I attempt to shake off the anger before I say anything.

  Keep it together. Try to stay in control.

  “She really shouldn’t have done that,” I say. “We need to stick together if this is going to—”

  “Charlotte Vanderheyden?” Someone says from over my shoulder. I freeze. “Nah. She didn’t really do that. No way.”

  I watch the other two as their eyes search the crowd for whoever uttered Charlotte’s name.

  “I’m telling you,” someone else hushes. “She literally talked so much on that date that Margaret was like, ‘See ya later, Char.’ The girl has the subtlety of a parakeet.”

  “You’re so bad,” the first voice says. I peer over my shoulder to see who’s talking and recognize Maya McConnell and Amy Yang. No sign of Charlotte, just gossip.

  “I’ve heard that rumor before,” Blythe murmurs, pulling us away from Maya and Amy so they don’t hear us and throw the loop off course. “The one about Margaret and Charlotte.”

  “It’s not true, though . . . Margaret didn’t abandon their date,” Drew says.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “Because after they got back to campus, they kicked me out of our dorm room so they could make out,” they answer. “It wasn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done, but it doesn’t warrant a nasty rumor based on—”

  A familiar voice cuts Drew’s sentence in half.

  “And that’s when I told her no way, you may not post pictures of us together. That’s going to make things between us look way too official.”

  Fuck. Charlotte’s voice is loud and close. Too close. Time to move.

  “C’mon,” I say, grabbing Blythe and Drew by the wrists and yanking them behind the nearest row of bookshelves.

  “What?” Blythe says, shoving my grip away and peeking out from our new hiding spot.

  “It’s Charlotte,” Drew says, their words rushed and urgent. “She’s right there, see?”

  Charlotte’s hair shines in the candlelight. She’s wearing a white-and-gold sequined dress. Her long bell sleeves scatter flecks of light. She looks beautiful. Prettier than I remember. But then again, the last time I saw her, her face was partially covered by a blindfold.

  I steal a glance at Blythe and notice that some of her fear has melted away. She’s watching Charlotte closely, just as Drew is. They’re waiting for something: an opportunity to track her next move, a moment to possibly intervene. Like Veró, these two might be looking for a chance to change what happened. It occurs to me now that I can’t trust either of them to do what I say and let things unfold, just like I can’t trust Verónica Martín.

  A dizzy, unmoored feeling starts to set in. And then the question appears in my head like a riptide, carrying me away: Was I ever in control? If I had been, then Charlotte wouldn’t have disappeared in the first place. The thought echoes through me. I shake my head a little, but it doesn’t dislodge.

  Maybe I’m just as helpless as everyone else.

  “It’s like, I don’t like you like that. We’re just talking. Ya know?” My eyes dart back over to Charlotte and I recognize a telling slur in her words. “Some girls can’t take a hint.”

  Charlotte’s body shifts slightly to the right. She stumbles a little. Now I can see that she’s talking to Katie Reynolds, who’s wearing a chiffon dress and her Lilies ring. She taps her diamond infinity symbol against her little silver flask before taking a sip. Katie always made me feel bad for eating Annys like candy, but she never seemed to be without a little sauce. I’m not surprised to find out that she was the one who got Charlotte sloshed.

  “Gimme,” Charlotte says.

  “No!” Katie bats her back playfully. “You’ve had enough. We’ve got a big night ahead of us. You’re becoming a little tonight, remember?”

  “Shhhhh!” Charlotte’s shush involves some spittle. “You’re gonna get me in trouble with them. You’re not supposed to talk about you-know-what in public.”

  “Relax,” Katie says. “You’re a legacy. They have to let you in no matter what. It’ll be a piece of cake. Nothing like what I had to do last year, I’m sure.”

  “They don’t let every legacy in.” Charlotte’s tone is suddenly serious, although her alcohol-induced slur is undermining every word she utters. “My roommate . . . you know, the weird one. Yeah, you know! Dre—”

  She hiccups before she can finish saying Drew’s name, but we all know who she’s talking about. I steal a glance at them, noting a new tension in their shoulders.

