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“And for the record, I knew it was a mistake to bring you — but, fortunately for you, others advocated on your behalf instead.”
I swallow in surprise. “Others?”
“Your politics teacher.” My heart begins to pound. “For whatever reason, he sees something of worth in you that I do not.”
* * *
As the rest of the year gets ready to dine at some fancy Italian restaurant, I’m handed a menu by Baxter belonging to the hostel we’re staying at.
“I don’t like the idea of her being left here,” Li whines, much to my surprise. Has she suddenly developed an interest in safeguarding? “She’s going to be locked in here with all ourstuff.”
“There are safety deposit boxes at the end of each bed that you may utilize.”
“But my things areimportant. A flimsy little safe won’t offer enough protection!”
“Then you shouldn’t have brought it with you, where it could easily be lost. Use your common sense, Ms. Zhihao.”
I try to hide my smirk as Li scowls at me, attempting to thrust her large designer handbag into the tiny square safe. On the other side of the room, Arabella does likewise, frowning at the safe when it fails to accommodate her copious study notes.
“It just feels like we’re being punished whenshe’sthe one who acted like a twat.”
“I’m not going to touch your stupid stuff,” I bite out.
“Use language like that and you can say goodbye to this meal the hostel’s generously agreed to cook for you.”
“She just called me a twat!”
Li gives me a smug look. “It’s a statement of fact.”
I don’t know what twats she’s been looking at. Eventually, I order a vegetable risotto, the only thing on the menu marked vegan and the blandest dish in the whole of world cuisine. Baxter leaves, her meter from telling me off fully recharged after sapping my energy dry.
“Hey, Weirdo,” Li calls, slamming her safe door shut with a wicked grin. “I’ll make sure to orderextrapepperoni to pay my respects, plus lots of full-fat yummy goat’s cheese. Yum, yum.”
“Cool. Enjoy your heart disease.”
Li’s mouth tumbles open in shock. “What a horrible fucking thing to say.”
It’s like she’s deaf to the shit she just said to me. I watch her turn to Arabella, attempting to prompt her into agreement. When no backup is forthcoming, Li frowns at her friend — and I do, too. Arabella gazes into space, her mind a million miles away from pizza toppings. When she eventually notices the silence in the room, she blinks, reviews the last portion of our argument, and faithfully adds, “Yes. Horrid.” It lacks conviction.
With a gentle frown, Li murmurs to her friend, “I think you’ve been studying too much.”
When they leave, I finally allow myself to breathe, and find myself cracking open a book for that rare thing: pleasure. A stupid, nonsense page-turner Danny loaned me about warring robots. Just as I reach the part where the sidekick robot is blown up, I’m interrupted by someone popping in with my risotto, and as underwhelming as I’d imagined it tasting, it somehow surpasses all my expectations by being even blander and more forgettable than that. Still, you can’t have a bad time with food and books at your disposal, so I endeavor to make the best of it. Halfway through the book, and the tenth scene of robot gang violence, I end up taking a break, glancing across at the other, remarkably pristine side of the dorm, where everything that could have been stuffed into a safe has been.
I pull back the covers, stepping over my empty bowl. Arabella’s left a bag outside the safe, as though the safe’s close presence will extend its protections against prying eyes. I don’t feel great about what I’m going to do, but I also can’t get it off my mind the fact that she could have a copy of The Daily Toot, and my skin is itching with the thought.
The top of her bag is stuffed with various waterproof jackets and a selection of charming bobble hats and gloves. Next is a handful of school textbooks, but beneaththatis something that crinkles when the bag shifts beneath my searching hands. My heart skips a beat. I fish it out. It isn’t The Daily Toot but a single loose article from it, and the majority of it is ensconced between the pages of yet another book.
Only it isn’t a book.
I stare hard at the empty, wordless cover, flipping it over and seeing the same on the back. It’s only when I open it and see rows upon rows of Arabella’s small, pretty handwriting that I realize exactly what I’m holding.
It’s Arabella’s diary.
This… could be an even more thrilling read than murderous robots, and that’s saying something. But the thought of it, of reading someone else’s diary, fills me with a kind of scandalous dread. It’swrong. Even so, curiosity burns as I imagine the things Arabella could be offloading from her mind: thoughts on her Head Girl resignation, details from Antiro’s latest newsletter, girly daydreams about Dr. Moncrieff…
I open the page containing the loose article and see a selection of other clippings that have been glued to the paper. Every single pasted cut-out relates to Arabella, and not one of them is flattering. Most of them I’ve read before at our late-night news debriefs. But I’ve never read commentary about it from the subject herself, and Arabella, it turns out, has much to say.
…Another stupid article, another stupid photo from four years ago. Embarrassing. Everyone else at this school has access to updated professional headshots but according to ALL papers ever published, I’ll forevermore exist as a squinting 12yo chipmunk with pigtails. At least make me look hot when ruining my life…
