by Eden Beck
I stop for a second and fix Rafael with a pointed look.
“That’s why you need to back off,” I snap, finally giving up on the buttons altogether. “You’re so focused on my weight, and you’re basically making me starve myself. It’s making me weaker. I ate one granola bar tonight, and for the first time in ages, I actually felt like myself. Just for a minute.”
“But your hips …”
“Damn hips!” I snap again. “Everyone’s got them. There are other ways to hide them! We can figure something else out. I refuse to keep starving myself.”
Rafael looks down at his feet as I rip off the shirt he lent me and throw it onto the floor. I pull my oversized hoodie on and lay down on my bed, turning my back to him.
As soon as I know he can no longer see my face, I feel my bravado melt away. I curl myself into a ball and begin to shake. This isn’t really about the food, or lack of it.
This is about me. About surviving. If I’d been just a little weaker, what would have happened?
What if I hadn’t been able to run away? What if I’d been alone?
What if Jasper had been alone?
I hate knowing that I may very well owe my life to two of the boys who’ve been tormenting me these past weeks, making my already complicated life a living hell.
I squeeze my eyes shut and curl tighter. I have to start working out or something, build some muscle. I’m tired of being scared.
To my surprise, I feel a warm hand on my back and hear Rafael’s voice, soft this time.
“Hey. Hey, Alex. I’m sorry.” He rubs my back a little, and unless I mishear him, I think his voice cracks a little. “I never should have pushed you like that. I’m no better than the rest of them.”
I open my mouth to try to reassure him that no, he’s not a bully like Jasper and Heath and Beck … but no sound comes out.
Rafael still somehow understands. His hand remains pressed to my back, the warmth and tenderness of it bringing even more tears to my eyes.
“It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Fuck, I think as tears slip down my cheeks. How could he tell? I keep my eyes closed and let him rub my back. He keeps whispering “you’re safe” over and over, and my tears keep falling.
I don’t know when, but I eventually fall asleep.
At least one good thing has come out of that night in the village.
Or, maybe two—if I count the fact that for the first time, I’m actually able to eat again. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve made it this far thanks to that alone.
But the true blessing in disguise is that ever since that night, The Brotherhood has been mostly leaving me alone. Whatever their reasons—shame, embarrassment, or simply trying to stay out of trouble in case I decide to snitch—I’m not about to complain.
But I also know it isn’t going to last forever. In fact, when Rafael shows up at the end of the table in the dining hall with a slip of paper in his hand, I know it’s not going to last long.
Not long at all.
“Another note.”
Rafael sits down beside me and shows me the piece of paper he’s got. I glance at it, then back to my plate. There’s only one person who’s going to be sending me notes, and I want nothing to do with her.
“I’ll look at it later,” I say, piercing a potato on the end of my fork and staring at it like it’s the most important thing in the world. And it kind of is.
Beside me, Rafael snorts. “From what I’ve seen, you won’t look at it at all.” But he doesn’t push further, just sets it down on the table and digs into his own food.
I eye the folded paper with the flowery script on the outside. I know it’s from Olive. I never did give her my number, so the only way she has to contact me is by sending me notes through other students. I read the first few, all containing her phone number again, all begging me to contact her. Begging me to give her a chance to apologize.
I’ve largely ignored the rest.
I don’t want an apology. I can’t bring myself to think about that night. I get the shakes every time I try. I can’t talk to her … even when part of me knows the only reason she’s even writing to me still is because I won’t talk to her.
At first, I think she felt responsible for what happened that night, but now I’m not so sure. There’s a kind of desperation in the slant of her handwriting lately. All I can think is that she’s used to boys positively fawning over her.
Of course she’d only be interested in the one who wants nothing to do with her.
“Here they come,” Rafael says in a low voice, elbowing me to jar me out of my momentary daze. I glance up as The Brotherhood breezes by our table.
Jasper is the only one who looks at me, but he quickly looks away and keeps moving. Heath and Beck act as though I’m not even here. They walk on by without trying to take my food, or picking on me, or anything.
I guess the truce isn’t over quite yet. That, or they didn’t see the note from Olive.
I smile and stick my fork into some potatoes. I’m not about to complain. Rafael grins and shakes his head.
“They’re really ignoring you, huh?”
“Yep.” I watch their backs as they head for the food. “Maybe that night was worth it if it was the end of it all.”
“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” Rafael cautions me, but he’s smiling as he takes a bite of his sandwich.
We throw out our trash and head to history class together.
I stop in the doorway to the classroom, a bit stunned at the sight of the woman talking to our professor. Rafael stops next to me and I think he asks something, but I can’t be sure, since the pounding in my head grows louder and louder as I stare at her.
It’s the head of the girls’ school, Dean Robin.
She turns her head and locks eyes with mine. The professor continues talking to her, uninterrupted.
Rafael elbows me slightly, jerking me back into reality, and I shuffle alongside him to our desks, tearing my eyes away from the girls’ dean. As I sit, I glance up to see she’s still watching me.
“I see the headmistress is here,” he mumbles.
I keep my head down. “Yeah. I guess.”
