Cruel Shame

by Sofia Daniel

  The presenter was the same blonde woman who had interviewed Elizabeth on Saturday, outside the academy steps. I glanced at Elizabeth, who leaned forward in her seat. Behind the woman were the sort of tall fences and electric gates I recognized from the juvenile detention center outside Richley. I bit through the chocolate and into a mouthful of vanilla ice cream.

  Next, a shaky camera pointed to a door, which opened to let in a bunch of girls wearing the familiar, bottle-green tracksuits. Someone in post-production pixelated all of their faces except for the one at the very end—a hunched figure with bushy, tawny, hair.

  Before she even raised her head, everyone around the dining tables erupted into cheers and whoops.

  I sucked in a breath, my pulse fluttering in my throat like a trapped moth. A band of anxiety tightened around my chest, reducing my lungs to the size of my fist. This was the beginning of a panic attack, but Myra wasn’t even in the bloody room. The footage had been shot hours ago, maybe even days. She was locked up in a detention center where she couldn’t shoot me in the head, so why was my body acting like I was still staring down the barrel of her gun?

  Maxwell turned to me and frowned. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah.” The word came out a shaky breath.

  Orlando poured me a large glass of water. “Drink this.”

  “Gideon turned around. “I can take you home—”

  “No.” I shook my head and raised the glass to my lips. “This is fine.”

  Kendrick’s eyes narrowed as though to ask if I was sure. I gave him a shaky nod, but he didn’t turn back to the screen.

  The roar of blood between my ears, combined with the heavy breathing muffled the first part of the interview. Shit. I had to get it together. It wasn’t like I was facing a dog. I forced myself to exhale, which was what I’d read in Cosmo was good for staving off panic attacks, and turned to Elizabeth’s table.

  Elizabeth sat with an unwrapped choc ice, her mouth gaping open and her wide eyes fixed on the screen.

  The interviewer’s voice drifted back into my awareness. That’s when I noticed that the camera only focused on Myra. It looked like whoever sat next to the interviewer was holding a hidden camera and not doing too smooth a job because they couldn’t stop it from jerking.

  “How would you describe your relationship with the Liddells?” asked the interviewer.

  “I never really met the archbishop or the uncle.” Myra said with a shrug. “And I only saw the mother on the few times she visited the school chapel. I suppose I was on better terms with the priest.”

  The interviewer paused. “Pardon?”

  “Father Neapolitan.” Myra rested her chin on her hand. “He’s sort of an uncle because Elizabeth’s granddad had him out of wedlock.”

  My throat dried, and all notions of the Liddells not thinking I knew about our familial connection flew out through the dining room’s double doors.

  “You mean, the former Lord Liddell?” asked the interviewer.

  “That’s the one.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with Elizabeth Liddell?” asked the interviewer.

  Myra slumped in her seat. “We loved each other.”

  “As friends?”

  “As lovers,” she said with a sniffle. “I would have done anything for that girl.” Whatever Myra said next became muffled with her sobs, and her face twisted with anguish.

  By now, I thought one of the other students in the dining hall would say something, the way they screeched while Elizabeth had uncovered my family secrets, but the students sat forward, transfixed by this prison-grade gossip.

  “When I spoke to Elizabeth, she implied that she was helping you come to terms with your sexuality with prayer.”

  Myra reared back, her teeth bared into a snarl. “That girl counts prayer as me worshipping the temple between her legs.”

  Elizabeth shot to her feet. “It’s a lie!”

  “Shut up,” someone roared from the back.

  “Slander!” She threw her choc ice at the screen, distorting Myra’s face with a smear.

  Myra outlined Elizabeth’s slimming pill empire, which she upgraded to cocaine pills after obtaining the drugs to plant in another student’s room.

  I folded my arms across my chest, not knowing if I should feel gratitude or annoyance that she hadn’t exonerated me on TV. As the list of Elizabeth and her family’s misdeeds continued, I shook off those thoughts. Right now, I didn’t want to be part of that mess.

