Every Bone A Dull Fragment

You don’t feel it sometimes when you break something important. All those stark clean tools, the skin pinned carefully away, your hands achingly precise as you cut through first the lungs, then the liver, then the heart. And you’re as careful as anyone can be, you’ve studied and practiced and you know what you’re doing — but it’s not until after, when it’s too late, that you realize you severed something vital. The lab it had taken weeks to prepare for ruined, the dissection you found so promising mere minutes ago now nothing more than poking through a carcass, every bone a dull fragment, everything gray and dead under your hands.

When the senior society members told me why I was being excused from their program, I confess I didn’t listen to a thing they said. I stopped forming thoughts sometime between being told I’d been kicked out and seeing Marjorie’s conceited smile as she swept into the building. It’s only now that I’ve regained feeling in my body, and the first thing I feel is not disappointment, or shame, or grief, though all of those emotions push close to the surface. The first thing I feel is boiling, white-hot anger.

My boots thud rhythmically on the flagstone path as I cross campus, my face cool and calm though my mind seethes with frustration. I’ve been telling everyone for weeks now that Marjorie’s out to get me, but no one seems to be making the same connections I am. Since sophomore year in the same university, she’s been the only other student who could keep up with me academically, but it’s surpassed that now — she’s sabotaging every aspect of my life. She pulls a string here, a piece of my carefully constructed world falls apart there; and so she continues, quietly unraveling everything I’ve worked tirelessly for.

I hurry under an alcove by the library and call Allison’s number once, then twice. She won’t pick up. I’m about to hit the call button again when her voice startles me, approaching from the other direction.

“Violet?”

I whirl around and grab her before she gets a chance to speak, pulling her into the alcove with me.

“Listen, it’s an emergency,” I hiss. She pries my hand off her shoulder and looks at me expectantly, eyebrows raised.

“I… I’ve been pulled from the senior society,” I say, trying to act like it’s some minor annoyance and not the ground opening up beneath my feet, swallowing me whole, snake-style. I can tell she doesn’t miss the quaver in my voice as I say it, even though I’m trying for nonchalant.

“Oh, Vi… I’m so sorry, that sucks. Jesus. Did they tell you-”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Listen.” I lean in to whisper it, although no one else is close enough to hear anyway. “There’s no real reason for me getting the boot. I checked my grades yesterday and they’re as good as ever, and I never got a warning or anything. It’s too random. It doesn’t make any sense.” I wait for her to get what I’m implying, but instead she stares blankly at me.

“It was Marjorie.”

She lets out a breath of annoyance at that and seems to lose interest in what I’m saying, her eyes slipping past me to watch the people rushing by.

“This again?”

“What do you mean-” I move so I’m in her line of vision and she stops looking past me, her eyes focusing on me again. “What do you mean, again? I swear-”

“I’m sorry about the senior society, really. But I should get to class,” Allison says. “And I think it’s better if you try and remember–” Her voice is kind but exasperated, like I’m a grouchy toddler that won’t go to bed. “It wasn’t about you.”

Only it was. I don’t know how to explain to her that Marjorie did it on purpose, that no one else can see how much she hates me and how it’s always, always about me.

“Allison, what do you… She kicked me out a week after becoming president. I’ve been there for two years, can you not see how-”

“Marjorie’s not in charge of everything!” Allison says suddenly, throwing her hands up. “There’s literally a whole board of student members, plus the alumni council. It’s ridiculous to assume that-” She stops, her expression changing as abruptly as her words.

“Assume what?” I say, and I can’t stop the bitterness leaching into my tone.

She passes a hand over her forehead tiredly. “Nevermind. It’s nothing.”

I know I don’t have to say anything; I can leave right now. I can head to class and pretend this conversation didn’t happen, and then tomorrow I’ll tell her how stupid I was being and we’ll go back to being friends. I stare at her furrowed brows and the taut line of her mouth and think of how easy it would be to let this go.

But I remember the way Marjorie looked at me as she walked into the dining hall this morning, how she gave me that pitying smile with all her perfect straight white teeth. Her hateful, gloating eyes hidden behind false sympathy. Honey laced with poison.

