by Sara Wolf
Trevino slows down, and then stops. She’s quiet for a long moment. At first I think she’s blowing me off, and then; “Bianca.”
“Wha - who?”
“Bianca,” She says, turning to me. “That’s my first name.”
“Oh. Okay. I’m Lilith -”
“I know who you are,” she mutters, looking me up and down. “Or at least I thought I did. You’re not the flighty clown I originally surmised.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I’m very good at pinning people down,” she says, her ballerina neck held long and proud. “I know how to categorize people; their motivations, their personalities, their weaknesses. I’ve managed sixteen years by doing it. It’s rare when someone comes along and defies my initial expectations.”
Her words are just words, but they sound so calculated. So cold, in a way that’s different from ferocious claw Alistair or lingering acid Maria. Her loneliness yawns like a canyon, a void in space, a force of nature all its own. Nothingness, where feeling should be. She looks back at me.
“Von Arx isn’t an irrational woman by any means. There could be a kernel of truth in the blood promise story. I’ll look in the old records in the library.”
“Wouldn’t that, like, cut into your studying-for-Cambridge-Law time?”
She sniffs. “I’ve read the textbooks already.”
“Wha -” I look down at the five-hundred page monster in my hands. “This…this whole thing?”
“And the other four.”
I gape. “How?! This is only, like, the second month of the school year -”
“I have a knack,” She says softly. “For remembering. Besides, I can’t trust you to efficiently search for a topic like blood promises, let alone know how to handle old texts with a modicum of respect. So I’ll do it.”
My chest glows. After the scare in Von Arx’s office, after Lionel and Alistair being less than helpful…it feels so nice to have someone offer to actually help me. Joy bubbles up.
“If I was the touchy type I’d grab your hand or hug you or something.”
“That’s alright.” She sniffs. “I’m not the touchy type, either.”
“What type are you, then?” I tilt my head.
“The type that wants to finish school, and be left alone.”
“By me.”
“By everyone,” She corrects. She starts to walk away, and I scrounge up something, anything, as thanks.
“Los Angeles, California.” I blurt. “My mom’s a nurse.”
Her footsteps pause on the polished floor. “Your father?”
“Gone.”
The word rings hollow in the high ceilings. Trevi - I mean, Bianca - takes it in for a beat. And then;
“Livorno. Italy,” She says. “Orphan.”
There’s a silence, and all I have is that damp feeling of sadness on my tongue where words should be as I watch her walk away. Did Bianca have anyone growing up? Did Alistair have anyone who was kind to him when he was young? Did Ciel have anyone there for him, at all?
Or have these Silvere kids always just been on their own?
Friday is American day at lunch. Which apparently means burgers and French fries. I feel less homesick already. And a bit actually-sick from all the grease.
“As William Shakespeare once said; where the hell art my French fries?” I ask.
Ana looks up from my empty tray with a half-smile and a mouth brimming with potato. “Sowwy.”
I sigh and flop into the seat next to her. “I forgive you. There’s something about fries that scream to be stolen. It’s all those crispy little buttcheeks.”
Ana nearly chokes on her juice, and I pat her back with a happy gusto.
“Was it the buttcheeks or the crispy part that got you?”
“My money’s on the buttcheeks.” A new voice interrupts, and I look up to see Chunhua slide into the seat next to Ana, her black pigtails bobbing. She wiggles her fingers at me. “Hi Pierce.”
“Aloha,” I say. “How’re the rankings going?”
“You’ve moved up ten spaces in one day!” Chunhua beams. “You should’ve told me you were friends with Ciel!”
“Hemi-friends. Full-on ‘friends’ is presumptuous. I’ve only been here, like, 72 hours - ”
“Still!” Chunhua scoots in and takes the very last fry in the bottom of my tray, munching on it. “He walked up and talked to you after the longsword duel. And he barely ever tries to talk to someone first. It’s always people trying to talk to him. Oh wow, these are soooo good.”
“You saw that?”
