He leaves with whatever party favors he’s acquired, and I stand up and walk toward G-Man.
I step on a pile of dead leaves. Their crunch gives me away, and G-Man turns around to face me. But he doesn’t seem surprised to see me. Instead, his smile curves up in a knowing way. He has no idea how much he doesn’t know about me.
“Come for more rainy-day supplies?” he asks, sliding a hand in his pocket and leaning against the gray stone wall surrounding the graveyard, one foot braced against it. He’s trying to look cool, and I’m trying not to roll my eyes.
I step closer to him, a smile growing on my face. “Something like that,” I murmur.
His eyes widen a bit as I move even closer to him, invading his personal space for a change. His foot slips off the wall.
I let my gaze fall to his lips, then drag my eyes back up to his. “How much for a few hits of Molly?”
He has to clear his throat before he speaks. “It depends.”
“What do you mean?” I ask innocently.
He attempts a leer and leans into me. “Well, there’s a friends-and-family discount.” And a discount for popular kids, too, I assume, as long as they invite him to their parties.
I look up at him through my eyelashes. “And do I count as a friend?” I coo.
He nods slowly. “I think so.”
I reward him with a dazzling smile and step back.
He takes a breath, clearing his head. “How much you want, then?”
“How much you got?”
He sells me several pills, enough for a few months, at least. Plenty of time to get Ben addicted to them and addicted to me. It costs me nearly all of the money Mother provided for this task, but not quite. She’ll be pleased with that detail.
I put the packets in my purse and lean back toward G-Man again. I give him a quick peck on the cheek and hurry away before he can ask for more, then manage to catch the last shuttle of the day.
I clutch my new sketchbook in my lap all the way back to school, but it’s only when I’m alone in my room that I open the cover and let myself get lost in its pages for a few hours. I try to sketch the house I found beside the graveyard, but it won’t spark to life under my fingers. I rip the wasted pages out and crumple them in frustration. I stick to sketching Ben’s face, showing him as the cocky adversary I must control and destroy.
When I glance at the clock, it’s almost nine. Mother will be waiting for my call.
I run to the hall, but there’s another girl on the phone. She chats contentedly with someone, twirling her hair around her fingers as she laughs and says, “That’s ridiculous,” over and over again.
I hover over her, crowding her until she gives me an ugly glare. “Have to go, Ames. Some bitch wants the phone.”
I simply raise my eyebrows at her until she finally hangs up and walks away, muttering more nasty names as she goes.
My fingers tremble as I dial, and I take a deep breath, forcing them to be still.
She answers on the first ring. “Late” is all she says.
“Sorry, Mom,” I say, trying to sound happy and privileged and not sorry at all. “There was a line. How are you?”
“Have you drawn him in?” she asks.
“I think so. The literary magazine meeting went well,” I hedge, looking around the hall to make sure I’m alone.
“Not good enough. Have you talked to him yet? Alone?”
“No,” I admit, waiting for her wrath.
It comes swiftly. “What on earth are you doing there, then? Wasting time and my money? Don’t think that just because you are off in England I can’t get to you.”
I hold the phone away from me as she continues shouting her rage through the line. When she stops, I press the phone back to my ear. “I did talk to a new friend, who gave me some not-too-expensive presents.”
“Fine. But still not good enough.”
“I am sorry,” I whisper. I don’t put emotion into my voice. She doesn’t respond to emotion. “I will draw him in as soon as possible, I promise.”
“You better,” she says darkly. The line clicks, and she’s gone. When I stumble back to my room, I have to put my head between my knees to stop the nausea rising in my stomach.
It’s going to be okay. I can do this. It’s what I was born for.
I wake the next morning determined to make contact with Ben. Alone. If I catch him when he has friends or admirers around, it’ll be harder to establish a connection. If I get him alone, he’ll be more malleable. More himself.
But I can’t find an opportunity all day. Or for the next two weeks. He’s always surrounded, even in our Thursday literary magazine meetings, and though he still glances at me and seems to study me when he thinks I’m not looking, I can’t seem to find a way to capitalize on that interest. I email Mother every night, assuring her that I’m trying. I know I’m running out of time.
It’s Arabella whom I encounter alone first. I’ve felt her eyeing me in the hallways ever since the night almost three weeks ago when we snuck out onto the moors. I know she doesn’t know what to make of me.
I’m heading for the shower one morning when she’s standing at the bathroom mirror, putting on one of her several layers of makeup. She pauses when I come in, pulling the mascara wand away from her eye. “Hi,” she says, a bit coldly.
I have to play this carefully before I reveal how much of an enemy I’m going to be. Surprise attacks are always the most devastating.
So I put on my brightest smile and say, “Hi!” like I couldn’t be more thrilled to see her. “Thanks so much for letting me come along the other night,” I add. This will make her feel like she has power of approval over me, and I see her eyes light up as she looks at me.
“Sure thing. If you want to join in again, just let me know.” She looks me up and down as she puts away her mascara, still trying to judge if I’m worthy, but she’s giving me the benefit of the doubt. For now.
“Thanks,” I simper. “Claire tells me you’re the most popular girl at Madigan. I can see why.”