  When the interviewer asked why her family wanted to frame the unnamed student for the possession of class-A drugs, Myra raised her shoulders. “I thought it was jealousy at first.”

  “Now?”

  “It has to be something big, otherwise Lady Liddell wouldn’t have handed me that gun.”

  Outraged shouts erupted around the dining hall. I guess the students hadn’t heard that part of the conspiracy. Elizabeth turned to me with her mouth gaping open. If I took that reaction to be true, she hadn’t heard about Lady Liddell’s involvement of the gun, either.

  I ignored her gaze and tried to listen to the rest of Myra’s interview, which was mostly about how Elizabeth would find a girl to bully or befriend and then run them out of the academy using a group of male sycophants.

  The knights slid further down their seats, and Orlando turned to me with an apologetic wince.

  I squeezed his hand. What mattered most was that they had changed.

  My phone buzzed once, twice, then three times, and messages popped up on the screen. Some of the girls I had emailed on Saturday replied, asking how they could take down Elizabeth and her family.

  I slid my gaze over to the girl shouting at the screen like an emaciated King Kong. Maybe everyone else’s efforts would take down the Liddells, they’d nearly killed me once, and I couldn’t leave my safety to chance. If any of those girls could uncover something useful, I might have the leverage to save my life.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  On Friday afternoon, Gideon and I took a walk down the driveway, discussing the fallout from Myra’s interview. After bolting out of the dining hall in tears, Elizabeth had been absent since the broadcast, and everyone couldn’t stop talking about the revelations. They also wanted to know if I would sue the Liddells for attempting to murder me. I needed a break.

  The Glasgow Herald reported that viewers sent over three-hundred complaints to the Office of Communications. It turned out that Myra’s solicitor got paid by the producers of Glasgow Tonight to sneak in a camera. Now, the man was facing a disciplinary with the Law Society of Scotland and could lose his license to practice law.

  I hoped Myra’s interview would be admissible in court.

  Winter was starting to drag, and I longed for a raise in temperature. The trees lining the academy’s driveway stood like blackened skeletons against a white sky, and the frost crunched beneath our feet. A slight breeze blew down tiny flakes of frost from the branches, and I glanced up to find the first signs of buds emerging from the trees.

  Beside me, Gideon exhaled a long sigh.

  I turned to my friend and frowned. “You’ve been down lately. Has Kendrick been getting to you?”

  Gideon’s brows drew together. “Actually, it’s nice to have so many friends. Even if we don’t agree on everything, we’re all united around you.”

  “Then what’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Lachlan.”

  My chest tightened. I’d been too preoccupied with the shooting and Elizabeth’s disgusting lies about Mr. Burgh to ask him how his weekend went. Lachlan was such a good guy and seemed really keen on Gideon that I thought things were going well.

  I looped my arm through his. “What’s happened?”

  Gideon’s lips tightened. “You know my parents are coming on Sunday?”

  “Yes?”

  “Lach wants to meet them.”

  “Right?” Up on one of the branches, a little bird twittered. I raised my gaze to find a robin redbreast bouncing after a similar-
looking bird with a duller plumage.

  Gideon turned to me, his eyes wide. “Lachlan wants me to introduce him to my parents as my homosexual lover.”

  It took a beat for the implication to hit me upside the head. “You haven’t come out to your mum and dad.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been lying to them for months.”

  “If you’re not ready, then you’ve got to explain things to Lachlan.” Resting my head on his shoulder, I wrapped both arms around his middle. Gideon was only a few inches taller than me, so it was a comfortable fit.

  He stopped walking and hung his head. “There’s one more thing.”

  I paused, wondering if this was going to be about the spit roast he had with Lachlan and Francesco over Christmas. “Tell me.”

  “My cousin told them I was in a relationship.” Gideon raised his head and met my eyes with a grim frown.

