by Claudia Gray
Nobody said hello.
The murmuring welled up again within an instant. Apparently gawky new girls weren’t worth more than a few moments of interest. My cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, because obviously I’d already done something wrong, even if I couldn’t guess what. Or did they already sense—as I did—that I didn’t really belong here?
Where’s Lucas? I craned my neck, searching for him in the crowd. Already I felt as though I might be able to face it if Lucas were beside me. Maybe it was crazy to feel like that about a guy I barely knew, but I didn’t care. Lucas had to be here, but I couldn’t find him. In the middle of all these people, I felt completely alone.
As I edged toward a far corner of the room, I began to realize that a few students were in the same situation as I was—or, at least, they were also new. A guy with sandy hair and a beach-bronze tan was so rumpled that he might have slept in his uniform, but being supercasual didn’t win you any points here. He wore a Hawaiian shirt open over his sweater but beneath his blazer, its gaudy cheer almost desperate in Evernight’s gloom. A girl had cut her black hair so short that it was more like a boy’s, but not in a cute, pixie style; it looked more like she’d haphazardly taken a razor to it. Her uniform hung on her, two sizes too big. The crowds seemed to part around her as if repelled by some force. She might as well have been invisible; even before our first class, she had been branded someone who didn’t matter.
How could I be so sure? Because it had just happened to me, too. I was trapped on the edge of the crowd, intimidated by the din, dwarfed by the stone hallway, and as lost as it was possible to be.
“Everyone!”
The voice rang out, instantly shattering the noise into silence. We all turned as one to the far end of the hallway, where Mrs. Bethany, the headmistress, had stepped upon the podium.
She was a tall woman, with thick dark hair she wore piled on top of her head, like someone from the Victorian era. I couldn’t begin to guess her age. Her lace-trimmed blouse was gathered at the neck with a golden pin. If you could think of somebody so severe as beautiful, then she was beautiful. I had met her when my parents and I moved into the faculty apartments; she had scared me a little then, but I’d told myself that was because I’d only just met her.
If anything, she was even more imposing now. As I saw her instantly, effortlessly claim command over this roomful of people—the same people who had shut me out by mutual, silent accord before I could even think what to say—I realized for the first time that Mrs. Bethany had power. Not just the kind that came with being headmistress but real power, the sort that rises from within.
“Welcome to Evernight.” She held out her hands. Her nails were long and translucent. “Some of you have been with us before. Others will have heard about Evernight Academy for years, perhaps from your families, and wondered if you would ever join our school. And we have other new students this year—the result of a change in our admissions policy. We think it’s time for our students to meet a wider range of people, from more varied backgrounds, to better prepare them for the world outside the school’s walls. Everyone here has much to learn from the other students, and I trust that you will all treat one another with respect.”
She might as well have spray-painted, in giant red letters, SOME OF YOU DON’T REALLY BELONG. The “new admissions” policy was no doubt responsible for surfer boy and short-haired girl being here; they weren’t intended to be “real” Evernight students at all. They were only supposed to represent a learning experience for the in crowd.
I wasn’t part of the new policy. If it weren’t for my parents, I wouldn’t be here. In other words, I wasn’t even “in” enough to be an outcast.
“At Evernight, we do not treat students as children.” Mrs. Bethany didn’t look at any one of us in particular; she seemed to look just over us, a distant kind of gaze that nonetheless took in everything within her field of view. “You have come here to learn how to function as adults in a twenty-first-century world, and that is how you will be expected to behave. That does not mean that Evernight has no rules. Our position in this area requires that we maintain the strictest discipline. We expect much of you.”
She didn’t say what the repercussions would be for failure, but somehow I thought detention would be only the beginning.
My palms felt sweaty. My cheeks were getting flushed, and I probably stood out like a signal flare. I’d promised myself that I’d be strong and that I wouldn’t let the crowd get to me, but so much for promises. The high ceiling and walls of the great hall seemed to be closing in around me. It still felt like I couldn’t quite breathe.
