At least that was what I thought until I unlocked the door to our room and Noelle was nowhere to be seen. Unsure of what to do next, I took a tentative step towards her desk, which, just as I had expected, was covered in notes.

I knew that it was probably a bad idea—the worst idea ever—

to touch her stuff, especially in her absence, but they were just school notes; surely she wouldn’t mind. After glancing at the closed door once more, I reached out and blindly took one of the pages.

I was still trying to decipher her handwriting and figure out which notes belonged to which class when the door suddenly flew open and I whirled around, my back pressed against the edge of the table.

I knew the second her eyes fell on me that I had made a mistake, my heart fluttering like a panicked bird in my chest as Noelle stomped towards me and snatched the piece of paper out of my grip.

“Have you read any of this?” she asked in a dangerously low voice.

“No,” I breathed. “Noelle, I’m sorry if I overstepped, I didn’t think—”

Noelle looked at me for what felt like hours with an expression I couldn’t read, her hand rumpling the paper in her hand with how hard she was clutching it. Finally, she said, “Don’t ever touch my things again.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I’m so—”

Noelle cut me off with a low don’t. I didn’t dare move as she slid the paper under one of the magazines on her desk and grabbed a duffel bag from her bed.

A moment later, the door slammed shut behind her and I slumped back against the desk, releasing a shaky breath. If I had had any chance of getting Noelle to like me, or even stand to have me around, I’d just ruined it.

3

Seth

I was starting to understand why the people in the novels I read became murderers.

It had been only a few days since I had arrived at Seven Hills, but I already felt one minor inconvenience away from snapping.

Reason number one: the fact that I had been sent here in the first place. It was all right that my parents were divorcing; after all, it had been a long time coming, and in the end, it was their decision to make. When they had sat me down at the kitchen table, apologetic smiles pasted over obvious discomfort, I had even been relieved for a split second to know that this was it—

the storm cloud that had been building up under the roof of the house, growing darker and more threatening with every year that went by, charging the air with so much tension that my hair stood on end every time I came through the door, was finally erupting and it wasn’t as loud as I had feared. No earthshaking thunder or blinding flashes, just a sheepish apology for the way things had been lately and an earnest This has nothing to do with you, we both love you so much. None of that would have been a bad thing in itself. It was only when my dad slid his phone over to me, the words Seven Hills International Boarding School for Boys and Girls written in an elegant font at the top of the website he had pulled up, that I realized I had let my guard down too soon. This was absolutely fucking terrible, but not in any of the ways I had anticipated.