Chapter 3. Ophelia
OPHELIA
Stalk me once, shame on you. Stalk me twice, and clearly, I must be a fucking idiot or something.
Or however the saying goes.
I don’t understand how I’ve managed to be stalked twice in one year.
I’m the kind of person who has to hype myself up in a mirror to tell the barista I got the wrong drink.
I cry at kids’ movies. How is it me who ends up with the stalkers?
Belladonna punched someone who looked at her funny at a party last week, and to my knowledge, she’s not being stalked.
Another crack of thunder reverberates through the castle, dragging me back to the present.
Divya lets out a stomach-churning yodel, and the cocktail glasses on the gold bar cart chatter in time with the flickering lights.
Colette shoves a sofa cushion over my head like she’s trying to finish me off.
Her friend Magda lets out a tuneful hum.
Their attempts to distract me from the thunder are working, but probably not for the reasons they think they are; I’m genuinely fearing for my life, too scared to even think about helicopters as Colette mashes the velvet tighter against my ears.
“Are you feeling better yet?” she demands, her voice muffled.
“I can’t fucking breathe!” I screech.
“Oh, sorry.” She eases the pressure on the cushion, and I heave in a grateful breath. My laugh is buried in the stiff fabric.
The article about Alex’s family going live may have sent so much of my life into chaos, but it’s tied what few friendships I do have closer.
Divya and I whittle away our evenings studying in the library in companionable silence, and Colette’s best friend, Magda, has become one of my best friends, too.
After the bomb exploded between me and Alex and fractured the delicate thing we were building, I did what I’ve only ever been able to do.
Withdraw. Isolate myself. Deprive myself of human connection because how could loneliness ever be worse than the pain of losing someone you thought was here to stay?
I’m never one to miss a good opportunity to wallow, and man, did I wallow.
Like, crying into my dry bowl of cereal and listening to sad music just to make myself cry harder.
Scurrying across the floor like a greasy orange sewer rat to collect the snacks that Divya left outside my door but refusing to let her in. That sort of wallowing.
But my new friends are not so easily dissuaded, and when Colette’s thousand-dollar ankle boot snuck in the door before I could close it on the fourth day, I knew I was done for.
A nutritionally balanced meal and a tipsy pep talk later, I told my new friends everything.
I told them about my parents, about Bancroft, about Cain Green.
I told them why I could never get on a plane, why the sound of the helicopter terrifies me, and why thunder crashing in the valley makes me think of my parents’ death.
I told them I felt like Alex leaving was one thing too many, that it hurt me so much I didn’t think I could survive it.
By the end, all three of them were sobbing with me.
And since then, by the time the first flash of lighting illuminates Sorrowsong’s crumbling walls and well-buried secrets, they’re already at my bedroom door, armed with snacks and blankets.
Which, when you’re as well-acquainted with the Highlands’ storm warnings and howling winds as we are, is serious dedication.
Every frantic run from the castle’s walls to the mansion feels like a deadly trial.
And yet, they think I’m worth it.
For the first time, I find myself with fledgling friendships, delicate roots finding their place in my broken heart and filling up the smallest cracks.
I’m desperate not to damage them.
Alex’s absence gnaws a gaping hole in my chest every day, but there are people looking out for me.
I’m getting to know the reflection in the mirror.
I’m learning what she likes, what she’s passionate about.
I’m learning her insecurities and her dreams and all the other things she put on pause for five years.
I see the next flash of lightning through the pillow, and when Colette finally removes it from my face, the power is out. The lush amber curtains and art deco wallpaper of the Cortinar halls are cloaked in dim candlelight.
“Fuck this weather,” I mumble, letting out a heavy exhale that has me sinking farther into the soft velvet of the sofa.
“Fuck this weather,” the three of them echo, in perfect unison.
“And fuck this group chat,” I add, phone open on one of the many group chats I was advised to join “because they’re a great way to network,” like having an oil tycoon’s son on speed dial is something that’ll come in handy for me.
With his good looks, online speculation of how badly his father treated him, various paparazzi images of him dropping his sisters off at school in his rugby shorts, and Green’s rallying economic performance, Alex has become somewhat of a national treasure.
And people love to talk about it, which unfortunately means everyone hates me.
More messages ping through in the Sorrowsong first years group.
