by Hannah Capin
My mother squeezes my hand so tight it’s almost like we’re only one person.
Then she lets go.
The car waits for me in the driveway, shining in the sunrise light, top down, keys in the ignition. There’s a Tiffany box on the driver’s seat with three lipstick kisses on the robin’s-egg blue: Jenny’s pink, Summer’s rose, Mads’s scarlet.
Inside, there’s a silver crucifix on a silver chain. Bright and big and flashy.
I laugh. The noise jars the dead-stillness and a black cat streaks out of the bushes for the road.
Jenny texts me, Bleed them dry.
I will.
Introductions
I’m the very first St Andrew’s Prepper in the door.
It’s on purpose.
I’ve parked front and center, the best spot there is, so everyone walking in will see the red car and wonder who’s new. St Andrew’s wants to live in the Middle Ages, somewhere craggy and cloud-covered, instead of soaking in the almost-summer sunlight of SoCal in March. So behind the same sky-bound palm trees as every other building in town, there’s a gray stone fortress with jutting angles and diamond-pane windows. When the door claps shut behind me I could almost believe I’m withering away in some castle with bats in the eaves and snakes under the foundation. Secrets in the walls and girls half-dead and locked in the attic.
I’m ready.
It’s dark, but not like nighttime streets or a club when the lights black out before the bass drops and shocks everyone alive. Like a crypt instead. Chandeliers drag down from the rafters and incense hazes the air. My Mary Janes click out a warning to the class pictures on the wall: row after row of sepia-tone fuckboys grinning through glass.
I go to the office first. Good little new girl. Hello I’m Jade, I’m so beyond excited to be here, what an amazing opportunity. They eat it up and lick their lips.
Then I swing back into the hall and hit every classroom on the schedule the thousand-year-old secretary sent to my phone. I introduce myself the exact same way each time: Good morning, brash enough to make them look up but polite enough that they have to smile. And then, before they can answer, I’m the new girl. Jade Khanjara.
They nod. They all look the same—Dr. Farris from biology, Magistra Copland from Latin, Sister María de los Dolores from religion. Books stacked like battlements and eyes that do skittish sideways glances and then settle back to blank. They’re playing defense already, always, because here the students run the show. Boys like Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks have fathers who can pay enough to erase any ugly little blemish on their records, the same way their fathers’ fathers did a generation ago.
The teachers know it’s not worth saying no at St Andrew’s.
But I smooth my smile out enough that they can think to themselves, good manners, that new girl. Well-behaved.
So they can think I’m on their side, as much as any St Andrew’s girl can be.
The teachers say, Jade, excellent, excellent, and make neat notes on their lists, and just like that I’m Jade and Jade only, from the first time they call roll.
And someday soon, when I’m standing in front of this castle with the palm trees and the gaudy-bright California flowers that clash hard with gray stone—
when I’m holding my long knife as it drips blood—
when the snakes slither out from under the foundations—
when Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks are dead and I’m queen, terrible and savage—
—all these teachers, they’ll say, oh, Jade? Jade Khanjara?
They’ll pause.
And then they’ll settle back into that look they’re giving me this morning, and they’ll say:
Lovely girl. She’d never do a thing like that.
New Girl
When all the beautiful vain St Andrew’s Preppers spill into the castle I’m waiting in the common hall. Right in front of the Virgin Mary statue where the lacrosse boys’ girls take pictures, one after another: #StAPstunners #blonde #prepschoollife. The boys roll up the minute before the last bell, but the girls come in early to stand guard with Mary, full of grace. Slice and dice: who-and-who hooked up last night, who looks like a skank today, who’s drinking where tonight. Unsheathe mirrors and front cameras, oh my god I look so VILE, and tap the screen and post the shot: #pretty #model #LAgirl.
Not that I’d know anything about it.
Not that I’d know all their names already. Who they hate and who they’re afraid of. Who’s fucking which #StAPlax boy. Who went to the party Friday night and watched that little whore with the jade-green eyes when she drank that just-for-her drink too fast and had to grab that dazzle-smiled boy’s arm when the room got slow and fast and dizzy.
