“No?”
“That’s what the play proposes. But if that’s true, we would watch it while delighting in its carnage. No, the intention is to force us to face that futility of violence. We are devastated by the pain, not drawn to it. We are tender, soft-hearted things caught up in rules of honor and justice that undo us all in the end.Thatis the tragedy.”
I stared at her, a little shocked. A little scared she was right.
I scrounged for some explanation of how a girl who passed notes to her boyfriend in lectures and often needed her lines fed to her could have a deeper insight into the play than me when I’d spent weeks poring over it.
The image that answered was the only other time I’ve thought her better at something than me: Her batted lashes and grazing, harmless touches. Her chirping laugh and gentle hair tosses, and I wondered, suddenly, if her assessment of the text was even hers. Maybe it wasn’t just flirting at the end ofclasses; maybe one of our professors was giving her …extra lessons.
It was an absurd suggestion, but not entirely baseless.
Harper was still watching me, and I didn’t know how to respond—to fight my cause or concede the point, not when I was so acutely aware of the fact the words wouldn’t wound at all if they were spoken from other lips. So I simply stared, like to look away from Harper would be to illuminate something I could never bear to see the light.
———
Partying began not long after, with bottles of alcohol doing the rounds that must have been intentionally packed because there was nothing around for miles.
Dear god, these were our very futures at stake—how could everyone treat it all so lightly?
So I abstained, curled up in the corner of the lounge instead, reading my well-battered play again and again, watching as Harper poured a glass of wine for Clive, wondering what else she might do for him. Now that the idea had crossed my mind, it felt like a certainty.
In the morning, I pushed my team past their pounding heads as we rotated the parts, spinning through them all, even the minor ones that would be awarded to those who chose other plays. We’d end up as trees and choruses in theirs, but here was our chance to transform.
I felt that rage settle into my skin. That desperation. Atjust how keenly I wanted this, the entire year working up to this one performance.
It sapped me, knocked the breath from my lungs. If I didn’t win this prize, it was not as though I would be unable to continue at CADS. I would struggle, but I would persevere. I would work hard and claw my way through regardless, just as I always had.
But that awareness that someone else was better than me would be something I would always know, in that part of myself that I knew was too fragile to survive this pursuit. But it was a piece of myself I was willing to break, to throw to the wolves, to obliterate if needed.
I broke away before I could break down, heading outside for air. I sat on the steps of the lodge, the forest sprawling out before me, but it wasn’t enough. I felt the angst written in my bones, so I climbed back to my feet just as the door swung open once more. Harper, fumbling with a lighter.
“Were you about to wander off into the woods alone?”
“Were you about to light a cigarette in the middle of a highly flammable forest?”
Harper flicked her thumb against the lighter’s edge and took a quick inhale—a bright flame catching. She breathed out a light plume of smoke. “There, that’s enough risk for us both. Let’s go.”
She walked past me, jumping the final step before sauntering toward the tree line. I did not want company, did not want a stroll in the woods with Harper—but I could not linger either. Reluctant, yet still propelled, I followed her.
“Were you sulking?” Harper asked.
“Spiraling,” I admitted. There was a strange safety with Harper—I did not like her or care what she thought of me, so there was no need to pretend, appease, or lie.
Harper nodded, the hand that wasn’t holding a cigarette reaching to toy with a necklace settled in the hollow of her throat. I noticed how short Harper’s nails were, and they were still stained with chips of purple polish.
“My mother’s,” she said when she saw me looking, as though I cared about the hunk of turquoise and not the hands upon it. “Got it from her grandparents in Chongqing and claimed it would bring me luck. Bullshit. If it were lucky, if it had any value whatsoever, she certainly wouldn’t have given it to me.” That wry smile was back, and she added almost confidentially: “Greta’s not really into acts of charity. Or acts of ‘anyone but herself.’”
Harper didn’t stop clinging onto the pendant, though.
I wondered what prompted the admission—after last time I’d certainly be making none of my own. Maybe she wanted to tell someone who vaguely understood. Or maybe making herself vulnerable was the only way she knew to lure people in. Or maybe my isolation made me her safety too—she did not have to be perfect Harper for a girl who didn’t have all that many people to tell about it.
“You’re anxious too?” I asked.
“We’re all anxious, Nadine,” Harper said, letting an edge of irritation slip through. “We all want this. I know you think you can somehow prove that you want it more, but—”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? There’s a difference between working hard and the performance of hard work.”