It’s much too sycophantic, but she eats it right up, her smile growing wider as she turns to the mirror again, fluffing her red hair.
“Claire also told me about your best friend, Emily,” I say in my most innocent voice.
Arabella rolls her eyes in the mirror. “That slag was not my best friend.”
“Sure she was,” I say casually. “I’ve heard the stories about you. Where else would she have learned to be such a slut?”
She whirls on me, but she only opens then closes her mouth with shock.
I smirk and step into a shower stall. As I lock the door, I can almost feel her fuming on the other side of it.
CHAPTER 8
With Arabella as my new enemy, my life at Madigan changes considerably over the next week, just as Mother wanted. Girls I don’t know glare at me. Boys look at me more curiously, trying to make sense of the girl whom the queen bee suddenly hates so much. They don’t understand girl drama, but it intrigues them.
I hope it intrigues Ben, too. I get glimpses of him in the hallway, and he catches my eye once when I perfectly match my walk across the courtyard with his return from rugby practice with his friends. But it’s still impossible to get him alone.
It’ll be easiest to do on a weekend, when everyone is more scattered, with time and more room to roam. On the last Saturday of October, I wake up early and watch for him in the dining hall. I sit over my desiccated grapefruit half for two hours before he shows up, bleary-eyed and disheveled. He greets his friends with a rueful smile and a high five. A reference to some female conquest, maybe? Or simply a wild night?
I wait for him to finish breakfast, then I slip out of the dining hall before he can, making sure he doesn’t notice me. I’m supposed to be the hunted, not the hunter.
There’s a hint of chill in the air,
and the morning mist has only just begun clearing. I position myself on a bench outside the boys’ house and already have my copy of Tennyson in hand when he comes outside. I pretend to be absorbed in the pages, but I watch him. He stops when he sees me, considering me. Then he continues sauntering toward me.
“I thought you’d already read Tennyson’s poetry,” he says without preamble.
I look up, feigning confusion. As if he has plucked me out of the world I was immersed in and pulled me back into this one. “Sorry?”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other before answering. “In class, you said, uh, that, you know, you’d read his poetry already.” He was paying attention. Good.
“I have,” I say. “But I reread it every chance I get. Because every time I do, it makes me mad all over again.”
“You read a poem because it makes you mad?” he asks with his eyebrows raised and a hint of a smile.
“Yeah,” I answer with a small smile of my own. I look back down at my book. “It’s just that the story it’s based on, Elaine of Astolat, is so infuriating.”
“I don’t know. I think it’s . . . romantic.”
I snort, genuinely amused. “You would.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asks. He takes my little jab as an invitation and settles down next to me, stretching his long legs into my personal space. I let him. It’s the first time I’ve really allowed myself to examine his face, his expressions. His hazel eyes with flecks of green and brown glance at me warmly. His smile, which he turns to me now, is wide and inviting. “Why’s that?”
I shift, turning to face him. He responds, leaning in a little closer. “Because you’re the nice guy. The good guy. The type who likes damsels in distress.”
His lips quirk up even more. “What makes you think that?” he asks.
I shrug. “Just a hunch.”
“I like it because the girl can’t help falling in love.”
“Yeah, and it destroys her. She sacrifices her life for some guy who hardly has any idea she exists. Who’s so wrapped up in his own drama that he can’t be bothered with her. It’s pathetic.”
I stop, remembering suddenly why I read this poem and learned the story behind it so long ago. It was Arthur’s recommendation. He loved Tennyson and spent hours trying to convince me to love his poetry, too. He thought I would be inspired by the intense imagery in it. And I was, but this poem unsettled me so much that I threw the book at the wall in disgust the first time I read it.
I grit my teeth, refocusing my attention back on Ben. “Have you seen the John William Waterhouse painting of ‘The Lady of Shalott’?”
“No,” he answers, shaking his head. But there’s a look of fascination and curiosity on his face. He’s hanging on my every word.
“It’s insulting. It shows this stereotypical damsel in distress. She’s in her boat, looking down toward Camelot, her mouth open in desperation. Waiting for some man to come rescue her. She just sits there, inviting the male gaze.”
“The male gaze?” he asks.
“Yeah, you know, the film and art concept? That women in portraits aren’t looking out at the viewer; they’re there to be looked at. They’re objects of beauty, put on display for the male viewer. Ridiculous.”
Ben smiles, looking at me as if he’s never seen me before. As if he doesn’t know what to do with me. My cheeks are flushed from my vehemence, I know. My wide blue eyes are sparking, catching the fire from my cheeks. I’m beautiful, in my own strange way.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just that I don’t like weak women who let men destroy them and don’t even protest.”
“Lancelot does destroy Elaine,” Ben says finally. “But she’s not, you know, she’s not weak. She’s in despair. To think that your true love is unrequited—it has to hurt.”
“She should have hurt him the way he hurt her,” I counter.
He shakes his head. “No, she loves him. She could never hurt him, no matter what he’s done to her. You can never hurt someone you once loved.” He’s looking deep into my eyes, like he’s searching for a sign that I understand him. Like he needs me to understand him.
