32. Precious Resource
32
Precious Resource
Sophie
The taxi ride is thick with silence.
Dahlia rips off her diamond earrings, throwing them into her purse with shaking hands.
She wipes her mouth with a tissue, smearing what’s left of her lipstick, but she doesn’t touch her eyes.
Tears tremble on her lashes, unshed.
She sits rigidly, staring straight ahead of her, not even deigning to glance out at the skyline glittering past the tinted windows.
“I had it under control,” she said when we got in the taxi.
I didn’t bother to argue.
Standing up to Marcel Roth was about Marcel Roth.
If it had been any girl but Dahlia, I would have done the exact same thing.
And even though I despise Roth and men like him, none of it changes the way I feel about Dahlia.
That’s how I know that I hate her, all the way down in the pit of my soul.
I can feel the two separate entities, side by side: my cold detached hatred of her, for her part in the prank, for her part in my break-up with Evan.
And at the same time, I can also feel sympathy for what she’s gone through .
The two feelings coexist, Dahlia held in the balance.
It’s not sympathy that makes me follow her out of the taxi outside her apartment.
Just human decency. But the second we step under the pool of yellow lamplight, Dahlia whirls around, eyes blazing.
“I won’t be indebted to you.”
Her voice shakes with rage, but I recognise it for what it is: the anger of someone who’s been shaken by a brutal, unexpected defeat.
I know this feeling well: it’s the exact same anger I felt the night Evan and I broke up.
“So whatever you want from me,” she sneers, “spit it out already.”
The venom in her voice would be impressive if her whole body wasn’t tensed like an angry animal fighting against an invisible chain.
“I’m not stupid,” she goes on, voice climbing higher, more frantic.
“I know what you did to Anthony. I know you’re still furious about that dumb, stupid prank and I know you blame us for your break-up. And now you know about Marcel. But I won’t let you hold it over me—so let’s get it over with. Tell me what you want.”
I let the silence stretch, let her feel how much pain and ugliness can be found in something as simple as silence .
Then, finally, I answer her.
“I could hate your guts and want you dead,” I say, “but I would still never stoop low enough to blackmail a victim for my own gain.”
Dahlia flinches like I slapped her across the face.
“I’m not a victim .”
She spits it out like a reflex, like the twitching of a pricked limb .
Maybe she believes it—I don’t think so.
Dahlia might be self-deluded and narcissistic, but she’s not stupid.
She knows that, even if she got something she wanted from Marcel, he still managed to take something from her she didn’t want to give him.
And that makes her a victim, whether she likes it or not.
“And even if I was the kind of person to blackmail victims,” I continue, “what makes you think you have anything I want?”
Dahlia lets out a sharp, ragged breath.
Tears slip freely down her cheeks now, streaking shimmering make-up along her sculpted face.
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy this,” she whispers.
Her voice is trembling now, a raw, broken thing.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like seeing me like this.”
I don’t answer.
My silence speaks for me.
“What are you going to do?” Dahlia’s lips curl, but it’s a pathetic excuse for a smirk, like a snake baring its fangs after being drained of its deadly venom.
“Find some other way of destroying me?”
I take a slow step back, dragging my gaze over her slowly, deliberately, taking her measure, and finding her lacking.
I tell her the truth.
“You’re not even worth destroying.”
Dahlia sways slightly, eyes widening with impotent hatred.
Her mouth moves wordlessly.
What would she say anyway?
Tell me she is worth destroying?
Beg me to blackmail her?
Of course not.
And although there’s a low curl of unease wreathing through me at the sight of her, I also realise that empathy is a precious resource, one I refuse to share with those who are unworthy.
Dahlia could’ve chosen to make a friend out of me, and, in turn, I could’ve chosen to comfort her when she needed comforting.
But she made her choice, and now, so do I.
By the time I get back to my apartment, I feel like I’ve been wrung dry.
The rush of triumph from watching Dahlia crumble has already faded, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.
I have the strange sense of feeling unclean and tainted, like there’s someone else’s dirt underneath my fingernails.
