AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I pull my dress on over my head. It’s a very unceremonious process, and I know I’m not paying it the respect it deserves. It’s the dress Rory gifted me, after all. Wearing it should be special. But I’m far, far too distracted by the idea of saving Arabella.
“I bet your parents are bigots, too,” Arabella sneers. “They clearly never did anything right.”
My jaw clenches, and a wave of powerful anger swells up in my chest. “Don’t you dare bring my parents into this.” Especially my mother, who, in the before times, had been a literal saint — always preaching about being open-minded and never holding grudges. Antiro isnotthat.
But Arabella laughs derisively. “They’re probably worse than the rest. They madeyou, after all.”
My blood boils. I clench my fists, my body tensing as rage builds like brick slammed on top of brick. One. Two. I try to control my breathing, to keep myself calm. But as Arabella’s words echo in my head, I feel my anger rising. Attack me — fine, whatever. Attack my parents… No. No way.
I take a step toward Arabella and she takes a step back. “What are you going to do, Weirdo?” she taunts. “Attack me like you did in school last year? This time you don’t have your sad boy gang around.”
Breathe. Breathe.
“Do you believe half the shit you say?” I’m genuinely curious. Because Arabella has always struck me as a person who likes to think of herself first and foremost, caring that others consider highly of her. To chat shit like this undermines her main motivation. But then, as the weird misfit, I’ve always been an easy target. Ever since Operation Strike First, when she sized me up as a soft little scapegoat and proceeded to destroy my reputation to enhance hers.
Even thinking about it, my mind is consumed and I start to see red.
“About you? Yes.” She slides a sparkling black jewel into her hair and clips it into place. “When your mother showed her face at the start of last term, it finally explained everything. I watched her for several nights, almost passing out at the table, waiting for her waste-of-space daughter to bother turning up. Could barely stand, she was so drunk. I saw then where you get it from. You’re a total screwup, an embarrassment to Lochkelvin, just like your stupid, drunk mother.”
50
Red. Blinding, beautiful red. I lunge at Arabella, my fists clenched tightly. She takes a step back, but it’s too late. The anger, mixed with a kind of grief, is too much. My knuckles collide with Arabella’s cheek and the crack reverberates through the room. She reels back against the wooden frame of the bunk beds, clutching her reddening face and gasping for air.
“Howdareyou.”
At first, I think that’s the end of it, that I’ve won with the upper hand and successfully warned her off. But then Arabella launches herself at me, tackling me to the floor. She sits on me, straddling me, a mountain of material weighing me down, even as I buck my hips and try to throw her off. She punches my face again and again, her blows coming faster and harder as the seconds pass. I watch the red jewel of her necklace swing in time with each punch. All she says is the wordtraitor, over and over, dealt with every blow and circling my head like a halo. I gaze, uselessly, up at the ceiling and try not to give way to the hot tears springing in my eyes.
This is insane. This is what Li would do — what Li has done. Arabella has never had the capacity for violence like this. She’d been easily chased away during last year’s brawl, but now,now…
The straining pain spreads across my body; I try to block Arabella, to push her off, but she’s too heavy. She’s crushing me into the floorboards. “Stop,” I hiss, my teeth gritted with effort. I can’t breathe. With all my strength, I try to throw her off, but she’s not budging. Her black dress is like a parachute above me. I hear my heartbeat, loud and fast, pounding in my throat. In desperation, my hand scrabbles along the floor, searching for something, anything, to use to defend myself. My fingers brush against a long, thin plastic cable, and with all my might, I yank it toward us.
The lamp from my bed rolls to the floor, crashing beside us in a shower of blown sea-green glass. My eyes widen in alarm. Arabella pauses, noting the shrapnel glittering around us, and I watch the devil whispering at her to use it on me, and plead to the gods that she’s not so far gone to follow through.
“What the—?”
I swallow. I’ve never been so relieved to hear Li’s voice. She’s standing by the bathroom door, staring down at us in shock. Before she can say anything more, Arabella springs away from me and storms out of the room in a billow of luxurious fabric. The door slams behind her and finally I’m able to breathe.
I don’t remove my gaze from Li. She stands in a shimmery red dress with an elegant tartan sash tied over her shoulder. I expect the worse from her, as I’ve always done, wondering if she’ll finish the job Arabella couldn’t. But Li just looks at me, a small frown pinching her pretty face, and murmurs, “You’re hurt.”
The shards of glass glimmer around me like magnificent beads. Slowly, I raise myself from the floor, clutching my aching side. “I’ve had worse,” I groan pointedly, grimacing at the girl who’s attacked me so often, who’s drawn blood and clawed at my face like a demented alley-cat. Li says nothing, but she returns to the confines of the bathroom, and I hear her rattling around inside it. I take the moment of privacy to observe the marks decorating my arm. I feel a huge pain throbbing on my jaw, and another on my neck, but I ignore them as best I can. Right now, my whole body is one giant bruise, pulsating to the surface with raw, agonizing blood.
Li returns, a clutch of toiletries in her arms. She holds out her hand to me on the floor, and I stare up at it, not understanding. “Are you planning to stay there all night?” she drawls, raising a perfectly arched brow.
I take her proffered hand gingerly. I don’t know which universe I’ve crashed into, where Arabella is beating me senseless and Li seems to be… helping me? She pulls me to my feet and then gestures at me to sit on the lower bunk. I watch in fascination as, without expression, she toes away some of the splinters of glass with a shining red stiletto.
“Why aren’t you going after her?” Every word is a concerted effort for the muscles in my face. When my jaw moves, it rubs against the tender pain. It hurts so badly that I have to keep my mouth small, my voice almost slurring.
Li doesn’t respond, and I blink in surprise as she dabs my face gently with a warm cloth. It makes me flinch slightly, and she stops immediately.
“It’s all right,” I tell her hoarsely, my heart a frantic drumbeat in my chest. This is strange. This is far too strange. Why does Li suddenly care enough to help me? And why didn’t she join in on assaulting me? Why isn’t she running after Arabella? My mind is swirling. I don’t understand. Li was always the arrogant princess who’s hated me, violently, since day one.
“I can use concealer if you want,” she suggests.
I glance over at the mirror next to the bunk and see the swollen, purplish blotch along my jaw, the awkward protrusion of it enough to make me wince. How the hell am I supposed to cover it up? “No.” There are more important things than how I look, and I glance at Li quizzically as she offers a tube of lipstick.
“At least do something to your face.” There’s no rudeness to her tone like usual. “Take attention away from the fact you just got beaten up.”
“Only you do that, yeah?” I snark, and I’d snatch the tube straight from her hand if I had any remaining strength. Instead, I tilt my darkening chin upward, confronting my face in the mirror, and apply a thick pink coat of lipstick. It’s not exactly as flattering on me as on Li, but it’ll have to do. As Li watches me even out the lipstick, I notice the way her eyes flick up occasionally to mine in the mirror and wonder what she sees there. Pity? Annoyance?