Annabelle Young
Apparently a guy in second year is missing
Lawrence Carlisle
Someone check Ophelia Winters’s hard drive.
Rose Hanover
Lol. Or under her bed.
Lawrence Carlisle
He’s probably in the trunk of her car with Sofia Ivanov.
The inside of my cheek bleeds from how hard I have it clamped between my teeth. I want to march into lecture halls and scream at them, but that won’t help my case.
Tabby Jones
You think she can afford a car?
Gabriel Bristol
Careful, Lawrence, she’ll dig up your private affairs and sell them to the press.
Lawrence Carlisle
Anything for a few dollars, right, @Ophelia Winters?
“Ophelia,” Colette scolds, snatching my phone away to close the app. “You’re going to have to learn to ignore what they say to you.”
But I can’t. It feels like the rest of the students are creating a movie about how awful I am.
How I was the one who killed my parents, how I ruined six girls’ lives, how I led Alex on for months.
And I, servant to my own morbid curiosity and apparent need to see myself suffer, haven’t left any of the group chats, haven’t asked any of them to leave me alone.
“One of them said I was bland, Colette. Bland and meek.”
It’s not remotely the worst thing they’ve said, but it has stuck with me.
Meek.
“Well …” says Magda, tilting her head from side to side like that might be a fair assessment. “You haven’t exactly got a zest for life.”
Colette throws the pillow at her head. “Magda!”
“She’s right,” says Divya, through a mouthful of popcorn. “There’s never any whimsy with you. You stomp around.”
“So does Magda!” I protest, sweeping a hand in the direction of the heavy platform boots that sit over her fishnet tights. Magda’s fashion sense lies somewhere between a ghost bride and Wednesday Addams, and she’s always matching her eyeliner to her braids.
See: Magda has it together. I really don’t.
“It’s part of her charm.”
I don’t even attempt to argue that I have charm. Whatever the opposite of charm is, I’ve got it.
Alex thought I had charm. Alex made me feel like I had charm.
Until he left me without giving me a chance to explain myself, that is.
I shrug the thought away, rising to my feet in the dull gloom of the Cortinar common room.
It’s Saturday, so students are strewn about the large space, slouched on sofas or studying at vintage desks.
The gold coffee machine at the far end of the lounge coughs and splutters, kicking out the rich smell of warm espresso.
I’m still upset that I wasn’t put into Cortinar.
I stretch my arms above my head and grab my swimming bag, ignoring the spiteful looks I get around the room from students who want me dead for betraying their rugby-thighed, messy-haired prince.
“Nice sweater,” sneers the guy studying by the exit, eyes sweeping up and down my father’s jumper with a poorly concealed look of revulsion on his face. He’s said far worse about me this week, but my anger bubbles up in my throat all the same.
I plaster a sweet smile across my lips. “You’re nineteen, Hugo. Worry about your receding hairline first.”
An orchestra could play on that forehead.
I turn back to Colette, cocking my head toward the door. “Let’s go.”
She clambers to her feet, all long Bambi limbs and honey-blond hair that falls in big, loose waves around her pretty face.
Her glossy bottom lip juts out, telling me she’s no keener to go to swimming practice than I am.
But with my first term’s performance in the pool—or lack thereof—it’s a miracle I’ve not been kicked off the team yet.
My relationship with swimming, like my relationship with most things since the events of the past few months, has grown more complicated.
Swimming was my mother’s hobby. Something we did together, from when I was floating in orange armbands to when fuzzy photos of me with cheap plastic medals made the local newspaper.
Then she died. Competitive swimming lost its charm.
The two faces I’d always looked for at the side of the pool, warm and reassuring, just weren’t there anymore.
Burger and movie night to celebrate a new personal best became a memory so distant that it was hard to imagine it was ever real.
The chopping boards grew dusty, the fridge shelves stayed empty, and my school swimming gear never made it out of the bag again.
But I never stopped swimming. I may have traded the pool for lakes and rivers, lost the stopwatch, lost the passion, but I never stopped. It was the only thing that made me feel close to them. The only thing that numbed the jagged wound their absence left.
Now I’m not sure if I want to feel close to my mother at all. Her affair with Bancroft feels like a ruthless betrayal of my father, which feels like a betrayal of me, of every Christmas and birthday and movie night we all shared together.