Chapter 10
Selena (Past)
The first time Katherine asked me to come to Bellamont Academy with her, she did it while we sat on the library carpet, dissecting a frog for a biology homework she volunteered to do at school.
The room smelled faintly metallic from the preservative, a sharp scent that turned my stomach, but Katherine wore latex gloves and leaned forward with total concentration as she carefully pinned back the frog’s tiny legs under the dissection tray.
I sat across from her, pretending to read the textbook.
Rain tapped steadily against the tall library windows, and beyond the glass, the ocean blurred grey beneath the cliffs.
Somewhere downstairs, I could hear my mother helping set the table for dinner, her footsteps quiet and familiar on the hardwood floors.
Katherine pointed with her scalpel. “Look,” she said, voice bright with the same excitement she always got from things most people found disgusting. “You can see the liver right here.”
“I’m trying very hard not to look,” I told her, keeping my eyes on the page even though the words had stopped making sense ten minutes ago.
“It’s interesting.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“You only think that because you don’t understand it yet.”
“That feels insulting.”
“It’s science,” she corrected absently, like that settled everything. She pulled off one glove with her teeth and reached for her notebook, her handwriting slanting sharply across the page while she talked.
“You should come to Bellamont next year.”
I blinked. “What?”
She glanced up at me impatiently, as if I were the one struggling to keep up.
“Public school must be boring. You should transfer.”
“To Bellamont?”
“Yes!”
I laughed immediately, not because it was funny but because the idea felt impossible.
Bellamont Academy sat less than fifteen minutes away from the Montgomery estate, but it might as well have been on another planet.
Even before we moved to Blackwater, I had heard people talk about it the way they talked about Ivy League schools or royal families.
Politicians’ children went there. CEOs’ children.
Girls who spent summers in Switzerland and boys who already knew which investment firms their fathers planned to hand them someday. Girls like me cleaned their houses.
“Katherine,” I said carefully, “your tuition probably costs more than my mother makes in two years.”
She waved one gloved hand dismissively. “That’s easily fixable.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.” She finally looked up from the frog, eyes bright now in the way they became whenever an idea caught hold of her completely.
“You hate your school.”
“That doesn’t mean I can magically attend yours.”
“You’re smarter than most people there.”
“That’s definitely not true.”
“It is socially true.”
I laughed again despite myself. “That’s not a real category.”
“It should be.” She pulled off the second glove and sat up straighter, completely abandoning the frog.
“You already know how to act as if you belong there.”
“I do not, that’s ridiculous.”
“You absolutely do.” Her voice grew more certain with every word. “Half the girls at Bellamont spend thousands of dollars trying to seem effortless. You already are.”
I stared at her. No one had ever described me that way before. Effortless. My entire life had been an effort. Katherine kept going before I could answer.
“You’d do better there than you think.”
“I can barely pass chemistry.”
“That’s because your chemistry teacher is incompetent.”
“You say that about everyone.”
“Because most people are.” She leaned forward, excitement overtaking whatever small hesitation had been there.
“Oh my God. You can’t be Selena there!”
I stared at her. “What’s wrong with Selena?”
“Nothing.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “But Céline sounds expensive.”
I should have known then. That line should have frightened me.
Instead, a slow warmth spread through my chest. Expensive.
Elegant. Chosen. Not Selena Martin from Portland with thrift-store jeans and a drunk father and a mother who ironed rich people’s sheets for a living. Someone else. Someone easier to love.
“Céline,” Katherine repeated softly, testing it. “Céline Martin.”
“That sounds so fake.”
“Exactly.”
I laughed despite myself, and Katherine smiled immediately, pleased she had won me closer to the idea. She grabbed her notebook and began writing things down with alarming seriousness.
“Okay. We say you lived in Paris until recently because your mother travelled for work. No, wait, the South of France sounds richer. Your accent doesn’t matter because Americans think all French accents sound the same anyway.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“You’ll need posture adjustment too.”
“My posture is normal.”
“You sit like someone prepared to run.”
The words hit harder than she intended.
Katherine noticed immediately, and her expression softened. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” I forced a shrug. “You’re probably right.”
Silence slipped briefly into the room. Then Katherine said more gently,
“Bellamont likes confidence. That’s all.”
“You say that like confidence is easy.”
“It is for you.”
“No, Katherine.” I looked at her directly.
“You just think it is because you don’t notice when I’m scared.”
That quieted her. “I notice,” she said quietly, the sincerity in her voice making something inside me ache unexpectedly.
* * *
Three days later, I walked into the main house after school and heard Katherine’s voice carrying down the hallway from the sitting room, sharp and determined in the way it got when she had decided something mattered. I stopped just outside the door.
“Mom, please,” Katherine was saying. “She’s smarter than half the girls in my class, and she hates her school. You know what it’s like there for me. I sit alone at lunch every single day. The other girls only talk to me when they need help with homework. Céline would actually be my friend.”
