Page 69 of Murder on the Upper East Side
The wall vibrated, and Hannah and Theo both jerked back. Something had slammed into it, on the other side.
‘Fucking Madison,’ Bash growled.
‘What does Madison—?’
‘It doesn’t matter. You chose Edward, and you stayed together for four years. Nothing can ever happen between us, and I have to live with that.’
‘Because Madison told you to stay away from me,’ Elle said flatly. ‘And ten years later, she was still calling the shots.’
‘Don’t act like she didn’t push your buttons too. We all hated her sometimes.’
‘And the endorsement?’ Elle asked, bringing the conversation back around. ‘You were going to give it, weren’t you?’
‘No,’ Bash snapped. ‘I vowed that this time, I wouldn’t let Madison win.’
Hannah sucked in a sharp breath. On the other side of the wall, Elle’s voice was low, soothing.
‘It’s okay. It’s going to be fine. When we get out of here, I’ll get to work. We’ll clean this up, together.’
Three hard raps on the door. Hannah’s back stiffened, but Theo pressed his finger to his lips. ‘Next door,’ he mouthed.
‘Bash, open up!’
Hannah exhaled. It was Edward.
‘I know you’re hiding out in there.’
‘Hang on,’ came Bash’s voice.
‘You abandoned me downstairs, you know? I can’t be assisting Crews and Wellesley and also managing the crowd. People are losing their patience. They’re exhausted and hungry and Chef Bernard is fussing over the tenderloin like it’s a little baby. He just kicked me out of the kitchen, and we need service,now.’
‘Give me three,’ Bash snapped. ‘I’ll talk to Bernard.’
The sound of Edward’s footsteps retreating down the hall was followed by silence in the MacAllister Room. Hannah and Theo locked eyes. Bash had refused to give into Madison’s blackmail, which could only mean one of two things: either he’d been planning to put his family’s company on the line, or he’d shut up Madison DuPont for good.
18 April 2017
Instagram
Image: Four upperclassmen stand on top of a lunch table in the Prescott courtyard with glittering gold letters P - R - O - M pinned to their blazers, serenading a group of giggling senior girls.
TheUpperEdgeWith junior–senior prom approaching, romance is in the air. Or is that the smell of desperation? Who will snare the date of their dreams – and who will get left in the dust?
@Alice_in_the_CityPromposals are sooooo 2012. Are we still doing this?
@PrescottPeach@Alice_in_the_City You’re just jealous no one’s asked you.
@Alice_in_the_City@PrescottPeach YET.
@Ty_MarsHaters gonna hate. She said yessss!
2520–21 April 2017
In the week following Bash’s truncated party on the Lenox Club roof, Hannah kept her head down, declining a competing series of overtures from Madison and Elle – tickets to everything from the Prescott Spring Fashion Show to Shawn Mendes at Madison Square Garden. All year, she’d vacillated between a barely contained obsession with the academy’s most elite and a series of broken resolutions to leave their drama behind. But this time, saying no felt different. It wasn’t a resolution. She just… didn’t care.
The relief was immediate, consuming. The duelling queens treated her to a series of puzzled and sometimes hostile looks, but she brushed it off. The weather was warming up, the sidewalks of the Upper East Side thrummed with tourists and joggers and nannies pushing $2,000 strollers, and there was a light at the end of the Prescott tunnel. Soon, all this would cease to matter.
Finally, her head felt clear. Graduation was two months away, and she had her sights set on the future.The revised draft of her senior seminar paper was on Mr Harris’s desk (and rumour had it, so was Bash’s, although the quality of his work remained to be seen). She was on track to graduate with straight As. And most importantly, she’d been accepted to both her top choice colleges. The decision felt huge, but thrilling. Should she enrol at UPenn’s prestigious Annenberg School for Communication, her longtime dream, or should she stay in New York, this city she’d only begun to know, and explore her interests in writing and reporting right here at NYU?
