“She wound up at y’all’s cursed initiation,” I say.

  “Where Blythe gave her an overdose of sand,” Rory adds.

  “An amount that you handed to me without saying anything about it,” Blythe bites back. “Then you had her taken to another room and left alone.”

  “I thought she would shake it off,” Rory says. “She was supposed to get only a little sick. The dose wasn’t supposed to be toxic. I didn’t realize how much she’d been drinking at the party. Then Drew found her.”

  “. . . and I didn’t help,” they say, voice shaking. “I . . . I couldn’t but . . . maybe I . . . No. I couldn’t help her.” Their face is twisted into a scowl. “But now I’m starting to wish I . . . I dunno.”

  “Can I ask”—Blythe’s voice is careful, gentle—“I know Charlotte was never nice to you but it doesn’t seem like you not to intervene. I mean, you’re a good person, Drew.”

  “No, I’m not,” they growl. “Good people don’t watch their roommates choke and struggle and then just . . . disappear. Especially since . . . now that I’ve actually lived through it again, I’m wondering if I really was understanding what she was saying.”

  “She was angry about something,” I say. “But it didn’t seem like she was lucid.”

  Rory nods in agreement, turning to Drew. “She didn’t recognize you.”

  “I see that now.” Drew cringes. “I thought she was calling my grandma a backstabber . . . a bitch. She texted me something about it earlier in the evening, so I just assumed . . . I thought she was telling me that I didn’t belong at Archwell.”

  “I think she was trying to warn you,” Blythe soothes. “Warn you about us . . . the Lilies, I mean. She was trying to tell you that it was dangerous. That you didn’t belong around all of that.”

  “And then she just . . . disintegrated,” Drew groans, burying their face in their hands. “Y’all saw for yourselves . . . It’s like . . . what even was that? We need to know what the hell happened!”

  “More like we need to know who is to blame,” I say. My eyes pass from face to face. Drew wears a hangdog look. They fold their arms in front of their chest. Blythe is gripping the padded arms of her chair, her fingers demanding vengeance but her mind denying the impulse. Rory is cold, chin held high, but she looks a bit like a tree after a hurricane. She’s still trying to stand proud even though the elements have battered her down. She catches me staring.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “You know this isn’t just on me.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, taking the bait. “None of this would have gone on without the Lilies. If the initiation hadn’t happened, Charlotte wouldn’t have disappeared. If the Lilies weren’t messing around with girls’ worst memories, who knows if the time loop would even exist?”

  “We never meant for any of this to happen,” Rory retorts.

  “I’m not blaming the Lilies, Rory. I’m blaming you. You’re the ringleader here. All this messed-up stuff is happening on your watch.”

  Rory launches toward me. “You see what you want to see, Veró. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain it or how many times you watch the loop play out. You just have your mind made up about me.” With every sentence, her voice climbs another decibel. “And that’s just fine. Be like that. It’s your opinion. In the end, it doesn’t matter what you think.”

  Rory’s words are designed to be a put-down but the sheer volume of her voice shows me something surprising. Somehow it seems like my opinion might actually matter to Rory Archwell. It’s not just that she doesn’t want to be responsible for everything that happened. It seems like maybe she might want me to just trust her. I consider it for a moment. Rory’s been the bad guy in all of this for me, but does that make her the villain?

  Before I can answer that question, the office door swings open. In the low lamplight, the chancellor somehow looks more severe than usual. She’s wearing her white pantsuit, the one she wore on Founder’s Night.

  “What did you do, Rory?” she demands. It doesn’t sound like a question. It’s more of a threat.

  She strides into the room, and startles when she notices that her daughter isn’t the only one waiting there.

  “What are you all—”

  Bong!

  Oh shit. The sound is back.

  Bong!

  The grandfather clock signals another shift.

  Bong!

  The office disappears into a red blur.

  Bong!

  I don’t understand how this could’ve happened.

  Bong!

  We found out what happened to Charlotte. I thought we were done.

  My body slams hard onto the closet floor again. The scent of mothballs crowds my sinuses.

  “Fucking hell,” someone groans.

  “What just happened?”

  Someone yanks the little metal cord and the light comes on again.

  Damn it. I can’t believe this.

  “The loop wasn’t done. We got reset,” Blythe exclaims.

  “Oh god,” grunts Drew. “I’m so fucking over this.”

  “Whose memory didn’t play out?” I ask. “We went through everyone’s! Drew, we just did yours. Blythe and Rory’s, we did it. Y’all know we did mine already. So what the fuck?”

  “I don’t know, but y’all know that I’m not playing with this loop anymore,” Blythe says. “This is not my idea of fun, so one of y’all better come clean.”

  “There’s unfinished business,” Drew says, rising to their feet. “Think about what the vow says: Only when her sisters’ wrongs are once again made right will she escape. I still don’t think that’s a metaphor. I mean, everything else in the vow is literal.”

  “But changing the past hasn’t worked,” I remind Drew. “I wish it all happened differently. Believe me . . . but—”

  “Listen,” Rory says. She reaches out for the light’s little metal cord, grabs it, and holds it still until it stops swaying. “I thought maybe the loop wouldn’t take us here. I thought maybe my initiation memories and Blythe’s were all mixed up together, but . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” Blythe says. “Are you saying we haven’t been through your loop yet?”

