Page 10 of Winterveil

Giselle glanced out the window again, watching the dusky blur of trees as they ascended. Then she let her head drop, slumping over wearily in her seat. “What’s the difference?”

Four

Spring 2037

Rural Virginia

Valeran Academy, the refuge of precocious teenage offenders, was concealed in the stygian haze of the Blue Ridge Mountains—perplexingly, to Julian’s mind. If the aim was truly just to keep them isolated from general society, why call it a school at all? Why bother with reassuring pretensions?

Not that Julian wasn’t grateful. He had passed several weeks in nauseated, shuddering anxiety, a horror show of orange jumpsuits and toilet wine playing out behind his eyelids. He had considered hiring a prison consultant, someone who would advise him on the intricacies of bunk etiquette, strip searches, and how to avoid being assaulted in the mess hall.

That was before he remembered that he was rich. Rich people didn’t go to supermax; they went to sparklingly landscaped minimum-security facilities where they took business classes and played pickleball. A month ago, Julian wouldn’t have been able to articulate the differences. Now he considered himself a casual expert on the various potential fates awaiting a disgraced nineteen-year-old former mayor nabbed for taking bribes.

The offer had come by mail: inside, a single piece of paper, with the Valeran Academy seal at the top. In any other circumstance Julian might have mistaken it for a college acceptance letter. But unlike admission to Harvard, this had not been guaranteed to Julian at birth. He didn’t need to glance at Landon’s article to know that he was the only Joyce-Young to be offered a place at Valeran.

A relief, like that first heady sip of scotch. His mother had burst into tears. His father had snatched the paper from Julian’s hand and read it over once, brow furrowing, then remarked that at least there was no need to hire a lawyer. If he accepted the offer, all charges against him would be dropped. No prison sentence, no humiliating, drawn-out public trial.

With gratitude, Julian had written back. He signed his name at the bottom using his monogrammed Montblanc, and that was that. Four years at Valeran to atone for his crimes. It was a lighter sentence than he had any reason to hope for, especially given the media circus that had already commenced. Released on bail, he hadn’t been able to leave his family’s town house in Back Bay without paparazzi darting out from behind the trees and bushes like deranged squirrels, cameras flashing.

But it wasn’t just him they were after; Julian could have survived that. One morning his mother had tried to leave with Olivia for her ballet recital, and the paparazzi had descended on them, swarming the car with such aggressive persistence that his mother had gotten flustered, dropped her keys, and then grown too frightened for the entire enterprise. She grabbed Olivia and ran with her back into the house, both of them by that point in tears. Olivia had fled into her room, still wearing her leotard, sobbing. And his mother had collapsed on the steps in the foyer, head in her hands, shoulders shaking.

“Mom,” Julian said—quietly, helplessly. “Mom, I’m sorry . . .”

She raised her head just slightly to look at him. Her pale green eyes, so like Julian’s own, were glossy with unshed tears.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

And then she, too, had fled to her bedroom, but not before snatching an ice-cold bottle of Chardonnay from the kitchen.

Four years, Julian had to remind himself. Four years and he would be home again. He could survive that. It was better than the alternative. Better than his mother really losing him, forever.

Yet by the time he approached Valeran, Julian found his gratitude supremely tested. He had managed to endure the bus ride (solitary, sweaty), and the accompanying indignities, including the driver, who had tossed his suitcase unceremoniously onto the grass and left Julian to pick it up himself. He even managed to remain silent as the guard at the entrance shoved up the sleeve of his shirt, snapping off the buttons, and clasped a gold band around his wrist.

When the guard released him, Julian held out his arm to examine the band. Fixed on a tight chain was a plate engraved with his name.

JOYCE-YOUNG, JULIAN, III

3.29.2018

Not handcuffs, but close enough to make him bristle. Without uttering a word, the guard waved him through the gate.

He’d had very little in the way of expectations when arriving at Valeran. Despite his best efforts, Julian had been unable to find anything about the academy online, save for a vague reference in a newspaper clipping from 1977 alluding to the Frost-Kennan Amphitheater, which had been endowed that same year in the diplomat’s name. Another article, from 1986, did not name Valeran directly but ambiguously referenced a “military school for troubled youth in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” comparing it to DC’s prestigious National War College.

And so Julian was surprised by its grandeur. The main building was a sprawling neoclassical structure, pale gray stone and black-veined marble, with Ionic columns upholding a large rotunda that framed an enormous courtyard. The mist of the mountains hung low, partially obscuring the cupolas and the outer buildings and giving the campus—he could give in to calling it that—a cryptic feel. Otherwise, it would have seemed reassuringly Ivy League.

What diminished the grandeur were the sixteen-foot-high walls, so sheer as to be impossible to scale and topped with coils of razor wire. And the armed guards, of course—including the one who prodded Julian none too gently with his rifle, urging him down the sleek brick path and toward the main hall.

The lobby of the building improved upon the exterior: black-and-white-tiled marble floors, oaken furnishings that gleamed in the half-light, and an enormous double staircase. Velvet drapes adorned broad bay windows that looked out into the courtyard. Students milled around in neatly pressed uniforms of navy, but they all had an industriousness about them, a head-down, hurried gait, and not a single one so much as glanced his way.

Mounted above the staircase was Valeran’s crest and, beneath it, words engraved in gold.

The struggle for power is being fought, rather than with deadly weapons, with competitive examinations.

—Hans J. Morgenthau

Before Julian could take any more of it in, the guard prodded him again. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “The headmaster is waiting.”

The note of undisguised sourness in his voice made Julian wonder if the stories about him had somehow penetrated Valeran’s walls. Despite the fact that his cell phone service had abruptly died somewhere in the rising gloom of the mountains, he wondered if his reputation preceded him. But surely he couldn’t be the most reprehensible character here. He hadn’t done anything violent. Maybe there was some precocious serial killer who had been benevolently plucked from death row.