  “They didn’t let Drew in. And they’re a legacy, ya know? You know everything, Katie! I love you so much!”

  Charlotte leans in and gives Katie a big hug. Katie rolls her eyes but allows it to happen. When Charlotte speaks again, her voice is too low to hear over the sound of the party. Just a few words come through.

  “Drew . . . And so their grandmother was in with them, ya know . . . Double-crosser . . . That’s what my grandmother Evelyn says anyway, but she doesn’t remember much anymore. She has dementia. That’s why she talks about the Lilies all the time. She forgot the rules.”

  I hate this—the way these girls throw around secrets like they’re party favors. No respect at all. I knew Charlotte was a likely leak, but I didn’t think Katie would be so cavalier on the topic of the Lilies. No matter what anyone says about womanhood, I know the truth: trust is hard to come by among girls.

  “Wow.” Katie sounds unimpressed by Charlotte’s garbled story. “I didn’t realize your grandmother was one of the founders too. So you’re like a super-legacy. Is that why they put you and Drew together as roommates?”

  “I dunno.” Charlotte shakes her head. “One thing I do know, though—the Lilies control everything that happens at Archwell. Everything.” With this she swishes her arm out to demonstrate the concept of everything. In the path of the swing, her arm collides with the table’s centerpiece. It comes crashing to the ground, candles and all.

  “Oop! We’re starting a fire over here,” Drew says as we watch Charlotte and Katie scramble to pick up the fallen arrangement. They’re talking like all of this is a joke, but I hear the bitterness in Drew’s voice.

  “What does Charlotte have against you, anyway?” I ask.

  “Dunno.”

  “Hmm . . .” I let my thoughts marinate for a moment, waiting to time my next question right. “It’s pretty weird that Charlotte would bring up you and your grandmother on the night she disappeared, don’t you think?”

  “It’s pretty weird that you belong to a whole secret society named after a girl who disappeared, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t expect the clapback. I’ve pressed on a bruise. Good. Now I know how to hit Drew where it hurts. “It’s a shame, really. Maybe you’d actually know something about the Lilies if your ‘double-crossing’ grandmother had bothered to tell you anything about us before she croaked. Maybe you’d have had a chance. Seems wrong that she didn’t give you one.”

  Before Drew can answer, Blythe cuts in. “Rory, there is no way that Drew’s grandmother did or said anything that was worse than what your mom did to Veró and Gabe. Like, c’mon. Let’s be real.”

  Heat rises in my face. The back of my neck prickles. I’m boiling up, but it’s not anger. It’s something else. Something I don’t want to feel.

  “Listen,” Drew says. “TERFs are TERFs. They’re made, not born. TERF behavior is about suppression. It’s about control. It’s about wanting to maintain a facade.”

  My stomach lurches as I push the feeling as far down as I can. I wish I were somewhere else: another time and place, where I am safe, and small, and don’t have to think about these things.

  “Maybe the chancellor acts the way she does because she has something to hide.” Drew’s voice is as icy as the ocean in winter. I let it wash over me, let the hair on my arms stand on end.

  Maybe my mother has something to hide?

  Oh, the truth is hard. Harder than Drew or Blythe can comprehend.

  Which is why I, like all good Lilies, need to do whatever it takes to maintain the facade.

  14

  Veró

  It’s not my memory, but I remember being there: feeling defeated, my mascara all smeared. It was not a good look the first time, but Founder’s Night the second time around is not much better.

  Archwell girls of all ages are packed together in their cliques. The bread is dry. The canapés are flavorless. There’s a steady flow of champagne and gin. The students camouflage theirs while the alumni brazenly guzzle. We’re all here to celebrate a white man, the founder of Archwell. Given how his granddaughter, the chancellor, and his great-granddaughter, Rory, turned out, I’m not so sure this dude is worth celebrating. There are toasts and speeches and grateful tears choked down to what’s socially acceptable. A cacophony of caucacity. It’s even easier to spot on the second go-around.