“You’re on her side.” I say it before I even know what it means or why I think it. Allison looks so angry for a moment that I’m nearly afraid, and then the fight goes out of her like a candle guttering out.

“You’re being so pig-headed, Violet, I- God, you can’t even hear yourself. You’re obsessed with her. How do you not even…” She trails off and takes a moment to collect herself, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and smoothing her skirt, then says primly, “Maybe you’re blaming all your problems on her instead of facing some consequences for once.”

She stalks away without another word and I stand there like an idiot trying to figure out what to say, minutes too late. Her words keep replaying in my head, almost amusing in their ignorance. Marjorie’s not in charge of everything. I guess no one else can see all the subtle coincidences: my favorite professor suddenly beginning to tutor and favor Marjorie after months of focusing on me, Marjorie’s choice to present her anatomy project the day she knew I’d be absent (and in doing so, secure the acclaim for herself before I got a chance), and my robotics club giving me the cold shoulder for no reason I can fathom (although Marjorie’s constant loud, fake laughter and snobbish looks shot my way might have something to do with it). Now this — this disgraceful discharge from the society I worked so hard to get into, mere days after her appointment to the position of chair — is too bold, too obvious.

Everyone I’ve told about this can’t see anything past Marjorie’s charm, not even my friends, and it stings more than I want to admit. She’s made it personal now, and I intend to do the same.

I wait for her outside of the conservatory, guessing what time she’ll be done with class. I can tell by the shock on her face that I’m the last person she expects to see, but she’s civil even as I fall into step beside her.

“Can I help you?” she asks, polite as always. If she ever frowned she might be doing so now, but as it is her smile is only slightly less vibrant than usual.

I waste no time in replying, “You need to let me back into the senior society. Now would be great, but within the next week works fine.”

She blinks at me disbelievingly, her mouth dropping open. “I can’t do that.”

“You had your fun and humiliated me in front of the whole school, and look where you are: you’re ahead now. You don’t have to prove anything else, so just let me back into the society and we don’t ever have to speak again.” Even this short conversation is making my stomach churn and I already wish it was over. Just about every person we walk by waves at her.

Marjorie leans in intently, then says again, “I can’t do that. That’s not part of my job.” She backs away and regards me coolly. “And besides, I know.”

Something in my chest tightens and my body suddenly goes cold. “Know… know what?” I choke out.

“It would’ve followed you around for a long time, Hargrave. I don’t know what was going on with you, but I hope you’ve sorted yourself out since then. Megan decided a suspension was the best way to deal with it for now, since we had to do something. But trust me, whatever embarrassment you’re feeling, it’d be way worse for you if everyone found out why we let you go.” Marjorie gives me a playful little smirk. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. Unless you step out of line, and then…” She shrugs and saunters off, immediately engulfed in a buzzing crowd of people like bees swarming around their worshipful queen.

I feel like I’ve been thrown from a great height and all of the wind has gone out of me. My face is flushed, my chest hot, my usually steady hands shaky and trembling. I can’t do anything but stare at the place she just stood, my thoughts like a tangle of knotted yarn. Only one makes it through the confusion, and I inhale sharply as a sudden clarity comes over me, a painful breath of cool air shocking my lungs. She knows. I can’t even imagine how, but she does, and I’m more certain of it than I’ve ever been of anything in my life. Not only does she know, but she could tell anyone at any time and I’d have no control over a single piece of it. She really did win, for good this time. My life would be over if anyone found out.

I don’t head to my next class or let anyone know what I’m doing, and I barely realize what I intend even as I stride across the quad back toward the library. She must’ve been looking into my past, trying to dig up something to use against me, and if she searched deep enough, maybe– but everything was covered up, and I moved away and it was all supposed to stay in North Conway where it belonged.

I head into the library and up the stairs to the second floor. There are only a few people here, but I still choose the most secluded seat I can, tilting the desktop screen toward me and away from any prying eyes. My fingers hover over the keyboard, the cursor blinking slowly at me from the search bar, waiting. I need to see it for myself, I think. I need to.