I’m just the new girl.
I wait by the statue with her shy downward gaze. Half a smile playing on my lips. Phone out, scrolling, not waiting for anybody.
Innocent little flower with a silver crucifix.
They show up all at once, bursting around the corner in a cloud of laughter and sick-sweet perfume. Six of them, a whole flock—fluttering and flitting left-right-left, orbiting the girl in the middle. Starlings with hollow bones and skinny legs and voices that tilt up-up-and-away—
“Oh my god did she really—”
“What a fucking tart—”
“Can you spell trash—”
They laugh too loud, a show for all the plodding not-it girls.
“Just, god, that was a party—”
“Well, what did you expect, it’s Duncan we’re talking about—”
Their elbows wing in, toward the girl in the middle: Duncan’s girlfriend. Their queen for today, the tallest and the prettiest. She’s beautiful in that about-to-break way, like a Russian runway model who lives on cigarettes and other girls’ jealousy. Ice-blue eyes and flax-white hair. Her Hollywood tan almost covers up the hollows in her face.
Almost. Not quite.
“Still can’t believe you blew it off, Lilia—”
—and that’s her name, not Lila or Lily or Lillian: Lilia Helmsley, missing last Friday. She gave her girls a neat excuse on all their party pictures, so bummed I’m missing it, my mom is such a Nazi for making me do this spa weekend, she’s the worst, but she’s lying. She was hiding from a boy she doesn’t like but can’t dump because he’s the king and she’s the queen and she has to stay perfect.
Besides, if she dumped him, he’d tell the whole world she’s a slut-dyke-cheater-prude, and he’d slam her skull against the wall until she couldn’t remember he made it all up.
She’s afraid of him but she can’t tell him no or enough or good-bye.
She’ll never stop him.
“—and I’m just saying, make sure Dunc doesn’t forget what you look like, or what you can do for him. Like, I’m not saying anything happened Friday, but—”
Another elbow flies and the blabbermouth girl squeals, but shuts up.
“He won’t,” says Lilia, wan, both hands clutching her Starbucks cup. She notices me before the rest of them do. Her eyes are dead-blank but the truth sits right there anyway: she knows Duncan fucked someone else at the party.
She’s glad.
I smirk.
She stops walking and her flock stops, too. The starling on her right sees me: “Who the fuck is that, and who does she think she is?”
Lilia sips her coffee and blinks slow. “New girl.”
Her right-hand girl scoffs. “Let’s get rid of her.”
Lilia starts walking again, toward me.
“God, you’re too nice,” says her right-hand girl, and everyone else shrills for real, but they hurry up next to her anyway. What this weak little spindle-queen says, goes, as long as she’s Duncan’s.
Lilia floats in front of me, smiling veneers and black coffee. “You’re new,” she says. “I’m Lilia.”
I spin my coven’s crucifix between two fingers. “Jade,” I say.
“You’re in our spot,” says the right-hand girl with a toss of honey-blond hair. He
r eyes say, get out, and her stance says, I’m next in line and God it’s my turn, and all Summer’s online stalking says, industry parents, smarter than most, not afraid to fight dirty.
I spin the crucifix again. “I didn’t see the sign.”
Three of the minion-girls go wide-eyed and drama-starved. A fourth falls onto Lilia’s arm and says, “We love her.”
“Adore,” the rest of them chorus.
“Jade,” says Lilia. “Welcome to St Andrew’s.”
Then they swoop in, all of them, skirts and feathers and hi oh my God you’re going to love St Andrew’s, you’re lucky we found you, no offense but we’re the only girls worth knowing, everybody else is just jealous, love the necklace—Tiffany, right?
Inside. Just like that.
But the right-hand girl hangs back. “Jade,” she says, tapping out the end of it with the tip of her tongue. Her left hand hooks against her hip, two fingers resting on the handle of her sabre.