My mother somehow got my attention without waving or calling my name, the way moms can. She and Dad were standing at the far end of the row of faculty, waiting to be introduced, and they both gave me hopeful little smiles. They wanted to see me enjoying myself.
It was their hope that got to me. Having to deal with my fear was hard enough without facing their disappointment.
Mrs. Bethany concluded, “Classes will begin tomorrow. For today, get settled into your rooms. Meet new classmates. Learn your way around. We will expect you to be ready. We are glad to have you, and we hope that you will make the most of your time at Evernight.”
Applause filled the room, and Mrs. Bethany acknowledged it by smiling slightly and closing her eyes, a slow, satisfied blink like that of a well-fed cat. Then conversation rose up, even louder than before. There was only one person I wanted to talk to; just as well, since it looked like only one person might possibly be interested in talking to me.
I moved all the way around the room, always right at the edges, keeping my back toward the wall. I searched the crowd hungrily, seeking Lucas’s bronze hair, his broad shoulders, those dark green eyes. If I was looking for him, and he was looking for me, we were bound to find each other soon. Despite my fear of large groups, and my tendency to exaggerate them, I knew there were only a couple of hundred students here.
He’ll stand out, I told myself. He’s not like these others, cold and snobby and proud. But I soon realized that wasn’t true. Lucas wasn’t a snob, but he had the same kind of chiseled good looks, the same toned body, and the same, well, perfection. He wouldn’t stand out much in this beautiful crowd; he would be a natural part of it.
Unlike me.
Slowly the crowd shrank, as the teachers left and the students dispersed. I hung around until I was almost the only one left in the great hall. Surely Lucas would come to find me. He knew how scared I was and felt responsible for scaring me worse. Wouldn’t he want to say hello?
But he didn’t. Eventually, I had to accept that I’d missed him. That meant there was nothing left for me to do but go meet my roommate.
Slowly I made my way up the stone steps, my new shoes with their hard soles click-clacking too loudly. I wanted to keep climbing all the way to the top, straight back to my parents’ faculty apartment. If I did, though, I knew that they’d send me downstairs again immediately. Time enough to get my things and really move out after dinner. For now, the first priority was “getting settled.”
I tried to look on the positive side. Maybe my roommate was as freaked-out by school as I was. I remembered the girl with the super-short haircut and hoped it might be her. If I were living with another “outsider,” things would probably be easier all around. It would be torture, living with a stranger—actually having somebody I didn’t know there all the time, even when I slept—but I hoped the feeling would pass eventually. I didn’t dare hope for a friend.
Patrice Deveraux, the form had said. I tried to hang that name on the girl I remembered, but it didn’t quite fit. Still, anything was possible.
I opened the door and realized, heart sinking, that my roommate’s name fit her just fine. She wasn’t another outsider at all. Instead, she was the total embodiment of the Evernight type.
Patrice’s skin was the color of a river at sunrise, the coolest, softest brown, and her curly hair was pulled back into a soft bun,
which showed off her pearl earrings and her slim neck. She sat at the dresser, still neatly lining up bottles of nail polish while she looked at me.
“So you’re Bianca,” she said. No handshake, no hug—just the click of each bottle of polish against the dresser: pale pink, coral, melon, white. “You weren’t what I was expecting.”
Thanks tons. “You either.”
Patrice cocked her head, studying me, and I wondered if we hated each other already. She lifted one perfectly manicured hand and began ticking off points. “You can borrow my perfume but not my jewelry or clothes.” She didn’t say anything about borrowing my stuff, but it was pretty obvious she wouldn’t ever want to. “I plan to do most of my studying in the library, but if you want to work here, let me know and I’ll talk with my friends somewhere else. Help me with the assignments you’re good at, and I’ll do the same for you. I’m sure we can learn a lot from each other. Sound fair?”
“Definitely.”
