The Unfairfolk (Valenbound Book 1)

by Sara Wolf

  It.

  I laugh despairingly and shake my head. Who am I kidding? I’m so fucked up. Messed up deep down where it counts.

  I stuff my phone in my pocket and leave my room. Ana’s door is closed, and I pause just before I slide the homework beneath her door crack. The dark thoughts start to crawl up my neck, into my ears. They come like a wave, like a snake, like a curl of fog on a windless day. Why has Ana been so friendly? Why is she so friendly with me already? Who would do extra work for someone they just met? It doesn’t make any sense. She could just be nice, maybe.

  Or she could be planning something.

  What does she get out of this? Nothing. She can’t be this nice. Not this fast. No one is. Or if they are, they’re just using that niceness as a mask. An angle to stab you from when you least expect it.

  No, c’mon brain. We talked about this.

  I know it’s paranoid. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it still lingers in my shaking fingers, in the trembling French words on the paper. Google translate exists, and I can’t depend on her forever. Or at all. Even if she’s not trying to get an angle on me, once she figures out what I’m really like - how immature and anxious and paranoid and fucked-up I am - she probably won’t wanna be my friend for much longer. I don’t like seeing blood. I don’t like getting touchy. There’s plenty of girls to be friends with who are much easier. Friendlier. If I can’t do this much my own, it just means I’m relying on others. And that always comes back to bite me in the ass.

  Weak.

  I stuff the homework in my pocket and take the spiral stairs two at a time down to Alistair-Dickhead-Strickland’s Funtime Chopping Block, AKA detention.

  The campus looks totally different at night - all the green grass turning into long stretches of dark silk. The air smells piercingly like fresh flowers and dew. The auroras still hang iridescent in the sky, even brighter now that it’s gotten darker, and I swallow a gasp. People meander back and forth, their stuffy uniforms abandoned for casual clothes at last. Well, as casual as you can get with the words BALENCIAGA and TOM FORD splashed everywhere. What’s up with couture and names in huge capital letters? It’s like they don’t want you to take a shit without remembering how expensive what you’re wearing is. It’s so status-symbol-y. So tacky. Everywhere I look, some brand name screams out at me on t-shirts, jackets, hats - even freakin’ socks. A guy walks by absolutely covered in brand names and I clear my throat politely.

  “Are they…are they paying you for that advertising?”

  “More than Pizza Hut is paying you,” The guy says, wrinkling his face at my sweater like it smells.

  “This is - !” I splutter. “This is handmade! It’s art, you swine! You cretin! You absolute buffoon!”

  He doesn’t stick around to hear my excellent retort slash insult, zooming away on a hoverboard. Ana was right - sometimes this place really is more like a display case than a school. I exhale, my bangs fluttering rebelliously, but the whole world’s too pretty right now to be peeved. The four chateaus look like giant boats floating on a grass sea, their windows warm gold squares of light. And then there’s Knight Durand. From certain angles you can see one of its spires peeking up from the trees, broken and mossy, it’s empty windows catching starlight and glittering black. Like eyes.

  Like teeth.

  I shake the creepy thought out and trudge towards Knight Augustin, dreading every too-fresh breath of air. Gaggles of students leisurely walk the campus in an attempt at freedom before curfew kicks in at ten-thirty. Between the lazy crowd, I spot a flash of gold. Gold hair, lit by the soft lampposts lining the walkways. It’s far off, but I squint - Ciel. Ciel for sure.

  My heart does a backflip by its ventricles, and I catch myself freezing up and staring at him. He’s staring too - not at me, but into the deep, dark woods that surround the school. His silvery eyes fixate into the pine-brush shadows with a quiet intensity. He’s not looking at Knight Durand - the only thing that’s in the forest to stare at, really. He’s looking everywhere but at Durand. It feels like he’s searching for something, for the smallest sign. Can he see something I can’t? Does he know something about the woods I don’t?

  I try to look where he’s looking, but there’s nothing. Just darkness and whispering tree branches.

  Maybe you should leave the guy in peace, Lilith. Like a normal person would.

