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“Why’s she talking in the third person?” Freya murmurs nervously to Arabella.
“And I wassucha good student in detention that I was left on my own for around half an hour, which means I have literally no reason for anyone to believe me.” I’m ranting now. Arabella eyes me, as anxious as though I’m about to riot. “I was doing my best, trying to stay out of trouble and keep my head down. I was the peacekeeper. I was the saint. But you all decided to go fuckingnuclear. For no reason! This isn’t striking first! It isn’t getting even. This is all-out war, and you started it. Youidiots!”
I’m breathing heavily. There is a long, long silence following my tirade.
“You have to own up to this,” I tell them wearily, sagging onto the cold floor and leaning against the closet. A small brown bug Freya missed crawls beside my legs. “Otherwise I’m going to go down foryourstunt.”
Freya looks like she’s on the verge of tears. Her fingers are furiously tugging the end of her blonde plait, repeatedly pulling stray pieces of hair free from it, as she looks to Arabella for direction.
Even Becca, normally so chill, seems uneasy about my last statement.
Arabella looks at them both. Freya’s practically whimpering in front of her, and I roll my eyes. I’m holding theJessa says hellopiece of paper between two fingers, dangling it limply above my feet.
“We can’t,” Arabella declares in a strong voice.
The piece of paper falls to the floor, skating under my bed.
“We can’t jeopardize our positions at this school.Youcan. It’s unfortunate, but you’re just the scholarship kid. People would miss us.”
Freya turns her big, watery blue eyes on me, and I swear I want to rip the stupid blonde plait she keeps playing with out of her head. “We can’t, Jessa. We’d be insomuch trouble from our families.”
“Lochkelvin is everything,” Becca agrees. “If it’s not on your CV then you’re a nobody.”
I stare at Becca. Since when did an ex-Royal care about the content of herresume? But I guess she’s just as much of a poser as the others.
Say one thing, do another.
“I got here on my own merit,” I state in a quiet tone. “You just had rich families who pulled strings for you. I hadnothingand you want to throw me back to it.”
“We hear you,” Arabella has the gall to say. “But you don’t understand. You might have nothing but we haveeverything. And it’s a lot harder to lose everything than nothing.”
“In a way, this is a mercy,” Freya adds, and I’m shocked. I’m so shocked. But I’m so tired of being shocked, it’s as though the shock no longer registers. “It’s better to happen sooner than later.”
What twisted world do these people live in? It’s the same with the chiefs and their goddamnpastries— it’s easier to take from the poor than the rich, and I’m basically porridge to them all.
“I thought we were friends,” I whisper. To my utter humiliation, I feel myself beginning to well up. But no. There’s no way I’m going to cry in front of them. I wipe my forearm across my face.
Becca gingerly steps out of my bed and over to me. “Babe, weare. The suspension’s what — a day or two?”
“Two weeks.”
I can feel Becca tense from here. “Okaaay… well. It’s only two weeks. That’s no time at all, in the grand scheme of things.” She crouches in front of me, her dreads long enough to skim the floor. “A month from now and we’ll all be laughing over this. And we’ll treat you like a — well, a queen, I suppose. To make up for it.”
The irony of a member of the Royal family promising to treat me like a queen. I don’t want anything to do with these psychos. The only thing I want is for them to leave me alone, but it’s hard to burn bridges with people you share a tower with.
“Why can’t you just admit to it?”
“Because then we’d go down,” Becca says with a sad smile. “If the papers found outIwas involved… that could start more riots, it could cast doubt on the principles of my family, it could make people question who they’re even fighting for. This is so much bigger than justschool. Put one foot wrong and we’re canceled. Butyou. You’re anonymous. You can get away with this stuff, Jessa. It’s a luxury.”
My head is spinning. I feel the truth of Becca’s words. I also sense that I’m being manipulated in about five different directions.
“Did you plant the paper? ‘Jessa says hello.’” I raise my head, looking specifically at Arabella. Poor Arabella, the niece of the headmistress. If her handevergot caught in the cookie jar, she’d want someone there to deflect the attention. She’d need someone like me. “Was it put there to make me look guilty?”
Arabella opens her mouth but nothing comes out. Instead, she clucks her tongue loudly, at a surprising loss for words.
It doesn’t matter because her pet blonde answers for her. “We wanted to make sure you were involved,” Freya says comfortingly, like this was a noble task indeed. “We didn’t want you to feel left out, so we customized everything the way we thought you might have wanted it.”
“Right.”
