’t seem like the type that got in here because your great-great-grandfather was a founding member or something, and you don’t seem all that interested in studying … so why are you here?”

I’m taken aback.

“I … I … ”

Why am I here?

I was never one of those girls who dreamt of going to some all-girl’s boarding school and giggling into the night under scratchy sheets, but I certainly never dreamt of sneaking into a boy’s school. I’ve had enough of boys. My whole childhood was rough-and-tumble with enough brothers to make me pretty convinced, at least for a little while there, that I would turn out to be a lesbian.

And then I hit puberty, kissed a couple girls on the schoolyard, and realized that Jack Frazier, designated-middle-school-hottie, was the dreamboat for me.

Rafael is staring me down like my life, or more likely his life, depends on the answer.

So, for lack of a better option, I tell him the truth.

“I found a brochure about the school in the trash can,” I say, shrugging. “I think one of my brother’s picked it up on a college tour and threw it out. I didn’t realize it was a school for boys, so when I saw the essay competition … I just figured it wouldn’t hurt to sign up.”

“Uh, huh.”

Rafael stops pacing and squints at me again.

“So, what … you just happen to apply to an all-boys school, and you just happen to win the first ever scholarship, and you just happen to get marked by an ancient fraternity on your first day? What’s next? You just happen to murder your new roommate in your sleep?”

“I’m not a serial killer!” I blurt.

“That’s beside the point,” he snaps back, going back to pacing. “This is not what I signed up for when I agreed to help you.”

The floors here were not made for anxious walking back and forth. The stone rasps underfoot as if complaining of mistreatment. Enough of this, and Rafael is going to wear a path into it.

“So then,” I say, “Why did you?”

“I don’t know? Karma? I’m used to being the outsider? I know what it’s like to never be able to fit in because of something you can’t help?”

Rafael shakes his head again. “I should just go turn you in now. I can’t risk the blowback on this.”

“No, wait! If you do that … I … I … ” My mind is reeling. I can’t be sent back now. Not after all that. Not after everything, as little as it may seem right now, I’ve done to get here. It’s that desperation that makes me blurt out, “If you do that, I’ll tell them that you knew all along! I’ll tell them you helped me.”

As soon as I say it, I know I’m being an utter asshole.

Rafael stops pacing. “Come on, you think they’ll believe you?”

Still, somehow, the idea of that being unbelievable overwhelms my worries of being an asshole. “And you think they’ll believe a girl got in here and tricked everyone all by herself?”

“Well you did, didn’t you?”

“But they’re not going to want to admit that,” I say. “Sounds a whole lot better if I had an accomplice.”

Rafael’s mouth drops open. He knows what I’m saying is true.

“You bitch.”

You know what, after the day I’ve had, I’ll accept that. But somehow, it also calms the raging hormone monster inside me that wants to be right over actually wanting to do the right thing. I’m about to apologize when my suddenly clearer head registers something Rafael said just a minute earlier.

“Hold on a moment. What was that you said, about … about being marked by an ancient fraternity?”

“The ash, Alex!”

I look down at myself.

It all comes back to the ash. The boys at the top of the stairs. This so-called Brotherhood.

“What about it? Wait …” It’s my turn to jump to my feet and point an accusatorial finger at him. “Is this what this is really all about? Why you’re suddenly so convinced you need to turn me in?”

He looks away, guilty. “You don’t understand, Alex.”

“Then help me.”

Rafael looks like he isn’t sure if he should start pacing again, or if he should just make a run for the door. So, I make that choice easy for him and move to block his exit.

“Come on, Rafael. If there’s something you’re not telling me …”

For one second, I feel my heart racing in my chest. Rafael is clearly mulling something over, trying to decide what—if anything—to tell me. But just as my overactive imagination has started to truly run wild with imaginings of secret societies, bloodthirsty rituals, and ancient covenants, Rafael does the only sensible thing and tells me the disappointing truth.

He lets out another one of this oh-so-signature Rafael sighs.

“It means they’re going to bully you.”

My breath, set to catch in my throat at whatever terrifying revelation he was going to share with me, wheezes out in a dissatisfied stream.

“Wait, that’s it?”

Rafael lets out an angry huff and crosses his arms across his chest. “It’s a Bleakwood tradition. A sort of hazing ritual.”

“Like … smearing the founder’s ashes on your naked body?”

“Or, at least pretending to,” Rafael says. “You can only do that so many times before there aren’t any actual cremated ashes left.”

I think about this for a minute, unsure of whether or not I believe him. “So, there is no weird cult or fraternity I have to watch out for?”

“You mean aside from the whole place that’s Bleakwood?” Rafael says. “But no. Fortunately or unfortunately, we’re just another boarding school for boys.”

“Albeit the one most likely to get me into a school like Harvard.”

“Yeah, if none of the better schools will take you,” Rafael says.

After a minute, it’s my turn to narrow my eyes and cross my arms over my chest. “If that’s it, why were you threatening to turn me in?”