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“I want to help.”
Finlay just shakes his head. “Focus on yerself. This year’s important — ye know that. Ye’ll need the grades tae get intae a decent uni.”
I pause and then decide to voice something aloud that I’ve buried deep inside me all year: “I don’t even know what I want todo.” It’s a helpless mumble, but just saying it aloud is something of a relief. Telling someone else feels instantly like unburdening myself, the weight lifting from my shoulders. Every class, every subject, I’ve been treating it like a stepping stone on the way to something big, toward my destiny. The only thing is, I don’t know what that destinyis— what it looks like, what it involves. Since arriving at Lochkelvin, I’ve only considered my future in the vaguest possible terms. Rory, he’d said, had wanted his to be bound up in mine…
But I’m not like the chiefs, with their visions of reading politics at St. Camford, the way they’ve been instructed since birth. Finlay at least had a brief flirtation with music — but that’s all it is, a flirtation. The chiefs aren’t allowed to deviate, to be their own people.
And I’m still figuring out my own personhood. My own womanhood.
I genuinely have no clue what I want to do with my life.
For now, though, there is English class — a stepping stone to a stepping stone. Finlay lifts my hand to his lips and kisses the back of it, his dark messy hair falling into his bright green eyes. “Ye’ll figure it oot, sassenach,” he says softly. “I know I’m meant tae be a’ hard and rational-minded… but sometimes there are moments when I think, nah. Maybe everything that’s happened really is a’ planned oot. That everything happens for a reason. So just let the moments play oot and see.”
“I likethismoment,” I tell him as his lips caress my hand, and Finlay grins up at me.
I follow him into class, watching the swing of his heavy kilt, the glitter of the studs on the back of his jacket as they catch on the low lamplight.Alba gu bràth. He carries himself with such confidence, with such swagger, even when I know it’s a deceit. When inside I know he’s just as vulnerable and worried for the future as the rest of us.
Maybe I need to be more like Finlay, then. Fake it till I make it.
There is no faking the hostile atmosphere in English class. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt. Arabella and Li sit at the front of the class like prissy gatekeepers, the chiefs relegated to the back of the room. We analyze a poem of our choice, the classroom tense with silence. Mr. Stevenson mistakes the silence for unusually excellent behavior, and unwisely decides to step out of the room to retrieve a book from the library.
All hell descends.
“So it appears you’ve lied about the abdication, too,” Arabella says in a voice like ice, turning around to see Luke’s reaction. Luke, who’s said nothing to anyone all lesson, willfully ignores her. Rory doesn’t.
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned,” he declares loudly, and his words are so bizarre that I have to glance over my shoulder to check I hadn’t misheard. I discover that he’s reading — or rather, not even reading but reciting. His arms are crossed behind his head, his long legs stretched lazily out in front of him. His blazer cuts fine against his body, his chin tipped toward the stone ceiling, and his gray eyes closed. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
These words ring a bell. I remember Rory speaking them before, a soft enchantment from his slow, drawling voice.
“What are you talking about?” Arabella snaps, looking like this is not how she expected the conversation to go.
“Yeats, you uncultured fuck.” Rory leans forward menacingly and adds, “Beware those who give in easily to the addiction of righteous indignation. As Yeats says, the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Arabella’s eyes narrow. “Aren’tyoupassionate? Aren’tyouintense?” She glances over at Luke. “Because he sure as hell doesn’t deserve it. You’d be better off putting your misplaced faith into someone who isn’t an out-and-out liar.”
A crooked smirk spreads across Rory’s face. “Why, Belly, are you trying to recruit me to Antiro? I’m flattered. Unfortunately I’m just not that much of a nutter.”
“Thisis who you’ve allied yourself with,” Arabella spits, and to my surprise she’s addressing me. “You chose dickheads and frauds over the girls, just because of some petty squabble last year.”
Petty squabble. The petty squabble that alienated me from the entire castle until Danny felt sorry enough for me that he stepped in to be my friend.
And it’s Danny again who steps in now. “Leave her alone,” he says quietly, and perhaps it’s because it’s Danny speaking up when normally he’s so reserved, but the whole class turns to look at him. “Jessa has nothing to do with you.”
“Are you joking? She damn well does when she chooses to have private chats with Dr. Moncrieff!”
“Tell us, then, Belly,” Rory says in a deliberately goading tone, “why does Jessa talking to her politics teacher impact you in any way?”
Arabella’s mouth shuts with a click. Rory’s eyes glitter with vengeance as cold as frostfall. He wants her to say it. To admit to the whole school that they’re together. Only we know the truth of it — to everyone else, it’s gossip so scandalous it’s to be repeated and mocked, but it isn’t meant to bebelieved.
As enjoyable as it is, I don’t want the chiefs sticking up for me. I want to do so myself. So I clear my throat slightly and say to Arabella, “If we’re still on the literature theme, then Mary Wollstonecraft pointed out in ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’—”
“Do you think Icarewhat you have to say?”
“No. But it may give you some cause for self-reflection.”Optimistic as that may be, I add in my mind. My tone is civil and polite. Nevertheless, Arabella’s expression grows increasingly skeptical. “She said that anyone who conforms to social expectations ends up rewarded by society, even if disregarded in the long haul.”
“So? How is that relevant?”
“She’s saying it’s easy to be popular when you jump on a bandwagon.” I keep my voice steady, even when looking at Arabella is enough to make me grip my pen that little bit tighter. “In a castle full of boys, it’s an opportunity to claim scraps of power when you’re already marginalized. So Iunderstandwhat you’re doing and why you’re going full steam ahead. But supporting a cause everyone’s already going rah-rah over takes no effort on your part. Bullying the weakened, keeping them down… it’s too simple. You know that. It’s why you’re getting no satisfaction from it and unleashing all your anger at us. Because what we’re doing? Standing by Luke when the odds are so high?Thattakes guts. It takes courage. And sure, you may be one of the smartest students with the best grades in here, but there’s one crucial thing you’re missing, Arabella — and that’s a spine.”