“No,” She waves the fry like a wand. “But Kiko saw it and told Greta, and Greta told the laundry lady, and the laundry lady’s cousin is Sadeen’s driver, and Sadeen’s driver told her, and she told me.”
Ana frowns. “You’re the girl who rates everyone on that horrible list.”
Chunhua brightens. “That’s me. And you’re the governor’s daughter -”
“U.N. Representative for Brazil.” Ana corrects, and it’s the very first time I’ve ever heard her voice get thorny.
“Yeah,” Chunhua chirps, unfazed. “That. Whatever.”
There’s a weird quiet where the two girls stare at each other, Chunhua munching on the fry and smiling around it, and Ana frowning hard. I inhale to break the awkward with more awkward when someone else walks up to the table and does it for me. With a picnic basket in his hand.
“New girl.” Alistair deadpans, blazer completely missing and his tie more like a loose suggestion around his neck. “Come with me.”
Chunhua smiles brilliantly at him. “Strickland! Just the guy I wanted to see. I was wondering if I could -”
“No.” He shoots instantly.
“But it’s just one little favor!” Chunhua blinks at him. “Pleeaasee? I’ll give you Dad’s personal cell -”
“Do you like being pinned with cleaning toilets for attempted bribery, Zhao?”
Chunhua deflates, leaning back in her chair and vibrating with mega-pout energy. “Everybody else does it.”
“Everybody else gets my gist after one fuck up, not three.” Alistair’s pine gaze cuts over to me. “Come on. Now. Or you won’t get your date.”
My heart rockets up to my throat. Shit shit shit shit shit -
“Date?” Chunhua leans in, all pout-traces gone and her eyes sparkling with rabid interest. “What date?”
“My thoughts exactly.” Ana cocks her head. “What date?”
“P-Palm date!” I stand up so fast I almost knock my chair over. “I just love those sweet little palm dates! Jewels of the desert! And dessert! I asked Strickland to find me some is all, because I’ve been craving them. Stress-craving, you know?”
“Um -”
“Cool, yeah, great talking to you!” I dart away with a smile. “Bye!”
Alistair thankfully trails behind me. Only once we’re in the hallway and away from the prying eyes of the cafe do I flash a satisfied grin back at him.
“I’m pretty smooth, huh?”
“You are perhaps the exact opposite of smooth,” He drones. “The antithesis. The antonym. Gravel, sandpaper, broken glass -”
“Okay! You can stop!” I shrill.
“So soon?” He cracks a yawn. “I was only just getting started.”
“What’s with the picnic basket, anyway?”
Through his yawn-watery eyes he opens the lid and tilts it at me. I can see little jams and fancy cheeses, fresh bread, tiny sandwiches, fruit arranged in mini cups, a bottle of Italian soda, and all of it done up with adorable blue ribbons tied around everything. Blue ribbons that look very, very familiar - I’m pretty sure this is the exact same color as the ribbon Alistair was wearing during the duel.
“Did you…” I trail off. “Did you put this together yourself?”
“I didn’t do shit,” he grunts. “All the ingredients were in the kitchen. I just threw whatever I saw in the basket.”
“Who tied the cute little bows on stuff, then?”
He turns his head, hiding his long frown in his disheveled collar. “The cook, obviously.”
“Obviously.” I agree. There’s a weird silence where there would normally be a glaring match between us. I decide to skip merrily ahead instead. Personal growth.
“It’s for your date,” He finally concedes. “You and I are going to find Ciel, and I’ll propose we have a picnic or something airheaded like that. When it’s all set up, I’ll make some excuse and leave.”
I gulp. “So I’ll…”
“Be alone with him. That’s what a date is, right? Good food, two people. Alone.”
My nerves wiggle their fingers in my stomach and my airway goes tight as I squeak out a half-laugh. “Y-Yeah. Alone.”
“Winning over Ciel isn’t going to happen instantaneously. It’ll take time. In the future, you will not approach my breakfast table with any more of your very loud and very public complaints -”
Alistair’s nagging fades in one ear and out the other and I feel lighter than the bubbles in champagne look, lighter than clouds and air and soft spring wind. But then something dark and sharp collides with my happiness and sends it skidding.
