Page 171 of Depraved Boys

Mrs. Benazir didn’t allow the lawn to be tarnished on Bonfire Night, so why would she allow a fire during a no-festival day? Bile rose to the back of my throat. Someone was burning my stuff. Someone had moved my things, placed them in the middle of the lawn, and set them alight.

Probably in retaliation for having Miss Claymore fired.

“Shit!” I bolted out of my room, down the hallway, down the stairs, and out through the fire exit.

One of the cases I had taken from the house lay at the bottom of a bonfire piled with burning books and items of clothing I recognized.

“Fucking hell!”

People streamed out from the doors to watch the spectacle. A warm hand landed on my shoulder, and Cormac asked, “What’s going on, Willow?”

“That’s all my stuff,” I said with a sob. “My books, my clothes, my laptop, some money, and Corrine’s diary.”

Cormac’s face fell. “A-are you sure?”

I nodded. “Whoever did it stripped the room bare.”

“Bloody hell.” He ran both hands through his hair, and his face turned the shade of diluted milk. “Bloody. Fucking. Hell.”

All concerns for myself burned into the ether, and pain lanced through my heart. It looked like the destruction of Corrine’s diary had struck Cormac with a fresh wave of grief. I wrapped my arms around his middle, remembering how I had felt after seeing Mom’s watercolor portrait of the family torn to pieces.

“Cormac?” I looked into his face.

Staring blankly at nothing, he shook his head. “I-I’ve got to sit down.”

We walked through the crowds and back into the main building. The only place I could think to take Cormac was the infirmary, and I guided him through the parquet hallways and into one of the comfortable seats in the reception area.

Cormac rested his head in his hands. “This is going to sound stupid.”

“You can tell me anything.” I rubbed his back.

“Knowing that you had my twin’s diary was like having her live through you.” He turned to me, his eyes glistening with tears.

I could have said that she still lived in our hearts or some other cliché, but it would be like a slap in the face. A meaningless platitude that only served to make the speaker feel better.

“Cormac.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “I know how gut-wrenching it feels to lose the last part of a loved one, but you’re not alone.”

He shook his head. “It was always Corrine and me until…”

“But you have me,” I said. “It doesn’t matter if you go to Oxford and I go to Cambridge. You’ve been with me through some terrible situations, and I’ll be with you for as long as you need me.”

He pulled his hands away from his face and stared into his lap. “Do you mean that?”

“With all my heart.”

We sat side-by-side in the infirmary with our arms wrapped around each other, each commiserating on our mutual losses. Why hadn’t Ashley and I banded together like this in the face of Mom and Dad’s accident? It had only driven us further apart.

Cormac and I had both lost siblings—his to death, and mine to betrayal—but at that moment, I truly felt what it meant to have a brother.

Mrs. Benazir wasn’t in her office, and I left a message with her receptionist informing her that I needed a new set of books and uniforms. Throughout the morning, I kept wondering who might have burned my things. Bianca? It would be twisted of her to leave twenty-five thousand pounds on my bed in the evening, only to burn all my stuff in the morning.

I sat next to Leopold in Economics, tapping my fingers against my bottom lip.

He leaned into me and whispered, “It was Claymore.”

“She’s at the top of my list of suspects,” I muttered. “She probably has a skeleton key for every room.”

“Probably?” Leopold scoffed. After looking from left to right, he whispered, “Seb went through a phase where he spent every night on Kash’s sofa so that you-know-who wouldn’t steal into his room with her fist of fury.”