Without Annette Read online

  FOR CRAIG WALKER,

  WHO BECAME A FRIEND THE FIRST TIME WE MET,

  AND UNDERSTOOD.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  I stared at the piece of paper posted on the dormitory door as if it were committing perjury, feeling the blood drain from my face. “We’re not roommates?” I blurted.

  “Apparently not,” Annette said. She found my hand and gave it a quick squeeze, then dropped it again. My head spun crazily. We weren’t roommates. “We’re in the same dorm at least,” she added quietly.

  I scanned the list again, double-checking the room numbers. Annette’s name was right where it always was, at the top: Annette Anderson, room 108. I was lost among dozens of other names in the middle: Josie Little, room 316.

  Behind us, sunlight glinted off the luxury SUVs and station wagons that lined the curb. Dads in sherbet-colored button-downs and loafers hefted luggage, while moms in printed blouses, skirts, and low heels gathered in conversation nearby.

  Our parents were thirteen hundred miles away, in Virginia Falls, Minnesota. Which was probably just as well, since most of the shirts my dad owned were lumberjack plaid, and my family drove a ten-year-old, rusty Dodge Caravan.

  Annette and I had both spent our entire lives in Virginia Falls, right up until three o’clock this morning, when we’d piled our luggage and ourselves into said minivan and departed for the Minneapolis airport. A three-hour drive and a two-and-a-half-hour plane ride later, we’d arrived in Hartford, Connecticut. And just now, at Brookwood Academy, elite coeducational boarding school in picturesque rural Connecticut.

  Turning, I looked out at the main circle, at the ivy-covered brick buildings and giant elms—the biggest I’d ever seen. At the people who somehow reminded me of Easter-themed tablecloth and napkin sets.

  “It looks just like the catalog, doesn’t it?” Annette asked as a silver-whiskered golden retriever lumbered past, sniffing the grass in search of the perfect place to relieve himself.

  “Sure does,” I agreed. A pair of girls in sleeveless sweaters embraced not far away, laughing. Their tanned, slender arms linked easily as they crossed the lawn—they could have been starring in the catalog shoot. I tucked a wayward curl into my headband and adjusted my backpack. I’d pored over that catalog a hundred times and imagined our arrival just as many, but somehow I hadn’t pictured anything like this.

  It wasn’t as though I expected balloons. Or a bunch of people standing on the curb, holding hot dishes with crocheted hot pads. I knew Brookwood wouldn’t be like Virginia Falls. I didn’t want it to be.

  I’d wanted it to be different. I’d wanted to be someplace else. I’d wanted to go to a school that challenged me. But most of all, I’d wanted to get Annette away from her mother, to keep her safe.

  I’d wanted Annette to be my roommate.

  “I see you’ve found the list of room assignments,” Dean Austin said, setting our luggage on the curb and mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “I’ll send someone over to bring your luggage up so you can settle in.”

  I watched as the golden retriever finished his business and trotted over to the car, hopping onto the seat I had occupied moments ago, panting and looking pleased with himself.

  I swiveled my head to look at my butt. Sure enough, the entire tail end of my dark denim capris was covered in blond, silky dog hair. I swiped at my ass, glancing over at Annette’s, which somehow remained hairless-terrier bald.

  “Hey,” a pair of girls dressed in sporty above-the-knee skirts, who had just come out of the dorm, said as they passed. One of them turned back, giving me a skeptical once-over. And why wouldn’t she? I was the only female in sight who didn’t have long, straight, shiny hair, and had dog hair all over her butt.

  “Should we go in?” Annette’s voice was crazy quiet, the way it got when her mom had been drinking and she was trying to avoid a blowup.

  Half of me wanted to go home, and none of me wanted to go in. But we couldn’t just stand there on the stoop, staring—especially since Dean Austin and the shed machine had already driven away.

  “May as well,” I said as lightly as I could. “I am in serious need of a bathroom.”

  Annette chuckled and stepped into the foyer. “Peeing all over yourself would not be good,” she agreed.

  It took about ten seconds to find Annette’s room. It was right there, a few steps down the hall, as accessible as her name on an alphabetical list. The door was open a crack and I could see a girl unpacking inside. She was tall and slender, with a blond ponytail running halfway down her back. Of course.

  “I’ll come find you as soon as I settle in,” Annette told me, giving my hand another quick squeeze.

  I gazed at the pale yellow shadow of a bruise under her left eye—a parting gift from her mother—and tried to disguise the fact that I longed to barge through the door and explain to the girl with the ponytail that there’d been a mistake, that there would be two girls moving into this room, that her roommate was actually upstairs in room 316. But even in my state of disbelief, I knew that doing such a thing would be ridiculous, as would giving Annette a passionate good-bye kiss in the dormitory hallway. Or any kiss right then, since Annette and I had decided to wait a little while—get our boarding school bearings—before going public as a couple. So I mustered up the best smile I was capable of and turned toward the stairs, unable to avoid overhearing Annette introduce herself to her roommate, picturing her expression based on the cadence of her voice, and then my mind’s eye going blank as I heard her roommate reply, “I’m Rebecca.”

