With Carmen's reign gone, the frost hanging over the Kensington crown has dissipated and been replaced with a lighter and friendlier air anticipated by Parker's new rule. No longer do the freshmen and sophomores quake in fear as the Elites stride down the halls and people in cliques are not as hierarchical and structured as they used to be.

Carmen not being around means the social calendar has been super dry, which is fine since it's time for our winter midterms. The Elite during exam week is a sight so different from how I usually see them- replacing frequent visits to trendy bar spots and new clubs with all-nighters at the library and weekend study sessions at quirky cafes at SoHo. The way the Elites does studying is definitely with style.

I take these moments of quietness and tranquillity I have with Orson to work on making him succumb to me. I've only two weeks left until my "punishment" is over and I no longer have to be Orson's girlfriend for the month. I need to find a way to further cement my role as his confidante, his girl more permanently. Which means I need to make him trust me, to make him feel that I can see every inch of his dark side and not run away. I need him to see me as his Bonnie, his real-life suicide blonde, his ride or die.

How do you make a person who has never so much cared about anything in his life fall for you?

Well, you start with his trust.

"Bronte."

I lift my eyes from the menu to see the person in front of me and even though my face is masked by enormous Chanel sunglasses, I tilt my head and beckon Helena Marx to take the seat opposite of me.

Helena Marx looks nothing like the girl I met out in Chicago; scraping by with Guess and Victoria Secret, making her own money by tutoring kids in private schools. Now she's a bonafide socialite in the Manhattan private school scene, which she helped secure by exposing Luciana Santiago's STD. Dressed in a Tom Ford mink-lined dark denim jumpsuit with a hat and brown leather ski boots, Helena was stunning with her waist-length almost-black hair fanning out behind her like a cape.

"Hey, Helena," I greeted her sweetly, "Love the bag." I eyed her not really cruelty-free mink-and-armadillo-skin Fendi baguette purse, thinking I should get on the wait-list for that as well.

"Thanks, a girl in my school got it for me." She sat down as I continued to scan the surroundings for anyone who could recognize Helena and potentially, me.

Across the street, the neon sign for Ferra's Cheesesteaks blinked off and on. Women in capri pants and big Chanel sunglasses went in and out of the Aveda salon. The bells on the door of Wordsmith's Books jingled cheerfully. Aside from the occasionally stinky exhaust from the passing cars, the whole world smelled like spring flowers and hot caramel from Pinkberry's toppings bar. But no one who looked like they were part of Manhattan's private school social scene was around.

"Two espresso martinis, double shot," I said to the waitress when she came over. She didn't even have the guts to ask for ID as I waved her a fifty-dollar tip taken from my Louis Vuitton purse.

"So what did you ask me to come here for? I thought I already did everything you asked me to. And Carmen's all nicely taken care of. I can't believe you got her shipped off to a mental health facility in Connecticut," Helena snorted gleefully.

I smiled wanly and removed my sunglasses. "I know, it's kind of fitting isn't it?" I gazed out the café window, marveling at the people with tiny dogs parading along the sidewalk as if it were a catwalk for the city's most fashionable breeds. A year ago, French bulldogs were all the rage, but now it looked like Italian greyhounds were giving the Frenchies a run for their money.

"So...why do you need me this time?"

"Well, I'm not going to need you to do anything exactly. What I need is some information from you, specifically about the girl Orson killed in the Hamptons." I finished and watched Helena's self-satisfied expression morph into one of seriousness, her lips become pursed together and when painted with that hot-pink lipstick, is arranged into an impossible heart shape.

"Oh," is all Helena could utter.

"Please, anything you know about the girl would really help me."

Helena blinks, nodding. She fumbles into her bag and retrieves a packet of cigarettes as the waitress returns with our drink. I take a sip of the bittersweet taste of sweet coffee liqueur and vodka mixed together in a drink.

"Well, I knew that her name was Carlotta. She was a waitress that worked at a cafe on Westhampton Beach, which her family owned. She was...obsessed with Orson but he never shared the same kind of infatuation she had with him. She was crazy over him, she would stalk him and wait outside of clubs she knew he frequented so she could just see him and she wanted so badly to be his girlfriend but Orson never saw her that way. To him, she was just..."

"An easy fuck," I finish for her bluntly.

Helena drums her fingers on the table, her L'Orient ring flashing the sunlight into my eyes as she speaks. "Pretty much, yeah. Essentially, I think part of the reason why she wanted to keep the baby, even though Orson said he was very willing to pay her to get rid of it, was that she saw it as a way to keep him."