  “No, I don’t think we have,” Rory utters.

  “Motherfu . . .” I breathe.

  “Oh, come on,” Drew groans, putting their face in their hands. “Seriously?!”

  “Something else happened that night. I—I didn’t think it would take me back here.”

  “What did you think?” Blythe says. “That you were somehow gonna get off the hook? That you were different from the rest of us? I’m pretty sure your family name doesn’t get you out of . . . whatever the hell this is.” She gestures wildly at the inside of the closet.

  Rory shakes her head and pulls the cord. The closet goes dark.

  “Let’s go back out there and get this over with, I guess. No point in staying here any longer.” Her voice is sodden and defeated, but for the first time I can tell Rory is being real with us.

  She is not performing anymore. She’s not trying to act the part of the caring friend, the queen, or the martyr. She’s just someone’s kid—someone who really, really messed up.

  And it’s that look of defeat—that honest look—that makes me follow her out of the closet one more time.

  24

  Rory

  I was raised to play the game. I tried to live up to my family name, to do what I needed to do to get ahead and stay there. Sometimes people got hurt in the process and that was just collateral damage. That’s what I was taught, and I learned from the best.

  But I didn’t know I could cause this kind of pain, and I had no idea how deep the hurt would run inside of me. I tried not to feel it, but time finally caught up with me. The loop wrapped itself around my throat and began to squeeze.

  “Where should we hide?” Drew wants to know.

  I motion to the heavy drapes, not quite as velvety as the Lilies robes.

  “If you stay really still, a couple of you can hide behind there,” I say. “Someone else can go over there.” I point to a small gap between the credenza and the office’s corner. “We’ll pull a chair in front so she can’t see you.”

  The others scatter to their hiding places, covering themselves in gray-green curtains and shadows. I listen for their rustling and breathing but after a few seconds everyone is still. It’s as if I’m all alone again, nothing to focus on except the feeling of my teeth grinding together and the sensation that my windpipe is narrowing. I sit down in the chair directly across from my mother’s desk. I would never dare sit in her chair, especially not now.

  The clock on her desk reveals that it’s after midnight. My phone buzzes in my pocket. The sensation makes me jump, even though I’m half expecting it. I check the screen. It’s a push notification. ALL CAMPUS LOCKDOWN DRILL: COMPLETE.

  I check my texts: nothing. Then I look at my recent calls: one outgoing call to my mother, fifteen minutes ago. This is not a drill. I’m about to relive this moment all over again. Every muscle in my body clenches in anticipation.

  The door squeals open and I shove my phone into my pocket.

  “What did you do, Rory?” My mother’s voice is rougher than I remember. She says my name with surprising violence, a tone that she’s usually careful to keep hidden.

  “What you told me to do,” I say.

  My mother storms to her desk and sits in her tufted leather chair. She’s still in her pantsuit from the Founder’s Night party, even though it ended a couple of hours ago. Her face is drawn. It’s not just disappointment clouding her expression. It’s something else this time . . . disdain.

  My heart sinks into my knees. I messed up so badly. The lights flicker and dim. It didn’t happen this way the first time, but the loop was bound to play tricks on me the way it did with all the others. The room is getting smaller and darker. My mother and I are alone and she’s looking at me like she would an insect that is better off squashed under her heel.

  “I told you to step up and lead. I told you to keep the underclassmen in line. I told you to keep the Lilies’ secrets under wraps. I didn’t tell you to dose your initiates with a controlled substance.” My mother’s eyes narrow and the walls draw closer around us. There’s nowhere to hide. She’s watching me squirm. The only thing I can do is ignore and deflect.

  “Why did you call for a lockdown drill so late at night?” I ask. “When I heard the alarm, I got scared.”

  “We did a campus sweep,” my mother hisses. “You gave me good cause for it.”

  “You told security about Charlotte?” My voice is smaller than ever. Fear constricts the words.

  “No,” she answers. “I’m not a fool. We did it as a standard drill procedure. No one knows about what happened.”

  “Did you find her?” The wall behind me bumps against my chair, rolling me forward slightly. The office isn’t much bigger than the closet now. It’s only four red walls, my mother, me, and a desk between us. It didn’t happen like this, but it felt exactly this way.

  “No,” she seethes. “We didn’t find anything.”

  “It was so strange,” I say. “Blythe gave Charlotte the sand, and when she started to look like she was going to be sick, I had some of the girls take her to get some air, but then when I went to find her after initiation she was totally gone. Nowhere. It was like she never existed. I’m sorry. I know this is bad. But I had to call you. I had to get help.”

  “This isn’t you asking for help,” she says as the paneled walls press farther in. “This is you thinking you could play with fire and I could just put out the flames. This is you being stupid, Rory. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You always put too much stock in those stories of your grandmother’s. The ones about the Lilies’ ‘glory days.’ Dosing initiates might have been part of the original tradition, but it was wrong! And you shouldn’t have been doing it. I told you as much.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Are you using again?” she presses. The wall behind her closes in and pushes her chair right up to the desk, squeezing her body against the edge, but she doesn’t flinch. “I thought your summer at Northbridge would’ve squashed your little habits.”

