Confessions: The Private School Murders Read Online Free PDF

been so busy
listing all the
negatives
of being off the drugs, I’ve decided to share with you—and only you—one of the positives. I know what you’re thinking.
There’s a positive? Then what’s she been whining about all this time?
I apologize if I’ve been in a morose frame of mind. But with all the deaths and the jail visits and the random strangers taking over my life, I’m hoping you can forgive me.
    So here it is, the positive: I am starting to remember James. And I’m not talking about the weird dreams. I’m talking about actual memories. At least, I think they are. I hope they are. See, there were always little bits and snippets that I could recall, vague feelings, hazy shadows, flashes of a face or a knee or a hand. But now I was starting to see real 3-D images. I was startingto hear his voice, sense his touch, smell his scent. I was starting to remember that I had been in love.
    Not only that. I had experienced love at first sight.
    There was a party one night about a year ago. A party I, of course, had to sneak out to go to, Malcolm and Maud not believing in fun, as it were. It was exactly what you’d expect from the children of the New York elite. Huge apartment, tons of breakables worth untold thousands, and at least a hundred kids drinking, smoking, and partaking of all kinds of drugs their parents had definitely not formulated especially for them.
    I hate to say “our eyes met across a crowded room,” but they did. But it wasn’t just like “Oh, he’s cute,” or even “That’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen.” It was like I knew him. And he knew me. And we just hadn’t seen each other in a really long time. Locking eyes with James felt like coming home.
    We made small talk about travel and school and our families, but what I really remember was all the smiling. All the anticipation. All the skin-tingling uncertainty.
    I had loved every minute of it.
    And then it had happened. Just as I’d started to get that awful, gut-deadening feeling that nothing could possibly come of this—that it was too good to be true—James had leaned in and kissed me. And I had felt it in every inch of my body.
    Me. The girl who never felt
anything
. The girl who was on so many drugs I’d barely cried when my favorite person in theworld—my sister, Katherine—had died. That was how I knew for certain that I was in love.
    After that, sneaking out became a much more common occurrence. But here’s the strangest, most unbelievable part of this: Aside from the clarity of our first meeting, I couldn’t remember most of the time James and I had spent together.
    Because when my parents did find out about us—because eventually they always found out about everything—they’d had my memory
purged
. Chemically purged, electrically rubbed out, scoured down to the bloody nubs.
    My parents were rich and powerful and connected enough to know people who could do that. They’d not only taken me away from James physically, but done everything they could to make sure I’d never so much as dream of him again.
    But I did now. All the time. Since I’d gone off the drugs, I was finally starting to remember, more and more each day, the details.
    After all this time, I had real and tangible hope that one day I’d remember everything. And that once I remembered, I’d find a way to get James back.

8
    The next morning,
Jacob was actually up before me and had laid out a huge breakfast of chocolate-chip pancakes, eggs, sausage, and coffee, which resulted in Hugo’s declaring his undying love for the man. I, however, was kind of annoyed that my morning ritual of breakfast making had been brusquely taken from me without my consent. But that didn’t stop me from eating everything in sight. Which made us late.
    After thanking Jacob, Harry, Hugo, and I charged up Central Park West and across the avenue at Seventy-Seventh Street to our school, All Saints Academy. All Saints is a privately owned, Gothic-style former church, all