I clench my hands into fists to steady them, and then before I can doubt myself I type the words into the search bar. North Conway, New Hampshire, Violet Hargrave.

There are the articles I remember, the phrases I’ve seen so many times they’ve all but lost their effect (North Conway teen found dead at 18 after fall from scaffolding, underage drinking suspected) but so far nothing about me, not really. There’s a brochure of the town, a project I did last year, and ironically, the senior society’s website, which must still have my name listed. The news reports about Brian are vague and don’t go into much detail, mainly mentioning the nature of his death, not the people he was with. I start to think that maybe Marjorie was just messing with me, and there isn’t really anything there, but something stops me from closing the tab and urges me to keep looking. I filter the search results by ‘recent.’ Dread settles in the pit of my stomach.

I know immediately which article she must’ve found. My name is right there in the title, and when I go to the website it only gets worse. Four years after the small-town tragedy: how a teenager’s death in 2017 continues to affect North Conway today. Brian Wood was found at the base of a scaffolding structure on a warehouse near the edge of town. Noise complaints and litter at the scene indicated that a party had taken place the previous night, and matched the witness statement of Elizabeth Crawford. Her account stated that she, Jason Hughes, Nadia Watts, and Violet Hargrave were with Wood at the time of his death.

My cheeks burn as I read the next sentence.

Crawford’s witness statement states that she and the other teenagers had dared Wood to climb the scaffolding with the knowledge that he was intoxicated.

I stare at my name in neat little black letters, the worst mistake of my life laid out in tiny words on a screen. But it’s everything. Marjorie was right; losing my position in the senior society is nothing compared to what this would do to me. If the school found out about my involvement in Brian’s death, I’d be expelled. I think about my years of work, my chances of being valedictorian, my internship, my career lined up after college, all the money my parents paid to get me here and to stop the public from knowing about what really happened. Everything right there in the palm of Marjorie’s hand, and all she’d have to do to get rid of me is close her fist.

The first thing I do is flag the article as inappropriate in hopes of taking it down. Fortunately, it was only written a few months ago by some high school journalist looking to land a big story about the town’s past, and it’s hard to find, so not many people could’ve seen it — unless they knew what they were looking for. I write the author’s name on a Post-It note too, just in case they decide to start any more trouble. Then I open another tab and get to work on Marjorie. She’s tried to keep it hush from the other students, but most everyone knows about her father’s corporation and that her brother is the heir to the family fortune. I had a feeling when she came to class uncharacteristically upset one day during her brother’s court case that something was wrong and her family might not be as innocent as her father’s company claims. I spend the better part of an hour incognito searching for dirt on her family, and when I can’t access certain legal documents, I use Allison’s law school credentials to get further. I can explain everything to her and apologize after I take care of this. Once I have enough information, I take pictures, grab my bags, and head to the dormitories.

I walk down gray dorm hallways until I find the door with Marjorie’s name written on it in cheery letters, surrounded by illustrations of colorful flowers in bloom. I write the numbers I’ve found on a note and slide it under the door. It includes the enormous amount of money her brother was exposed for embezzling and the even larger fortune her father paid to cover the whole scandal up. It doesn’t bring me much pleasure to expose something like that, but I’m doing what I need to do, and it’s only in return to her threat. Hopefully she backs down and I won’t need to use it.

Next, I make my way to my own room. I rifle through my closet until I find a half-empty jar of clear nail polish, which I slip in my pocket. I take a small lighter with me too, filled with grim purpose.

It’s a long trek across campus to the botanical gardens, but the walk gives me time to think over my plan and what I’ll do next. I feel strangely calm inside. When I get to the gardens, I assess how many people are around: not too many in the gardens and greenhouses, but the building next door is all windows with a clear view to where I stand. Who knows how many classes could be going on in there right now?

I use my student ID to get into the building through the back and check that there are no security cameras nearby. Then I locate the closest smoke detector and hold my lighter up right beneath it, standing on my tiptoes to get the flame as close as possible. Within moments the alarm has gone off and I hurry outside with the rest of the students, my head down and my hands shoved in my pockets. The students flock toward the lawn beyond the garden, and I head surreptitiously around the building out of anyone’s sight, praying I go unnoticed. Once everyone’s out, I duck into the greenhouse and scan the rows of plants.

