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“Arabella,” I call out from the curved wall of a smashed turret, which I have to grip hold of to stop myself from flying off the edge. I don’t know how Arabella withstands the gale. Her head shoots up to look at me but her expression lacks surprise. “Are you okay? Can you talk?” Her silence is answer enough. With a tentative step away from the turret, I approach her. “Arabella?” I whisper hoarsely. She shakes her head once, her mouth trembling ever so slightly. She looks like a statue, except for the tear stains on her pale cheeks. “What’s happened?”
She returns her gaze to the feral sea and continues to stand where she is. Then, without acknowledging me, she starts to walk away. I quickly grab her wrist, pulling her back for her own safety.
“Let go of me!” she snaps, and I hesitate. I don’t want to lose her. My fingers tighten around her wrist again, and she tries to yank herself free. Through gritted teeth, Arabella orders, “Let – go – of – me.”
Her eyes flash in the dim light and I hold up my hands defensively. “Okay. Fine.” I’m not comfortable with it, but she appears to have the capacity.
I wait until she takes another couple of steps before speaking again. My muscles tighten as she calmly approaches the edge, lingering. “Why did you come down here?” I ask, trying to distract her.
“Why didyou?” she fires back, her gaze glued to the vast emptiness in front of her.
“To help you.”
She gives a bitter laugh I’d never recognize as coming from her. “I don’t need help,” she says darkly. “I’m far beyond it.”
“That’s not true,” I declare over the sudden whoosh of wind. I’d be a lot more comfortable if I could get us both out of the wide open grassland and into the scant shelter of the ruins. “No one’s ever beyond help.” I take a few tentative steps in her direction, moving closer until I’m standing beside her. I feel sick with nerves, like every second counts. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“What would you know about it?” she snarls, and while I don’t recognize this reaction ever coming from Arabella, I recognize it all too well from the bitter desperation I once carried in me before Lochkelvin.
“I know you’re smart. I know you can do anything you put your mind to.”
“Asmartperson wouldn’t have blabbed that the Queen was killed,” Arabella mutters. “Asmartperson wouldn’t have said anything. I don’t have any way back. It’s all I’ll ever be known for.”
“We’re eighteen,” I point out, not entirely surprised that Arabella’s uncharacteristic breakdown is due to her ruminating over her legacy. I try to temper my impatience. Lochkelvin is a different world, after all. “You know you can be known for anything, right?”
“I haven’t even studied,” she reveals quietly, her voice carrying in the wind. It’s knowledge I gained from looking in her diary, but I listen to her without judgment. “I’ll never make it to St. Camford. I’m going to fail this entire year. My whole life is one big failure. Finlay was right — Iamnothing but an impostor.”
I touch Arabella’s shoulder tentatively, hoping to steer her from the edge. “You don’t need to sit exams to do good things or be a good person,” I point out, as casually as though this were a debate in our politics class. I lick my lips, glancing nervously at the sheer drop just feet away from us. One especially strong gust of wind, and I don’t know… “Arabella, please,” I whisper, trying to sound encouraging, though my teeth are chattering from the cold. “Let’s go through here and just… we can talk it over, yeah?”
My only thought is to get her away from the cliff’s edge — to protect her from falling into the raging waters, and maybe save her from the darkness inside.
54
As I look at Arabella, she doesn’t respond, her blank gaze fixed and stony on the dangerous depths below. A slow, humorless smile spreads across her lips as the water viciously lashes the rocks. “Why did it have to be you?” she whispers harshly. “Why areyouthe one who had to see me at my weakest? Always barging into places you aren’t wanted. I think you must be simple.”
“Yes, Arabella.” I wonder if agreeing with her will somehow appease her. “I’m just a simple girl from an American backwater, who could never have imagined the worldly sophistication residing in the minds of Lochkelvin students. I’ve truly been humbled.” I let a short breath escape, hoping Arabella isn’t so far gone that she’s unable to pick up sarcasm. “Now, what can a simple girl like me do to persuade you to give up this mad idea and allow me to bring you back to shore?”
Arabella’s head gradually turns toward me, her gaze penetrating. “Do you know the shameful thing?” she asks as if I hadn’t spoken. A small frown puckers her brows when she returns to look at the sea. “Out of everyone in Lochkelvin, I was always more like you than the others. Middle-class. Comparatively impoverished, looking for better. I always had to fight tooth and nail, struggling to be seen as a human being like the others, instead of a clown, and I still managed to fail their social games. I was still mocked. Nobody cares.”
“That’s not true—”
“Because this world…we’rethe ones playing a rigged game compared with everyone else. They started playing it before they were born, and only for us do the rules keep changing. It’s not like you can even say ‘screw this for a game of soldiers, I’m playing something else.’ Youhaveto play the same trick of a game that they chose long before you crashed the party. Li gets a million every time for passing Go, while I’m lucky to get a hundred. If you scraped every penny together to buy Mayfair, Oscar Munro’s the one who ultimately says who deserves it because his family owns the deeds to the entire borough, which he’ll pass on to his ungrateful son, and since Rory shares a dorm with Finlay, it’s quids in for the boys… How are we supposed to stand a chance, other than by doing what you did, taking off all your clothes and hoping for the best?”
I ignore her last jibe. She’s hurting. And despite her insult, I’ve experienced the truth of her words, the hopelessness and fear of seeming as small as a cockroach among the biggest wallets and egos. Because Arabella’s right: in this world, it feels like we’re playing a rigged game of Monopoly, where the rules keep changing, certain players have been gifted unfair advantages, and our hard-earned accomplishments can be snatched by those in power. Unlike a game of Danny’s favored chess, where skill and dedication can lead to talent and improvement, this particular game feels predetermined, unavoidable. You play the game. You have to play the game. You have tokeepplaying the game, even when you know you’ll lose. When all that matters is blood and money, the rich and untalented are primed for success. It’s not like you can even opt out of the game and live a quiet life free from the rest of the game’s players, because everything of worth has already been hoovered up by large corporations, whose creators have already won previous rounds of the game.
“I know. It’s shit. But it’s not true to say nobody cares. I’m worried about you. Li’s worried about you.”
“Li’s barely spoken to me since Christmas. We used to be close but — not anymore. She can’t hack it when her friends have problems. It’s too complicated for her to bother with.”
“Forget Li, then. I always wanted to be your friend.” My words are sincere and I hold out a hopeful hand. I remember her brutally rebuffing me the Christmas before last, when I’d only wanted company, and Arabella had sneered that I needed a psychiatrist instead. It’d come from a cruel place. But it’s a cruel place that still has a hold of her now, and this isn’t how anyone deserves to end up. “If you want, we can do it now. We can still be friends.”
She glances down at my offering as though it’s some kind of puzzle. “The only person I had,” she eventually murmurs, still staring at my rapidly numbing hand, “was Tobias.”
Tobias. Dr. Moncrieff.Was. I swallow. In the end, I have to tuck my hand beneath my armpit to warm it up again. Arabella gives me a look as though it’s what she expected, like I can’t have been serious after all.
“I’ll admit, I don’t understand it. You know he’s our teacher, right? It’s not the romantic story you think it is.” When she says nothing, I press on, “You’re the smartest person in school, but when it comes to him…?”
Arabella blinks up at the vast black sky, and I almost sense the impatience rolling off her in waves. The wind picks up drastically, blowing strands of her hair around her pale face. “No one ever understood our relationship,” she states bitterly, “though they made sure to make it appear as lewd as possible.” She glances at me, narrowing her eyes. “So you can tell those chiefs of yours that Tobias and I never once had sex.”