“All right. We’ll get along.”
If she’d acted all fake friendly with me right away, I think that would have weirded me out more. As it was, I was sort of reassured that Patrice was so businesslike. “Glad you think so,” I said. “I know we’re…different.”
She didn’t argue. “Two teachers here are your parents, right?”
“Yeah. I guess word travels fast.”
“You’ll be fine. They’ll take care of you.”
I tried to smile at her and hoped she was right. “You’ve been here at Evernight before?”
“No. First time.” Patrice said this as though changing her whole way of living was as simple for her as slipping into a new pair of designer shoes. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
I left my opinion of the architecture out of it. “You said you had friends here, though.”
“Well, of course.” Her smile was as delicate as everything else about her, from the peach gloss on her lips to the perfume and nail polish bottles neatly arrayed on the dresser. “Courtney and I met in Switzerland last winter. Vidette was a friend of mine when I was staying in Paris. And Genevieve and I spent a summer together in the Caribbean, once—was it St. Thomas? Maybe it was Jamaica. I can’t keep these things straight.”
My pokey hometown seemed duller than ever. “So you guys all just—run in the same circles.”
“More or less.” Belatedly, Patrice seemed to realize how awkward I felt. “Eventually they’ll be your circles, too.”
“I wish I were as sure as you are.”
“Oh, you’ll see.” She dwelled in a world where endless summers in the tropics were everyone’s for the taking. I couldn’t imagine ever being a part of that. “Do you know anybody here? Besides your parents, I mean.”
“Only the people I’ve met this morning.” Meaning Lucas and Patrice, for a grand total of two.
“Plenty of time to make friends.” Patrice spoke briskly as she began putting away more of her things: silky scarves the color of ivory, hosiery in shades of taupe or dove gray. Where did she plan to wear things so elegant? Maybe it was unimaginable for Patrice to travel without them. “I hear Evernight is a wonderful place to meet men.”
“Meet men?”
“Do you already have someone?”
I wanted to tell her about Lucas, but I couldn’t. Whatever had happened between me and Lucas in the forest—it meant something, but my feelings were too new to share. All I said was, “I didn’t leave a boyfriend behind in my hometown.” I’d known all those guys at my old school since I was a little kid, and I remembered them back when they used to play with Lincoln Logs and mash Play-Doh in my hair. That sort of made it impossible to feel passionate about any of them.
“Boyfriend.” Her lips curled upward, as if the word struck her as childish. Patrice wasn’t sneering at me, though. I was simply too young and inexperienced for her to take me seriously.
“Patrice? It’s Courtney.” The girl outside knocked on the door even while she was opening it, obviously certain she would be welcome. She was even more beautiful than Patrice, with blond hair that fell almost to her waist and the pouty kind of lips I’d seen only on starlets in TV shows, who could afford stuff like collagen. The same kilt that hung awkwardly at my knees made her legs look a thousand miles long. “Oh, your room is much better than mine. I love it!”
The rooms were all pretty much alike, actually—a bedroom large enough for two people, with white, cast-iron beds and carved wooden dressers on each side. The window looked out upon one of the trees that grew closest to Evernight, but I couldn’t think of anything special about it.
Then I realized there was one thing. “We are closer to the bathrooms,” I said.
Courtney and Patrice both stared at me as if I’d done something rude. Were they too refined to acknowledge that we needed bathrooms?
Embarrassed, I kept going. “I’ve never, um, shared a bathroom before. I mean, I have with my parents, but not with—what, it’s like, twelve of us sharing each one? That’s going to be crazy in the mornings.”
This was their cue to agree and gripe about it. Instead, Courtney kept studying me, curious. I figured her curiosity was only normal, but I wished she would say something. Her narrow-eyed gaze felt threatening, even more so than most strangers’ did.
“We’re going out on the grounds tonight,” she said—to Patrice, not to me. “To eat. A picnic, you might say.”
