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Chapter Twelve
Several weeks pass and I hang out with the guys loads, but we never mention what happened in my room with Tilly that night. I have so many burning questions that I hate to leave unanswered, but I bide my time. Things are comfortable with the princes, but we don’t go on any more dates. In fact, they seem to have backed off all together. Rebel’s still a limitless flirt, and the others are affectionate with me, but there’s no kisses or romance.
It’s sort of driving me crazy really! If I want to use our relationship to drive a wedge between them, then I need to be dating them all and having a relationship with them. I need to work harder at moving things along with them, I just have no idea how.
I’m excited that all four of them are going to be around over Christmas. Like me, they aren’t going home for the holidays. We‘re the only fourth years staying behind, and aside from a handful of international exchange students in the years below, we’ll more or less be the only students in the school sticking around. They haven’t asked me any questions about why I‘m staying on campus, so I didn’t ask them any. By some sort of unspoken agreement, it’s been decided that I would stay with them over the two week school break because they have a spare room and they didn’t like the idea of me being the only girl on the top floor by myself.
I guess it could be the perfect opportunity to step up our relationship, but I can’t think too much about that right now.
I have other things on my mind that need my focus and attention.
It’s a couple of weeks until the winter concert, and I have major revenge plans for the princesses underway. I’ve decided that I’m going to hit Lexxi and Natalia right where it hurts: in their talents. Lexxi’s a stunning dancer, and she’s performing a solo from the school’s ballet production of Swan Lake that will be put on later in the year. The idea of her performance is to give a teaser of what’s to come, to gain more interest and raise ticket sales. What a shame it would be if she couldn’t dance for some reason.
Natalia’s a beautiful singer. I have, of course, heard her sing before at the winter concert when I came expecting to see Lizzie sing her solo that she worked so hard for months on, but Natalia took her place. What if someone did the same to her? Both of these girls did horrible things to my sister, and I feel like they need an exact taste of their own medicine for vengeance.
Lexxi’s going to be easy. I just need to wait for the perfect moment - I’m thinking right before the concert should do it. Natalia will be a little more tricky to pull off, but it’ll be worth it. I don’t enlist any help. Despite Michael’s offer, I’m still keeping him at a distance, not fully trusting him either still. It’s not that I think he’s lying about the guys' involvement, but that I think he’s not telling the whole truth about his own.
For the last two weeks, Natalia’s been obsessively drinking from a sports water bottle; she’s been so paranoid about catching anything that she won’t take any chances. She’s also - somehow - managed to get a doctors note to excuse her from talking in class to protect and rest her voice. Like, really, what the actual fuck? Lexxi’s also snagged a doctor’s note to excuse her from gym to avoid injury. There’s a rumour that she even has her legs insured for a million pounds...per leg! What planet do these princesses live on? I’d laugh if they didn’t make me so angry.
Luckily for me, Natalia has no such excuse for getting out of gym class, and she’s an exceptionally heavy sleeper. That gives me two opportunities a day to sneak into her bedroom and locker to tamper with her drink. They made Charlotte lose her voice by lacing her bottle with chemicals. I’m just returning the favour, but going one step further.
You see, if Natalia simply loses her voice, it’ll be too obvious. So I needed to devise a way to ensure that she got sick too. Losing your voice when you have a cold isn’t suspicious, just unfortunate timing. And once again it’s my love of science that enabled me to carry out these plans.
Chem lab gives me access to the chemical cocktail I need to ensure that Natalia can’t sing. I’ll admit, I’m pretty haphazard in the way I mix the solutions together, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the little songbird never sings again. Oh well.
I sneak into the lab one evening to mix a giant batch of the chem-cocktail and decant it into a bleach bottle, which I decide to keep under my bathroom sink. No one will question it there.