  Point taken, brain-voice. I trudge towards Knight Augustin again, this time at double speed to warm my knee up. It’s weirdly comforting to see couples walking around, holding hands, sneaking in PDA - just like Northview. Just like any high school. Theoretically, this place would be perfect for romantic walks. The lights, the architecture, the flowers, the fountains.

  I smirk. “I can always take myself here on dates, I guess.”

  Realistically, that’s the only date I’m ever going to get. I know from three years of personal high school observation; guys like average height girls who are cute and sweet. Conventionally pretty. Girls like average height girls, who are cute and sweet and conventionally pretty. Everybody does. And here I am. My eyes are too heavy-lidded, my cheeks too round. But more importantly I can’t seem to ever lower my voice. Can’t stop swearing. I argue. I’m dramatic. I talk about poo and piss too much. Who would want that, really? Like, really? Who would even want someone who can’t stand being touched? That’s the whole point of being in a relationship, isn’t it? To touch. Sex. Kissing. Shit, just hand-holding. Impossible, impossible hand-holding.

  And even if someone didn’t mind the fact I can’t do all that stuff, hell, I’m picky. The chances that someone I like would like me back are slim to none. I don’t know math, but I know how gambling works. And if anybody came to my table I’d take them aside and say in all honesty; ‘The odds are pretty shitting miserable on this one, mate’. Or something. With or without the random Australian accent.

  One to a million odds.

  I look back at Ciel - that golden spot in the dark. I want to believe he could be the one. Not The One (because I’m not that fuckin’ naive, c’mon). Just. My one chance. Ugh. What am I even saying? I’m a whirlwind, I’m a storm, I’m a ghost. I believe in things with all my heart. I say the things I feel, I know the things I feel. I fight and I scratch and I bleed, and I never go down quietly. I never stay still. I don’t know how to be nice, or gentle, or kind - not the way people want. Not the way people think is right.

  I’m not right.

  It’s so easy for everybody else, isn’t it? I look around at the beautiful couples smiling at each other, squeezing each others’ hands and taking selfies. It’s so easy for them. Like someone, tell them you wanna get Starbucks together. Like someone, send ‘em a text asking to meet. Like someone, like their snap, talk in the dms. Like someone, just smile at them. Flirt with them. But it’s not that easy for me. Love isn’t easy. It arrives hard and blazing and screaming, or not at all. I want it to be easy. I want to be one of them, laughing together. Holding hands like it’s easy. Kissing like its easy. I want to fall in and out of love easily, without the world ending, without dying on the inside for the first and last time. I want someone kind. I want someone gentle. I want someone who, above all, understands me. Understands what it’s like to be a storm, and when to hold me until it passes. But who would do that, for a girl who can’t stop saying fuck? For a girl who makes piss jokes? For a girl who argues until she can’t anymore?

  For a girl who can’t trust anyone?

  Who would want to hold fire, when all it does is burn?

  Save it for the pillow, Lilith.

  The brain-voice is right. Again. Too much angst, not enough detention getting done and over with. I swallow and walk in the other direction, away from the couples. Away from Ciel. Away from what feels like hope.

  Alistair’s easy to spot, even in the dark - towering over the hydrangea bushes, staring off into the distance quietly like a grumpy gargoyle. The wind ruffles the edges of his plain leather jacket and the plastic trash bags clenched in his fist. I
stop in my tracks. His eyes aren’t those ready, unsheathed claws like I saw this morning. His silhouette gloams softly against the night, his proud nose and jaw outlined in light. For a second, by himself, with no one else around for him to glare or harp at, he looks almost…peaceful.

  I inhale. “Hi -”

  “No,” Alistair breaks the reverie by tossing a trash bag at my feet and immediately walking away. “We’re doing this without talking.”

  “But!” I stumble after him, clutching the bag. “What if I have something important to say?”

  “Then say it.”

  “I -”

  “To someone who cares.” He cuts me off. I fume. Elegantly. With a lot of hissing.

  “You can’t act like you’re too cool for school when you’re currently walking inside of a school.”

