“Go and warm up,” she barks, more at Colette than me. She’s made it clear that she believes that what happened to Alex was my doing and wants nothing to do with me, either. For the most part, I can handle the online abuse, the stares and the venomous looks, and the snickers whenever I ask a question in a lecture, but when they come from someone I’d hoped might be my friend one day, it feels a whole lot worse.
SWIM PRACTICE ISgrueling. I stay long after the others leave. Length after length with Belladonna shouting at me. Too slow, too sloppy, too tense, toorelaxed. Steve, theactualswim coach, can’t get a word in edgewise. He’s a short, wiry man who wears a navy tracksuit that tells me he’s clinging onto his youth as hard as he is to the remaining strands of hair dotting the back of his head.
He might be the only person more scared of Belladonna than I am.
My final one hundred is fueled only by frustration and spite. A determined chant ofdon’t cry don’t cry don’t cryrattles around my brain.
Miraculously, it’s my fastest time of the day.
I haul myself out of the pool, thighs landing on the edge with a wet slap as my mantra ofdon’t cryturns todon’t vomit.
“Good job, Ophelia,” Steve says, like it hasjustoccurred to him that he is a coach.
Belladonna crosses her arms. “Keep swimming like that, and there’s a slim chance you might not loseeverythingthis season.”
From her, it’s high praise, and I take it as a win.
She’s the only one in the poorly lit changing room when I emerge from the showers, tugging a hoodie over my head. Industrial iron lockers line one wall, oak benches along the other. The stained plaster is peeling to reveal gray brick beneath. It looks postapocalyptic in here, like a war bunker.
Belladonna doesn’t glance in my direction, focusing instead on stuffing a folded towel into her bag. The atmosphere is awkward as I pull my duffel from my rusty locker, half expecting a knife to land in my back.
“How is he?”
It takes me a minute to realize it’smymouth those words have slipped out of. Those words I’ve held on to so tightly, swallowed down at every opportunity, creeping out without my permission.
She looks like she can’t believe I’ve just said that.Ican’t believe I’ve just said that.
“How do you think he is?” she snaps, picking up her bag with far more force than is required.
I don’t know why it makes my stomach sink; it’s not like it’s a surprise that Alex is suffering. I know how sick his mom is, how lost his sisters are, how heavy his father’s disappearance must weigh on him, how busy Green must keep him. I’ve seen videos on social media of Fleur lashing out in clothing stores, smoking outside bars she’s far too young to be at, arguing on the street with her new boyfriend.
Deliberately or not, I did that to them.
“Heleft, Belladonna,” I say, not convincing enough for either of us. “He left without a word.”
What happened between Alex and me was a mess, a complete injustice to what I felt for him, to what I’d dreamed of for our future. I let my desperation for revenge take the reins on my life for four years. I let the grief I felt over my parents prevent me from doing the one thing they always wanted me to do: live.
But he believed them. The papers, the media. The lies and the deceit. I made a space for him in my heart, and he walked away.
Belladonna is facing me now, stalking over until she’s almost nose to nose with me. She’s taller, wider,stronger. The delicate vine tattoos that peek out from the neckline of her hoodie stretch as her jaw ticks. “He left because you put six girls into a relentless wheelof media attention. Didn’t you think his mom was sick enough already?”
“It. Wasn’t. Me.” I’ve said it so many times, I’m convinced the words are etched onto my tongue, bleached onto my soul.
Her nostrils flare, pale blue gaze icy. I’m sure she can smell my fear. I don’t doubt that Belladonna would kill—maybe evenhaskilled—for those she loves. “Do us all a favor and stay out of his life, Winters. He doesn’t need any more mess.”
The final word comes out laden with so much malice, so much intention, that despite my desperate efforts to thicken my skin over the past few weeks, it slips inside like a hot knife through butter.
Mess.That’s what she thinks I am to Alex.
She stalks away before I can think of a clever reply, shouting over her shoulder as she leaves. “You’re kicking too wide on your breaststroke. That’s why you suck.”
The door slamming rattles my bones, teeth chattering as wind slips through the cracked windows. I sink down to the bench, letting my head hang in despair.
A heavy silence settles in the locker room.
My fingers fumble with the laces on my boots, hurrying to zip up my bag. Like every time I’m alone here, my heart rate spikes where it thuds in my throat. Bancroft may be dead, but it doesn’t stop me feeling watched everywhere I go, hearing twigs snap behind me in the forest, sensing someone standing on the other side of every door.
I glance over my shoulder whenever I walk along the path to the Nightshade mansion. I double lock my room each night, slide the chair beneath the handle.