It’s biology that really gives me what I need though. We’ve recently moved on to microbial cultures, and part of our practical was to gather samples from all around the school to put in Petri dishes, labelled, and watch them grow. Every few days, we have to examine the rate of growth and list our findings. I don’t know what kind of germs specifically that we’re growing yet - that test comes later - but I figured if any were going to make someone ill, the swabs taken from the plughole of the men’s urinals would be a good bet. If nothing else, it gives me pleasure to know that I’m lacing her bottle with guys’ piss twice a day while she guzzles down gallons of some foul looking green herbal remedy that’s supposed to strengthen her vocal folds or some shit. Whatever honey, you’re literally drinking piss right now. Lucky for me, whatever vile concoction she’s devouring masks the taste of what I’m spiking it with.
I almost wish I could tell her just to see her reaction.
Anyway, it seems as though it’s starting to work because she’s beginning to look like shit. She’s necking even more of the green gloop now - oh the irony - and has started popping pills like they’re smarties. But it’s okay because I’ve switched those out too. All she’s doing is popping a shit load of contraceptives instead.
I need to make sure she can’t take part in the concert though so I wait until two days before and I hit her with a heavier dose of the cocktail and lace the rim of her bottle with a special swab I collected last week. A guy in my maths class looked like he was dying; he was absolutely wrecked with flu. I watched in horror as he repeatedly sneezed all over his desk throughout the whole lesson. It was so gross, but once everyone left the room, I snuck back in and swabbed his desk. I popped the swab into a sealed plastic bag and then showered for what felt like ten years. Gross. But worth it.
The day before the concert, she looks like death. I hear a rumour around lunchtime that she’s had to pull out of the concert and her parents are on their way to pick her up. Apparently, they’re taking her to a top Harley Street clinic for an examination, and she might need reconstructive surgery on her vocal cords. Even then, she might never sing again.
Mission accomplished.
Now I just need to get Lexxi. My plan’s simple; to push her down the stairs. I needed to wait until we were close enough to the concert that a sprained ankle wouldn’t heal. I had planned to get her the evening before on the way down to dinner because there’s always a bit of a stampede on the stairs, but as I was heading back to my room after class, I overheard Tilly and Lexxi talking about her pre-show rituals, which gave me a new idea.
That night I lay in bed, ready to move, when I hear a door along the corridor open. I slide out of bed in my floor-length white cotton nightie, glad that I saved it. I quickly apply the white stage makeup to my face that’s leftover from Halloween and don the long white-blonde wig. I slip out of my door and ghost along the darkened corridor, barefoot.
I sneak down to the first-floor balcony where I watch and wait. Lexxi’s ahead of me, already slipping into the dining room to raid the kitchen. Earlier today I heard her telling Tilly that every night before a show, she sneaks off to the kitchen wherever she is to eat ice cream. She said the one and only time she didn’t eat it, the show had gone terribly wrong. Tilly scoffed at her superstition, but I was glad of it; it was going to give me the perfect opportunity to exact revenge.
I wait, but I don’t have to wait long before I spy Lexxi coming back out of the dining room, carton of ice cream and spoon in hand. She looks so young without her makeup and bitchy scowl, wearing unicorn shorts PJs, that for a moment I waver and almost change my mind. Then I remember Lizzie’s face when I found her crying outside in the rain after the concert she never got to sing at, and my resolve strengthens.
I wait until she’s almost at the top of the steps, and I step out. She’s so startled that she jumps into the air, dropping the spoon and carton as her arms flail helplessly. There’s a moment of recognition as she looks at the long white-blonde hair and pale face, and I see the shock on her face morph into terror. She stumbles backwards, falling down the step, and I think for a moment that I won’t even need to push her because she’s done the hard part for me; she’s going to fall all by herself.
But where would be the fun in that?
I step forward and plant both my hands on her chest, and I shove her backwards. Hard.
Her scream is so loud I know that she’ll be found in just a moment, so I don’t need to worry about her banging her head and being found cold and lifeless on the ground when people come down for breakfast in the morning. I don’t hang around to watch her descent into justice. Instead, I turn and walk away, pausing only to look back when I hear a dull thud. I only meant to sprain her ankle, but even I can tell in the dark that both of her legs are bent at unnatural angles.
Good, I think to myself, ignoring the way that my stomach twists painfully. All I’ve done is what she did to Lizzie.
I repeat that to myself every step of the way back to bed. But for some reason, I have trouble falling to sleep for a long time.