  He ignores me, moving fast towards the wooded back parts, where school lawn meets forest. Catching up to his long strides is torture in this cold air with my knee, but I grit my teeth and push on. It hits me for the millionth time just how many trees there are out here. Like, I saw Twilight. I knew trees and forests existed, like, hypothetically. The same hypothetical way you know other galaxies exist - through stories and pictures. Nobody tells you pine trees smell so fuckin’ good - like a million Christmases. A million night-darkened, slightly-creepy Christmases, but. Still. We stand outside the forest proper for a second, in from of the wall of Christmas trees, and then Alistair starts forward.

  “We’re -” I stammer. “We’re going in?”

  “That’s where the trash is, yes.” He drones. I follow, ducking under branches and around trunks. All the light from the campus disappears in here, swallowed up by bark and soil, the shadows moving as the wind moves and suddenly I get why cavemen invented fire - because this shit big scary.

  Something in the dirt pulls my eye just then - many somethings, small and white and round.

  “Are these…mushrooms?” I breathe. Another hypothetical I never saw growing up in LA, grocery stores aside. But they’re here now, in the wild. Peeking through the mulch of the pine-needle floor is a pitch-perfect circle of adorable white mushrooms, some caps big, others tiny, but all of them plump and round.

  “Fairy ring,” I hear Alistair say ahead of me. “That’s what they call them when they grow in a circle like that.”

  I straighten. “I’m surprised no one’s trampled it down yet.”

  “Right,” He drones. “You’re American. Respect for nature is a new concept to you.”

  “Or maybe you Europeans are just super-superstitious. Hellastitious.”

  “I’m going to pretend - charitably, mind you - that you did not just say that.”

  “You can try!” I crow. “But it was said. And I regret none of it!”

  Alistair whirls to say something, but he cuts off, his gaze riveting over my shoulder. I glance behind me and bungee-jump outta my under-moisturized epidermis at the sight of two massive guys in suits suddenly standing there, perfectly still. When did they get here? Why didn’t I hear them? The forest floor’s littered with crackly branches.

  “Is everything alright, Strickland?” One of the men asks. They both wear impenetrable black sunglasses - the ultra-douchey-especially-at-night kind. I thought Rafe was huge, and Alistair was tall, but these guys make them look like ants. They’re both moonshine-bald and nearly half as tall as the freakin’ tree they’re standing next to, their immaculate black suits straining at the seams to keep all their muscles in. They’re famous-basketball-player huge. Evolution-having-a-good-laugh huge. Security. These guys’ve gotta be the security Von Arx warned me about. They’re nothing like the polo wearing, visor-sunburned, beer-gut, distantly-related-to-the-principal guys who ride around in golf carts back at Northview. These guys are legit. The real freakin’ deal. Professionals in suits. Pro-fresh-ionals.

  Alistair’s tone shifts suddenly; going crisp and quick, not an ounce of his usual tired drawl to be heard.

  “We’re fine. I’m accompanying this student. She’s doing detention for running in the halls.”

  One of the security guys looks between us for a long second, face unreadable and eyes completely obscured by those stupid sunglasses. Finally, he nods.

  “You’re too close to Durand.”

  Alistair slides his eyes over to him, gaze weirdly flat. “Am I?”

  “Construction is still ongoing. The risk of falling debris is high,” The guard insists.

  I squint into the woods - sure enough, Durand’s close; way closer than I thought. It looms like a skeleton, an empty ribcage with no organs, all its bones darkened by the night. I can see the path leading up to it, near-overgrown with wildflowers and blackberry thickets punctuated by half-rotten planks of wood and piles of discarded bricks. Broken glass glitters like scales at its mouth - the massive double doors the only wood still untouched by the moss. Suspiciously untouched. It’s clean as a whistle, while every other part of the chateau is rotting. And if it’s so ‘under refurbishment’, where are the machines? The cranes, the cement mixers, the trucks hauling stuff in and out? There isn’t a single tire mark on the overgrown path. Not a one. What the fuck?

  “Noted,” Alistair drawls. “We’ll move ourselves.”

  The security guys start lumbering towards us and I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for them to break me in two with their pinkies. But they just walk right past, a faint flower scent following both of them. Rose? Definitely rose. Rose is one of those easy, unmistakable smells. The shadows of the forest swallow their inky black suits up quickly, and when I’m sure they’re not gonna lunge out of the trees at us, I turn to Alistair.