  I traverse the crowd, finally on my own again. It’s a relief to get away from Rory’s bullshit and get down to business here in the loop. It’s time to make things right, to fix what was broken. If I can just find Charlotte and interrupt whatever horrible thing happened to her, then we can all get out of here. It’s not lost on me that saving Charlotte and freeing us from the loop will have side benefits too. Hopefully, it will give me a solid chance to prove to Drew that I’m not a total fuckup. After what happened with Gabe and the chancellor, Drew didn’t exactly say that they hate me, but I don’t know if they trust me anymore. And I’m realizing that I want them to trust me. I want them to like me. In some way, I feel pulled to them. More than any of the others . . . more than I’m ready to admit. But I can’t think about that right now.

  I set about looking for Charlotte, eyes flitting from redhead to redhead. She should be here, assuming she hasn’t already disappeared. As I slide between cliques, I home in on different conversations.

  “Jillian was going to let me borrow her Tom Ford for tonight, but Bettina said I could get my own from this year’s collection.”

  “You’re so bad, calling your mom by her first name.”

  “I felt like the thirty-year reunion was kind of a letdown. I was expecting more.”

  “Well, you know, it was a pandemic year. I think not everyone was comfortable . . .”

  “Did you see Eleanor on DC Daily last month?”

  “Ugh! Yes. Completely fabulous.”

  “It’s gonna be huge, trust me. The bigs get together around ten, right after all this wraps up.”

  “Is that when I should show up?”

  “Closer to eleven for new initiates. Don’t worry about that though. Someone will take care of it.”

  “How will I know where to go?”

  “We’ll find you.”

  My ears prick up at the word initiates. I ease behind the nearest table and bend down to tie my shoe. Well, first I have to untie it . . . then retie it. It’s not my slickest move ever but it works. No one notices that resident art freak Veró Martín is listening.

  “Who all is coming?” This voice is high and soft. Freshman, for sure.

  “I can’t tell you that. Some new blood. Some legacies. It’s always like that.” This voice is smooth and slow. I don’t quite recognize the tone. But it’s definitely sus. This is obviously about some Lilies cult shit.

  “Is Drew Simmons coming? I saw them wearing an infinity ring,” the first voice asks.

  The second girl doesn’t respond immediately. She’s calculating how to put this delicately. “The society is girls only,” she says. “It’s always been like that.”

  A flash of anger pushes its way through my chest. I pull my laces tight and listen hard.

  “If they have a Lilies ring, doesn’t that make them a legacy, though?”

  The voices are beginning to fade. I stand and try to catch a glimpse of the girls, but their backs are to me. One has long, shiny black hair. The other has a blond pixie cut.

  “I don’t know . . . I don’t know about that,” the one with the long hair says.

  With that, they disappear into the crowd. I try to follow but I can’t move fast enough. Frustration pinches between my shoulders. I stretch up to my tiptoes and scan the room for the girl with the long dark hair and her short blond henchman. Instead, I see Rory.

  Her hair is pulled back into an elegant ballerina bun she must’ve thrown together after I ditched her. For the first time, I noticed the rose tint of her lips and the graceful curve of her brows. She looks good. Better than I remember. At least more rested. She is talking to that girl, Caitlin Callahan. Her eyes flicker over to me but the expression of recognition never comes.

  She’s ignoring me. Good. I’m over Rory Archwell’s shit anyway.

  I realize that she probably knows my plans: to change what happened, to make things right. Not through an installation, but through direct action this time . . . although I don’t really know what that looks like yet.

  Of course, Rory doesn’t want me to mess with her and Blythe’s memory. She benefits from things staying the same, whether she knows it or not. For that reason, among others, Rory is dangerous.

  Before she can decide to drop her silent treatment act and come mess with me, I dart behind the nearest bookshelf and sink to the floor. The noise of the party is deadened, but only slightly. I rest my hands on the carpet on either side of me, noticing a trace of pink paint on my knuckle. Is it possible that this pink paint has been on my hands since last Friday? Or is it just a vestige of my replayed memory?

