Elle
I scream, but no sound emerges as I swallow the water. So much water. It’s everywhere, in my ears, stinging my eyes and filling my stomach to the point of bursting. Panic chokes me as I plunge to the bottom of the pool, and then pain blinds me as my feet strike the concrete, bringing me to a spine-shattering halt.
Through the seemingly infinite darkness, a halo of light ignites like a beacon above me. The air ripples through the inky water tantalisingly, letting me know that it’s just there, just on the other side. All I have to do is emerge and inhale it.
But my throbbing feet are like two anchors tethering me.
“Mummy will come soon.” My childhood voice rings in my head. “She always does when it grows black.”
Darkness is creeping into my vision once more and this time, I know it has nothing to do with my murky surroundings.
My body’s given up. I can’t withstand the water’s crushing pressure any longer and yet Mum isn’t breaking through the water’s surface to rescue me.
“Gant!” my mind screams hopefully, almost longingly. “This is the moment when Gant pulls me to safety.”
My slowing heart ticks out the remaining seconds with finality.
No one’s coming.
I have to rescue myself.
I have to…
The darkness claims me with a smothering embrace.
I bolt upright and gasp for air, my fingers tearing at the collar of my pyjamas. Buttons go flying and I breathe easier, as if the loose fabric had somehow been constricting my airflow.
Panting like a dog, I climb out from the smothering warmth of the duvet, but it isn’t enough. Air! I need air.
Unlatching the window pane beside the bed, I push it open and propel myself onto the graphic tile of the tiny balcony, landing on my already bruised hands and knees. Pressing my head against the cool metal bars of the railing, I try to steady my breathing.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.
When my lungs finally find a decent tempo, thoughts of my nightmare, no, my memory, flood my mind all over again. But the most distressing part isn’t Jarett shoving me in, nor the inexplicable feeling of drowning, and the imminent outcome. It’s who I’d been hoping to come rescue me. Gant.
Did I hope that Gant fucking Auclair of all people would dive in and save me? I shudder, wrapping my fingers around the freezing metal bars for strength.
The man is a psycho. No better than Jarett, so why had my mind been so hopeful? Worse, almost giddy?
The difference is he didn’t know you couldn’t swim. Jarett did. Gant saved you. He held you. He massaged your heart into beating again and peppered it with kisses.
His voice, so deep and commanding, had lured you back to the living.
And once he had, you still played dead for a heartbeat too long.
His lips had been so soft and his touch so gentle after the chest compressions…
I shake my head frantically, anger swelling in my chest at the intrusive thought. No. No! I would never rationalise his actions after the way he ignored my pleas and my explanation. I would never willingly want him to touch me and I would never want nor need help from that jackass.
I’d rather die.
You almost did.
Gant almost did.
The car crash video zooms in my mind’s eye and Gant’s horrible, rattling breathing echoes in my ear. Seeing him, hearing him in such a state does something to my soul I don’t want to identify. I don’t want to sympathise with or grieve for my would-be killer.
But is Mum any better? A nasty voice coos in my ear. You were waiting for her too.
Mum hadn’t been able to rescue me since that day Jarett shoved me into the pool. So then why was she the first person I thought of to help me? What was one time in a sea of thousands?
Why hadn’t I tried to kick off my satchel? Sure, I could barely swim, but the water had been fairly shallow. If I’d just pushed and kicked, I could’ve gotten my head above the water for at least a second. Maybe I could’ve grabbed the dock. Why did I just stay there like a sitting duck accepting my fate?
Because you are a sitting duck. The voice laughs cruelly in the recesses of my mind.
I rake a shaking hand through my hair and groan. I fucking hate this. I hate feeling so helpless all the time. I hated waiting for Mum to leave Jarett. I hated waiting for her to intervene to rescue me, no, us both from his abuse. Now I end up at my dream school with the same amount of abuse I thought I’d escaped and what had I done about it, about Gant so far? Absolutely fucking nothing.
I’m no better than Mum in her complacency.
“You’re mine,” Gant’s words mock me. “I own you.”