  The stairwell was concrete and metal, and my footsteps echoed as I shuffled my way up. Floor three was at the top, 316 at the end of the hall. The door was closed.

  “Hello?” I called quietly, opening it a crack and peeking inside. Speak up, Josephine! my deceased grandmother said in my head. She was practically deaf by the time she turned seventy, so shouting was required if you wanted her to hear whatever it was you had to say. And in this case she was right.

  “Anyone home?” I said a little louder as I pushed the door open wide and saw for the first time the space that would be my home for the next nine months. It was smaller than I expected, and already full of stuff—presumably my roommate’s. She was lying on the bottom bunk, which was covered in a funky duvet, with her eyes closed and buds in her ears. A matched set of partially empty suitcases covered most of the floor, along with a stack of oversize art books, and one of the dressers was piled with everything from toiletries
to magazines to jewelry to a mountain of lacy underwear. I was wondering how many pairs of underwear were in that heap when my roommate did a little shimmy and belted out part of the song she was listening to.

  I laughed out loud, and she opened an eye.

  “Hi, I’m Josie.” I stepped forward so she wouldn’t have to get up.

  My roommate stared at me for a long, hard moment, her eyes a mixture of resentment and ambivalence. Then she momentarily looked past me, rolled over, and turned her entire body to the wall.

  Face flushing, my hand dropped limply to my side. “Nice to meet you, too,” I mumbled.

  I stared blankly at my roommate’s back, grimly thinking that I probably should have been grateful. After all, she did not have long, shining hair and was not wearing pastel. Her dark hair was short and spiky and she was wearing black. All black.

  The door behind me swung open, and a tall boy with shaggy brown hair stepped into the room, carrying my suitcases—all three of them—like they were rag dolls.

  “Hey,” he greeted. “Where do you want ’em?”

  Room 108, I thought, thinking maybe I could just move in with them. Annette and I could sleep in a twin, no problem—we did it all the time. “Uh, anywhere is good,” I replied.

  He put the suitcases down and held out a hand. “I’m Penn,” he said. “Penn McCarthy.”

  “Josie Little.” I extended my own hand and hoped it wasn’t clammy. Clammy hands, along with bitten fingernails, were gross.

  “Rocks,” he said loudly.

  I blinked in surprise. Rocks? He’d just carried my suitcases in as if they were filled with feathers.

  Penn swiped at my roommate’s foot. “Roxanne!” he said, a little louder.

  My roommate rolled over and pulled her earbuds out. “What?” she asked, a little annoyed but clearly not at all fazed by this boy’s presence in our dorm room.

  “Just sayin’ hey,” he said with a shrug. A lock of hair hung over his eyes, making it hard to see what color they were. Brown, maybe. Or hazel. “How was your summer?”

  “Not terrible,” Roxanne admitted, propping herself on an elbow. She had dark eyes, a long face, and blue-black nail polish. “My dad was gone the whole time, of course, but my mom let me help out at the gallery.”

  “Sweet,” Penn said. “New self-portrait?”

  I followed his gaze to a small painting that leaned against the wall above one of the desks. It was a girl with piercing dark eyes standing alone on a crowded city sidewalk, the people around her a blur of motion. It did in fact look a lot like the girl lying on the bed, though the face in the painting was more gaunt and pale, more ghostlike.

  “Yeah.” She shrugged.

  Penn stood there for a second, as if waiting for more detail, or for Roxanne to ask him about his summer. She didn’t. Nobody said anything, and you could almost hear the silence between them. I wondered what it meant.

  “Well, I’d better get back to delivery,” Penn said. “Duffels await. Nice to meet you, Josie. Welcome to Brookwood. Catcha later, Rox.”

  “Later,” Roxanne agreed, sticking a bud back into an ear.

  “I’m Josie Little,” I said quickly, before she could get the second bud in and tune me out entirely. “Your roommate.”

  There was that look again—ambivalent resentment. I was expecting her to roll away from me a second time, but she opened her mouth instead.

  “Hello, Roommate Josie Little,” she said in a voice that was practically impossible to read. It wasn’t mocking, but almost. “I’d tell you my name, but Mr. McCarthy has already taken care of that. And it’s obvious that I’m your roommate, unless of course I’m some sort of vagrant who’s stumbled into Cortland Girls Dormitory, which seems extremely unlikely. So if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my music. Feel free to make yourself at home. The top bunk is yours, as is the empty dresser and half the closet. The bathroom is through that door. I haven’t finished unpacking in there, so go ahead and spread out a little. But not too much, or I’ll have to reclaim what’s rightfully mine, which won’t be pretty.” She smiled wanly and stuffed the second earbud in, flopping back on her bed.

  Bathroom. I was through the door before Roxanne pressed PLAY, unzipping my capris and sighing in relief. I felt myself relax a little and perused the room, which was covered in tiny, off-white octagonal tile. The sink and tub were both huge, and the slightly open window had leaded glass and ran practically up to the ceiling. Roxanne already had a bunch of stuff next to the sink and a huge toiletry bag on the wall shelf.

