Gabriel Bristol
Careful, Lawrence, she’ll dig up your private affairs and sell them to the press.
Lawrence Carlisle
Anything for a few dollars, right, @Ophelia Winters?
“Ophelia,” Colette scolds, snatching my phone away to close the app. “You’re going to have to learn to ignore what they say to you.”
But I can’t. It feels like the rest of the students are creating a movie about how awful I am. HowIwas the one who killed my parents, how I ruined six girls’ lives, how I led Alex on for months. And I, servant to my own morbid curiosity and apparent need to see myself suffer, haven’t left any of the group chats, haven’t asked any of them to leave me alone.
“One of them said I was bland, Colette.Bland and meek.”
It’s not remotely the worst thing they’ve said, but it has stuck with me.
Meek.
“Well …” says Magda, tilting her head from side to side like that might be a fair assessment. “You haven’t exactly got a zest for life.”
Colette throws the pillow at her head. “Magda!”
“She’s right,” says Divya, through a mouthful of popcorn.“There’s never any whimsy with you. You stomp around.”
“So does Magda!” I protest, sweeping a hand in the direction of the heavy platform boots that sit over her fishnet tights. Magda’s fashion sense lies somewhere between a ghost bride and Wednesday Addams, and she’s always matching her eyeliner to her braids.
See: Magda has it together. I really don’t.
“It’s part of her charm.”
I don’t even attempt to argue that I have charm. Whatever the opposite of charm is, I’ve got it.
Alex thought I had charm. Alex made mefeellike I had charm.
Until he left me without giving me a chance to explain myself, that is.
I shrug the thought away, rising to my feet in the dull gloom of the Cortinar common room. It’s Saturday, so students are strewn about the large space, slouched on sofas or studying at vintage desks. The gold coffee machine at the far end of the lounge coughs and splutters, kicking out the rich smell of warm espresso.
I’m still upset that I wasn’t put into Cortinar.
I stretch my arms above my head and grab my swimming bag, ignoring the spiteful looks I get around the room from students who want me dead for betraying their rugby-thighed, messy-haired prince.
“Nice sweater,” sneers the guy studying by the exit, eyes sweeping up and down my father’s jumper with a poorly concealed look of revulsion on his face. He’s said far worse about me this week, but my anger bubbles up in my throat all the same.
I plaster a sweet smile across my lips. “You’re nineteen, Hugo. Worry about your receding hairline first.”
An orchestra could play on that forehead.
I turn back to Colette, cocking my head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
She clambers to her feet, all long Bambi limbs and honey-blond hair that falls in big, loose waves around her pretty face. Her glossy bottom lip juts out, telling me she’s no keener to go to swimming practice than I am. But with my first term’s performance in the pool—or lack thereof—it’s a miracle I’ve not been kicked off the team yet.
My relationship with swimming, like my relationship with most things since the events of the past few months, has grown more complicated. Swimming was my mother’s hobby. Something we did together, from when I was floating in orange armbands to when fuzzy photos of me with cheap plastic medals made the local newspaper.
Then she died. Competitive swimming lost its charm. The two faces I’d always looked for at the side of the pool, warm and reassuring, just weren’t there anymore. Burger and movie night to celebrate a new personal best became a memory so distant that it was hard to imagine it was ever real. The chopping boards grew dusty, the fridge shelves stayed empty, and my school swimming gear never made it out of the bag again.
But I never stopped swimming. I may have traded the pool for lakes and rivers, lost the stopwatch, lost the passion, but I never stopped. It was the only thing that made me feel close to them. The only thing that numbed the jagged wound their absence left.
Now I’m not sure if I want to feel close to my mother at all. Her affair with Bancroft feels like a ruthless betrayal of my father, which feels like a betrayal of me, of every Christmas and birthday and movie night we all shared together.