  A red van approached from further down the drive. We stepped aside to let it pass, taking in the Royal Mail logo and the Queen Elizabeth II crest.

  I’d seen Gideon’s cousin around the academy. Mary was a fifth-year prefect, who wove red ribbons of tartan into her long, black braids. She was a strict prefect to the younger students but took her job seriously. Mary didn’t spend much time with Gideon except to exchange the occasional greeting.

  Gideon was mostly a loner. We weren’t in any classes together, and he seemed to know everything about everyone around the academy. People didn’t dislike Gideon, but they also didn’t gravitate toward him because he was an intensely private introvert.

  He wasn’t ready to announce to the world that he liked hot guys and women’s clothes. The only person Gideon really hung around with was—

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry, but when they received my itemized credit card statements and saw all the purchases from MAC and Victoria’s Secret—”

  “They thought you were buying all that stuff for me?” I asked with a tiny smile.

  The corners of Gideon’s lip curled upward, and his ebony eyes twinkled. “I bought you one or two items.”

  I huffed a laugh. “More like a third of everything you bought.”

  Warmth filled my chest. Gideon was everything—a best friend who shared my secrets, a consigliere who gave brilliant advice, someone who made me laugh with his dry humor, and he was generous with exquisite taste. Even though he didn’t say the words, it looked like he was building up to asking me to pose as his girlfriend.

  I looped my arm back around his. “So, when your mum and dad come up from London, would you like me to join them for afternoon tea?”

  His eyes softened. “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I could do.” I smoothed down his already immaculate lapel. “If you hadn’t been there for me, I might have gone back to Richley.”

  Gideon shook his head and was about to say something modest when I interrupted. “Seriously. That time everyone called me the whipping girl, and then the days after my arrest. I felt like total shit, but you were there, letting me know that everyone else was the problem, not me. In a place like this, do you know how important it is to have a friend who sees through the bullshit?”

  His eyes softened. “I also appreciate your support. You’ve helped upgrade me from a moth to a butterfly.”

  My heart melted at the words, and my mind rolled back to that afternoon when I’d left Gideon alone in my room for a meeting with Mr. Burgh. Back then, I had no idea why the old man was so interested in what I did around the academy. When he questioned me about the hand job rumors, I had exploded and stormed back to my room. Gideon had been there, standing in front of the mirror and wearing my new dress.

  That moment was just like when Hermione lied about going out to defeat the troll and then became friends with Harry and Ron. After seeing Gideon in my dress, we formed an unbreakable bond.

  Gideon and I held hands and stared into each other’s souls. I’d had friends before, but no one was as special as him. Back in Richley, most friendships had an undercurrent of rivalry which ranged from petty to boyfriend-stealing. It wasn’t like that with Gideon. We were too different, for starters. Everything from our genders to our backgrounds to the subjects we studied at the academy differed. But we had loads in common and not just clothes and makeup and smoking hot guys.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, taking in the citrus scent of his aftershave. Gideon paused for a heartbeat and wrapped his arms around my middle.

  “Oh, how typical,” drawled an irritating voice.

  A frosty breeze rustled down from the trees, blowing my hair to one side with its frigid tendrils. Ignoring Elizabeth, I squeezed Gideon tighter around the middle.

  “I’m talking to you,” Elizabeth snapped.

  Gideon broke the hug first. “What do you want?”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Is your name Delilah Hancock now?”

  I cupped a hand behind my ear. “Can you hear something?”

  Gideon glanced from side to side. “The wind howled a second ago. It might have said your name.”

  “That’s probably it.” I pulled on Gideon’s arm, and we strolled back toward the academy.

  The last few times I had engaged with Elizabeth, it had been part of a larger ploy to get me into trouble. This time, I wouldn’t participate in her stupid games. She was probably looking for some reason to start a fight or frisk me for her betting slip.