“She’s looking at you real hard.”
“Wish she would stop,” I mutter under my breath, fumbling to get my things together. I haven’t seen her since the first day I arrived, but I’m immediately reminded of the way she looked at me then. I didn’t like the careful scrutiny of her gaze then, and I certainly don’t like it now.
The professor claps his hands to get the class’s attention, and the buzz of conversation dies immediately. He looks around the room at us briefly.
“We have a guest in the classroom today,” he says. “Please welcome Headmistress Robin.”
“Dean Robin,” she corrects him, her gaze sweeping across the classroom before landing, again, on me. I look away.
“Sure. Anyway, she’ll just be walking around and observing. Be respectful, please. And now turn to chapter twelve in your textbooks. We’ll be diving back into the American Revolution.”
Throughout class, I do my best to keep my eyes on the professor or my textbook, but Dean Robin always finds a way to meet my gaze. I can’t look up at all without her hovering somewhere in my peripheral vision.
What the hell does she want? I hate the way she looks at me, looks through me.
“Can anyone tell me about the reasoning behind France’s involvement in the revolution?” the professor asks.
No one answers, but nearly all eyes swivel over to me—the American. I’m not the only one, but it often feels like I am.
I raise my hand reluctantly, doing my best to keep my gaze away from Dean Robin, even though she’s walking slowly around the classroom and getting nearer to my own desk.
“Yes, Alex?”
“It was about weakening Britain,” I say, trying to keep my voice deep. “They’d lost in the Seven Years War and wanted revenge.”
“Correct,” the professo
r replies, now looking at me seriously. We haven’t talked about the Seven Years War or France in class yet, but there was a reason I got into this school on a scholarship after all. Stuff like this just sticks in my head. “And can you tell me how they sent aid?”
I shrink a little in my seat, waiting for someone else to come up with a reply. They don’t, so I continue even though I wish I could just turn invisible instead.
“At first it was smuggling supplies through some sort of shell company. Mainly gunpowder,” I say, wracking my brain for details. “Eventually some French volunteers joined the American army and fought with them.”
Silence rings out in the classroom. I shrink a little bit in my seat.
Dean Robin breaks the silence. “Has France’s role in American politics been discussed in this class before, Professor?”
“No,” he admits.
Dean Robin looks at me, and this time, I meet her gaze. “You’re from America, aren’t you, young man?”
I bristle at the way she says young man. It sounds like it’s dripping with sarcasm. “Yes, ma’am,” I reply through my teeth. As if she didn’t know that already.
“There’s a historical conference taking place over break. You should look into going. You could probably get special admission, being a student from Bleakwood. Or I could get in touch with them for you.”
I grit my teeth. “Thank you, but that’s okay,” I tell her, my hands clenching my desk.
I wish she would stop looking at me that way. It makes me want to disappear under my desk entirely.
“I insist,” she replies smoothly, heading over to me, her kitten heels clacking on the floor. “It’s no trouble at all.”
“Well, I—” I look around. Everyone in class is looking at me, including The Brotherhood. My knuckles grow white. “I’m not going home for break, ma’am. But thank you.”
“Not going home?” she asks, surprised. “What do you mean?”
I work my jaw. “The tickets home are expensive,” I mumble.
Silence. I wish someone would just say something. Everyone’s staring at me, the poor kid, who can’t afford to go home. The prospect never really bothered me before … but there’s nothing quite like a dozen sets of eyes staring at you with pity to make me wonder if maybe it should have.
Finally, someone scoffs.
“That’s why scholarships are such a waste,” Beck says, his breathy half-laugh nearly as mocking as the rest of the chortles that break out across the room.
I turn. Beck sits between Jasper and Heath, shaking his head in disappointment.
“The students who receive them don’t even know how to use the advantages they get from them.”
A couple other kids chuckle again. Neither the professor nor Dean Robin speaks up about it. I lower my head, feeling my face burn with embarrassment, and slide down further at my desk.
But it’s not embarrassment for what he said.
It’s because I’m embarrassed by myself and my own inability to say anything back. I thought I was unable to fight back before because I was weak.
Maybe it’s not that.
Maybe it’s just that deep down, I’m a coward.
Chapter Fifteen
Standing up to Rafael is one thing, but it isn’t enough.
Not once this little truce with The Brotherhood, whatever it is, is over. Because it will be over, eventually.
Boys like Jasper don’t stay down for long.
Rafael doesn’t even say anything to me as we leave the classroom. I don’t blame him. I’m scowling so hard I think my eyebrows might fall off.
“Alex?” asks a cool female voice before I’ve taken two steps down the hall. I stop, glaring down at the ground. I had a feeling this would be coming. “A word?”
I turn around and face Dean Robin as she clickety-clacks her way out of the classroom ahead of the boys streaming from it. I just want to go back to my dorm and out of the way. I don’t want to deal with this. With her.
Rafael stares pointedly at her. He doesn’t leave my side as she comes up to me.
“A private word?” Dean Robin says pointedly, eyeing Rafael back.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” I retort, glancing over my shoulder in hopes of seeing some sort of excuse for an escape. “So, you can say whatever it is in front of my friend.”
