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She was lucky Matron Baker kept droning on about the rules and punishments.
“Uppers will have their family notified, and a fine will be levied against them,” she said. “This will make for awkward visits home, and you know the kinds of punishments they’ll put you through if you cost them money.”
She smiled at this as if it was some great joke, but the only noises I heard from the Upper side were groans and angry whispers.
“Why is that such a big deal?” I asked Harlow quietly. “Do you know?”
“Just because I’m a Lower doesn’t mean I don’t know anything,” she replied under her breath. “My family is Upper. It’s just my parents who are Lower.”
I didn’t know that about her.
“The family will be publically humiliated, and your failure will be published in the Upper news rags,” she continued. “This will mean a potential loss of business contracts for your father and social penalties for your mother. They’ll take it out on you.”
“How?” I asked and turned to look at her.
“Shut up,” an Upper hissed across the aisle. “You’ll get us all in trouble.”
Her name was Grace. She was Victoria’s friend and sometimes sidekick when I wasn’t needed. I glared at her, and she stuck her nose up, looked forwards, and patted her blonde bob.
I wanted to know more about everything but couldn’t keep asking. Matron Baker might blame Harlow, and I couldn’t risk it.
My mind kept working through the information as if I was a tourist in a strange land. None of these rules or social systems made sense to me, and it felt like the more I struggled to understand, the thicker the fog grew, and the darkness spread.
It generally hovered at the edges of my inner world, with the wisps of fog snaking through the center. It was an inky black vignette that would bleed into the rest of my memories when I tried to concentrate on them too hard.
I was sure it was the pills. The medications kept me drowsy and unable to grasp simple memories. But I feared what would happen if I stopped taking them. Could things get worse?
After Matron Baker’s speech about behaving ourselves and working hard to become the wives we were destined to be, we went off to our classes.
I had expected some sort of consistent schedule, with most academic courses taking up my time. It wasn’t like that at Crimson Academy, though, and I found myself going day after day to the most bizarre combination of oppressive patriarchal bullshit and outdated domestic chores.
By Friday, I was ready to lose my mind. I hadn’t been able to spend any time with Luke, and being near Rome without understanding the sorrow and heartbreak I had whenever we talked, it was all driving me a little looney.
“Oh, thank god, I get to go to treatments,” Victoria said after our sword class that afternoon. She was talking to Grace, and her voice was one part annoyance at me and one part smug boasting because she had access to something nobody else did. “This week has been terrible, and I swear I’ve aged ten years just having to deal with Willow’s craziness.”
“I’d be weirder than her if I had to put up with it,” Grace laughed, and their group of followers laughed too, as though she’d made the cleverest joke ever.
Grace never missed a chance to take a stab at me. She was like an annoying Chihuahua, always snapping and barking at me but yelping and hiding behind Victoria the moment I said anything.
I had an unsettling feeling that she was after Alexander, and as much as I’d love to ditch him and let her take him off my hands, I couldn’t deny the amount of privilege I had as his fiancée.
I left them and started across the campus towards the modern research building. Without them, I couldn’t stomach any more of the Upper game playing.
When I was walking past the hedge maze, I gave it a look of longing as I thought about hiding from everyone in there. It was tempting to shirk my treatments and disappear for a while, preferably into Luke’s arms.
But I carried on, ready to face the strange sensation of treatments and finally find out what they were supposed to do to me.
I went through the same thing as the week before with the receptionist and the scan, but this time there was no reaction. Victoria arrived just as I was going through to Flora, and her annoying energy was rolling off her as I left her behind.
Flora was happy to see me. I didn’t need an interpreter to figure that out. The moment I walked in, her face lit up, and she said, “Willow! I’m so happy so see you here. Now, please, don’t run away from me this time.”
I felt sheepish about the whole situation, and my cheeks flared with heat. “I’m so sorry about that,” I replied. “I don’t know what came over me. I just reacted. Or overreacted.”
“It’s normal to be on edge after such a traumatic injury,” Flora smiled, consoling me. “I’ve seen worse. Yours wasn’t even that bad.”
“Worse than freaking out, running away, and disappearing?” I laughed.
“Worse, I promise,” she replied. “Now, let’s just dive into treatments this time, shall we?”
