Chapter 3
Céline
By Monday morning, the university had already turned Katherine into a beautiful memory.
They placed her photograph under the main archway of Montgomery Hall, inside a silver frame, ringed it with white roses and those flickering electric candles that never burned down.
Student affairs set up a table right beside it so people could leave notes in a wicker basket.
When I walked up the steps, the basket was already half full of folded cards from students who had barely said two words to her while she was alive.
I stood there with my coat still buttoned tight to my throat and let my eyes drift over the handwriting. The loops and careful slants all blurred together until the messages became nothing more than black ink on white paper.
Rest in peace, Katherine. You were so brilliant. Bellamont won’t be the same without you.
Everyone knew exactly how to grieve a dead girl once she was gone. It was the living version of her they had never figured out what to do with.
Around me, the students moved more quietly than usual.
Voices dropped when they passed the photograph.
Some of them glanced my way and then looked somewhere else fast, as if my grief might be catching.
Others offered those soft, wounded smiles people give when they want to feel kind but not too involved.
I gave them back exactly what they needed.
A small nod here, a brave little smile there, eyes lowered at the perfect moment so they could walk away feeling like they had done something good.
By ten o’clock, I had been hugged six times by girls who had never once invited Katherine to sit with them at lunch.
By eleven, three different professors had pulled me aside to tell me to take all the time I needed.
By noon, someone had left a cup of tea outside my dorm room door with a note that read: We love you, Céline.
Not Selena. Céline. I held the note between my fingers longer than I should have, the paper growing warm from my skin.
I was still standing in the doorway with the untouched tea cooling in my hand when Sophia Kwon came out of the shared living room.
She moved with that quiet elegance she always had, dark hair twisted into a low knot at the nape of her neck, cashmere sweater draped just so over her shoulders.
Even in our private dorm suite, she looked like she belonged in a drawing room somewhere, pouring tea for important guests.
“You don’t have to go to class today, Céline,” Sophia said gently, her voice carrying that soft aristocratic lilt she had never quite lost, no matter how many years she had spent in America.
She had grown up between London and South Korea, her family essentially royalty, and it showed in every careful word.
“We can all stay in if you want. I already told my professor I might be absent, and Anya hasn’t opened her textbook in two days anyway. ”
Anya sat at the long oak desk by the tall windows, one pale eye fixed on the same page of her book for the last twenty minutes.
Her South Indian features stayed perfectly still, those striking light eyes giving nothing away.
She was only here for the degree her family expected her to collect before she went back to running the company that would one day be hers.
University itself bored her, and she never pretended otherwise.
“I know I don’t have to go,” I said, stepping inside and closing the door behind me.
The suite smelled faintly of Sophia’s vanilla perfume and the fresh lilies Anya’s mother had sent last week.
Our shared living room stretched wide and bright, with deep velvet sofas and a fireplace that actually worked, each of us with our own bedroom branching off like private little worlds.
I had changed into a soft Chanel skirt and matching blouse before coming downstairs, the fabric smooth and expensive against my skin, the kind of outfit that made me look put-together even when I felt scraped hollow inside.
Sophia watched me set the tea down on the side table. “Then don’t go. You’ve been running on empty since the funeral, and none of us expect you to keep pretending everything is fine. We’re right here if you need to fall apart for a little while.”
I crossed to my own room just long enough to drop my bag on the bed, then came back out and opened my laptop on the coffee table. “I need to do one thing first.”
Sophia’s gaze sharpened with that mother-hen concern she could never hide. She came over and perched on the arm of the sofa, close enough that her knee brushed mine. “What thing, darling? You know you can tell us anything.”
I stared at the screen. The email had been sitting in my drafts since three in the morning, written while the rain beat against the windows and both of them slept in their separate rooms. I read the words again.
Dear Professor Moreau,
Due to personal circumstances, I would like to formally withdraw my application for your research group this semester.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Céline Martin
It was clean. Polite. Safe. It said nothing about the real reason.