  I don’t answer. I try to look at my shoes like I remember doing, but I’ve been pushed too close to the desk to see my feet. The room is the size of a coffin.

  “I thought you would’ve been smarter about all of this by now. When you were a freshman, I could understand. You were young and impressionable. But you’re nearly grown now, Rory. Real Archwell women don’t succumb to their weaknesses.”

  The mahogany desktop between us begins to crack. The wood splinters and buckles. The clock rolls off the edge onto what’s left of the floor. The walls are threatening to crush us, but my mother’s tongue-lashing continues.

  “You have to be tough. Lilies are not weak.”

  The desk falls away and we’re pushed even closer together, my mother’s face is just inches from mine. I can feel her breath. A drop of her spittle lands on my cheek as she speaks.

  “Blythe gave Charlotte the drugs, but you are the one who had them in the first place. You are the one who was trying to cut corners to get ahead. If you were really smart, Rory, you would be ahead already. You wouldn’t need to go to such desperate measures to eliminate your competition.”

  I cover my face with my hands. Hearing the truth of the matter out loud feels so much more awful than I remember. Even worse, I know Blythe is watching. She can see what’s happening. She can hear my mother’s words, understand that, yes, she was my target. Yes, Blythe, the only other contender for valedictorian. Blythe, who took the sand from me without looking at how much I’d poured into her hand. Blythe, who gave a heavy dose to the Lilies’ biggest blabbermouth. The plan was going to fix all my problems.

  But Charlotte wasn’t supposed to just . . . disappear.

  I squirm in my chair as an explanation worms its way out of me. “I was just trying to do what you told me! I was doing whatever it took to be the best. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Charlotte was supposed to maybe get a little sick and get Blythe into trouble. That’s all. If it had worked out differently, you would’ve been proud of me!”

  “You’re a disgrace.” My mother’s voice strikes me squarely in the face.

  A sob escapes my mouth before I can push it down into my belly.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

  My mother grips my chin. “You need to think about what you’ve done.”

  “Please, I—”

  The closet’s polished wooden door comes into focus, and I know what’s coming next.

  My mother drags me from my seat. I hear the keys rattle in her hand. I’ve been at this threshold hundreds of times. Every mistake, every betrayal, every misstep since I was small has landed me here.

  “No, please. I don’t want to go in there. I promise I’ll—”

  “Promise you’ll what? Fix it? When have you ever had the wherewithal to clean up your own mess?” She rattles the closet open and pushes me toward it.

  I grasp the door’s walnut frame, resisting my mother’s shoves. It’s a trick I’ve pulled since grade school, although it only delays the inevitable.

  My fingers stretch beyond their natural length as I hang on to the outside for dear life.

  I don’t want to be alone in there. Not again. Every time, the darkness swallows me and twists my thoughts into terrors. It gathers my secrets together and flays each of them like a carcass.

  My fingers give way and I fall back into the closet onto what feels like a bed of spiders. In the sliver of light from the closet door’s opening, I can see the mess of papers, dresses, and jewelry crawling all around me, like snakes in a pit.

  My mother’s shadow spills through the doorway, dense and threatening. “You need to reflect on your transgressions. And we both know that this is the best place to do it.”

  I muster what’s left of my voice, trying to say what I remember saying before. It’s barely there but I manage to force it out. “Please—”

  The closet door snaps shut and the walls begin to squeeze around my body from all sides. Memories invade, pushing reality far, far away. I can’t move my arms. I can barely breathe, but the closet just keeps caving in.

  I’m five and I’ve been caught stealing gum from the grocery store checkout.

  I’m seven and I’ve pushed Courtney off the monkey bars.

  I’m nine and I’ve cheated on a spelling test.

  I’m thirteen and I posted something rude on the internet.

  I did something bad. I let someone down. I betrayed someone.

  The evidence is all here, and it consumes me.

  I relive each memory again and again until I don’t recognize myself or the world anymore. The loop has me.

  There’s barely space to exist here. There was never enough space for me here, and now I’m going to be crushed. Destroyed, just like my mother wants.

  She wants me to be somebody else. She wants me to be her. And I tried. And now the closet is squeezing so tightly around me that there is no more space for my lungs to expand. My ribs crack under the pressure.

  I wait for relief. I know it’s about to be over. Soon it will all be over.

  And then the sound is back. Bong . . . Bong . . . Bong!

  The alarm clock wakes me in the morning, the same as any other. I dress up in white, put on my pearls. It is senior portrait day.

  After the photos, Father calls me into his office and shows me the letter from Meredith. He is concerned. Not so much about Adeline—he’ll deal with her later. But about the nature of Evelyn’s and my friendship. He’s heard things, he’s seen the way we act together, the way we look at each other. I try to explain. He was so understanding before. But this time . . . it’s different. It’s too much for him. He barks something about burdens and selfishness. Something about decency and the law. I leave in tears.