  An icy sword of karma was hanging over the Liddells by the barest of threads. The last thing I wanted to do was get in the way of her family’s comeuppance.

  Elizabeth hissed through her teeth. “This is important. I know why my mother hates you so much.”

  My steps faltered, and my insides burned with curiosity. Gideon’s arm tightened around mine, and only the pace of his brisk marching kept me from turning around and asking Elizabeth why.

  Elizabeth followed us all the way to the academy’s double doors, only stopping when a group of girls stepped out and squealed at the sight of her.

  “Well done on rising above the provocation,” said Gideon.

  I nodded to the doorman as we passed, muttering, “She probably wouldn’t have told me the truth.”

  “If I were an aristocrat with a cupboard full of secrets, the last person I would confide in would be Elizabeth.”

  A laugh bubbled up in my chest. “Her impulse control is worse than mine.” I was about to head to the tuck shop for some hot chocolate, but Gideon steered me in the opposite direction. “Where are we going?”

  “Maxwell paid for the express service, did he not?”

  “The DNA test?” I whispered.

  He inclined his head. “Let’s see if the results got set aside by the mailroom.”

  My heart flip-flopped. They couldn’t have arrived so soon, but those girls had scared Elizabeth away for now. It was time to get those results before they fell into malevolent hands. “Alright.”

  We stepped into the mail room, a small chamber lined with wire shelves labelled with the names of every student. Nobody ever sent me mail, but I glanced over at the H column to find my mail drawer empty. On the far-right of the shelves was a small sorting table piled with envelopes that hadn’t been properly addressed.

  Gideon explained that one of the administrative staff would open the letters in the afternoons to work out its recipient. Then they’d slip the opened envelope and its contents in a manilla packet, and place it in the correct slot.

  I stood by the door as a lookout, while he picked up the items of mail and examined their return addresses. Butterflies thrashed in my stomach. Part of me wanted the letter to have gotten lost in the mail or the DNA samples destroyed by the testing company. How would I react with definitive confirmation that I was a product of rape?

  After picking up a manilla, letter-sized envelope and turning it around, he slipped it under his blazer and headed back to the door. “Do you want to wait until the others are present?”

  I shook my head. “Can we go to your room?
”

  Whenever Gideon and I got together, it had always been at Mr. Burgh’s house or in my room. I expected his bedroom to be pristine, with certificates on the wall and books sorted into alphabetical order.

  Gideon’s room was chaotic with posters of Beyonce, Jennifer Hudson, Naomi Campbell, Lupita Nyong’o, and a bunch of the actresses from the Black Panther movie. I marveled at the array of gorgeous women, guessing that the room said everything about his personality. Reserved on the outside but on the inside, he was a diva.

  My gaze lingered on the neat piles of clothing arranged on most of the surfaces. “What were you doing?”

  “Before breakfast, I decided to declutter and meant to continue it in the evening.” Gideon cleared a pile off his desk chair and motioned for me to sit.

  I flopped down on the seat, wincing at the palpitations squeezing my heart. Sweat gathered on my palms, and I pressed them on my skirt. The information we would uncover here would either answer several questions or send me into a spiral of depression and shame.

  Gideon extracted the envelope from his blazer. “Open it.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “You do it.”

  “Are you sure?” Gideon took the envelope.

  “My fingers won’t stop shaking.” I held up a trembling hand.

  Gideon reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bronze letter opener with an ornately carved, mahogany handle. My stomach churned so painfully that I didn’t even have the wherewithal to quip that he was too posh to use his fingers.

  With a crisp swipe, he sliced open the envelope and extracted a wad of papers. After casting the first set aside, which included a glossy pamphlet that probably explained the results and advertised further services, he read the cover letter.

  My throat dried.

  Gideon’s brow furrowed, and he dropped down on the mattress, not caring that he’d just crushed a pile of clothes.

  “What?” I rasped.

  “Did you mix up the samples?”