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“At least I do it for a reason,” Li murmurs. “Arabella… well, she’s not herself anymore.”
I’d love to know how Li rationalizes her reasons for punching me in the head, but I remain quiet, waiting for her to continue.
“She’s been weird for weeks. Ever since the — you know. She’s taken it all very badly.” Li tucks a sleek strand of hair around her ear. “I mean, in my opinion, all publicity is good publicity, and I’ve tried telling her that she can build on this new platform of hers and become a figurehead, but she’s just not having it. Thinks her life is over. She’s very sensitive like that, unfortunately.” The way Li says this, it’s as though sensitivity is a personal failure.
Still, I say nothing, adjusting my hair, listening.
Li seems off in her own world when she adds in a gossipy tone, “Honestly, I think she’s just embarrassed. I would be. How could you not be embarrassed after saying what she said, and having it blasted around the globe for everyone to criticize? Very awks.”
“Awks,” I repeat blandly, feeling a bit nauseous at Arabella’s unwise comments on the death of Luke’s mother being described in such a way. But Li has never been as openly political as the others. She doesn’t care. And why should she, as the daughter of a billionaire?
And speaking of awks… The door to our room begins to open and Li abruptly stands, foisting a large distance between us. Baxter’s hawk-like eyes absorb the scene of devastation within seconds, darting from the glass sparkling on the floor to me fixing my distressed hair in the mirror. Beside her stands Arabella in her glorious gown, her face tear-streaked but her eyes hollow.
* * *
Isolation. It’s the same as detention, except Baxter can’t call it the latter because we’re outside Lochkelvin’s premises. Still, the word is delivered as icily as when she’d inform me detention beckons. Is it out of care, I wonder, that Baxter refuses to let me carry out my suffering in a room full of broken glass? Of course not. Later, when thinking back on the rest of this evening, I’ll realize I’d have preferred being locked up in this hazard zone of a dorm instead of what I actually endure.
I’m marched onto the coach and forced to sit at the very front, as far away from the chiefs, it seems, as possible. Baxter keeps me in sight, looking truly disgusted. For my part, I’m glad of her presence. If I were alone with Arabella, I wouldn’t hesitate to rip her throat out — and who knows, maybe Arabella would continue to butcher me for defending myself. I mean, what the fuck did she hope to accomplish? I’ve known Arabella my entire Lochkelvin life, practically from the moment I arrived, and she’sneverbehaved like this. She’s normally so repulsed by violence. I remember at St. Camford, her tentative warning to Rory that a counter-protest against Luke would go ahead, divulged purely because she was worried it’d make Lochkelvin look bad.
This is not the same Arabella.
She’s lashing out.
A large, stately hotel greets my eyes, and excited chatter begins to spring up in the coach. This place is fancy, the kind of fancy that has an enormous opalescent fountain at the front. The kind where people get married in sleek white gowns and walk down a plush carpeted aisle surrounded by flowers and dreamy music. The building is impressive and the guests look expensive. Outside, some female students from other schools are dressed almost identically to Arabella, and I wonder if this outfit has actually been sanctioned by Antiro to have such a hold over so many. Maybe one of their high-up women wore it and started a fashion craze. Maybe Antiro holds award ceremonies — Best Murderous Psychopath, that kind of thing.
I don’t get to see much of the hotel. I barely even see the chiefs, though when I do, I note glimpses of kilts that never fail to stir the butterflies in my belly. Rory in a kilt…God. It’s what he wore the night of the senior dance and it still may be the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. A part of me wants him right now, wants his mouth on my throat, his tongue on my lips, in my belly button, my cunt. His body on top of mine, his breath hot and warm across my skin, that kilt never removed. Oh, God.
Rory turns his gray eyes onto me and shoots me an unhappy frown as Baxter marches me away from the rest of the students gathering by the fountain. I’m dragged into the sparkling hotel lobby and pass a series of marble pillars, turning into another grand corridor decorated with traditional oil paintings. It opens into a foyer where a pair of female attendants await us.
“You received my message?” Baxter asks the women curtly. “This is her.” She turns to face me, clapping her hands briskly so that I take a grudging step forward.
The pair of attendants inspect me with a critical sweep. “She’s a little on the older side for our usual service,” one murmurs, and despite the prestige of this hotel, where the customer is presumablyalwaysright, she fails to hide the doubt from her face and voice. “I see she has marks on her face. Is she likely to be violent?”
“I’m right here,” I seethe. I don’t know how much longer I can tolerate being treated like a rare curiosity.
“There is a history,” Baxter remarks grimly, as though describing a skittish horse. “But with any luck, she’ll have had her fill of violence for tonight. Just keep her away from the main event. I don’t wish for our students to be endangered, or our school to become a laughing-stock.”
“Understood,” the attendant says, though she still casts me a suspicious look. I get the crazy thought that I’ve been in so many scraps I could probably take on both of them and win. The urge to do so increases when she adds, “Because of her age and history, I think we’ll need to increase the babysitting fee.”
“Babysitting?” I snap, staring agog at Baxter. “Are you kidding me? I’m eighteen!”
One of the attendants frowns and glances at Baxter. “You won’t find anything we cannot cope with, provided the price is reasonable…”
“Fine,” Baxter says coolly, looking most displeased by this wrinkle in negotiation. “Add it to my employer’s tally. And for that, I expect the utmost impeccable service.”
She leaves, her boots clicking along the gleaming tiles. I turn to my two babysitters, and I’m led in silence so far down a carpeted corridor that I feel my connection to the chiefs stretch and almost sever.
51
Like the child I’m being treated as, I’m handed a piece of paper and a collection of colored pencils to entertain myself with. My automatic attempt is to scribbleHELP MEacross the paper, which my babysitters frown at.
“What is this?”
“An S.O.S.,” I mumble. “You think I want to be here?”
“No, no, no,” her backup tells me sternly. She picks up my pencil with an admonishing sigh and, to my bemusement, writes on my paper in big block letters:DO NOT USE PENCILS. Marching to the front of the room, she pins it onto an empty corkboard, then settles on a sofa where she begins to flick through a glossy magazine. To me, this sums up the hypocrisy of grown-ups.
After a moment’s silence, and woefully pencil-less, I snap, “Can I get something to read?”
