Frenzy

  Contents

  Synopsis

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chatpter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Frenzy

  by V. J. Chambers

  Cori Donovan is dead.

  When she was alive, she was a bundle of opposites. She was a freshman college honors student. She wrote poetry and plays. And she sold ecstasy on the side. She slept around.

  Molly Colligan moves into Cori’s old room, starting the spring semester at a new school, hoping to escape from the dark secrets of her past. But it seems that darkness follows her. Cori may be gone, but her absence seems to saturate everything in Molly’s new life. Before long, Molly finds herself using the same drugs that Cori used, hanging out with same people Cori hung out with, kissing the same boys that Cori kissed, and ultimately in trouble with the same dangerous people that Cori knew.

  Levi Reed, Cori’s drug dealing partner, wanted to use Cori’s connections to get close to the mysterious Professor X, the biggest ecstasy cook this side of the Atlantic. Now that Cori’s gone, he figures Molly’s the next best thing. Using her gets tougher when he realizes he just might care about her. But he has his own past and his own secrets, and he can’t get involved with a girl like Molly.

  However, they’re both twisted up in Cori’s past now, and to get free, they must untangle her secrets—without getting caught on the snags of their own.

  FRENZY

  by

  V. J. Chambers

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jesus, I thought. How much money is that?

  I held an envelope bulging with hundreds, fifties, and twenties. It was thick. Too thick to close. The flap strained to meet the seal.

  I’d found it under the mattress of the bed in my dorm room.

  On the front, written in sparkly pink ink: Prof. X, #3.

  I pulled the wad of cash out of the envelope and began to count it.

  I counted the hundreds.

  Nine.

  Nine hundred dollars.

  I moved onto the fifties. Six hundred more.

  So far… Fifteen hundred dollars.

  I moved on to the twenties.

  I lost count.

  I started over.

  Twenty. Forty. Sixty. A hundred. Twenty. Forty. Sixty. A hundred. Twenty. Fort—

  “Why is this door unlocked?” interrupted a female voice. An annoyed female voice, high pitched and sort of preppy sounding.

  Startled, I thrust the money back in the envelope and shoved it back under the mattress.

  The door to my dorm room opened. The dorms here were set up so that there were two alcoves at the far end of the room, a partition wall between them. The beds went sideways, spanning from the partition to the far walls of the room.

  My heart pounded, and I stepped out around the partition. “Um… hello?”

  When I’d moved my stuff in earlier that morning along with my dad and sister, I’d noticed that the other side of the room was occupied. There were movie posters stuck to the wall. The Hunger Games. Breaking Dawn. Les Miserables. The bedspread was fuzzy and purple, but the bed hadn’t been made. I’d seen a hint of rumpled flannel sheets. A few shimmering skirts or tops were flung over the door of the open wardrobe. As dorm rooms went, there hadn’t been enough there for me to really gauge the personality of my roommate, but she at least hadn’t seemed super strange or anything.

  A girl stood in the doorway. She was pretty. Blonde hair in a ponytail. A pug nose.

  Which she was wrinkling at me. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  “Um, I’m Molly,” I said. “I guess we’re, um, roommates?”

  “What?” She looked me up and down, still making a face like she smelled something bad. “No fucking way. They can’t move someone in here already.”

  I gulped. Great. She hated me. “Sorry,” I said. “They, um, said that the dorms are overcrowded. The other girl who went through orientation with me has to live in a study lounge with four other girls. They have bunk beds in there and stuff. It looks packed, but they have a sink and full-sized refrigerator and a stove and stuff. I guess it’s supposed to be for the whole wing to share, but they don’t have space for all the students.”

  Shut up, Molly, I told myself. I was babbling because I was nervous. I really didn’t want to live with a girl that hated me.

  My new roommate narrowed her eyes. “You can’t be my roommate. I already have a roommate.”

  “Uh… they said she left,” I said.

  “Well, that’s what Cori said, and that’s what I told them, but I didn’t think they believed me.” She shook her head. “I was supposed to have a single.”

  I bit my lip. “Sorry. Like I said, I think the dorms are really crowded.”

  “Right. Really crowded.” She mocked me, raising the pitch of her voice.

  I looked down at my shoes. “Look, I didn’t think you were coming until the weekend. They said that only new students were moving in today.”

  “Oh, I’ve been here over winter break,” she said. “Paid the extra and everything.”

  “I’m quiet.” I turned and walked back to my bed, which I’d been attempting to put sheets on. “You won’t even know I’m here.”

  “Sure I won’t,” she said sarcastically. She opened the door again. I heard her dialing her phone. Then her voice, shrill. “Forget coming over here, Parker. You’re not going to believe this…. No. I have a fucking roommate…. I don’t fucking know why. She’s just here.” The door slammed.

  I winced.

  I waited for a few minutes until I was sure she was gone.