Meals at Evernight were meant to be taken in the students’ rooms. Apparently they explained this as “tradition,” the way things were back in ye olden days before anybody had invented the cafeteria. Parents would send care packages to supplement the Spartan grocery allowance delivered each week. This meant I had to learn how to cook using the little microwave my parents had bought me. Patrice obviously didn’t worry about such mundane problems. “Sounds like fun. Don’t you think so, Bianca?”
Courtney shot her a look; apparently that invitation wasn’t meant to be open.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m supposed to eat with my parents. Thanks for asking me, though.”
Courtney’s lush lips could look almost ghoulish when twisted into a smirk. “You still want to hang out with Mommy and Daddy? What, do they feed you with a bottle?”
“Courtney,” Patrice chastised her, but I could tell that she was amused.
“You’ve got to see Gwen’s room.” Courtney began tugging Patrice out the door. “Dark and dreary. She swears it might as well be a dungeon.”
They took off together, and whatever fragile connection Patrice and I had created was broken in an instant. Their laughter echoed throughout the hallway. Cheeks burning, I fled my new room, then the dormitory floor, hurrying upward toward my parents’ apartment and refuge.
To my surprise, they let me in without a fuss. They didn’t even ask why I was early. Instead, Mom gave me a big hug, and Dad said, “Check out our packing job, okay? There are a few things for you to do, but we got you started.”
I was so grateful I could’ve cried. Instead I went to my room, eager for peace and quiet in some safe place.
Only a few pieces of winter clothing still hung in my closet. Everything else had been bundled into Dad’s old leather trunk. A quick check of my overnight bag showed makeup, barrettes, shampoo, and the rest all neatly tucked in. Most of my books would stay here; I had too many for the few shelves in our dorm room. But my favorites had been set out for me to box up: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, my astronomy texts. The bed had been made, and on one pillow was a packet of things for me to hang up on my walls, like postcards friends had sent over the years and some star maps I’d hung on the walls of our old house. But something new had been hung in this room, an affirmation from my parents that this was still my home, too: a small, framed print of Klimt’s The Kiss. I had admired the print in a shop months ago, and apparently they’d bought it as a surprise for me on my first day at the new school.
At first, I was simply grateful for the gift. But then I couldn’t quite stop looking at the picture or s
hake the thought that somehow I’d never really seen it before.
The Kiss was a favorite of mine. From the days when my mother first showed me her books about art, I’d always loved Klimt. I was in awe of the way he gilded every pane and line, and I liked the prettiness of the pale faces that peeped out from the kaleidoscopic images he created. Now, however, the image had changed for me. I’d never paid as much attention to the way the couple tilted toward each other—the man leaning in from above, as if tugged toward her by some inexorable force. The woman’s head fell back in a swoon, giving in to gravity’s pull. Her lips were dark against the paleness of her skin, flushed with blood. Most beautiful of all, the picture’s shimmering background no longer appeared to be something separate from the man and woman. Now it felt as if it was a rich, warm mist, their love made visible, turning the world around them to gold.
The man’s hair was darker than Lucas’s, but I was trying to imagine him there nonetheless. My cheeks felt warm—blushing again—but this was a different kind of blush.
I jerked back to the here and now; it felt almost as if I’d fallen asleep and begun to dream. Quickly I smoothed my hair and took a couple of deep breaths. I realized I could hear Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” on the stereo. Big Band music always meant that Dad was in a good mood.
I couldn’t help but smile. At least one of us liked Evernight Academy.
When I finally finished my packing, it was nearly dinnertime. I went into the living room, where music was still playing, to find Mom and Dad dancing together, being a bit silly with it—Dad pursing his lips, mock sexy, and Mom holding the hem of her black skirt in one hand.
Mom spun around in Dad’s arms, and he dipped her backward. She tilted her head almost to the floor, smiling, and saw me. “Sweetheart, there you are.” She was still upside down as she spoke, but then Dad righted her. “Did you get your packing done?”
