“I’m sorry,” he says. He reaches a hand under my chin and gently lifts my face so that my eyes meet his. I pretend to catch my breath and hold it as I watch him. My lips part ever so slowly.
His breath hitches in his throat, and before he can lean in toward me, I step back. “I—I should get back,” I say, as if confused. I open my mouth, look at him, then close it.
I know I’ve done well by his eyes, which are filled with longing, pleading with me to step forward again.
I hate what I’m about to do. I have to sacrifice the one thing that has come to mean something to me at this school. But I need to get Ben alone to make him truly mine. “Do you want to go somewhere with me tonight?” I say finally.
He nods, his longing eyes still on mine. “Yeah.” His throat is dry, and his voice rattles as it comes out.
“Meet me here at lights-out,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says. He trusts me. I see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. He doesn’t even know me, will never know me, but he trusts me.
I turn, nearly tripping in my haste, and hurry back to Faraday.
CHAPTER 13
It’s an eternity until lights-out. I try to focus on my history reading about Louis XIV and Versailles, but none of the words stick in my head. So what if he built a magnificent palace? His descendant, Louis XVI, married Marie Antoinette, one of the most ridiculous, weak women in history. The French Revolution occurred when she was queen, and the revolutionaries were only too happy to cut off her head. Mother taught me through Marie Antoinette’s example that when you have power, you shouldn’t waste it.
I finally shove the textbook aside and try to calm myself by sketching. I sketch Marie Antoinette as I think she might have looked: a decorative woman obsessed with fashion and frivolous things. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, so high that it must droop over and bring her whole body with it.
I call Mother once the hallway clears out, certain she will be eager to talk to me about Helper’s visit.
She answers with “He told you that you must get Ben to run away with you?”
A part of me was hoping Helper was wrong and she would tell me to stick to the original plan of just breaking his heart. I stifle a sigh. “Yes.”
“Do you think you are capable of that?”
I give her the only acceptable answer. “Yes.”
“And you have to do it right after March seventh, as soon as he turns eighteen, so he won’t be able to graduate. Make it happen, Vivian, or there will be consequences.”
“Yes, Mother,” I say.
I hang up and walk back to my room, where I fling myself on my bed and stare up at the ceiling. Four months. That’s how long I have to make a boy so obsessed with me that he leaves his entire life behind.
I rub my temples as I remember what Mother told me about Collingsworth. She met a boy and fell instantly in love with him, but he didn’t notice her. So she threw herself in his path, training herself in the art of coy glances and flirtatious conversation that she would later teach me. And he paid attention to her, for a while. “But I had no sense of how to keep a boy,” she told me, her eyes gazing out the den window as she remembered, her voice cracking with pain. “I did not know how to keep his love. So he rejected me. He threw me off like I was nothing.”
She learned later how to correct her mistake. Making a boy fall in love with you is infinitely harder than attracting him, she taught me. But by drawing him in and pushing him away, pulling him away from his friends, and slowly building a connection, I can do it. I have to do it. And then, maybe, I can convince him to run away with me.
Finally, Claire returns from the library, and it’s almost time for lights-out. She watches me as I hurry into my coat. I have to get outside before they flash the lights and order everyone back to their rooms. “Cover for me if anyone asks, would you?” I ask Claire as I fan my long hair down the back of my coat.
She nods. She has snuck out so often this week that she shouldn’t question my own rebellion, but she still tilts her head, looking at me curiously. That’s something I’ll have to deal with later.
I rush out into the darkness, staying away from the gas lamps that light the yard, their circles of hazy gold threatening to reveal me. It’s much riskier to sneak out now instead of waiting for Jenkins’s smoke break, but if we leave when everyone else does, it would be too obvious that we’re going off together. We have to take the risk.
Ben is waiting for me, his broad form covered with shadows. He smiles at me, but his eyes are uncertain.