Mrs. Montgomery’s voice stayed calm and measured, the way it always did when she was weighing something carefully.
“Katherine, sweetheart, it’s not that simple. Tuition at Bellamont is substantial, and we already support the scholarship fund—”
“But this is different,” Katherine interrupted, her voice rising with that fierce stubbornness she rarely showed anyone but her parents.
“She’s not a stranger. She lives here. She already knows how everything works.
And she’s good with people. She makes me less…
weird. You said yourself last year that I needed real friends, not just study partners.
This is the same thing, except I’m asking for one specific person instead of waiting for the universe to send someone. ”
There was a long pause. I pressed my back against the wall, heart beating too hard.
Mrs. Montgomery sighed softly. “You’re asking me to pay full tuition for a girl who isn’t family.”
“She might as well be,” Katherine said, quieter now but no less certain.
“She’s here every day. She helps me with everything.
She makes this house feel less empty. Please, Mom.
I know I’m a genius. You and Dad say it all the time.
But being a genius doesn’t stop me from being lonely.
Céline would fix that. And she deserves better than public school. She’s wasted there.”
Another silence stretched between them. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what Mrs. Montgomery’s face looked like right now. Kind but practical.
Finally Mrs. Montgomery spoke again, her voice gentle.
“If we do this, we keep the name change between us. Selena’s mother has already been through enough.
We won’t upset her by telling her we’re turning her daughter into someone else.
We’ll handle the paperwork quietly through the school. Understood?”
“Yes,” Katherine said quickly, relief flooding her tone. “Thank you. Thank you!”
I stepped back before they could see me. My chest felt tight and warm all at once. They were going to pay for it. Katherine’s mother was going to pay for everything because she knew her daughter was lonely and brilliant and difficult, and somehow I had become the perfect solution.
* * *
Three weeks later Mrs. Montgomery drove us to Bellamont Academy for a “tour.” The campus looked like a church built for rich people, grey stone buildings covered in ivy, tall windows, and black iron gates with the Bellamont crest worked into the center.
Students crossed the courtyard wearing navy uniforms and expensive coats, coffee cups in hand, moving with the careless confidence of people who had never once wondered whether they belonged somewhere.
My stomach twisted the second we stepped out of the car.
Not with fear, but hunger for more than I was handed in life.
Girls passed us speaking casually about ski trips in Aspen, summer programs in Florence, a yacht party in Nantucket, and internships arranged through someone’s father.
They sounded bored while describing lives I could barely imagine.
Katherine walked beside me like none of it was remarkable.
Mrs. Montgomery adjusted my blazer collar lightly. “Nervous?”
“Yes.”
“That’s normal.”
Easy for her to say. Everything around her had probably looked like this her entire life.
The admissions office smelled like polished wood and expensive perfume.
Portraits of former Bellamont graduates lined the walls: senators, judges, CEOs, women with sharp smiles standing beside men who looked trained never to sweat.
The woman at the front desk smiled immediately when she saw Mrs. Montgomery.
“Mrs. Montgomery. Lovely to see you again.”
Katherine rolled her eyes slightly behind the receptionist’s back. I almost smiled.
The interview itself blurred together afterwards. Questions. Grades. Polite laughter. Mrs. Montgomery smoothly introduced me as “My niece Céline. She’s recently relocated from France.”
The lie landed softly in the room as if it belonged there already.
No one questioned it. Not really. The admissions director asked whether I missed Europe, and something strange happened.
I answered smoothly, without hesitation.
“Yes,” I said with a small smile. “Mostly the pace. America feels louder.”
The woman nodded immediately. “Oh, I completely understand.”
And just like that, they believed me.
Katherine looked at me in awe the entire drive home. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Lie like that. You didn’t flinch.”
I stared out the car window at the dark ocean beyond the cliffs. “I don’t know.”
But I did know. I had spent my entire life learning how to become whatever kept people calm. Pleasant daughter. Quiet girl. Grateful poor child. Easy guest. Céline was just another version. Only prettier.
By the time Bellamont accepted me that spring, Katherine was more excited than I was. She spent two full weekends rebuilding my wardrobe.
“No logos,” she informed me while tossing sweaters across her bedroom. “Actual rich people don’t wear logos unless they’re having a nervous breakdown.”
“You sound so paranoid.”
“You know I’m right.”
She taught me which fork to use, how to pronounce brands properly, how to tell old money from new money, how to look bored during conversations about wealth, and how to answer questions without giving real information. And slowly, terrifyingly, it worked.
At Bellamont, people looked at me differently than they ever had before.
Not with pity. Not caution. Interest. The boys moved closer when I laughed.
Girls invited me to places after one conversation.
Teachers remembered my name. For the first time in my life, people looked at me and saw someone worth moving toward instead of away from.
And all it had cost me was my real name.