Megan O’Donnell is labeled clearly on the nicest plot of herbs in the whole greenhouse. Her prize collection of plants is lovingly cultivated and wins botanical awards every year. She’s been the head of recruitment and student organization in the university’s senior society for as long as I can remember, and she’s always been kind to me. But if Marjorie knows about my past, so does Megan, and I can’t trust her to keep quiet about it. I take some nail polish and hastily paint it onto the stems and leaves of a few of her plants. I won’t ruin all of them, just enough for her to get nervous about her position in this year’s competitions. I quickly put the nail polish back in my pocket and slip out of the greenhouse door, just narrowly making it around the bend before the students file back into the building.

I lean back against another science building as I gather myself, my head resting gently on the firm brick wall. I should be done now, but I feel like I can’t rest until I’m certain I’m safe and no one will share what they know. What happened wasn’t my fault, but the school won’t see it that way. Another idea starts forming and I glance through the window beside me into a classroom. It’s empty and filled with rows of sleek computers. The blackmail was enough. Marjorie won’t talk now, I tell myself. But I keep thinking about her knowing eyes, how she toyed with me like a cat with its prey, gloating in her power over me. Unless you step out of line, and then… she’d said, letting her unspoken threat hang in the air. There’s no way I can forget that. I’ll just knock her down a few pegs. She deserves it, anyway.

I fight with my conscience for a few more moments, but in the end I decide it’ll be worth it. I enter the building as confidently as I can, trying to act like I know where I’m going, and close the computer lab door behind me once I get in. I immediately think of a professor to weave into my plot: Ms. Smithfield, who partnered me with Marjorie for a whole term to “get us to work together,” which went about as well as you’d expect. I can’t use Smithfield’s account directly due to the school’s security protocols, but she’s had a teaching assistant for a few weeks who might be easier to pose as. It only takes me a few tries to get the student’s credentials, and from there I rely on luck. It seems like things are turning around for me today; this teacher’s assistant has access to the class’s grades. A sick satisfaction wells up in me as I lower Marjorie’s grades for this class, not enough to be obviously false, but enough to threaten her pretty position at the head of the senior society. She’ll have to let me back in once she realizes that I can play this game just as well as she can.

I rush from the computer lab to my next class and just barely arrive on time, my hair wild and my clothes disheveled as I drop into a seat. I feel more secure since I’ve taken matters into my own hands, but I’m still jumpy when my English professor approaches me, his mouth drawn in a thin, disappointed line. He asks me to speak with him privately in his office, so I follow him in and shut the door behind me.

“Violet, I must confess… I never expected this from you,” he begins. The sense of safety I’d been beginning to feel falls away just as quickly as it had formed. “I hate to say it, but I may have to decline your personal narrative essay submission for the English department’s writing awards.” He adjusts his glasses and looks at me sadly. I’m in shock all over again, unable to say or do anything but nod slowly.

“I know you better than this, and I don’t want it to define you. But I can’t ignore what’s happened.” He sighs and folds his hands over his desk. “The situation is being investigated. I hope for your sake that you’re proven innocent. We’ll… talk about this again later.” He gestures for me to leave, and I shuffle out numbly. I don’t understand how this is happening to me. Did Marjorie decide to tell people what she found? Do the rest of my professors know by now that I was involved in Brian’s death all those years ago? Have all my efforts been for nothing?

I spend the walk to the dining hall for dinner in quiet withdrawal, ruminating on when I’ll be sent home and how much time I have left here. All the ways I’d been worried about my life changing earlier come creeping back to me, making me feel nauseous, and I suddenly have the urge to turn around. There’s no point in going to dinner if I can’t manage to eat anything. I’m about to head back to my dorm room when I catch a glimpse of Marjorie and her posse guffawing in the commons, the scene almost idyllic with its soft orange light and warm laughter. She sits at the center of it all, a shining, radiant sun. And here I am outside, an ink blot on the perfect reputation of our school, a disgrace to everything they stand for. For all I know Marjorie’s laughing about me right now.