I don’t smile back. I look back over my shoulder, as if I’m afraid of being pursued, and catch hold of his wrist, pulling him along with me over the worn footholds of the wall and down the hill.
“Where are we going?” he asks, his voice a whisper in the whistling dark.
“You’ll see,” I answer, shooting him a mysterious smile. The wind pushes us along as we sprint, and I hear the measured in-and-out of his breath beside me.
The moors are transformed under the night sky. The land is black and murky, but the sky above us shimmers with stars. A few clouds drift between us and them, but they can’t overwhelm the brightness. The wind is perfumed with the smell of earth and rain, and I drink it in.
I don’t slow down, even when we’re out of sight of the school. There’s something comforting about my sneakers thudding against the earth, as if I’m pounding out all of my uncertainty and frustration and fear. Ben seems content to keep up, flying over the hills with me. There are moments when he comes so close that he almost runs into me, but he swerves out of the way just in time, laughing. I pretend to laugh, too.
We are wild things.
It doesn’t take long to reach the cottage, though I wish it would. Cold dread twists through me when I think of what I have to do when we get there. But the cottage comes into sight much too soon, its wooden slats gleaming in the light from the half moon above. We slow to a walk, both of us breathing hard, our breath creating slight puffs of steam that shimmer around our heads.
“What is this?” Ben asks. He runs his hand over the rough wood panels, as if he can’t believe this is here until he touches it.
I watch him, try to reconcile this boy with the hidden part of my life. I slip past the door, and he follows. “I found it a few days after I came here. I needed someplace—someplace to be alone.”
I light the candles, and he looks around the room, taking in the collapsed roof and my sketches taped to the walls. There is one of him, my first attempt at capturing the enemy as I need to see him, and I rip it down when he’s looking the other way. “You really are an artist,” he says, giving the word serious weight.
I say nothing. I stare at one of my drawings, one depicting the strange trees around here, and try to see it as the work of an artist. But it’s too personal, too much a part of me, to be considered that way.
I’ve never shown my work to anyone besides Ms. Elling. And Arthur. He knew about all the hours I spent up in my room, pouring my emotions out into images only he and I could read. I feel cut open, exposed, as Ben stares at the inner workings of my mind.
For a moment he fingers the ripped photo of the headless girl, the one I found on my first visit to the cottage, and then comes to stand behind me to look at my sketch of the tree. He’s so close that I can almost feel the small distance between us. As if we’re magnets. I lean into him. He’s solid at my back, and my head fits into the groove of his shoulder.
“What made you draw this one?” he asks. I can feel the rumble of his voice all along my spine.
I try to focus. “I wanted to show how strong it is. How willful. It shouldn’t be there. It’s bent over like it’s about to be ripped out of the earth. But it isn’t. It stays.” The sketch still doesn’t show the power of the tree, though. Instead, it seems as if the tree is on the verge of collapse. As if the tree is weak. I haven’t been
able to capture that strength yet.
One of Ben’s large hands comes up to rest on my hip. I know something will happen, if I let it.
I step away, digging in my pocket, and turn to him. I pull out two pills, which lie small and white in the palm of my hand. “Do you want one?”
His eyes narrow as he takes one. “I’ve never tried Molly before.”
I shrug, as if it’s no big deal. “It makes you feel light. Incredibly, almost unbearably happy.” So happy that you don’t feel real anymore, I almost add, but I stop myself.
He smiles. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” He looks at me, then pops the pill in his mouth when I do.
I hold mine under my tongue and silently spit it out when he looks the other way. I can’t lose control around him.
It will take almost an hour for him to feel the effects of the drug. I sit on the ground with my legs crossed. He follows my example, sitting so close that our knees brush together. I’ve brought my sketchbook, and I flip it open to a blank page. “I want to draw you,” I tell him. “But I don’t know which you I want to capture.”
“I didn’t know there were, you know, different versions of me,” he says with a short laugh.