  The shade of magenta takes me back to the memory of my bathroom #transinclusionatarchwell installation. I’m done with my part of the time loop, but the memory is still torturing me. Gabe’s face materializes in my mind and I wince. He wasn’t at the Founder’s Night party. The chancellor had already dispatched him by then. I remind myself that, in his story, I’m one of the villains: a bad friend, someone who bulldozed his life in the name of art. Guilt wells in my tear ducts, but I try not to give in.

  “It’s atrocious,” a voice moans from the other side of the bookcase, drawing my attention. “I would hope that Archwell’s curriculum never would fall prey to those sorts of radical cultural politics.”

  “I’m not sure if accounting for historical context is particularly radical.”

  I recognize the second voice immediately. I can’t see Ms. Katz, of course, but I can make out a librarian-shaped shadow from between the shelves.

  “I think acknowledging an author’s political and personal history to contextualize their work is a bare minimum for teaching high school students, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Of course, Rachel. But that doesn’t mean Fitzgerald and Hemingway should be written out of the curriculum.”

  “Even when there’s anti-Semitism baked into their narratives? Come on now, Caroline. How do you think that made me feel when we were in school?”

  I didn’t realize Ms. Katz was an alum. I try to picture her as an Archwell girl fifteen or twenty years ago, maybe with bangs and a headband, probably with thick-framed hipster glasses. I wonder if she and this Caroline person—definitely another alum—were friends. The more I eavesdrop, the less likely it seems.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. None of us liked reading The Sun Also Rises and it wasn’t because it was anti-Semitic. It was because we were kids and we didn’t know any better.”

  I catch myself curling into a ball of anger. Caroline’s dismissiveness is a bit too familiar. I can only imagine how many times Ms. Katz has had to wade through this sort of trash argument as a distinctly un-Archwell-y librarian.

  “I’m saying that we all should have known better. The adults in our lives should have known better. Now it’s up to us to live up to what this current generation deserves. Minimally, I think that means our idea of the cannon needs to evolve.”

  Before Caroline can get in another word, Ms. Katz maneuvers. “Ah, it’s after quarter till. I promised the chancellor I’d help with dorm duty for the underclassmen. Good to see you, Caro.” Except it doesn’t really sound like it was good to see Caro at all. Ms. Katz’s tone is more along the lines of fuck you, Caro.

  I peek between the bookshelves and smile as I watch Ms. Katz walk away. For a second, I see her as she once was: Rachel from the class of ’06. Brown curly hair. Gentle smile. I wonder why, after all this, Ms. Katz is still at Archwell. But then I remember that she’s probably ensnared in the school’s web just like the rest of us. I imagine that she also knows the strange feeling of being tied to a place that was designed to exclude people like you.

  I glance at the clock above the circulation desk. It’s almost ten p.m. The crowd is beginning to thin out but the music and chatter stay loud. I notice a white girl with silky black hair perched at a nearby table. She fingers the table’s centerpiece and shifts her eyes around the room. She’s looking for someone, waiting for something to happen.

  Nearby, a group of alumni hug their friends goodbye. Some of them take flowers from the tables and weave them into their hair. “For old time’s sake,” one of them says.

  An upperclassman blows out one of the candles.

  “Ut sacram memoriam,” someone in the crowd murmurs. It’s loud enough for me to hear, but probably too quiet for anyone else. I try to locate the speaker, eyes darting from girl to girl, but there’s no sign of her.

  My gaze falls back on the girl with the silky hair. She’s still alone. Behind her, the library shadows grow longer as more candles go out, signaling the end of the Founder’s Night party.

  Then from those same shadows, a pair of hands. They clamp over the girl’s mouth. Her eyes widen for a split second and then they’re gone, covered by a velvety blindfold provided by a second pair of pale hands. She doesn’t have time to scream. Somehow, I seem to have lost my voice too.

  The hands wrestle the girl back into the stacks with little resistance. They pass by my hiding spot, nearly rounding the bookshelf corner and running smack into me. The two robed figures are a blur of dark green, faces covered by hoods topped by wiry flower crowns. The girl in their grips wriggles and resists as they drag her along the library carpet. I hear the dull sound of her heels against the floor. She’s trying to stop them. Trying to pause time.