  Then I dug the envelope of money back out. I resumed counting it.

  When I was done, I counted it again.

  Two thousand dollars in cash.

  What the hell was that much money doing under my mattress?

  * * *

  “Sorry,” said my roommate. She was standing back in the doorway to the room. An hour or two had passed. I’d stashed the money in the top drawer of my desk underneath my notebooks. I didn’t know why it was there or what I was going to do about it. “You must think I’m a real bitch.”

  “I didn’t think that,” I said.

  “It’s okay. I was horrible. I’m really sorry.” She strode across the room and offered me her hand. “Can we start over? I’m Jill Rogers.”

  I peered down at her hand and then took it gingerly. “Molly Colligan.”

  She gave me a big grin. “Hi, Molly. I swear I’m not usually that awful. I’m going to blame hormones.”

  I made myself smile back. “Right.” Honestly, though, I always felt weird when girls said stuff like that. It was like we were all supposed to be in the same club because we menstruated or something. “It’s okay.”

  She put a hand to her chest. “My old roommate, Cori? Cori Donovan?” She paused as if I should recognize the name.

  I shook my head. “Uh, I’m new here. I don’t know anyone.”

 
“Okay,” she said. “Well, if you’d been going to school here before, you’d totally know who she was. Anyway, Cori stormed out of here about a month ago, right at the beginning of break. She said she wasn’t coming back, and she cleared out all her stuff. And… I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together. “I guess I didn’t really believe her. I thought she’d show up. But she must have been serious. She’s gone.”

  Oh. So Jill missed her friend, then. I guess it made sense that she’d be upset to see me. I nodded. “I get it.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Really, it’s no big deal. Like I said, I’m quiet. I’m not going to bother you or anything.”

  She reached out and grabbed both of my hands. “No, I don’t want it to be like that. You saw me on my worst behavior, but I’m usually not a raving psycho, I swear. If we’re going to live together, I want us to be friends.”

  “Sure.” But I kind of wished she’d let go of my hands.

  “Let me make it up to you,” she said.

  “Really, it’s not a big deal.” Could I pull my hands away without seeming rude?

  “No, it is. It’s a huge deal. It’s your first day here, and you’re new, you don’t know anyone. Then the first person you meet bites your head off.”

  “You miss Cori. It wasn’t personal. Seriously, I’m over it.” I tried to slowly pull my hands away.

  She grasped them tighter. “I know. I’ll take you to a party tonight. I’ll introduce you to all the cool people.”

  “Uh…”

  “Come on, it’ll be fun.” She grinned. “At the very least, we can get to know each other.”

  Well, I had come to Keene College for a fresh start. And I did want to meet new people. “What kind of party?”

  She dropped my hands.

  Thank god.

  She studied her fingernails, wrinkling her nose again. “Um, it’s kind of a rave thing.”

  “A rave?”

  She looked at me. “I know that sounds so lame and like 1997, right?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I remember ‘97 as a pretty good year. I was three. I think I liked Teletubbies.”

  She laughed. “You’re funny. That’s cool. I think I’m going to like you, Molly.”

  Was that funny? I wasn’t sure if I’d been joking or not. Honestly, everything was beginning to seem really weird. First, I found a wad of cash in my room. Then my roommate hated me. Now, she liked me? I was confused.

  “Anyway,” Jill continued, “it’s not really a rave or anything. It’s in Guy Bancroft’s basement, and there’s going to be a band or something. And maybe some people spinning later. I don’t know. Sometimes I get into that techno shit when I’m rolling, but usually, it’s sort of monotonous.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “But there’ll be beer and… other treats will also be easy to procure if you’re into that.” She raised her eyebrows.

  I realized that was a question. “You mean, like ecstasy?”

  “And maybe some weed and stuff,” she said. “But no pressure or anything. If you’re not into that or whatever.”

  “Uh… I’m not, you know, opposed,” I said. “I’ve smoked weed before a little bit, but I’m not a pothead or anything.”

  “Me either.” She considered. “Well, okay, maybe that’s a lie. Maybe I kind of am.” She giggled. “You want to smoke a bowl?”

  I looked around. “Here?”

  “Yeah, there’s no one in the dorm yet,” she said. “No one to smell anything. Like you said, everyone will move in over the weekend.” She scurried across her room and dug through one of her clothes drawers. She came out with a glass piece that was swirly purple. I guessed she liked purple. She also pulled out a tiny plastic bag of marijuana. It wasn’t the slightly green stuff that usually resembled oregano, like I was used to. Instead, there were two clumps of leaves covered in veins and crystals. When she opened the bag, the aroma of weed hit the air strong and cloying.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Really nice kind bud,” she said, grinning proudly. “This stuff is awesome. We’ll only need a couple of hits. You want some?”

