AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My mouth parts in surprise. “Bury—?”
“I know you’ve always had my back when it came to my dad,” Danny plows on, and already I feel a hot, sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, like the heavy spoon dancing through the gloop of Danny’s thickening porridge. “So… I just wonder what’s going on with you and your mum. Because I think there’s a lot of stuff there you’re refusing to process.”
I stare at him blankly but my face is coloring. Having close friends isn’t something I’m used to. I was a small fish in a big pond at Greenvale, able to be as anonymous as I wanted. But Lochkelvin has, to my surprise, been something of a crash course in tight-knit relationships. I’m learning how tricky it is to balance other people’s opinions, their worries and cares, and to fight the desire to keep all of them at arm’s length. Somehow friends figure out your behavior and can tell you’re feeling off based on intuition alone. That’s powerful. For someone determined to keep their emotions buttoned-up, having friends who care about you can, it seems, be quite a nuisance.
“I’m fine,” I tell Danny, as blandly as possible. When his expression turns skeptical, I repeat, “I’mfine.”
“It’s what you always say.”
“You don’t believe me?” I throw my hands up. “What am I supposed to do? My mom’s in another country. It’s hopeless.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Write to her.”
My laugh is short and bitter. “She wants nothing to do with me.”
Danny raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, she wanted nothing to do with youso muchthat she flew all the way over here from America just to see you for, what, an hour?” When he puts it like that, I suppose it does sound ridiculous. He makes mefeelridiculous, like all my grievances are minuscule. His voice softens a little and he reaches out from across the table to take my hand in his. “Look. I know what having a shit relationship with family looks like, Jessa, and I’m sorry to keep bringing this up but I don’t want you throwing away a good thing out of…pride. Or spite. Or whatever it is that’s driving you to pretend you don’t need your own mum fighting your corner anymore.”
I say nothing, instead gazing down into my sludge-gray bowl of porridge. Maybe Danny’s right. Maybe Ihavebeen too stubborn. Too callous. But it’s not like Mom makes it easy. I’m starting to believe mothers don’t, as a general rule.
“I don’t know,” I mumble, twirling my spoon distractedly. “I might write to her… I guess.”
Danny smiles up at me like this is all he wanted to hear.
As the gremlins enthusiastically compare pastries with each other, Headmistress Baxter stands at the lectern in front of the staff table.
“It’s that time of year again, students,” she says with a small smile, “when sport unites us once more. Lochkelvin students have always benefited from the school’s competitive edge, so it is with great pleasure that I announce the return of this year’s Highland Games.”
Eager chatter bursts out around the room before Baxter’s finished speaking. It seems everyone loves the Highland Games. My experience of them last year was exceedingly peripheral: clearing away leaves from the bank of the loch as preparation, so that the games could go ahead while I was confined to my small room in the tower. Fun. This year, it seems I may actually get to experience this much-heralded annual event.
Danny doesn’t look overly enthused, his face twisted into an unimpressed grimace, but then he’s the kind of guy who’d much rather read a book than run cross-country around the castle in the rain. “I always put this out of my mind…”
“It can’t be that bad?”
“It’s Lochkelvin. Ofcourseit’s that bad.” The grimace on Danny’s face doesn’t lessen. “I guess we know what we’ll be doing in PE this week.Heats.”
He says it in a tone laden with such doom. But it turns out, for me, that the Highland Games has literally nothing to do with me at all.
As is typical on the days when we have PE, the murky gray clouds swell with rain unleashed on us in a sudden, rushing torrent. Arabella, Li and I have been relegated to the side of the class, because girls don’t take part in the Highland Games at all. Instead, we’re forced to watch the boys — which, for me, isn’t much of a hardship, though I wish I could do so out of the freezing cold rain. Danny, who paces the length of the castle like a vagabond, looks so miserable that I wish I could bound over and hug him. Happily, Finlay seems to sense Danny’s woe; I watch him fall into step beside Danny and chat animatedly with him, as though trying to distract him from the upcoming heats.
Rory, on the other hand, looks incredibly focused as he sticks close to Luke. He’s taken his role as Luke’s bodyguard seriously. His eyes study every face in the milieu, as though on the hunt for bad faith and worse intentions. For more shallow reasons, my eyes linger on the cut of his calf muscles and the lean lines along his thighs. Only when he sees me does his form soften, the hard, tense, alert outline of his body relaxing. A small, winning smile flickers across his face before he’s guided away by the instructor.
The group of boys move off, leaving the girls behind. I almost think the instructor’s forgotten our ever-so-burdensome existence.
“So,” Li drawls, sounding phenomenally bored. “Are you going out with him, then? With Rory?”
Instantly, I’m on edge. I swear there’s a phantom twinge from the ribs she almost broke when she beat me up. “What’s it to you?”
Li shrugs, looking out into the gray middle distance. “You know he’s a wanker, right? My ex? Seems like you don’t have any semblance of girl code in your body.”
I stare at her in amazement. “I. Have. Tried.So hard. To be friends with you.” They don’t even realize that I’m the one who negotiated with Rory to stop the gremlins from bullying them. I glance at Arabella, who’s saying nothing. Ridiculously, her gold Head Girl badge is pinned onto the breast pocket of her tee. Even Rory has never been that obsessed about being Head Boy. “I even tried to be friends withyou, Arabella — and fat lot of good that did. Because ever since the start, ever since Operation Strike First, you’ve all shut me out.”
“That wasagesago!” Li snaps, sounding offended that I even bring it up. “Back when Freya and Becca were still here.”
“The world’s changed a fair bit since then,” Arabella says quietly, staring out into the rain. Her gaze seems stuck on Luke.
“I’m just saying,” I tell them as delicately as possible, though I’m fed up with trying to be delicate around these two when they never show me half the consideration. Really, I just want to go on the rampage now. “Your so-called ‘girl code’ only seems to extend one way. ‘Girl code’ only matters if you’re the rightkindof girl — one with money and connections. And I guess for you that isn’t me.”
“Why would we haveyou?” Li spits. Her eyes slide in revulsion from my rain-drizzled hair to my scuffed grass-stained sneakers. “Gallivanting with boys? Making a spectacle of yourself at the talent show? You’re a fucking weirdo, Jessa.”
For someone who claims that Operation Strike First wasages agoand therefore utterly irrelevant, it’s interesting to note that my talent show performance still lives in her mind rent-free.
“I’d rather be a weirdo than the kind of girl who calls other girls weird.” I meet her gaze and tell her frankly: “I’d rather be a weirdo thanyou.”
