Chapter 21 #2
She said it so casually that no one even paused.
Not Mr. or Mrs. Montgomery. Not the driver.
Not Katherine. The key pressed into my palm hard enough to hurt.
A gift that large meant almost nothing to Katherine.
She could hand it to me because there would be other cars, chauffeurs, parents to arrange insurance, and money to fix whatever broke.
She could be careless when she wanted. If she crashed it, there would be repairs.
If she hated it, there would be another gift.
If she forgot it existed, someone would maintain it anyway.
I thought of my mother comparing grocery prices in the kitchen. I thought of the visible logo on my belt. I thought of the wardrobe full of Katherine’s unwanted dresses, and how grateful I had been for every single one.
“Are you okay?” Katherine asked.
I looked up too quickly. She was watching me with genuine confusion.
“Yes,” I said, closing my fingers around the key. “It’s beautiful.”
“Then you drive it first.”
Mr. Montgomery chuckled. “Absolutely not until the insurance is finalized.”
Katherine rolled her eyes. Everyone laughed.
I laughed too, because that was what Céline did when the room required it.
* * *
That night, Camila Rodriguez from the graduating class hosted the graduation party.
Technically, her parents hosted it. In reality, they had paid for catering, removed anything fragile from the main rooms, and disappeared upstairs with enough trust or indifference to let thirty newly graduated Bellamont students celebrate becoming legal adults with expensive alcohol and terrible judgment.
Katherine still walked beside me. Not behind me anymore, close enough that people understood we arrived together and far enough that they still greeted me first.
“Céline!” Camila called from near the staircase, already flushed with champagne. “You made it.”
“Obviously,” I said, kissing both her cheeks.
Her gaze moved to Katherine after the required pause.
“Katherine, hi. Congratulations.”
“Same to you,” Katherine replied shyly.
Inside, the house glittered with graduation decorations.
Gold balloons, white flowers, trays of champagne, music floating through rooms full of girls in silk dresses and boys wearing jackets they had already abandoned over chair backs.
Everyone looked too beautiful and too young and too convinced the world was waiting for them.
I felt dizzy with it. Not the alcohol. Bellamont Academy was over. Bellamont University waited. Céline had not been exposed. My future stretched ahead of me, improbable and shining, built on Katherine’s help, my mother’s silence, and my own ability to become wanted wherever I stood.
For one night, I wanted to enjoy it.
Katherine held a glass of champagne that she barely drank and stood near my shoulder while Camila and Lila dragged us into the main room.
That was where I saw Thad Rodriguez for the first time.
He was leaning against the archway to the terrace, laughing at something one of the boys had said.
He looked older than the rest of us, though later I learned he was only twenty-one, home from university for the summer and far too aware of how much younger we found him.
Dark hair, warm brown skin, white shirt open at the collar, watch glinting at his wrist. A typical finance major at Bellamont University.
Camila followed my gaze and grinned.
“My brother,” she said. “Thad. Try not to encourage him. He’s insufferable.”
Katherine looked over. Her posture softened first. Then her mouth parted slightly, as if she had forgotten what she meant to say. Colour rose faintly across her cheeks, and she looked down into her champagne too quickly.
I stared at her.
“Katherine.”
“What?”
“Oh.” I smiled slowly.
“No.”
“Oh my God.”
“No,” she said again, more sharply this time, but her face betrayed her completely.
“You like him.”
“I don’t know him.”
“That has never stopped anyone.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You looked at him like he was a peer-reviewed article with cheekbones.”
She kicked my ankle lightly, but she was smiling despite herself.
It was rare to see Katherine want something so plainly. But Thad had caught her off guard, and for once, she looked like any other girl at a party noticing a handsome older boy across the room. It made me happy for her, at least at first.
Lila waved Thad over before either of us could retreat.
He crossed the room with lazy confidence. His eyes moved over Katherine politely, then stopped on me.
“Camila’s mysterious Céline,” he said.
Katherine’s smile froze. I felt it happen beside me.
“Just Céline,” I said.
“Nothing mysterious?”
“That depends on who’s asking.”
He laughed, and the sound was warm enough that I understood immediately why girls probably forgave him for most things before he did them.
Camila rolled her eyes. “Don’t flirt with my friends.”
“I’m being welcoming. We need to be good hosts, relax.”
Thad smiled at Katherine then, as if remembering manners.
“And you’re Katherine Montgomery.”
Katherine straightened slightly. “Yes, that’s me,” she squeaked.
“I’ve heard about you.”
Her face brightened with such sudden, fragile hope that something in me tightened.
“Really?”
“My father knows your father,” he said.
The hope dimmed slightly, but she recovered.
“That’s usually how people know me.”
He laughed politely, but his attention had already drifted back to me.
“So,” he said, “France?”
I could have redirected him. I could have pulled Katherine into the conversation properly. I could have made him see her.
Instead, I smiled. “Supposedly.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Katherine looked at me sharply.
I had broken character for him. Just slightly. Just enough to make him feel like he had been given something private, and it worked to get his attention.
* * *
By midnight, the party had spilled onto the terrace.
The air outside was warm and damp, smelling faintly of ocean salt carried from farther down the coast and the sweet rot of flowers after a hot day.
Fairy lights hung along the railing, casting everyone in soft gold.
Someone had started dancing inside near the piano.
Lila was arguing with a boy about whether champagne tasted better than prosecco.
Katherine sat on one of the outdoor sofas with a group of girls who had asked her about university and then immediately started discussing dorm decor before she could answer properly.
Thad found me near the railing alone.
“You’re not like the others,” he said.
I laughed because the line was so obvious it almost deserved admiration.
“You use that often?”
“Only when it’s true.”
“That must be so exhausting for you.”
He smiled and leaned beside me against the railing, close enough that his sleeve brushed mine.
“You going to Bellamont University?”
“Yes, starting this Fall.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“It means I’ll see you around.”
I should have found Katherine. I knew that even then. She liked him. She had said it without saying it, and I had understood. That should have been enough to make him forbidden, not morally perhaps, but emotionally, within whatever private system Katherine and I had built between us.