  “Sure,” I said. Why not? She was trying to make friends with me, after all. And I had to admit that stuff smelled better than the badly rolled joints that my ex-boyfriend Duncan used to share with me.

  * * *

  “So, um, Cori took all of her stuff?” I was sprawled in a big, purple bean bag chair that sat on Jill’s side of the dorm room.

  Jill lay on her bed, her head hanging upside down, her blonde hair falling like a curtain, brushing the floor.

  I felt like the limbs of my body were weighed down with concrete blocks. Also my eyelids felt very heavy.

  “Yeah,” said Jill. “She and I got in this fight, and she was all, ‘I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back.’ And then she left. And I went out that night, because I was upset. But when I got back in the morning, all her stuff was gone. The whole place was cleaned out. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Whoa.” I peered at the ceiling. It was one of those drop ceilings with panels. One of them was stained. The stain was the shape of an elephant.

  “Cori was kind of a bitch.”

  “I thought she was your friend.”

  “She was. But she was annoying. She was one of those girls who’s good at everything, you know? Smart and talented. And pretty too. And nice on top of it, so you couldn’t really hate her for it.”

  “I thought you said she was a bitch.” Was Jill not making sense, or was I just really fucking high?

  “She was. But… you kind of got the impression she didn’t mean to be. Things just happened to Cori. She got caught up in everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… Well, for example, you’d go to the dining hall with Cori, and she’d ask you to save her spot in line while she went to the bathroom. And she’d be gone this really long time, and you’d be wondering if you should wait for her, or just go through the line anyway. You’d let a few people go ahead of you, but then you’d just say, ‘Screw it,’ and get your food. And then you’d sit down someplace alone to eat it. And then right as you were finishing up, she’d sit down at the table with you, and she’d have these two really hot guys with her, and she’d be roping you into going to some party with them or something. She wouldn’t be mad that you didn’t wait for her to eat, and she’d be friendly, like it was no big deal she abandoned you. And whenever she was around you, she always acted like you were, you know, her favorite person on earth. But after a while, you noticed that she did that to everyone. And you weren’t sure if it pissed you off or not. Because you knew that whenever you were around Cori, everything was totally amazing. You met all the coolest people. You did all the coolest stuff.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “Does that make any sense?”

  I squinted at the ceiling. Actually, I was pretty sure that the stain was the shape of a buffalo, not an elephant. “Maybe.”

  “She slept with my boyfriend. That’s why we argued.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s really… bitchy.”

  “I know.” Jill stared at the floor. “She slept with lots of guys. She had a boyfriend and everything, but it didn’t matter. She always acted like it was a big accident or something. Like she just happened to end up spreading her legs for everyone.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “My ex was a jerk, anyway. I dumped him, and I ended up with someone way cooler right away.”

  “That’s good.” I bobbed my head in a semblance of a nod. The only problem was that I didn’t seem to be able to stop nodding. I just kept bobbing my head. “That’s really good.”

  She giggled, lifting her head. Her hair was in her face. “Are you high, Molly?”

  I giggled too. “Maybe.”

  “You totally are.”

  I shrugged, still laughing.

/>   She shoved her hair out of her face. “That stuff is good, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever really felt like this before. The weed I smoked before was… different.”

  “Holy shit, yeah. Trust me, it is very easy to get spoiled around here.”

  “I can’t turn into a pothead,” I said. “I have to get good grades and stuff.”

  “Right. We’re in the honors dorm, after all. You’re in the honors program too, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Maybe that stain wasn’t an animal at all. Maybe it was a star. A blobby star.

  “How come you decided to come here?”

  “I was going to Princeton. But I went through a really bad breakup. My boyfriend Duncan and I—we were together since our sophomore year of high school. Once, when we were drunk, we even named all our future kids.”

  “No way. It was serious?”

  “It was way serious.” I stopped looking at the ceiling. Thinking about this depressed me. “Anyway, it’s over now. But I couldn’t handle being near him. I dropped all my classes in November, and I started looking for somewhere else to go. Keene took me.”

  “Keene takes everyone.”

  I laughed. “I know. That’s why I transferred here.”

  Jill sat up. “The honor’s program is good, though. They bring in guest professors and stuff. And you have to write a thesis.”

  “Yeah.” I looked down at my hands. Did they look bigger than usual? “Thing is, I guess I don’t really care as much. Last year in high school, it seemed really important that I get into a good college and all of that. Now…”

  “Not so much?”

  “Now, it just seems important to be far away from Duncan.” And everyone else from my life. I didn’t want to be reminded of any of it.

  She wrinkled up her nose. “You know what? I don’t even know him, and I already hate him.”

  I grinned. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “We’re going to be good friends, Molly. I can just tell.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think we are.”

  She flounced up off the bed. “Um, so why’d you ask about Cori’s stuff? Did you find something?”

  “Uh…” Did I want to tell her about the money? “No, nothing. But I thought if I did see something…”