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It had been about changing opinions onme.
So I raise my chin and meet Baxter’s fierce gaze.
My head might still be in shock about what just happened, but I’m pretty sure I still did it for the right reasons.
They’ll never underestimate me again.
They’ll never think of me without thinking about my dance.
And, with any luck, the next time they dare to spring a boner, I’ll probably be the only person they’re able to bring to mind.
I can make men so very, very weak.
“Well, what?” I answer, my voice as neutral as I can make it. It’s what politicians do when they’re being grilled by a particularly harsh interviewer, diminishing any concerns the interviewer may hold about them.
Of course, the real corrupt politicians have a complicit media that lick their ass for hours instead. So maybe I’m not as corrupt as I thought yet, otherwise Baxter would be high-fiving me for a job well done.
Baxter doesn’t high-five me. Frankly, she looks bamboozled — like she doesn’t have a clue what to do with me, like she’s never experienced anything like tonight before.
“It’s tradition,” she says, “that I go out there and close the show. I say a few words, I give a few smiles and thank everyone for making it all the way up here. Because it’s not easy to reach Lochkelvin. The people in the audience have had to plan their journeys for days, maybe even weeks.” She narrows her gaze at me. “And you. You’re what we greet them with.”
If it’s supposed to be threatening, it’s not.
But Baxter isn’t done. I get the impression that Baxter won’t be done for a real long time.
So maybe Ihavesnapped.
The only thing she has on me is my admission to this school. And I know, I just know I’ve fucked it.
There’s no way I’m going to be remaining at Lochkelvin next semester.
I’ll just be the joke girl, the weird American who thought she could trick the boys into falling for her, who failed in her mission to become a better person, and who had to be sent back home for bad behavior.
It makes me seethe. But it’s a fault of my own making.
All I have now to keep me here for more than a single semester is my silver tongue, and from the fury on Baxter’s face, I’m starting to have doubts that basic placating will work.
“I don’t want you to explain yourself,” Baxter says tiredly as I open my mouth. “I don’t want you to say anything.” She touches her temples with the tips of her fingers. “You’ve ruined everything. The good reputation of this school hangs in the balance. When we let girls in — when I single-handedly campaigned to allow girls into Lochkelvin — this obscenity was never on the cards.”
I feel like I’ve been slapped. Like I’m Eve, the greatest sinner of all time, who once dared to eat a damned apple. Like I’m standing naked in Baxter’s office save for a fig leaf, instead of spangly bejeweled fabric covering my most private areas.
Like the downfall of womankind at Lochkelvin rests on the curves of my body and the way I dared to dance.
“It’s just dancing,” I say, my voice shaking. Fuck, I’m not a politician. Right now, my heart is too wide, too open, too obvious and able to be seen.
“That was not dancing,” the uptight old bat tells me, and I clench my jaw. “It was obscene. The worst kind of obscenity Lochkelvin has ever known—”
I laugh. I actually laugh.
“You know people are havingsexin this school? In the library?” My mind flashes to the curves of Li’s breasts, to the tightness of Rory’s palms against them. “I can name names if I have to — and yet I’m the one being punished fordancing?”
Baxter sighs, the heavy kind of sigh that only the longest-suffering would emit. In a cold voice, she asks, “Do you have problems?”
I stop speaking after that. There’s no point. I’ve ruined everything for myself, but not in the way that Baxter sees it.
I’ll be shoved back home to America, to my alcoholic mother and a subpar education.
All at once, it’s as though the thought of losing access to Lochkelvin crashes down on me.
