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She watches me for a moment. Her face is still unreadable, but I can almost see her thoughts like swirling mist glimpsed beyond the glass windows of her gaze.
“I would never try to offend you, Zachary. Unlike you, I don’t take casual conversations so personally.”
Do I take things personally? Perhaps I do. I still remember the sting of her comment thatAnimal Farmwas a short book that day we first met. And her supposition that I’m too young to understand Byron’s “Prometheus” did sting—still does.
I’m mature and honest enough to acknowledge that, though. Whereas Theodora would never willingly admit she said those things intending to be offensive. That might make her appear as if she’s more human than she wishes to appear.
Because Theodora Dorokhova doesn’t wish to appear human. She wishes to appear like a being made of steel and marble and glass, smooth and polished and unstirred. There’s a reason for that—a reason I can’t yet understand. Nobody builds a wall unless they’ve got something to protect. Nobody wears armour unless they fear pain.
The mystery of Theodora is like a book—like a philosophical text in an ancient and cryptic language. I can look at the pages but I can’t understand what they say.
I’m in Year 9, though. I’m young, and as she so hurtfully stated, I’m not yet clever and perceptive enough to understand certain things.
The book of Theodora sits in the middle of my heart. It’s not going anywhere, and I’m very patient. I’m going to learn its language, and I’m going to decipher its code. I’m going to read every page until I know the text better than I know myself, until every word of it is inscribed on every part of me.
No matter how long it takes. No matter the obstacles Theodora sets in my way.
And I have a feeling she’ll set many.
Chapter 7
Summer Ball
Theodora
TheendofYear9 is marked by the Summer Ball—a Spearcrest tradition seeking to denote the end of an era and the beginning of another. A rite of passage of sorts.
Unlike the glittery proms movies filled my imagination with—wristfuls of flowers, spinning disco balls filling blue darkness with coruscating lights, orange slices floating like wheels in blood-red spiked punch—the Summer Ball is a solemn affair. Black tie and ballgowns (though Spearcrest, surprisingly, allows boys and girls to wear whichever they prefer), a formal dinner, then a dance with a string quartet.
Although no student wishes to admit it, everyone is excited for the dance. The entire month leading up to it, it’s all anybody can talk about. Students complain about the over-the-top formality of it, the old-fashioned dress code, the fact there’s not going to be any “good music”.
But above all, they complain about finding a date. They complain about having to ask someone, having to be asked, having to learn a dance. The girls loudly state there’s not a single good-looking boy in the year and that they’d rather go with one of the Year 11 boys. The boys ostentatiously question why girls are so difficult to approach when they all secretly want to be asked out. Everyone jokes about going to the dance with their same-sex best friend.
Everyone is lying, of course. The girls are desperate to be asked out by the boys, and the boys are both petrified of asking and petrified of not asking.
I feel nothing at all.
The thought of being at a formal dinner makes me ill. I rarely eat in front of people anymore. My relationship with food is too complex for that. Like an abusive marriage, it requires utter privacy.
As for the thought of being squeezed into a ballgown, of having to look more beautiful than ever when looking beautiful is already a daily effort, it is disheartening. And dancing with a boy when I’m not allowed to date just sounds like a complete waste of time.
In my group of friends, we all decide to pair up and go together as friends. I get Giselle Frossard, the pretty French girl who flirts with any boy that enters her field of vision. Once the boys find the courage to start asking girls, I can imagine she’ll be one of the first bastions to fall, so I don’t hold out much hope of making it to the Summer Ball with her.
I have other things to worry about anyway, like trying to make sure my name finally appears alone at the top of the exam results boards or trying to give myself as much of a head start for my GCSEs as possible since I know for a fact Zachary will be doing the same.
And worrying about a silly dance isn’t going to give me the advantage I desperately want to get over him.
TheSpearcrestlibraryismostly empty at this time of the year. Exam groups, like Year 11s and the upper school years, have all more or less finished their exams by now, leaving the library eerily deserted. The cold sunrays of early summer drop from the glass cupola crowning the building, tilted columns of light alive with the faint glimmer of dancing dust.
I’m sitting at one of the reading tables near the poetry section one afternoon, a volume of Keats open in front of me, my cheek resting on my palm. Keats is the poet I tend to gravitate towards in my more sedate moments, his lyricism soothing as a lullaby. My eyes open and close slowly as I read each line to myself, my lips moving but my voice shut.
The cushioned sound of footsteps draws me out of my torpor, and I know before I even look up who I’m about to see. Maybe it’s because I can simply sense him, or maybe it’s because I’m used to the smell of him by now, soap and a rich, alluring cologne.
“Theodora,” he says, standing by my reading table.
His hair is longer now, and the curls of it, normally so neat and tight, become looser and softer the longer they are. The light catches them and outlines them in a warm halo. He’s wearing the summer uniform without a blazer, his short sleeves revealing newborn muscles.
While I spent the entire year working so hard trying to become beautiful, Zachary simply blossomed into his beauty. A natural sort of beauty, warm and polished.
