“I should get to work,” Ivy said. I heard the words buried underneath: I’ve told you everything I can tell you. I’ve told you more than I should.

I understood where she was coming from. Logically.

Ivy walked me to the bottom of the stairs. I could see her, wanting to say something, not knowing what to say. I could also feel her wanting to get rid of me, needing to pursue the lead that Priya had given her.

I mattered to Ivy. But there were times when her job had to matter more.

“Just for the record,” I said as I started climbing the stairs, “there’s a decent chance you might get a call from the Hardwicke headmaster sometime in the next couple of days.”

There was a beat of silence. “I don’t want to know,” Ivy decided.

It was probably better that way. She had her job—and I had mine.

CHAPTER 18

It took thirty-six hours for our little social media experiment to come to the headmaster’s attention. On Friday morning, I was called into his office.

Mrs. Perkins gave me a sympathetic look. “Tess, dear, there are times when it’s best not to poke a hornet’s nest,” she advised.

I didn’t reply.

Mrs. Perkins sighed. “Go on in.”

The headmaster was standing at his window. “Sit,” he said without turning around.

I sat and leaned back in my chair, balancing it on two legs. The headmaster’s silence was probably aimed at making me sweat, but thus far, things were going exactly according to plan. While I waited for Headmaster Raleigh to tell me that my behavior was unfitting of a Hardwicke student, my eyes found their way to the wall behind his desk. It was bare.

The front legs of my chair thudded against the floor.

Weeks ago, there had been a framed photograph on that wall—of Headmaster Raleigh and five other men, taken at a Camp David retreat. All three of the known conspirators in the murder of Justice Marquette had been there that weekend. It was entirely possible that the fourth co-conspirator—the one whose identity we didn’t know—had been there as well.

The headmaster took the photo down. I tried not to read too much into that.

Headmaster Raleigh turned away from the window. He took a seat at his desk and turned his desktop computer screen to face me. “What is the meaning of this?”

This was a series of pictures—representing more than 80 percent of the female students in grades nine through twelve—like the ones Vivvie and I had taken in her bathroom. Slumped. Unfocused. Seemingly drunk—and holding a sign.

“You—all of you—will take these pictures down, or I will have the lot of you up on misconduct charges.”

That was an empty threat. I doubted the headmaster wanted to deal with the parents of all those girls—or to explain to those parents that the Hardwicke administration still hadn’t managed to track down the person who was texting around pictures of borderline unconscious teenage girls.

“Remind me again,” I said. “Is it performance art or organized protest that’s against the Hardwicke code of conduct?”

The headmaster’s eyes narrowed.

I took advantage of his stormy silence. “In the past decade, Hardwicke has had exactly one female student-body president. For a school that claims to value diversity, tolerance, and equality, that’s shockingly disproportioned, wouldn’t you say? And now our only female candidate has been strong-armed into dropping out of the race, despite the fact that she has broken no actual Hardwicke rules.”

On my phone, I pulled up the picture Vivvie had taken of me and then slid the phone across the table.

DOUBLE STANDARD.

Raleigh looked at the photo like it was a snake. “There is no double standard at play here,” he said tersely. “I assure you that had Ms. Rhodes been male, the outcome would have been the same.”

“You can tell the press that when they call for a quote,” I suggested in the most helpful of tones. “I wasn’t sure they’d be interested in our little protest, but given that one of the girls participating in this protest is the vice president’s daughter . . . it’s seeming like we might be able to find some takers.”

“Is that a threat?”

“That’s a statement of probability,” I told the headmaster.

The headmaster looked as if he might actually leap over the desk to throttle me. “I did not require Ms. Rhodes to step down. I suggested she might find it a wise course of action.”

“Strongly suggested,” I said.

“Fine,” he returned. “Strongly suggested.”