“I just wanted to express how much of a shame it is that you can’t attend the conference,” she says slowly, carefully, her eyes still on Rafael. “I also have been asked to pass something along to you.”
“What?” I’m caught off guard as she reaches inside her bag and pulls out a white envelope which she places into my hands before I can refuse it.
“It seems that one of my students has been trying to get in contact with you. She heard I was heading here and asked me to give this to you.”
I stare blankly at her for a moment. She’s got to be kidding me. Olive has got to be kidding me.
Because that must be who it’s from.
I glance once more down the hall, this time looking for any sign of the boys who might murder me if they draw the same conclusion I just did before I stuff it roughly in my backpack.
“Thanks.”
“Funny that it’s … you that she’s interested in,” Dean Robin continues, finally sliding her eyes back over to mine. “I didn’t think she was …” She pauses as I stiffen, her eyes searching me with hooded lids for a moment before she finishes her thought. “I just didn’t think someone like you would be her type.”
She keeps her gaze on mine. I’m not sure what to make of that.
“But maybe she just doesn’t know everything about you,” she replies, her face a mask of coolness. “Oh—and I’m sorry to hear about your injury. I spoke with Nurse Weber just an hour or so ago.”
For one second, I think she means from the other night … and then it slowly dawns on me, and it feels as though a cold hand grips my heart. This woman—this headmistress, or dean, or whatever—there’s no way she knows my secret, is there? She must at least have her suspicions.
Every time we speak she does this to me, looks through me. Into me.
“Cool. Thanks. Anything else?” I ask, deepening my voice so that a nervous squeak doesn’t make its way out and betray me.
“I don’t think so.”
Before the words are even out of her mouth, I seize Rafael’s elbow and steer him away, walking us briskly down the hall.
“Hey, so, what the fuck was that?” Rafael asks in my ear.
“No clue. Just keep walking.”
“It was nice to see you again,” Dean Robin’s voice calls as we flit around the corner, away from her.
I expect there to be some sort of backlash from Dean Robin’s appearance, from the note, but things fade away within a couple days. Even Jasper, Heath, and Beck return to their new routine of just ignoring me.
But ignoring isn’t in my nature.
So as much as I know I should just throw it away, I do eventually open the note delivered by the dean.
It’s from Olive, predictably. I can barely stomach the first paragraph of her sweet, perfect handwriting expressing her pleading sentiments before I crumple the paper and toss it into the trash can.
It’s worse than I thought. She’s obsessed. Not necessarily with me, but with the idea of me—or at least, with the idea that she has to somehow make up for what happened.
“What’s the matter?” Rafael asks from his bed, his voice flat.
“Olive,” I mumble.
“Yeah, that was a mistake and a half, wasn’t it?”
I bury my face in my hands. “She just won’t let it go, Rafael.”
“I told you not to go.”
“I know,” I reply angrily, digging my fingers into my hair. “Now … now she’s turning it into something else.”
From what I managed to read before the guilt took over, Olive is heartbroken—or at least she thinks she is. She keeps writing to me, asking me why I won’t contact her, why I’m avoiding
her. She’s been to lacrosse practice a few times looking for me. I suppose you were injured, this last note said, on our date, and I’m so sorry. That’s all my fault. I should have stepped in.
But it’s not her fault.
Not entirely, anyway. I had an idea of what I was getting into.
Not fully, of course, but I went on that date with the intention to hurt someone else. It’s kind of karma that I was the one who ended up getting hurt, I guess. Even if it doesn’t make it right.
I grunt and stand up. “This is too much. I need a smoke.”
Rafael lowers the magazine he’s reading to his chest, raising his eyebrows at me. “Do you?”
I shrug. “What else am I gonna do?”
Rafael sets his magazine aside and sits up. “I’ll come with you, then.”
“No—I’m okay.” I grab my backpack and sling it over my shoulder. “I’ll meet you in class.”
I leave before he can answer.
I don’t know why I want to be alone, or why I feel so restless, but I hustle down the steps as fast as my aching ribs will allow on my way to my smoking spot. Do I even feel like smoking? No. I hate it. But I need my voice to stay deep and hoarse. And nicotine is addictive, after all.
I burst out into my usual spot and breathe a sigh of relief as the door drifts shut behind me. Leaning against the wall, I light a cigarette and inhale, letting the smoke fill my lungs as I shut my eyes. It’s cold, but the sun is on this side of the school, so the wall behind me is warm. The heat of it seeps into the back of my jacket as I breathe out clouds of grey smoke.
Things have been fine lately, apart from Olive’s notes. No lacrosse, no Brotherhood. But people have been snickering behind their hands at me because of what happened in class the other week.
The scholarship kid is too poor to go home over break.
Ha-ha.
Most of those kids aren’t even going home; they’re off to the Alps or the Bahamas or wherever insanely rich people go for Christmas. They’ll be having adventures in mountain lodges or lounging on white-sand beaches, and I can’t even afford a flight to a nowhere town back home in the States.