  “Whew. Didn’t expect ‘em to be that big. Let’s hope they don’t get paid per pound of muscle, huh? Uh, wait. ‘Gram’. I meant gram.”

  Alistair says nothing. And because I’m both beautiful and intelligent, I decide to poke the hornet’s nest.

  “Even your security has a dress code, huh? Fancy suits and rose cologne.”

  He snorts. “If you patrolled a well-maintained rose garden daily, you’d end up smelling somewhat like roses, too.”

  “Somewhat? They fuckin’ reek of ‘em.”

  “Your nose works surprisingly well.” He cuts. “Much better than your brain.”

  “I’m good at sniffing people. Not-weirdly.”

  “Like a dog.”

  “Or,” I posit. “A cool superhuman with cool superpowers.”

  Alistair ignores my self-compliment and strides waist-deep into the woods, the two of us leaving Durand behind - way behind - before he turns and throws me a pair of gardening gloves.

  “You’ve got a half-hour. Make it count.”

  He pulls his own gloves on and starts searching the ground - coming up with an empty soda bottle in seconds.

  “You’re gonna clean too?” I ask, surprised.

  “No, I’m going to pick it all up and dump it back on the ground when I’m done. Out of pure spite.”

  “Wouldn’t put it past you,” I mutter, pulling my gloves on.

  “We’ve established we know nothing about each other,” He says lightly, wild bangs shading his eyes as he bends down. “So maybe cool it with the insults.”

  I glower and pick up an empty cigarette pack. Bend, pick. Bend, pick. I make sure not to get too close to him, always parallel so that if he tries any funny stuff, I’ll have time to dodge at least. With all this bending, and the fact it’s way colder in these mountains at night than I thought it’d be, my knee aches like its being stabbed. I should’ve worn my brace. And this is just October, still fall - it’s gonna get even worse over the winter! California has mild winters, but I’m pretty sure Switzerland doesn’t. Skiing is a big deal here. Which means being cold is a big deal. I swallow the pain as best I can until I notice my shoe laces are untied. Again? This school is cursed with bad shoelace karma. I bend over to tie them, but my knee stabs at me with a rusty knife.

  I gasp softly. “Fucké.”

  “You alright, new girl?” Alistair’s
voice reverberates.

  “Fine! Mother Nature tried to shank me with a thorn is all,” I say. I can’t show any weakness here - and definitely not in front of Prickland of all people. I might’ve called his nuts little in front of the entire school, but I’ve still got pride to maintain, damnit! Our shuffling footsteps and the puffs of our white breaths into the chilly air are the only things breaking the work-rhythm, and even with a bad-knee it’s kind of calming after the buttso nuttso first day I’ve had.

  “What state?”

  His voice ruins it all. I look wearily at Alistair, who’s collapsed on a stump nonchalantly, trash bag half-full at his feet.

  “Pardon?” I say with an overwrought French accent. “What happened to doing this without talking?”

  Alistair ignores me and tidily picks up a soda can. “The U.S. is a big place.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. Or should I say no shit Poirot? He was Belgian, right? Like you.”

  He massages the space between his eyebrows like he’s in pain. “I’m just trying to make friendly conversation, here.”

  “So am I!”

  “You’re terrible at it.”

  “Thank you,” I smile.

  “What state?” Alistair repeats.

  “Mindyourownbusinessville.”

  “Fascinating name,” He sighs. “Is it indigenous?”

  “Everything over there is technically indigenous. We stole it from them, remember?” I pause. “Why do you care?”

  “About colonialism? Historically, it’s been a serious problem -”

  “About where I’m from,” I correct. He leans back, green eyes banded with iron and framed by the slightest shrug. Not even a shrug. More like a shoulder-twitch.

  “New people are rare around here.”

  “Okay, but I’m a person, not some holographic Pokemon card you can collect. So unkindly fuck off.”

  He stands up from the stump (angry?) and I scrabble backwards, pine needles and leaves flying. My heart rabbits around in my chest, my knee throbbing at the effort. I tentatively look up at his face, the pale lavender aurora in the sky haloing his head. He’s stopped moving.