Piper Morello, Duffy’s girlfriend, freshly on-again after their Friday night fight. She’s clawed her way up to where she is: Lilia’s lady-in-waiting, captain of the fencing team, a junior who tells seniors what to do. A girl who carries a sword on her hip even in the off-season, no guard, swinging from a tie she’s looped around her waist, shining sharp on her skirt and her skin. It’s against all the rules and that’s why she does it. So everyone knows the rules don’t apply to her, in the halls of St Andrew’s or the locked-tight rooms at Duncan’s house.
I could love her if I didn’t hate her so much.
fine, go fuck some roofied slut, said Piper Morello on Friday night—
see if I give a shit, said Piper Morello in the doorway harping at second-place Duffy—
you’re worthless anyway, said Piper Morello while everything spun and I tried to separate up from down, tried to scream, tried to rip my arm out of Duncan’s grip, got a hand around my throat for the trouble—
you deserve each other, bon fucking voyage and I hope you get chlamydia, said the same Piper Morello who won last semester’s Outstanding Citizenship award.
“New girl,” says Piper Morello now, Monday morning in the common hall with her sabre slivering the air into jagged little pieces. “Where’d you come from?”
“Hell,” I say before I can stop myself.
Lilia blinks again. The flock nudges like they’re not sure if they should laugh.
“Boarding school,” I say. “New Hampshire. Boring as shit. Cold as shit. They kicked me out.” I spin the crucifix once more: third time’s a charm. “Deo gratias, honestly.”
The First-Communion-purest of them gasps but Lilia giggles a tiny high-pitched trill and then they all join in.
Except Piper. “Kicked out,” she says. “Keep it classy.” And then, “Why?”
I shrug. “Fucked a teacher.”
This time they all gasp, but it’s a shivery-excited gasp. A this-girl-doesn’t-mess gasp.
Piper stays steady. “You’d think he’d be the one to take the hit for that. Not you.”
And I say, “You’d think.”
Lilia takes a long sip of coffee. Leaves a barely-there coral crescent on the lid. She says, “No, you wouldn’t.”
But nobody hears it, not one single girl, because they’re all hissing and giggling back and forth about bold-bitch Jade.
Except Piper, narrow-eyed, two more fingers on her sabre now.
“You fence,” I say before she can make her next move.
“I’m captain of the girls’ team,” she says. “State champion.”
I smile. “For now.”
She laughs and her amber eyes spark. “Find someone who can beat me. Nobody can. Not even the boys.” Her grin sharpens. “Unless you’re saying you can.”
She’s fiercer than I thought she’d be and I’m glad. She’ll fight hard. “It’s the off-season.”
“It’s never the off-season,” she says, and her fingers tap down one-two-three-four on the handle. “Not for winners. I’ll take you on whenever you think you’re ready.”
I tip my chin and say, “Prête.”
And her grin goes thrill-white and she says, “Allez.”
“Piper,” Lilia sighs out—everything she says is a sigh. “You exhaust me.”
Her flock flutters their yeses.
Piper claps one arm around Lilia’s shoulders and Lilia stumbles a step. “Everything exhausts you, babe,” Piper says, antifreeze-sweet. “You do too much.”
“Probably,” says Lilia. “But so do you.”
I like her a little more because of that.
Piper gives Lilia a look that says, I can’t wait until you’re over. Then she shifts back to me: “Did you fence for—what was your old school?”
“No,” I say. I don’t give anything away. In ten minutes when she’s sitting in English, she’ll get my last name from someone in my biology class and she’ll stalk me like we stalked her, but she won’t find anything. I’m invisible now.
And anyway, it’s true. I never fenced for Hillview. Never joined Latin Club or the Indian Student Association. My days and nights and weekends went to my coven: lounging across Summer’s king-sized bed, all four of us tangled together, long arms and long legs and wearing each other’s clothes, scrolling through gossip and lies. Or sitting high up in the bleachers watching Hillview boys play football or lacrosse. Or flying up the coast in Mads’s Mustang, loud music and knotting hair and restless dauntless boredom.
After-school activities are for losers with curfews.
“Then where?” Piper asks.
