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Perfect Parallels
Theodora
StartingYear12,Iwas both relieved and devastated to find I was only sharing a single class with Zachary.
Relieved because Zachary’s presence is a distraction—a complication—which becomes harder to ignore with each passing year. Devastated because I would miss our conversations, our debates, and, yes, our rivalry. Mostly, though, I would miss him.
Zachary is unlike anybody else at Spearcrest—unlike anybody else I’ve ever met. And being around him is like being in the presence of some sort of ineffable being. Being around him gives me the same breath-catching sense of consecration one might get from entering a magnificent cathedral or an ancient shrine.
As it turns out, I never need have worried at all.
Now that we are in the upper school, students have a lot more freedom, especially those of us with powerful parents. My friend group is the female equivalent of Zachary’s group—the hyperbolically titled Young Kings—and so instead of barely seeing each other, we end up seeing each other all the time.
Parties are a strange social obligation. They come with the crushing pressure of needing to look beautiful and having to socialise even when I’m not in the mood.
But now I know my own limits better, I can drink a little more, and alcohol gives me the fuel I need to make it through the long evenings in crowded places and dimly lit clubs. Alcohol gives me a reprieve from the pressure, the crushing loneliness, the numbness that makes me feel cold from the inside out.
Alcohol also allows the wall between Zachary and me to blur and transform, becoming glass-like—invisible but impenetrable. During those parties, with the burn of alcohol searing away our inhibitions, we meet each other carefully in the middle of the neutral no-man’s-land.
“How are you getting on with the metaphysical poetry essay?” Zachary launches in one night at the Cyprian.
I’m sitting in one of the booths, nursing a glass of wine and waiting for my head to stop spinning after dancing a little too hard with a perfectly wasted Kayana.
I look up at the sound of Zachary’s voice, which has become deeper and more melodic over time. He slides into the booth and sits down facing me, half collapsing into the dark leather of the curved seat.
He’s more than a little tipsy: his eyes have a glaze like sugar, his eyelids droop heavily, and his mouth stretches in a frank, open smile, displaying those dazzling white teeth. In a room full of men in expensive clothes, he still manages to appear over-dressed, but the top three buttons of his shirt are undone, and his neck and collarbones gleam with sweat.
I take a sip of my wine and drag my gaze back up to his face.
“I’ve not started yet,” I answer.
His eyes brighten.
“Oh? Struggling with it? The great Theodora Dorokhova, the patron saint of perfect grades, stumped?”
I am, but I could never admit it. It would only disappoint him if I did. “Never. I’ve just been putting it off.”
“How come? You’re the”—he waves his arm in a sweeping flourish—“mistress of poetry, are you not?”
I purse my mouth to hide a smile. “I’m not the mistress of poetry. More like poetry’s secret admirer. I just lurk and admire it from afar. But metaphysical poetry just isn’t setting my heart racing like I thought it would.”
“I didn’t know there wasanythingcapable of setting your heart racing,” Zachary says, a wicked edge to his widening grin. “I thought your heart was a thing of marble, not of flesh and blood.”
This is Zachary’s way of drawing me out into unknown, dangerous territory. I ignore it and veer safely away.
“Thank you, Zachary.” I lift my glass and tip it towards him. “You always know how to compliment me.”
He laughs. “You’re exceedingly easy to compliment.”
“Is that so?” I can’t help but be tempted. “What makes me so easy to compliment, then?”
“Where to begin?” He speaks in a ponderous tone, his gaze bold and unashamed. “Your dazzling intelligence, of course. Your brilliant use of rhetorical devices in debates. Your exquisite beauty and the tantalising way your body looks in that green dress.”
I tilt my head and give him a look of warning. “Your flirting is in excellent form tonight. You shouldn’t waste it on me.”
I’m giving him an easy way out: all he needs to do now is deny he was flirting with me.
But Zachary doesn’t take the easy way out.