"Huh."

My mind is turning and I'm starting to wonder if Orson is completely the perpetrator in this story. Yes, of course, Orson is mostly in the wrong. He struck a pregnant girl carrying his baby and basically pressured his sister and all his closest friends to bury her but after being around him so much and studying his demeanor, Orson is a pretty careful guy. He's a person who measures his words and emotions, calculates the weight behind every sentence, and doesn't seem like the type who gets fired enough to lose his temper.

And the fact that Carmen has been so quick to defend her brother after he did such a horrible act made me speculate that maybe this Carlotta girl wasn't so innocent after all.

"Well, thank you, Helena. I think I have everything I need to know. I'll call you if I need anything else."

That night, I log into my laptop and begin to search for a missing/dead girl named Carlotta in the Hamptons. Sure enough, plenty of local news channels wrote articles and filmed segments about it- after all, the whole case is a textbook local news channel's wet dream: a pretty young girl, lost in one of the safest upper-class towns in the country.

The Hamptons is an idyllic, picturesque scene to begin with- all the little cedar-shingled cottages, with white picket fences covered with roses and wicker rocking chairs on the porch and geraniums hanging from the rafters. And the village greens and tall-steepled churches and old-fashioned school houses give the east coast beach town a real old-school charm to it.

One article, in particular, makes sure to give Carlotta a pretty thorough profile. Her full name was Carlotta Weston, a freshman attending Westhampton Beach High School. The photo attached to the article is a stunning one of her, showcasing blonde curly hair, her perfectly symmetrical face, cupid lips, and cobalt eyes. Orson really has a thing for blondes, I muse to myself as my eyes scan through the author's description of Calotta with quotes from her family and friends.

Her parents describe Carlotta as a diligent worker at the cafe, always pulling late nights and weekends to save up for her dreams of becoming a star in Hollywood. "She always wanted to be rich and famous," a person the article notes as Carlotta's best friend, Briar Watson. Once I read and cross-reference everybody's information about Carlotta, I painted an image of a girl who's sweet, cheerful, and bubbly but with a hunger for the spotlight. This is a girl who craves attention and notoriety. I'm rolling over Helena's words.

She was obsessed with Orson.

I take down the names of people in the article and then book a train to the Hamptons. I pack a bag, including a change of clothes, a wig, some makeup. I hurriedly hack into Veronica's email, which she never checks because of her constant travelling, and send a sick note dismissing my disappearance from Kensington.

I text Orson that I won't be at school tomorrow because of a family emergency and I stumble some lie to Hadley and Veronica about taking a mental health day to visit my parents' graves in Westchester. After all of this, I make sure I settle into bed early so I'll be well-rested tomorrow.

-

Thanking the lucky stars that Briar Watson happens to have a public Instagram, I'm able to study her patterns and habits relatively quickly. A stunning exceedingly tan, willowy girl with thousands of followers on Instagram, a love for tattoos, and frequent pictures of her at high school parties with her 6'2 footballer boyfriend, it's not hard to deduce that Briar is one of Westhampton's It Girls. She posts pictures of her friends shopping at the local mall, wearing knitted J-Crew sweaters and sipping on pink smoothies.

Using an anonymous site for watching Instagram stories privately, I notice that this happens to be the day Briar decides to play hooky with some friends at the local mall. So I head straight there. Strolling around the luxe section of the mall, which smells of the latest Carolina Herrera perfume and packed with upper-class suburban moms shopping and gossip, I turn into Macy's.

And just like I suspected, I see three young-looking girls crossing the store. The one in the middle possesses the face of the girl I've been stalking: the heart-shaped face of Briar Watson, completed with her upturned nose and forest green eyes framed with a wealth of long dark hair. She's also by far the best dressed in a baby blue cowl neck sweater, a black parka with a faux fur collar, and jeans.

Keeping her trained in my line of sight from the corner of my eyes, I station myself in the girls' path and begin to studiously loiter: picking up various items, studying them as if actually considering them, then setting them down again. I'm keeping an eye on the progress of the group, but still, I can't help relishing the feel of a cool leather belt or a slippery silk scarf in my hands. When the girls are only a row away, I pretend to stumble forward, knocking a whole table of purses to the ground. They fall across the polished wood floor like pieces of spilled candy. "Oh my god! I'm so sorry,"

I have purposefully tipped the table so that the clutches will fall in the girls' direct path; forcing the trio to either step carefully through them or kneel down to help. Unsurprisingly, they do the latter. Popular girls never leave something expensive on the ground, unless they'd been the one to toss it there.