I should feel victorious—another win, another step forward—but instead, everything feels polluted.
Marcel Roth. All the horrible abuses of power I spent months reading and writing about.
My own successes dragged through that filth.
Maybe that’s why, when I open my laptop to check for flights home, I don’t hesitate.
For once, I don’t overthink it.
I just book it.
I land in Heathrow with five days left until Christmas.
It’s my first time spending the Christmas holiday with my parents since before my last year at Spearcrest. Our small garden is buried under a fluffy blanket of snow.
On the little brick wall, some neighbourhood kids must have built three small snowmen, their faces squished in, one of their little elderberry eyes fallen on the wall.
Taking off my gloves, I kneel in front of the wall, and I place the berry back into the little snowy eye socket.
When I knock on the door, Mum opens it with a gasp.
“Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you say you’d arrived? We would’ve come to pick you up!”
“Heathrow, this close to Christmas?” I say, smiling into her hair as we hug.
“You’d still be in traffic by New Year.”
“Hello, love,” Dad says, reaching over Mum to kiss my head.
“Come in, come in, you’re letting the cold in.”
They rush me through the house, taking my suitcase, my coat, propping my boots near the radiator, Mum rushing me towards the kitchen where she immediately sets about making a cup of tea.
I’m surprised to find that the house smells exactly how I remember: like detergent and vanilla candles.
Everything looks the way I remember it.
Even the Christmas tree has the same decorations, the blue and silver fairy lights, the little bear ornament I’d painted in primary school.
I’m turning away from it when I notice something new: a gold frame on top of the mantelpiece, right in the centre like a pièce de résistance, tall candles flanking it on both sides.
“Oh god, what’s this?” I look at my parents through my hands.
“Please tell me you’ve not had my article framed.”
“Your dad did,” Mum says proudly.
“I think it looks good,” Dad says with a shrug, bringing in the tray with cups of tea and a box of biscuits.
“I got the frame from the market—it’s an antique.”
“Is this because you want to impress Aunt Polly?” I ask.
“Aunt Polly’s already impressed,” Mum says without bothering to disguise her satisfaction.
“I can tell you it’s been a long time since she’s brought up Marianne’s first-class degree.”
I don’t comment with the fact that neither Marianne nor I ever cared which one of us was doing better in school, or racking up more awards and achievements.
There’s no point; the competition was never about us anyway .
Mum and Dad are all too happy to fill me in with all the gossip: the neighbourhood, their friends, my aunts and uncles and cousins, Spearcrest.
I watch them as they talk.
They look different: Mum’s lost weight, and her greying hair is several shades lighter, dyed a brownish-blonde.
Dad, who always towered over us both, somehow seems smaller now, his beard a little longer, his hair, unlike Mom’s, now completely grey.
Two realisations hit me simultaneously: my parents are getting older, and stranger still—they’re just people .
Logically, I’ve always known those two things to be true.
Of course they’re getting older, that’s what time does to people, and of course they’re just people, everyone is.
For so long, my parents have felt like an all-powerful entity in my life, a sort of structure standing high above me, offering me shelter even while it casts me into shadows.
I’ve been afraid of them, and worst still, I’ve been afraid of disappointing them.
But I never once looked at them as though they were real people, living their own lives without even knowing if they’re doing it right.
It fills me with a deep, terrible tenderness.
“I missed you,” I whisper to Mum that night when she comes to place one last cup of tea on my bedside table as I finish unpacking.
“We missed you too, sweetheart. We’re so happy to have you home.”
Mum moves around my room, tidying things that don’t even need tidying.
She picks up my gloves and folds them neatly on my nightstand, smoothing the fabric.
Then, as if satisfied, she walks to the door.
She pauses, just for a second .
“We’re so proud of you, Sophie, we know how hard you’re working. But you’ll see, once you finish Harvard and come back, it’ll all be worth it.”
I open my mouth—but my throat is suddenly too tight to speak.
I close my mouth.
In the end, I don’t have the heart to tell her I never once planned to come back.