Good Girls Lie
Author: J.T. Ellison
ISBN: 9780778330776
Publication Date: 12/30/19
Publisher: MIRA Books
Book Summary:
Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of
Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a
Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and
influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest.
Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing
exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and
beyond. But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.
In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. But when a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.
But look closely…because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. But when a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.
But look closely…because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.
J.T. Ellison’s pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.
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Excerpt:
1
THE HANGING
The girl’s body
dangles from the tall iron gates guarding the school’s entrance. A closer
examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal on a
winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her graduation
robe and multicolored stole as if knowing she’ll never see the achievement. It
rained overnight and the thin robe clings to her body, dew sparkling on the
edges. The last tendrils of dawn’s fog laze about her legs, which are five feet
from the ground.
There is no breeze,
no birds singing or squirrels industriously gathering for the long winter
ahead, no cars passing along the street, only the cool, misty morning air and
the gentle metallic creaking of the gates under the weight of the dead girl.
She is suspended in midair, her back to the street, her face hidden behind a
curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains.
Because of the
damage to her face, it will take them some time to officially identify her. In
the beginning, it isn’t even clear she attends the school, despite wearing The
Goode School robes.
But she does.
The fingerprints
will prove it. Of course, there are a few people who know exactly who is
hanging from the school’s gates. Know who, and know why. But they will never
tell. As word spreads of the apparent suicide, The Goode School’s all-female
student body begin to gather, paying silent, terrified homage to their fallen
compatriot. The gates are closed and locked—as they always are
overnight—buttressed on either side by an ivy-covered, ten-foot-high, redbrick
wall, but it tapers off into a knee-wall near the back entrance to the school
parking lot, and so is escapable by foot. The girls of Goode silently filter
out from the dorms, around the end of Old West Hall and Old East Hall to Front
Street—the main street of Marchburg, the small Virginia town housing the elite
prep school—and take up their positions in front of the gate in a wedge of
crying, scared, worried young women who glance over shoulders looking for the
one who is missing from their ranks. To reassure themselves this isn’t their
friend, their sister, their roommate.
Another girl
joins them, but no one notices she comes from the opposite direction, from
town. She was not behind the redbrick wall.
Whispers rise
from the small crowd, nothing loud enough to be overheard but forming a single
question.
Who is it? Who?
A solitary siren
pierces the morning air, the sound bleeding upward from the bottom of the hill,
a rising crescendo. Someone has called the sheriff.
Goode perches
like a gargoyle above the city’s small downtown, huddles behind its ivy-covered
brick wall. The campus is flanked by two blocks of restaurants, bars, and
necessary shops. The school’s buildings are tied together with
trolleys—enclosedglass-and-wood bridges that make it easy for the girls to move
from building to building in climate-controlled comfort. It is quiet,
dignified, isolated. As are the girls who attend the school; serious, studious.
Good. Goode girls are always good. They go on to great things.
The headmistress,
or dean, as she prefers to call herself, Ford Julianne Westhaven,
great-granddaughter several times removed from the founder of The Goode School,
arrives in a flurry, her driver, Rumi, braking the family Bentley with a
screech one hundred feet away from the gates. The crowd in the street blocks
the car and, for a moment, the sight of the dangling girl. No one stops to
think about why the dean might be off campus this early in the morning. Not
yet, anyway.
Dean Westhaven
rushes out of the back of the dove-gray car and runs to the crowd, her face
white, lips pressed firmly together, eyes roving. It is a look all the girls at
Goode recognize and shrink from.
The dean’s
irritability is legendary, outweighed only by her kindness. It is said she
alone approves every application to the school, that she chooses the Goode
girls by hand for their intelligence, their character. Her say is final.
Absolute. But for all her goodness, her compassion, her kindness, Dean
Westhaven has a temper.
She begins to
gather the girls into groups, small knots of natural blondes and brunettes and
redheads, no fantastical dye allowed. Some shiver in oversize school
sweatshirts and running shorts, some are still in their pajamas. The dean is
looking for the chick missing from her flock. She casts occasional glances over
her shoulder at the grim scene behind her. She, too, is unsure of the identity
of the body, or so it seems. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge the
truth.
