After last period, Natty and I were sitting in the cafeteria together with most our classmates when suddenly our school secretary Sandra Bale walked in. Sandra's gaze focused on Mallory.

"There is a phone call for you, Carmichael."

Mallory got up from her chair. Leaving her textbooks on the table, she followed Sandra to the secretary's office.

When she returned about ten minutes later, Mallory looked as if she had been hit over the head with a heavy object.

As she picked up her books, she turned towards Dorothy Barnett.

"You can tell your parents that they can terminate their monthly transfer of money to the hospital," she announced in a flat, toneless voice.

"Ah," Dorothy replied, acknowledging that she understood whatever this was about.

Dorothy Barnett, Eleanor Bradford, Carol Mellon and Barbara Lane exchanged brief glances.

Ignoring them, ignoring all of us, Mallory made for the door.  It was Natty who broke the silence.

"Mallory, what's wrong?" she called.

Mallory stopped in her tracks. Though it appeared to cost her a terrible effort, she managed to turn her head and focus on the girl who had been her friend.

"Fabrice died last night," she said.

There was a catch in her voice, as if she was about to cry. Abruptly, she turned around and left the room.

"Mallory, wait!" Natty shouted, as she got up and sprinted after her.

I started to get up too. Nancy reached out and touched my right arm.

"Leave the two of them to sort it out," she told me.

Reluctantly, I sat down again. "Who is Fabrice?" I asked her.

Nancy shrugged. "I have no idea."

Half an hour later, I walked back to my dorm room. I found Natty and Mallory sitting side by side on the edge of Natty's bed. I noticed that Mallory's eyes were red.

"I can leave, if you want privacy," I said, feeling a bit awkward.

Natty looked at Mallory. The other girl shrugged.

"You can either stay or leave, Hart. Whichever you prefer."

"In that case, I will stay." I sat down on the edge of my own bed. "Do you mind telling me what happened?"

"I guess it is not a secret anymore, now that he is dead," Mallory replied.

And she proceeded to tell me the story. A story that had begun on a Saturday night, roughly two months ago.

It had been hours past midnight when the five boys had been driving home from a party. Francis Barnett, Thomas and Eric Bradford, Peter Lane and Fabrice Carmichael. All of them had been drunk. It had been a dark and foggy night. Turning around a bend on the narrow country road, their car had hit a lorry on the opposite lane, in a head-on collision. While the other boys and the driver of the lorry had gotten away with minor injuries, Mallory's brother had ended up in a coma.

The Barnetts, the Bradfords and the Lanes had tried everything within their power to hush up what had actually happened on that night. They wanted to avoid at all costs that charges of drunk driving would be pressed against their sons.

They were wealthy and they had influential friends, and, according to Mallory, the local police played along. So they had talked to Mallory's parents and a deal had been struck. All four boys had testified that Fabrice was the one who had driven the car.

The Carmichael family had accepted that, and in return, the Barnetts, the Bradfords and the Lanes had agreed to pay for all current and future financial expenses associated with the treatment of Fabrice in a famous London clinic that was specialized on patients in a coma.

Part of the deal had been not only that Mallory would never talk about the accident to anybody at St. Albert's, but also that she were to become friends with Dorothy, Eleanor and Barbara and that she was going to join their student society, the Galads.

"I understand how they did not want you to talk about the accident. But why on earth would they make it a condition that you become friends with their daughters?" I inquired.

"Because they could." Mallory shrugged. "See, that is the way those people are."

"But why didn't you tell me?" Natty asked. "You know that I would never have told anybody else about it."

"I don't know." Mallory sighed. "My parents were convinced that we needed to shoulder this alone, as a family. I guess I believed them, or at least I went along with it."

"What are you going to do now? Will you tell everybody about what happened that night, and the way they blackmailed you and your family into keeping silent?"

"I am not sure. I mean, how would that help us now? Besides, my mother fears that they will demand that we pay back all that money if we break the deal now."

"Fuck," Natty muttered.

I could not have agreed more.

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A / N :  A more somber chapter, this one. A necessary one, though.

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