“It’s stupid to feel this happy,” I murmur. “Isn’t it?”
Alistair heaves a sigh. “What?”
“I’ve only known Ciel for, like, four days. So why am I so ridiculously happy? It doesn’t make sense.”
For a long while the only sound is our shoes tapping down the polished corridor together. When we hit the main doors and the stairs and the warm fall sunshine, Alistair speaks.
“Feelings rarely make sense.”
I look over at him, his stone-cut profile stark against the blue sky. He’s always a spot of darkness in any crowd, like black velvet. His eyes barely peek out from his thicket of dark bangs.
“Even if you know you shouldn’t, even if you know they don’t love you back, you can’t help the way you feel,” He says softly. “That’s just how feelings are. Nonsensical. Unfair.”
He sounds almost serious again. Not as serious as when he talked about his sister. But nearly.
“It doesn’t matter,” I suck in a breath. “Somebody like me…I’m not cut out for love, anyway.”
“Awfully confident in that, aren’t you?”
I blink. “Confident? Nothing to do with confidence. It’s a fact.”
“You talk a big game, but you won’t know until you give it a try. Or are you afraid of trying, too?” He shakes his head. “Your list of fears is longer than my list of people who hate me. And that’s well and truly saying something.”
I’m afraid of trying, but only because I’m afraid of failing. It’s the fall back down to Earth that hurts most. It’s the chance someone could hurt me again. Let me down again.
Betray me again.
Inside my hard thousand-layer shell with venom-tipped spikes is the softest nougat center of the world’s biggest baby. But he’s not supposed to know that. No one is.
“Why do you talk like you’re forty?” I fire back.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” He drawls. “It tends to happen when English is your third language.”
“You think you know everything but you don’t, actually. And you definitely don’t know the particulars of my life.”
“We don’t know anything about each other, and yet somehow we’ve ended up making a blood promise.”
“I’m trying to forget that part.”
“Don’t forget it too soon. You’ve still got a whole date to get through.” He starts off down the stairs, the picnic basket swinging on his arm, and I stumble after him.
“What do I, like, say?”
“Words, hopefully,” Alistair offers.
“Yeah but what words, and in what order?”
“All of them. The interesting ones,” He corrects himself. “Are you using me to fish for ways to make him like you?”
“Was it that obvious?” I bat my non-existent eyelashes. “C’mon. Just one teensy little hint. I’ll take anything at this point. It’s my first date.”
Alistair’s heavy brow quirks. “Ever?”
“Ever ever.” I push past him. “So offer some pointers, maybe.”
“You’re just assuming I’ve been on dates before, then?”
“With that side profile, yes.”
Alistair lets out a long sigh and sidesteps a planter of violets. “Ciel is the one who…dabbles. Not me.”
“Ciel dabbles. You, on the other hand, dribble. On yourself. With your own spit.”
“Are all your jokes designed to fail like this?” He inquires lightly. I do a chill 180 off the base of a lion statue.
“All my jokes are a cry for help.”
“Well, they’ve worked.” He motions at his entire presence walking next to me. I squint up at him.
“Are you implying you’re the helpful sort?”
“I got you this date, didn’t I?”
“By making me cut my hand open and exchanging cooties with you!” I trill. “Look! Look at this hand! You didn’t help shit! You just made holding a pencil harder! And it made your grandma piss-drunk mad at -”
I stop myself at the ridges of deathly seriousness that move over his face.
“What about my grandmother? Finish the sentence, Pierce.”
“I’d…uh. Rather not.”
“And I’d rather the universe implode, but you don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
He stops walking, runs an easy hand through his hair (I wish he wouldn’t do that, makes it harder to ignore the fact he’s okay to look at), and then locks his eyes on me expectantly. Twin spears of pine. All-important, all-crushing. Like nothing else matters. I sneak a peek at my phone to escape it.