"It's okay," says the girl on Briar's left; a pretty petite Asian girl wearing a beige silky jersey slip dress that matches her tan. She surreptitiously scans my outfit, taking in my cream-colored knit dress and brown boots, and her eyes immediately grow warm in evident approval.

"Oh my God, you're Briar," I say in that crucial instant before they started to walk away.

Briar's eyebrows knit in confusion. "Do I know you?"

"I'm...Carlotta's cousin, Kelsey. I'm here to visit her family at the moment actually," I fudge a simple lie.

Briar's eyes widen. "You're Carlotta's cousin?"

"Yeah yeah, she used to visit me and my family all the time. She told me about you," I say breezily, so glad my bleached blonde hair is tucked tightly into the chestnut brown wig I'm wearing. The lines roll easily off my tongue. "It's so sad what happened to her, right?"

A painful expression fixes Briar's face. "Yeah, it's really sad."

Taking a complete plunge, I add on: "I know this seems weird but is it ok if you tell me more about her life here? I'm her cousin and I never really got a chance to know her super well and I know you guys were like the best of friends...it would really help me get some closure."

Briar blink. She appears dubious for a little bit then she nods. "Sure, um, I'm free this afternoon."

Later that day, Briar Watson agrees to meet me by the organic cafe at an inn intended for rich out-of-town guests. With cushioned wicker chairs on French verandas, the cafe overlooks a beautiful beach with pristine pink-sand beaches. I'm ushered into the inn's immense lobby and into a large cafe full of gilded mirrors, tinkling crystal, and overly perfumed ladies with freshly blown-out hair. Briar is waiting for me on a round, white-clothed table that has been laid with silver tea service and a three-tiered silver tray covered with freshly baked scones, pots of homemade jam, and tiny cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

"Hey, thanks for meeting me," I say gratefully as I sit down on the chair. Briar generously pours me a cup of hot steaming grapefruit tea as I smother clotted cream on a warm scone and pop it into my mouth.

"No problem." She shakes her head, "I still can't believe you're Carlotta's cousin."

"Hmm yeah, my family just decided to pop up and visit Scott and Karen," I make sure to name-drop Carlotta's parents, which I've picked up from all the newspapers I've read on Carlotta.

"So what do you want to know?"

"Well, everything. Her life here. Whenever she came to New York, I swear to God she was always obsessed with this one guy Orson-"

"-Calloway," Briar finishes for me with a dry little laugh. "Yeah, I'd know. The Calloways used to holiday here all the time and trust me, Carlotta was obsessed with stalking him. She would try to get his attention at every party or hang out at places she knew he would be at. She said he was her ticket out."

"What do you mean?"

Briar sends me a weird look as I should know. "It's all Carlotta ever talked about. Getting out of Westhampton, going to a big city, becoming rich and famous. Orson is a Calloway and she thought if she got him, she'd be able to get her foot through the door."

My heart thumps. Here we are. We're getting to the meat of the story. I prop my chin on my elbow. "Right, I remember now. I remember she told me he got her pregnant."

"Oh, that?" Briar laughs without any mirth, "You know that he didn't get her pregnant, right? She wanted that to happen. She was bragging to me that afternoon before she disappeared that she finally got him where she wanted him."

Shock mars my face. "What?"

"Orson is a careful guy. He's a son of one of the world's most powerful men in the world, he's not going to get some random girl pregnant. Carlotta planned it, you know? She knew he would be forced to make her his girlfriend if she was having his kid so she poked holes in the condom to lock him down." Briar pours milk into her tea and sip, "I'm surprised she didn't tell you her idea if she told you she was pregnant."

Blood is rushing through my ears. This changes everything. You know, Orson might be crazy but this bitch he was messing within the Hamptons was even crazier. Who the fuck purposely gets pregnant at fifteen just to become someone's girlfriend?

It makes sense now. Why he must've been so angry- he must've found he was tricked into getting a girl pregnant. And Carmen must've been furious too- at some slimy suburban girl attempting to weasel her way into the ranks of the Elite through such deception. That's why Carmen was so quick to make her friends bury the girl's pregnant body, with such careless coldness.

In all this tangled, bloody chaos, I'm able to carve out my next move of action. With Carmen out of the way and this next kill shot, Orson's heart is mine for the taking.

-

dedicated to  xohrats.