I feel just like I did that night so many years ago, watching Brian pull himself up the scaffolding too fast, his movements clumsy and inebriated. That feeling of bated breath, of waiting for everything to go wrong, of knowing it’ll be my fault when it does. And it was my fault, if I’m honest with myself for once. He would’ve done anything we asked him to and we knew it. To have that little bit of power over someone, that fragment of control, I gave up everything.

I breathe out shakily and then suddenly remember the last shred of control I have right now. I open the photos on my phone of what I found on Marjorie’s family earlier. It might not be enough to save me, but at least I’ll drag her down with me. I post the photos on multiple of my social media stories and send them to anyone I can think of, intending some sort of widespread chaos. The school will ignore her family’s corrupt, illegal dealings because of their generous donations to the university, but the students won’t let it go.

I decide to go into the dining hall after all, my appetite returning with a vengeance. I position myself at a table across the room so I can see the exact moment when Marjorie finds out that her own secret has been uncovered and shared with the world, just as mine was. It happens sooner than I expected, and before I know it I hear her voice from across the hall.

“Oh my God.” I turn to look at where she and her friends are sitting and see that she’s staring at her phone in horror, one hand clasped over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she says again, transfixed with what she’s looking at, even though she seems appalled.

I allow myself a small, smug smile, certain I’m witnessing the downfall of my greatest rival. The school might not forget about what I did in comparison to this, but at least Marjorie can’t claim to have bested me. It’s all so darkly poetic, so ironic in its cruelty, I could laugh and almost do. She thought she got the better of me. She thought she won.

Marjorie stands up abruptly, her chair sliding back behind her and clattering to the floor. I’m surprised to see her walking over to me, her face stricken. Has she figured it out that fast?

But she doesn’t shout at me, or break down sobbing, or even ask me how I know about her brother’s embezzlement scandal. Instead she turns her phone screen around to me, and it takes me a minute to process what I see there. It’s a photo of the computer I used and the article I looked at this morning, complete with my name and a picture of Brian Wood. My eyes widen as I realize what it means: I left the computer open. I left a trail right there, in plain sight, and someone went and picked up the pieces.

“Is this true? Were you involved in this guy’s death?” Marjorie asks me, snapping me out of a daze. I stare at her in bewilderment, suddenly unsure of myself.

“Didn’t you- didn’t you know?” I ask, clenching my fists so hard my fingernails make little seashells in the palm of my hand. “That’s what you were teasing me about. Just this morning.”

Marjorie blinks at me, then says, “What? That was about the essay you plagiarized for English class. Didn’t the senior society tell you? Did you think this was what I was talking about?”

I stand up violently, gripping the table unsteadily. I have the same reaction she did: Oh my God. Oh my God. She didn’t know. This whole time, no one knew, and the reason they do now is because of me. In my infinite carelessness I somehow left the tab open on a public computer, the evidence of my crime clear as broad daylight. Because of my backwards paranoia and my spitefulness, everyone knows for real.

I almost fall in my haste to leave the dining hall, and Marjorie helps to steady me. To offer any kindness to me, she must not know about the photos I’ve spread of her family’s affairs yet. Still – after everything I’ve done to her, she’s helping me. It’s something Brian would’ve done, if he’d survived my unfair, idiotic whims. It’s something Allison would do, if she were here and I hadn’t pushed her away with my jealousy and my need to be right. It’s something most people would’ve done, but I’ve been too absorbed in my own selfish ambitions to be that kind of person. The funniest thing is, I’ve always felt like I was alone, but I haven’t truly been until now, and I made it that way myself.

I remember how hard I worked on that one dissection, tirelessly studying for it and getting ready to prove myself to my professor. I’d practiced so many times before and knew exactly what I was looking for. But my hands were so robotic, my focus so intent on what I needed to do, that I never even noticed I’d mistaken a vein for an artery until afterward. Everything on the line because of one simple mistake. When you think you’re safe, when you’ve done what you set out to do, when you thought everything was just right and you look back at your work — that’s when you’ll see it. The most glaring mistake made obvious only in hindsight. You don’t always feel it when you break something important.