Page 60 of The Debutantes
“Where?” I ask.
She looks at me like it’s obvious. “We can talk. Just not out here.” She scans the space around us, the bending oak trees. “I figure we should be careful who’s listening.”
Renee lives in a dorm that looks sort of like a motel, situated on the second floor with an outdoor walkway overlooking a green courtyard. Inside, it’s nicer than it looks—white brick walls tacked with band posters, a bed with deep-purple covers, fairy lights dangling overhead.
“A single?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to say.
“Perks of being an RA.”
“Do you like it?”
She shrugs. “I like the free housing. Not so much the dealing with drunk and crying freshmen. But you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not exactly flush with cash.”
Renee hops onto her bed, unlacing her boots. She nods for me to take a seat, so I sink awkwardly into her beanbag chair. My heart is beating fast, but I know I have to bring it up.
“That’s why you go to the Pierrot, right?” I ask. “You said he pays. The guy who takes you.”
Renee drops a boot onto the ground with a heavy thud. “A damn pretty penny.”
“Who is he?”
The other boot thuds to the ground. She eyes me. “I signed a shit ton of NDAs.”
A chill slinks down my spine.
Renee must notice, because she adds, “He’s harmless, though. Don’t worry. He doesn’t even try to kiss me or anything. Mostly, I think he just wants a little young thing to parade around for his friends.”
Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel any better.
“What about the other women?” I ask. “Who are they?”
“Girls like me, I guess. Ones who need the money bad enough to keep our mouths shut.”
“But Margot didn’t need money,” I say. “Why was she there?”
Renee watches me for a moment.
“What happened to your friends?” she asks, sidestepping my question. “The other debutantes?”
I grit my teeth, tensing at the memory of the levee. “I don’t know if I’d call them my friends.”
Renee is silent.
“Please,” I beg, when she still hasn’t said anything. “This is the closest I’ve gotten to answers, and I just—”
It rushes back to me like a gasp of cold water. The way Margot looked at me that night, her hand around the lighter. Desperate.Please.
“Something happened,” I say. “The last night I ever saw her, I could tell something had happened. She was angry and reckless,but she wouldn’t tell me what was going on. And I just—I need to know. Because if I don’t… then all I’ll know is that she needed me, and I left her.”
And there it is: the truth. The dark, creeping thought I haven’t been able to voice, not even to Piper or Vivian. Some part of me still can’t say all of it out loud—what we did that night, the thing I know the Jester might be holding over me, even though it feels like it matters so little now.
Renee brings her legs up on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest.
“I always thought it seemed wrong,” she says. “The overdose thing. I only really talked to Margot a few times, but I’ve known addicts, and I didn’t think that was her. She seemed so… I don’t know. Bright. Fun. And she had this fuck-you attitude, but under all that, there was this… joy. Like even though life is full of shit, she was so fucking glad to be alive.”
Tears sting my eyes. I’ve never heard someone describe her so sharply, so truthfully. I would snap a picture of those words if I could, just so I could hold them close.
“I didn’t know Margot was a Les Masques girl until after she died,” Renee continues. “I still have no idea how she got into the Pierrot in the first place, if anyone there recognized her.”