“France,” I say. Let her figure out I’m lying, eventually. Turn her paranoid and let everyone else decide she’s a bitch with a vendetta. They’ll side with me when I’m done with her.
“Paris?”
I stay coy. “Does it matter?”
Her beading gaze locks tighter. “I know you.”
I laugh at her.
She bristles. “I do. I know you.”
“I’m sure you don’t.” I slip a glance to the rest of them and they shift and smirk. They want her cut down almost as much as she wants to climb even higher.
“I know you,” she says again, blind to them. “I’ll remember—”
“Piper,” Lilia breathes out in a long limp rush of air. “Chill.”
“Yeah,” says one of the flock-girls. “Chill.”
That makes Piper turn. Leaning forward, so her sabre swings in front of her. She gives the flock-girl a look that’s fire and scorn, right in front of Lilia’s face while Lilia’s buried in her phone.
If Lilia wasn’t standing right there, a fragile paper peacekeeper, Piper would send that flock-girl to the guillotine this second.
“You too, sweetie,” says Piper.
Lilia looks up and Piper settles back into line. “Well,” she sighs out, and then she pauses so long her starlings almost suffocate holding their breath for her. “Jade doesn’t want to be late on her first day.”
“Maybe she does,” says Piper. And then, “Let’s wait for the boys. You know they’re going to love a girl like Jade.” Her eyes track down my body and back up again: Slut.
Exactly what I want her to think.
But she slides a look to Lilia, too, and says, “Besides, you want to see Duncan.” She turns it into a test: you’re avoiding him, aren’t you? Shitty girlfriend. Shitty queen. Count your days.
“I’ll see him at lunch,” she says. “Come on, Jade. I’ll walk you to class.”
I’m not ready to go yet. Not until I see the golden boys with their curling smiles and their crooked ties. A crosse clipped to each backpack. Ready to swing and hit and kill.
“Whatever you say, Lili,” says Piper with a smile so plastic I can’t believe Lilia swallows it without choking. “I’ll kiss Dunc for you.”
Lilia’s eyes catch mine for a second again: do. And keep him. “You’re the best,” she tells Piper, and she links her elbow with mine, bone and nerve and frozen-slow blood. “Come on, Jade—”
Th
e boys come in.
The whole room changes. All the St Andrew’s Preppers clustering around the columns in the common hall, all the chitter-chatter energy and show-off laughter—it all goes quieter, stiller, watchful. The floors glow hot and the chandeliers flare from gold to blue-white—
earthquake weather and earthquake light—
—and there’s a tremor, but only barely. Just enough that everyone pretends they don’t notice. But they do.
The boys swing around the corner the same way the girls did. All at once and inseparable. But the girls were a flock of birds, and the boys are a pack of wolves. Their smiles are bolted into place and their teeth are so square-straight it jars.
Duncan. Duffy. Connor. Banks.
The crowd parts for them. They stalk straight toward Lilia and Piper and their girls. Next to me, Lilia freezes to stone.
“Duff!” Piper squeals, and the flock prisses, and the boys yell louder than they need to.
Duncan shoves Duffy. “Still haven’t taught her how to shut up yet, huh, Duff?”
Piper laughs on demand. Fake, but they don’t care.
Jesus, Duff, Duncan said on Friday, shut the bitch up—
My skin fires so hot Lilia thaws.
“Come on, Jade,” she says, the third time now, and out of nowhere she’s stronger than Piper and dragging me off to the left, through a vaulted entryway, into an empty hall. Shoving all her featherweight nothing against a door and pulling me after her.
The door claps shut.
She locks it.
We’re alone in a girls’ room with a slanting ceiling and a too-big mirror, magnified, so we can see our flaws up close.
She still has my hand. Our arms are pressed together, inside-wrist to inside-wrist. Her pulse flutters too fast. We watch us in the mirror.
Then: “God,” she says. “God damn.”
“What the hell?” I say, because new-girl Jade doesn’t know anything.
She says it again, louder, and then she frays into a high uneven laugh that lasts too long.
this bitch almost makes me miss Lilia’s starfish shit, said Duncan on Friday night.