“U-Um, according to Wikipedia, if the Big Bang is real, the universe is imploding.” I look up, but his eyes still haven’t stopped scalding my face off. “Just very, very slowly.”
He doesn’t blink, or breathe too deep. Nothing. Just pure unrelenting pressure directed in a laser beam at me. I snap.
“Can you stop?”
“Stop what?” He asks lightly.
“Staring like you wanna flay me alive, maybe?”
“If it’d get you to talk, I’d consider it. Messy work, but someone’s got to do it.”
“Von Arx just got mad, okay? When she saw the cut on my hand. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe one of her flowers wilted or something. I dunno what it was - she just flipped out on me.”
Alistair mercifully breaks sight and looks down at his bandaged palm. “She probably thought -”
“That we did a blood promise? I mean, she’s right.”
He hefts the basket higher on his arm. “She can be…reactive when it comes to me -”
“You don’t fucking say.”
“- because she raised me, more or less. She means well.”
I blink. “Wait, she - so you -”
“Grew up here.” He shrugs. “Or something like that. Silvere is more home than the home I was born in, anyway.”
It’s annoying that one sentence can make so many puzzle pieces fall into place. That’s why he’s so protective of this place. Alistair’s mom must’ve done some bad shit. To him. It’s hard to merge the beautiful wedding picture I saw of her on the internet with the idea that she might’ve dripped boiling oil on her son, or poisoned him, also? But evil comes in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes, from people you love. I know that best of all. So Von Arx took him in, and he grew up here. On campus. It also explains what Lionel meant when he said Alistair ran around in diapers whilst he was in school. I try to imagine it - four hundred way-older-than-you strangers roaming around, everything beautiful but austere and rigid and…I feel really small in these huge halls, and I’m almost seventeen. A kid would feel even smaller, probably. It’s just a flash in the pan of my brain, but the image of a little Alistair, standing alone in a polished hall, only the eyes of the unfeeling paintings watching. Tiny. By himself.
Seven months. Seven months and then I ne
ver see any of these messed-up rich kids again.
I breathe in and skip to catch up with him.
“So you took it on yourself to be this place’s protector or some shit? And here I thought you were just a lawful evil snitch with a stick up your ass.” The picnic basket yawns open as he walks, offering a chance to escape all the heavy, and I peer in. “Pita bread, but no hummus?”
“Not a fan of it, personally,” He says.
“Hummiss you with that bullshit,” I nod sagely. “I understand.”
There’s a beat, and I watch his eyebrow wrinkle like Dorian Grey post-painting-destruction. “I want you to know if I could throw you in jail for word-crimes, I would.”
I’m about to blurt a retort when, finally, I see him. Him. In the near distance Ciel leans against a tree trunk, a flash of gold sunlight on gold hair, smoke spiraling around his hand from a cigarette. And that’s, I mean, bad. Smoking is fucking grody, and bonus, it kills you, but he’s one of those people who makes it look infuriatingly good - all casual elegance. Just by picking out his silhouette from the crowd, some stress-knot I didn’t know I had loosens in my chest.
Alistair leans in over my shoulder and murmurs as we approach; “He likes fish.”
“Like, sushi?” I squeak.
“Alive fish. The ones that swim around.”
“Don’t ever mention fish fingers.” I wipe sweat off my eyebrows. “Got it.”
“He hates cowards. So do your best to look him in the eye when you talk.”
“I can’t even look normal people in the eye when I talk.” I forget how to breathe and start gasping. Alistair moves to helpfully thump me on the back, but I sidestep it. “Stop.”
“What?” He feigns innocence. “Can’t have you dying before you go on this date. The last thing I need is a ghost with a grating American accent yelling in my ear for the rest of my foreseeable life.”
“I would be a very polite ghost. I’d do all kinds of nice things while I haunted you. Like add more spices to your chicken. And I’d turn the lights off for you when you’re too tired to get up from bed.”
“A veritable saint.”
Ciel’s head snaps up as we approach, and he lowers his cigarette with a dazzling smile.
