The Book of Miranda | gxg | ✔︎

(11) Stupid Petty Wagers

I don't actually expect an answer to my question, so it startles me when Exie says, "My brother came here."

"Here?" I repeat stupidly. "Like, to Melliford Academy?"

She nods.

"What happened?"

Curse the church if that question drives another wedge between us. I really do want to know what's up with this school now, and Exie almost certainly has more leads than I do. My heart begins to sink as she fails to reply. Seconds tick past, encroaching on a minute as a mounting urge presses me to retract the question.

"Sorry," I blurt. "I just—"

"I don't know." She buries her face in her arms. "I don't know what happened. That's why I'm here. He got home—"

"Alive?"

"Yes, alive. Let me talk. He got home at the end of the year, but it wasn't... him? I don't know what happened to him. My parents always pressed him hard in school, but he hated being lectured at; he wanted to start a business on his own, and he was brilliant at it. I don't know why they sent him here. The school suckered them in. Maybe he didn't listen much, but he didn't deserve anything that happened to him."

"Which was what?" I say helplessly.

Exie digs both hands into her hair and clenches it. It's all askew right now, its stylish fluff half-shrunk, but all unevenly, giving her a harried look in the darkness.

"I don't know," she snaps.

"Then describe it? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"He prayed." She flings both hands out. "My brother never prayed before. But he got home and he'd kneel in his room for hours, pleading like his life depended on it. And he looked terrified. But I'd ask, and he could never tell me what he was so scared of. He stopped talking about business, or anything else that wasn't working for the church like my father always wanted. He'd spend hours at the stupid church. I couldn't hold a conversation with him anymore. We used to..." Her voice breaks, and she wilts against the wall. "We used to talk so much."

So they were close. I gnaw my cheek until it stings, like that will help me grapple with the mixed messages I'm getting from this school. "But he was alive."

"Yes."

"Is it getting... worse, then?"

"I don't know."

"Unless that was an accident. In the stairwell." I scrub my hand over the empty bed. The feeling of still-warm body has crept into my fingers now, where I pressed them to Colson's neck. I can't bring myself to believe this school would kill him. Or let him die. It was an accident; he snuck out like me and Exie did, but slipped on the stairs and broke his neck. We're going to hear about the tragedy tomorrow morning. Then the school will need to write a horrible letter to his parents, a job I don't envy anyone. But the rest of us aren't in danger. Whatever happened to Exie's brother was a fluke.

"I had to convince them to let me come," says Exie. "My parents. They didn't want me to. That's how I knew I wasn't crazy. Even my parents knew something was wrong with David; they just wouldn't say it out loud."

Nothing out loud. That's all she has; just a hunch that something happened to her brother, when there are many things that can change someone during a year-long stint at boarding school. For better, or for worse.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you."

I startle from my thoughts to find Exie glaring at me. "What?" I say before my brain catches up with me. My doubts must be showing.