The siren grows
to an earsplitting shriek and dies midrange, a soprano newly castrated. The
deputies from the sheriff’s office have arrived, the sheriff hot on their
heels. Within moments, they cordon off the gates, move the students back, away,
away. One approaches the body, cataloging; another begins taking discreet
photographs, a macabre paparazzi.
They speak to
Dean Westhaven, who quietly, breathlessly, admits she hasn’t approached the
body and has no idea who it might be.
She is lying,
though. She knows. Of course, she knows. It was inevitable.
The sheriff, six
sturdy feet of muscle and sinew, approaches the gate and takes a few shots with
his iPhone. He reaches for the foot of the dead girl and slowly, slowly turns
her around.
The eerie
morning silence is broken by the words, soft and gasping, murmurs moving
sinuously through the crowd of girls, their feet shuffling in the morning
chill, the fog’s tendrils disappearing from around the posts.
They say her
name, an unbroken chain of accusation and misery.
Ash.
Ash.
Ash.
2
THE LIES
There are truths, and there are lies, and
then there is everything that really happened, which is where you and I will
meet. My truth is your lie, and my lie is your truth, and there is a vast
expanse between them.
Take, for
example, Ash Carlisle.
Six feet tall,
glowing skin, a sheaf of blond hair in a ponytail. She wears black jeans with
rips in the knees and a loose greenand-white plaid button-down with white
Adidas Stan Smiths; casual, efficient travel clothes. A waiter delivers a fresh
cup of tea to her nest in the British Airways first-class lounge, and when she
smiles her thanks, he nearly drops his tray—so pure and happy is that smile.
The smile of an innocent.
Or not so
innocent? You’ll have to decide that for yourself. Soon.
She’s perfected
that smile, by the way. Practiced it. Stood in the dingy bathroom of the flat
on Broad Street and watched herself in the mirror, lips pulling back from her
teeth over and over and over again until it becomes natural, until her eyes
sparkle and deep dimples appear in her cheeks. It is a full-toothed smile, her
teeth straight and blindingly white, and when combined with the china-blue eyes
and naturally streaked blond hair, it is devastating.
Isn’t this what
a sociopath does? Work on their camouflage? What better disguise is there than
an open, thankful, gracious smile? It’s an exceptionally dangerous tool, in the
right hands.
And how does a
young sociopath end up flying first class, you might ask? You’ll be assuming
her family comes from money, naturally, but let me assure you, this isn’t the
case. Not at all. Not really. Not anymore.
No, the dean of
the school sent the ticket.
Why?
Because Ash
Carlisle leads a charmed life, and somehow managed to hoodwink the dean into
not only paying her way but paying for her studies this first term, as well. A
full scholarship, based on her exemplary intellect, prodigy piano playing, and
sudden, extraordinary need. Such a shame she lost her parents so unexpectedly.
Yes, Ash is
smart. Smart and beautiful and talented, and capable of murder. Don’t think for
a moment she’s not. Don’t let her fool you.
Sipping the tea,
she types and thinks, stops to chew on a nail, then reads it again. The essay
she is obsessing over gained her access to the prestigious, elite school she is
shipping off to. The challenges ahead—transferring to a new school, especially
one as impossible to get into as The Goode School—frighten her, excite her,
make her more determined than ever to get away from Oxford, from her past.
A new life. A
new beginning. A new chapter for Ash.
But can you ever
escape your past?
Ash sets down
the tea, and I can tell she is worrying again about fitting in. Marchburg,
Virginia—population five hundred on a normal summer day, which expands to seven
hundred once the students arrive for term—is a long way from Oxford, England.
She worries about fitting in with the daughters of the DC elite—daughters of
senators and congressmen and ambassadors and reporters and the just plain
filthy rich. She can rely on her looks—she knows how pretty she is, isn’t vain
about it, exactly, but knows she’s more than acceptable on the looks scale—and
on her intelligence, her exceptional smarts. Some would say cunning, but I
think this is a disservice to her. She’s both booksmart and street-smart, the
rarest of combinations. Despite her concerns, if she sticks to the story, she
will fit in with no issues.
The only strike
against her, of course, is me, but no one knows about me.
No one can ever
know about me.
Author Bio:
J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 20 novels, and the EMMY-award winning co-host of A WORD ON WORDS, Nashville's premier literary show. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in 26 countries. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.
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