I smile as I pick up one of my charcoal pencils. “There’s the you in class. The boy who raises his hand with the right answer. There’s the boy in the dining hall, laughing with his friends. And then there’s the boy I like best.”
I begin drawing lines on the page, capturing his strong jaw first.
“What boy do you like best?” he asks when I don’t say it.
“The boy who debates Tennyson with me. The boy with the warm hazel eyes. The boy who sees me. The real you.”
He stares at me intently, and I know I’ve done well. “Capture that one,” he says, his voice soft and deep.
I nod, my head bent over the paper already. It takes only a few strokes to get his face on the page, but his eyes take much longer. I want to show them as they are now, filled with softness and new understanding and want. When I’m done, I’m looking at a sketch of a boy who’s anything but arrogant. It’s a truer likeness than any of those drawings where I tried to see the enemy in him, and that realization startles me. I show it to him, and he studies it carefully.
“Can I keep it?”
I nod.
He looks up at me, his eyes big and serious. “Draw yourself now.”
I blink. I’ve never drawn myself before.
“Which me should I draw?” I ask finally.
He answers without hesitation. “The girl who leads a bloke to a rundown cottage in the moors in the middle of the night. The one who seems like she belongs to another world. The one who can’t help but be noticed.”
I let my eyes rest on him for a moment. I feel a blush rising up to my cheeks, which surprises me. I like the way he sees me. Even though all of it is fake, even though I’m supposed to be a heartless weapon, I like the way he sees me.
I sketch out something quickly, trying to follow his instructions. A girl emerges on the page. Her hair is thick and glossy. Her mouth is a bow. Her eyes are wide, trusting, true.
I look nothing like this girl. But the image pleases him. “Can I keep this one, too?”
I nod, and he takes it reverently. As if it is a promise.
And then the drug begins to rear its head inside his body. I can see it when he starts drumming his fingers on his leg, and a careless smile spreads across his face. “This feels . . . brilliant.”
“Mmmm,” I murmur, closing my eyes and letting a slight smile show. When his hand covers mine and begins rubbing up and down my arm, my eyes snap open. I stand, pulling him with me. “Come on,” I whisper with a giggle in my voice. “There’s something I want to do.”
His eyes widen as I pull him outside. I let go of his hand and run up a hill, stretching my arms out to the sky. And then I scream, let out a howl of glory at the moon, my voice rising up over the hills and into the night.
It’s all an act, a bit of wild abandon to make me even more irresistible. But part of me feels a sense of release, like all of the tension of the day is escaping with my cry.
He collapses in laughter behind me. “What . . . are you . . . doing?” he asks, gasping for breath.
I grin wildly at him. “Try it!” I yell. “Just scream at the moon.” I do it again. I am the embodiment of a free spirit.
Behind me, a low but joyous howl echoes mine. And then he’s running, bounding over the hills, splashing mud onto his jeans in his frenzy. We run and yell and terrify the night with our joy.
He runs up to me as I fling my arms up to the moon, tackling me onto the mud. It knocks the wind out of me, and it takes a few moments before I can laugh and reassure him that I’m all right. He’s lying on top of me, his body pressing down fully on mine. He looks into my eyes, his smile fading into something more serious. Into a look of resolution.
And then his lips are on mine, and for a moment, I almost lose myself to them. It shocks me. I taste the urgency on his lips, feel the soft flicker of his tongue, and something in me wants to surrender to it. As if I’m just a girl. A normal, guileless girl tangled up with a boy on the moors.
I kiss back, answering his urgency with some of my own. We are dark and desperate.
He seems content to kiss me in his drug-induced state, and soon he slows, his kisses becoming more deliberate and more devouring. We lie there for hours, sinking into the mud, kissing each other as if there’s nothing else in this world but our connection.
He falls asleep next to me after taking off his warm coat and folding it over the two of us to guard against the chill of the night. I count his breaths, tracing the contours of his face with my eyes. He almost looks innocent as he sleeps, younger, more vulnerable. I want to paint him like this, the spatters of mud on his face, the trusting stillness. The boy who is letting me ruin his life, though he doesn’t know it yet.
