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At the door, Dr. Moncrieff turns his amber eyes onto me. “If that will be all?” He pulls out a key from his back pocket, ready to lock up.
I hesitate in front of the busy chalkboard with its complex words and array of arrows. As a politics professor, this is his life: dusty definitions and academic scholarship. A world of books, of being holed up in libraries, instead of the frontlines of reality and consequence. Suddenly, the emptiness weighs down on me as I realize the depressing truth: I will never be able to change Dr. Moncrieff’s mind. That grown-upsarefallible. That teachers can be wrong. That everyone has blind spots no amount of education can fix.
“I keep thinking back to that presentation I gave in politics. The one you gave me an A for last year.” Dr. Moncrieff sighs heavily, and he stares hard and unblinking at the back wall of the classroom. “It was on fascism. And I thought I knew everything, I thought I had it all figured out.” He refuses to meet my eyes, holding the door open for me to leave. “Now? Fascism? It’s a case of which side has more.”
* * *
Asmall side room on the third floor of the castle is where I’m supposed to decide the rest of my life.
The career adviser gives me an encouraging smile as I take my seat in front of her.
“Is what I say being recorded?” I ask, quiet enough that she’d have to strain to hear me. “Are you Baxter’s spy?”
Her smile turns perplexed. “No, I’m an outside contractor. I’m not involved with the school in any capacity, I’m just here to help steer you in the direction you require.”
I nod. She’s young, in her twenties — and, more importantly, a woman. It’s a small mercy, but it means there’s a higher chance she has more sense than a bleating elderly man married to life at Lochkelvin.
“Let’s take it from the top, Ms. Weir. Do you know what you’d like to do or is it something you need to finesse?”
My lips quirk upward.Finesse, as though there’s already an established plan. As though the blueprint for the rest of my life only needs a little buffing and polishing before releasing it to the world, instead of constructing the whole damn thing from the ground up.
I open my mouth but no sound comes out. Before me, my future splays into a multitude of directions, each one different from the last. Dancer, student, activist, lover. Truth-seeker, protector, jailbird, wife.
“If you’re a student at Lochkelvin, then you must have an inkling of what you’d like to do?” Her smile is kind, bordering on patronizing. “It’s okay if you don’t — it’s very normal, of course, as a teenager — but Lochkelvin students tend to be a different breed, and arrive already primed with their defined pathway.” Her large almond eyes sweep my face. “For better or worse, it’s usually instilled in them since birth.” She trills a laugh. “It makes my life easier, at least.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I inform her quietly, feeling shame in even admitting this.
“That’s okay.” Her voice is high-pitched, threaded with alarm. She writes down my indecision, her eyebrows furrowing as though projecting a complex task ahead of her. “Is there any inkling at all, any spark that interests you?”
Warm naked skin. Writhing on silk sheets. Screaming against the moon. Being surrounded by love not trauma.
“Originally, I wanted to go to St. Camford,” I confess, not mentioning the fact that last year’s bullying made my grades drop significantly below their eligibility criteria.
The career adviser winces, and for a while I think it’s because she’s seen my low grades on the report in front of her. “If you wish to apply to St. Camford, they’re one of the few universities who require applications to be sent in October.”
I stare at her. “October?”
“You’ll also need an academic reference. Have you written your personal statement yet?”
“I-I don’t know…” I gaze at the short report of me, informing the career adviser of my name and grades, as though a handful of letters is the sum total of me. Not my desires, my aims, my values, my wishes for humankind. Not the people I love, nor the ones who love me back. Nothing of my struggles, my pains. Every punch unrecorded, every barb unspoken, every kiss erased. To Lochkelvin, my existence is nothing more than a blemished academic record, a scatter of letters from the front of the alphabet.
What does any of it matter, anyway? We’re under the reign of King Benji now, and God only knows what the country will look like in a month, never mind a year. “How am I expected to know my future when everything out there’s so bleak?”
The career adviser glances at me in concern.
“I just wish people told the truth,” I mutter, gazing down at my hands as the last conversation I had with Dr. Moncrieff plays through my mind. “I wish people weren’t cowards.”
She licks her lips, and then says, as though my angst over university is the root of all my deep-seated problems, “You can of course still apply for deferred entry, if you’d like to take a year off to confirm your choices are the right ones…” She pauses, giving me an upbeat smile. “Your grades last year aren’t strong enough for an unconditional place at St. Camford, but if you achieve them this year then I see no reason why they wouldn’t accept you as a conditional candidate.”
This, at least, is surprising information. Arabella’s mocking words from earlier, about how I’ll never walk St. Camford’s hallowed halls, still weigh heavily on my mind. “You’re saying I could still make it to St. Camford? There’s still a chance?”
She nods, glancing down at my report again. “I’m not saying it’ll be easy and I’m not making any promises. But if you study hard and get straight As this year, then there’s no reason why not. The university, after all, prioritizes Lochkelvin pupils.”
How sick of me, I think distantly, to take advantage of the name and status of my school. As though being affiliated with prestige must in turn makemeprestigious, and therefore good enough for the best university in the world.
But then, maybe it’s what Lochkelvin deserves. It battered me into submission in my first year; I can take what I want from it and become stronger long after.
The career adviser hesitates. “I will point out, however, regarding what you were saying about telling the truth… St. Camford — well, traditionally it’s where they send members of the… family previously known as royal.”