Sophia leaned in a little, reading over my shoulder the way only she could without making it feel intrusive. “Céline, sweetheart, is this about the lab? You worked so hard on that proposal. Katherine helped you with it, didn’t she? I remember the two of you staying up late in the library.”
I almost laughed, but the sound caught somewhere in my throat.
Katherine had understood every line of it immediately.
She had hunched over her desk with her hair falling around her face, chewing the end of her pen, crossing out whole paragraphs and rewriting them until they shone.
I had only saved the final version and put my name on it.
Mine, I had told myself. Just once more. Just this one thing that might make me feel like I belonged here.
Anya finally looked up from her book, those pale eyes steady and unreadable. “Why pull out now? You put weeks into it, and Professor Moreau only takes a handful of students. It would be a shame to throw that away just because everything feels heavy right now.”
My fingers tightened on the edge of the laptop. “I’m tired,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. The tiredness lived in my bones now, mixed with the guilt that pressed on me every time I thought about Katherine’s careful handwriting in the margins of that proposal.
“Everything is about her. The memorial downstairs, the notes, the flowers showing up here, even though she never lived in this room. I can’t sit in that lab pretending I earned the spot when she was the one who made the work good.”
Sophia’s hand rested lightly on my shoulder, warm and steady.
“Then maybe wait a few days before you decide. Grief does strange things to the mind, and I hate the thought of you regretting this later. We’re all worried about you, Céline. You’ve been carrying so much for everyone else.”
“If I wait, I’ll change my mind,” I told her, and before either of them could say anything more, I moved my thumb across the trackpad and clicked send.
The email vanished from drafts. My inbox looked ordinary again, as if nothing had happened.
My chest tightened so sharply I had to breathe through it, slow and careful, the way I had learned to do when I needed to keep the mask in place.
“There,” I said quietly. “It’s done.”
Anya’s hand slipped from my shoulder with a small sigh. “If that’s what you need right now, then all right. But we’re here if you want to talk about any of it. Or not talk. Whatever you decide.”
I closed the laptop before the comfort in their voices could soften me too much. Comfort meant letting the cracks show, and I couldn’t afford that yet. My phone buzzed on the table. Thad’s name lit up the screen.
Thad: Thinking of you. Dinner tonight? My dad’s in town and wants to meet after. Could be good for us.
I stared at the message until the screen went dark.
Good for us. By us he meant himself and whatever connections the Montgomerys could offer his family.
By good he meant useful. I had always known that about him, but right now the thought of sitting across from him and his father while they talked business felt like another weight I didn’t have the strength to carry. Still, I typed back quickly.
Céline : Of course. Let me know the time.
The reply came almost right away.
Thad: That’s my girl.
I set the phone facedown and looked up to find Sophia watching me again, her expression soft but firm.
“You don’t have to go to dinner with him either, you know.
Thad means well in his own way, but he has never been very good at noticing when you need more than a quick hug and a pat on the back.
We could order something in and watch that terrible reality show Anya pretends not to like. ”
Anya made a quiet sound that might have been agreement or amusement. “That’s called being exhausted,” she said, her voice low and matter-of-fact. “Saying yes to everything that drains you because it’s easier than explaining why you can’t.”
I looked at both of them then, my beautiful, loyal girls.
Sophia, with her sharp eyes and perfect calm, always ready to smooth things over and take care of everyone.
Anya, with her gentle aloofness and those striking pale eyes that saw more than she ever admitted.
They had folded themselves around me since the suicide, sleeping badly because I slept badly, walking the halls like quiet guards whenever people stared too long.
They loved me. That should have made me feel safe.
Instead, it made me feel unbearably fragile, like one honest word from me could shatter the whole careful balance we kept.
“Please don’t look at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?” Anya asked, tilting her head.
“Like I’m something that can fall apart any second.”