HARTWELL

Room 14

Chapter 2

The first thing I learned about Hartwell was that the walls were thin.

Not thin like you could hear conversations. Thin like you could hear everything. Every door slam, every laugh, every argument, every single thing happening in every floor at eleven o'clock at night when you're supposed to be asleep.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling listening to the building breathe.

Fiona was out cold. She'd fallen asleep mid sentence which I was starting to think was just her thing. Eleanor had her eye mask on and her earphones in and had been that way since nine thirty.

I was the only one still awake.

This is fine. This is completely fine. You're eighteen. You've slept in strange places before. This is fine.

It wasn't fine.

I picked up my phone. No messages except one from my mom asking if I'd settled in and one from Liam saying simply — you dead yet.

I typed back. Almost.

He replied immediately with a skull emoji and nothing else. I smiled at my phone in the dark like an i***t.

Liam had been my best friend since we were fourteen and he was the only person who understood that sometimes you didn't need advice. Sometimes a skull emoji was exactly enough.

I put my phone face down and tried to sleep.

From down the hall something crashed. Then someone laughed. Then Mrs Cecilia's voice cut through everything like a knife.

"I said lights out. That means lights. Out."

Silence.

Then whispering.

Then giggling.

I pulled my pillow over my face.

Morning came too fast and too loud.

Fiona was already up, already dressed, already eating something she definitely wasn't supposed to have in the room. Eleanor was at the small mirror doing her edges with the focus of someone defusing a bomb.

"You look terrible," Fiona said when she saw me sit up.

"Thank you."

"Bathroom gets busy at seven so you've got about four minutes before the queue starts."

I grabbed my things and went.

The bathroom at the end of our floor had six sinks and four shower cubicles and approximately thirty girls all trying to use them at the same time. Someone was playing music from their phone. Someone else was arguing about stolen shampoo. A girl I didn't know caught my eye in the mirror and looked me up and down once then looked away.

I found a free sink and got on with it.

The girl next to me was washing her face with the urgency of someone who had somewhere very important to be. She had her hair in two plaits and she was humming something under her breath.

"You're new," she said without looking at me.

"That obvious."

"You're using Sasha's sink. She's going to make your life difficult about that."

I looked at the sink. It looked exactly like every other sink.

"How was I supposed to know."

"You weren't. That's the point." She finally looked at me, she had this expression like she found everything slightly amusing. "I'm Yasmin."

"Emily."

"I know. Word travels fast here." She turned off her tap and dried her hands. "Come sit with me at breakfast. Fiona's good people but she'll have you expelled within a month."

She walked out before I could respond.

I sat with both of them.

Yasmin and Fiona sized each other up across the table for approximately thirty seconds then silently agreed to tolerate each other. Eleanor ate her toast and observed everything and said nothing which I was learning was just Eleanor's natural state.

"So," Yasmin said, pulling apart a croissant. "You met anyone interesting yet."

"Define interesting."

"She asked about Ethan already," Fiona said.

I pointed my fork at her. "I asked who he was. That's not the same thing."

"She asked who he was after knowing him for approximately four seconds," Fiona said to Yasmin. "So."

Yasmin looked at me with something I couldn't read. "What do you want to know."

"Nothing. I was just asking."

"He's in our year," Yasmin said anyway. "Scholarship student. Been here since lower sixth. Doesn't talk much. Has a thing with Charlotte that's technically over but Charlotte hasn't fully received that information yet." She paused. "Stay out of that particular situation."

"I'm not in any situation."

"You will be," Fiona said cheerfully. "Everyone ends up in a situation here eventually."

Eleanor looked up from her toast. "She's not wrong."

Those were the first words Eleanor had said all morning.

I looked at my plate.

Great.

First lesson was English with Mr Gordon. Room 12, second floor, third door on the left, which I only found because Liam appeared out of nowhere in the corridor and pointed me in the right direction.

"You owe me," he said falling into step beside me.

"How do you already know where everything is."