CHAPTER 14
I watch the rise and fall of Ben’s chest until the sun begins flickering on the horizon and shake him awake when it has bathed us in a golden light.
He wakes with a start, sitting up and looking around in confusion. We lie on the damp earth on top of a hill, the land stretching out around us. We are startlingly alone. It’s a gold-and-brown morning, and the wind is kinder than usual as it brushes over us. He doesn’t know what to make of this new world I’ve led him into.
I wait, silent, until he turns to me. Some of the confusion fades from his eyes, and he leans into me, claiming my mouth again with his. My lips are almost rubbed raw from last night, but I let him kiss me now, sweet and gentle.
I pull away softly. “We should get back,” I say, letting regret seep into my voice.
He nods, cupping my chin in his hand and leaning his forehead against mine. “Only if you promise we can come here again.”
I brush against his cheek softly, a flutter of a kiss. “I promise,” I say, though the thought of another night like this one sends a shiver up my spine that I can’t define.
We walk back to school hand in hand, his long fingers wrapped securely around mine. I want to pull my hand back, reclaim it as my own, but I swallow that feeling and keep it in his. It seems to make him happy.
At the wall, we separate with a deep kiss. He looks into my eyes and seems to like what he thinks he finds, because a bright smile lights up his face. We part without a word.
I scale the wall behind Faraday, and just as my head clears the top of it, I spot Jenkins lumbering out the back door. I duck down, my feet scraping off the footholds, and I have to clench my fingers on the top of the wall to hold on. By the time I find my footing again and peek my head back up, Jenkins is gone.
I clear the wall and creep into the dorm, hoping no one is up early. It would help my strange reputation if someone saw me sneaking in, but I don’t want to deal with anyone else looking at me right
now, judging me, forcing me to acknowledge her presence. I want to lock myself away somewhere, alone. The halls are thankfully empty in the early morning stillness, and I get through them without any hassle.
But when I get to our room, Claire isn’t nestled up in her blankets, sleeping off another hangover, as I expected her to be. Instead, she is sitting at her desk, typing furiously. She doesn’t even look up. “Forgot a biology lab write-up due today,” she mutters. “Where have you been?”
“Nowhere,” I murmur. I try to sound nonchalant, but something in my voice catches her attention. She looks over her shoulder at me, confused, and then her mouth drops.
“What on earth . . . ?” She looks me over like she doesn’t quite believe I’m real.
I look down. My clothes are covered in mud, practically caked with it. I know I probably have smudges on my face, too, and when I brush a hand over my hair, I feel how matted and dirty it is. I must look like a wild animal.
I smile sheepishly, which I know Claire will find endearing. “I should probably take a shower,” I say, grabbing my towel before she can ask what I’ve been doing.
Mud swirls down the drain as I wash last night off of my body. I can’t wash off the feel of Ben’s lips on my skin, though. I wonder if I even want to. I close my eyes, replaying the night before. I was acting, wasn’t I?
I can’t remember what I was thinking when we kissed. Or even if I was thinking anything at all. I know I started kissing him because I was supposed to, but then . . .
I’m traveling down a dangerous road, I tell myself, stepping out of the shower and twisting my hair up in a towel. I can’t give my heart to a boy who will most certainly break it. Not again.
CHAPTER 15
Claire says nothing about my frenzied sunrise appearance. But all throughout the day I catch her glancing at me with her head tilted to the side, considering me, everywhere: in English class, in the dining hall, when we pass each other in the hallways. It sets my teeth on edge. I feel as if she’s on the hunt for me, as if she’s about to uncover my true identity and warn Ben about me. She’s adding up all the details that have puzzled her, and it’s only a matter of time before she comes to the correct conclusion.
I Am Her Revenge Page 10