I think of Mother and Ben’s father, how her love for him turned into anger and hatred. What would Ben think of that? I stand up, suddenly unsettled.
“Look up Waterhouse’s painting. You’ll understand what I’m talking about.”
Before he can say anything, I walk away, leaving him in the morning mist.
It’s best to leave him wanting more, anyway, I tell myself. I’m not running away.
I never felt unsettled seducing Ethan, the public school boy Mother had designated as a practice target and the whole reason I went to school at all last year. Like Ben, he was the king of the class, with floppy hair and a braying laugh. But he was conceited, full of himself, obsessed with his image. He fell for the slightly edgy, confident girl gambit and sought me out, pulling me into janitor’s closets and empty classrooms as if I was his to steal away. To make him feel more than lust for me, I began a complex maneuver of avoiding him and then drawing him in, showing him a vulnerable side. He vowed that we were meant to be together, that he loved me. When I laughed off his confession and told him that I’d only been playing a game, he mooned around my locker for months, trying to get me to talk to him. His status fell dramatically when people found out he was heartsick over a girl who thought she was too cool for him.
Ben isn’t like Ethan, that much is clear. But my new persona will draw him in just the same. It will be easy.
I keep repeating that to myself as I hurry away from him.
No one seems to have heard about my strange conversation with Ben. I have no doubt that if they had, that bit of news about Arabella’s new enemy cozying up to the golden boy would be flinging itself around the school. I refuse to look at anyone as I walk down the halls. I know they don’t know what to think of me, and I’ll have to do something further to ignite their curiosity. Keeping myself in their conversations will help keep me in Ben’s thoughts, too.
At my old school, I let everyone assume I was into drugs, which gave me a certain helpful notoriety. But it wasn’t enough, because there were plenty of druggies. And considering the number of pills, joints, and packets of powder I saw G-Man distributing during the nighttime escape, that wouldn’t be enough here, either.
I become more inventive. On Monday evening, I use the footholds in the stone walls surrounding the campus and climb up to the top, nearly twice my height above the ground. The top of the wall is only about a foot wide, the surface of the stones smooth and slippery, but I saunter along it confidently, a book in my hand, seemingly too absorbed in it to notice the stares of all the students streaming out of the dining hall after dinner. Over the next two weeks, as October fades into November, I bring my sketchbook with me everywhere and for the first time start drawing in public. I draw in the dining hall, in the courtyard, in the student lounge. I even join the popular crowd in a few late-night sneak-outs, and after giving the barest of shy smiles to Ben, I slip away, climbing a nearby tree and sketching by flashlight until it’s time to sneak back in.
All of what I do is intriguing and confident, with only the slightest show of a vulnerable side to Ben. I make no more moves to encounter him alone. He’ll have to seek me out himself.
CHAPTER 9
One Friday afternoon, nearly two weeks since I spoke to Ben, I’m sneaking behind the residence halls to head off to my cottage as the late fall wind grows icier and angrier. Suddenly, there’s a heavy footstep behind me. I whirl to find Arthur, covered in mud and dirt and holding a shovel, his eyes almost amused as he looks at me. It’s a cold amusement, though. Everything about him now is cold.
“Where are you going?” he asks. “Are you running off to get caught in the rain again?”
“It’s not going to rain today.” I try to sound confident, but I look up at the sky. The clouds
are white and unthreatening.
“Weather here is unpredictable. Don’t expect me to come after you if you get lost again.” He leans on the shovel, the corded muscles in his arms supporting his weight.
I flick my eyes back up to his and laugh, and the brittleness of it reminds me of Mother. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say dryly. “You’ve made it very clear that you hate me now.” I move to step around him, longing to be safe in my cottage, hidden from this world. From him.
He puts a hand on my arm, stops me. “Do you remember?” he whispers.
I shiver at the pressure of his breath in my ear and close my eyes. I stay still. His hand still grazes my arm, I’m so close to him. I can smell him, his scent of grass and soil, a scent that calms me and electrifies me all in one thrilling moment. And I remember.
When I was fourteen and Arthur was seventeen, something changed between us. It was subtle at first: We would hold each other’s gazes just a touch too long, or our hands would brush against one another and skitter away. Soon, though, the change became all-consuming, choking the air between us.
We spent more and more time together, seizing any moment that we could escape our parents. One day, Arthur pulled me to our spot, out of sight behind the little house he and his father shared. It was dusk, just before dinner, and the fading light left us in shadow as we hid between the brick walls of his house and the prickly hedge. He placed a gentle hand on my cheek, and I looked up at him with an emotion I still can’t name.
Slowly, he bent toward me, his eyes locked on mine, making sure I was okay. I closed my eyes, and soon I felt his lips brush over mine, whisper-soft. It was my first kiss, and it felt like the sparks of a fire, setting me aflame. When I opened my eyes, I saw the stunned expression on his face, the one that must have mirrored my own.
He held my hand until we were back in sight of the main house, and I felt as if I was floating up with the clouds, even as I bid him goodbye. I looked up at the door of the house, dreading going inside. I tried my best to compose my features and get through dinner with Mother without revealing the excitement bubbling inside me. I could hardly look at her, but she didn’t notice.
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