"I asked someone." He shrugged. "Novel concept."

Liam was like that. Easy in a way I had never been able to figure out how to be. He walked into rooms like he'd been there before. Talked to people like he already knew them. I had spent four years watching him do it and I still couldn't work out the trick.

We found seats near the middle.

Ethan was already there. Back row. Alone.

I sat down and did not look at him.

I looked at him once.

He was reading something. Actually reading, not on his phone, an actual book. His jaw was doing that thing jaws do when someone is concentrating. I noticed this. I immediately filed it away in the part of my brain labelled absolutely do not think about this.

Mr Gordon came in and the room settled.

"Right," he said dropping a stack of papers on his desk. "New faces this year. Welcome. I don't do hand holding so if you're lost ask a neighbour." He looked directly at me when he said this which felt pointed. "We're starting with personal narrative. I want two pages on an experience that changed how you see yourself. Due Friday."

The class made the sound classes make when homework gets announced.

"Two pages isn't a novel," Mr Gordon said without looking up. "Get on with it."

Liam leaned over. "What experience changed how you see yourself."

"Being forced to come here," I whispered.

"Write that then."

"I can't write that."

"Why not. It's true."

From the back row I felt something. Not a look exactly. More like an awareness. Like someone paying attention in my direction.

I did not turn around.

I kept my eyes on my notebook and wrote my name at the top of the page and told myself I was imagining it.

After class Liam and I walked out together and nearly walked straight into Charlotte.

She was standing in the doorway like she'd been placed there. Tall, hair perfect, the kind of pretty that knew it was pretty and had made several decisions based on that information.

She looked at me.

"You're the new one," she said. Not mean. Just a statement.

"Emily."

"I know." She smiled. "Welcome to Hartwell."

She walked away.

Liam waited until she was fully gone then leaned close. "Don't let that smile confuse you."

"Yasmin already warned me."

"Good." He picked up his bag. "Come on. We've got twenty minutes before next lesson and I found the vending machine."

I followed him down the corridor.

Behind me Room 12 emptied out slowly. I didn't hear Ethan leave. I didn't check.

I really didn't.

That night the three of us were in Room 14 and Fiona produced a bag of crisps from somewhere inside her mattress.

"How long has that been in there," Eleanor said.

"Does it matter."

"Yes."

"They're fine." Fiona opened them and passed the bag around. "Okay. Real talk. The party Friday. Are we going."

Eleanor said nothing which I'd already learned meant no.

"I said I'd think about it," I said.

"You've had all day."

"It's been one day."

"Exactly so you've wasted enough time." Fiona sat cross legged on her bed. "Look. The party is at this club about twenty minutes from here. Older students have been going for two years. The way out is through the fire exit at the end of the east corridor. Mrs Cecilia does her last check at ten fifteen. After that she doesn't come back until six."

"You've done this before," I said.

"Obviously."

"And nobody got caught."

"One person got caught last year." She paused. "But she was being stupid about it."

"What counts as being stupid about it."

"Coming back at three in the morning smelling like a brewery." Fiona looked at me. "We go, we have fun, we're back by one. Simple."

I looked at Eleanor.

Eleanor was examining her nails.

"Eleanor," I said.

"I'm not going," she said calmly. "But I'm not stopping you."

I looked at the ceiling.

One day. I have been here one day.

"Fine," I said.

Fiona grinned and opened her mouth to say something but then her phone buzzed. She looked at it. Her grin disappeared.

"What," I said.

She turned the phone around.

It was the school group chat. Someone had posted a photo. A photo of two people in what was very clearly one of the bathroom cubicles on our floor. You couldn't see faces. You didn't need to. The uniform gave the school away instantly and the body language gave everything else away.

The chat was already going insane. Forty messages in thirty seconds. Names being thrown around. Laughing emojis. A few shocked ones.

Eleanor sat up slowly and took the phone from Fiona.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she looked at me.

"Welcome to Hartwell," she said quietly. "For real this time."