  I was done peeing, I realized, but had no desire to get up. The view from the toilet seat was surprisingly pleasant, looking out over rooftops and between sky-reaching elms to the seemingly endless fields that surrounded the campus. How long can I sit here? I wondered. Ten minutes? An hour? Roxanne clearly wouldn’t give a damn. But what about Annette?

  I grabbed my phone, typed Miss u already, and hit SEND before I could change my mind. I felt like a barnacle as I watched the screen for a moment, waiting for a response before leaning my head back against the wall and trying to wrap my brain around the fact that we were here. In Connecticut. At a boarding school. Thirteen hundred miles from home.

  And that, so far, nothing was going the way I’d thought it would.

  A typo—it was all because of a typo. Well, okay, it wasn’t exactly the typo. It was actually Annette’s mother, Shannon, a mean drunk who had a tendency to flip out and rail on her only daughter. Shannon had been mean for as long as I could remember, and was getting meaner. So when I tried to look up bookworm, but typed in brookwoom, and my search engine kindly translated it to Brookwood, what I saw on my computer screen wasn’t just Brookwood Academy, elite boarding school in pastoral Connecticut. What I saw was an exit strategy—a path to something better.

  I’d thought that coming to Brookwood would solve everything. It would put six whole states between Annette and her mother, between us and her mother. Annette could live without the constant fear of her mother going on a rampage. We could be together without our parents hovering over us. And we would also get out of Virginia Falls, our tiny Minnesota hometown, where the priorities were hockey, homecoming, football, and more hockey. Plus, it certainly didn’t hurt that Brookwood offered twice as many classes as VF High, or had fewer than a quarter as many students.

  I’d been one hundred and one percent certain that coming to Brookwood was the right thing to do. Even when Shannon became so enraged she hit Annette and declared that she wouldn’t let her go. Even when Annette herself got so nervous she balked. I never panicked—I just kept believing that we were coming, right down to the moment we got on the plane. Right down to the moment we pulled in and I saw the place. Because even though it looked exactly like the catalog and the pictures on the website, it felt totally different.

  Now here we were, at Brookwood, with 418 other students and (according to the catalog) an extremely qualified faculty. Half of me still couldn’t believe we’d both gotten in, with scholarships. I turned my gaze back toward the fields, remembering the day the letters came. I could still feel the envelope in my hand, my thudding heart as I dialed Annette’s number.

  The phone rang—once, twice, three times. I’d stripped down to my T-shirt even though there was still snow on the ground—spring was late. Finally, she picked up.

  “Did you get it?” I asked without saying hello. I’d set the envelope on my desk, where the full-color return address and its embossed, crested logo stared up at me.

  “Yes,” Annette said a little breathlessly. “Do you want me to come over?”

  Uff-da. That was a tough one. I did want her to come over—I always wanted her to come over. But I didn’t want to wait for her to get here, and what if our letters weren’t the same? What were the odds that we’d both been accepted?

  “How thick is it?” I’d read somewhere that rejection letters were single pieces of paper, while acceptances were three pages or more. My envelope looked suspiciously thin.


  “How thick?” Annette echoed. “I don’t know. Kinda thick, kinda thin.”

  That was so Annette—always coasting down the middle. She just glided easily along, no matter what. It was her gift.

  “Should I come over so we can open them together?” she repeated.

  A wave of nausea engulfed me as I eyed the Brookwood logo on the envelope. “Let’s just open them,” I blurted. I still felt like throwing up, but suddenly had to know.

  “Are you sure?” Annette asked. I could picture the expression on her face, the concern in her flecked green eyes. She knew me better than anyone, knew how compulsive I could be. “It might be better if …”

  Too late. I was already ripping it open, completely mangling the envelope and tearing a corner of the letter itself. My hands shook as I unfolded the paper.

  Dear Miss Little,

  After careful consideration by our Admissions Committee, we are pleased to offer you a contract with financial aid for enrollment at Brookwood Academy.

  “I got in!” I shrieked into the phone. “Annette, I got in!”

  Silence, and then a very quiet “That’s great.”

  I pulled my lips together, feeling like an idiot. Duh. My getting in was only half the plan. But of course Annette got in. There was never any question in my mind about her being accepted. She was a much better student than I was, if a little less driven. “You did, too, right?”

  “Not exactly.” Her voice was steady but soft.

  I took a breath. Not exactly?

  “I got wait-listed.”

  Wait-listed? I had heard about wait-listed, of course, but hadn’t really considered it a possibility. Through the seemingly endless process of applying to boarding school, I’d always assumed that the letter in the mail would be a kind of deliverance—a yes or a no. After everything, a maybe seemed unfair. Cruel, even.

  A shuddering exhale made its way across the phone line and into my ear, and it wasn’t the good kind.

  “I’ll be right there.” I hung up the phone and dropped the letter onto my desk, slipping my feet into Converse and arms into down. “Going to Annette’s!” I shouted as I headed out the door.