No, he had me on a loan, on a debt I never asked for, yet I have every intention of paying off. I don’t care if Gant doesn’t want it. He can burn it or use it to wipe his ass. Paying him back has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. So if it takes a weekly nineteen ninety-nine payment plan, so be it.
Another painful wave of hopeless reality crashes over me as I remember the sheer amount. Two hundred grand. That’s more than Beaulieu’s tuition. It’s the tuition plus a hefty ass bribe.
Where the fuck was I going to get that kind of money from?
The night breeze rustles a stack of colourful papers on my nightstand, sending one onto the balcony with me. I trap it with my foot before it can fly over the edge. It’s a flyer, looking for part-time employees. I’d found it in the girls’ bathroom, of all places. Maybe it’s a hoax, because what kind of legitimate club advertises to teenage girls in a boarding school? Still, I’d kept the flyer because I’d been rejected from nearly all the local businesses close to campus via my online applications. The problem is that most places are looking for employees who can work more than just Friday afternoons, Saturdays, and Sundays, without a curfew.
I draw my knees to my chest and study the black paper for the third time tonight. The shadiness of the ad is the only thing that’s stopped me from calling, seeing as the hours work well with my schedule. It’s seeking out eighteen and over bartenders and waitresses capable of walking in six-inch heels who are unopposed to fishnets, bow ties, and cufflinks.
Behind me, my phone buzzes and glows in the tangle of my sheets. When I fish it out, Mum’s name blares across the top of the screen. Beneath the notification is an open tab I’d been watching on repeat. A clip of a black-haired boy giving a girl a finger necklace in a dark corner against a wall. His fingers creep up her throat in slow motion then the video speeds up as he grabs and squeezes her. With his free hand, he palms her ass and lifts her onto his waist like she weighs nothing at all. Her slinky mini dress rolls up from the motion, riding around her waist and leaving his fingers on her bare cheek that he’s gripping like a lifeline. Then the video slows again and the angle changes so that the camera is pointed down at the girl’s face as she leans her head against the wall, her eyes rolling back as the boy descends on the hollow of her throat with a wet lick.
I genuinely don’t know what’s wrong with me.
One day I was normal, and then the next I’m binge-watching public, throat-grab sex while pillow fucking beneath the covers.
Shame and dread roil in my stomach as my mind produces a picture of who awakened this side of me I didn’t know existed.
Gant should ignite disgust, revulsion, and hatred within me. And he does…but the emotions are so fucking intense, they’re creating a tornado and stirring up every other emotion into the mix, turning me feral.
With a sigh, I quickly exit the video and answer the call.
“Hey,” I breathe, trying to sound upbeat and like I hadn’t just had a miserable nightmare.
Or a few orgasms prior.
Shut up!
I don’t know why I do that. Why do I protect Mum’s feelings by constantly reassuring her that I’m okay when she never does the same for me?
Maybe it’s because I try to be one less thing she has to worry about.
“Elle Belle,” her familiar voice crinkles over the speaker and the nickname sends a shot of warmth to my soul because I’m that damn lonely. She really needs a new phone though. I have to pull it away from my ear every time she talks to avoid the static shredding of my eardrums.
“I wanted to call earlier, but I didn’t want to impose on your first week. Tell me everything. Have you made some new friends yet?”
My heart sinks at the excitement in her voice. No matter how mad I get at her, no matter how much she never protected me, I still want to protect her at all costs. So, how could I tell her that I’m being bullied? That my uniform and textbooks were ruined and that I’d nearly drowned for a second time?
Worse, how could I tell her that she’s right about the Auclairs? How could I risk her coming to Beaulieu and begging me to leave with her? She’d think she was doing the right thing by keeping me safe under her broken wing. But all she would be doing is setting me up for a life of minimum wage. Without Beaulieu, there are no opportunities. No scholarships, no college. No ballet.
Not if I returned to my old defunded public high school.
She’s right that I’m not like the other kids here who have Mummy and Daddy to rely on. All I have are Jaime and Jarett, a match made in hell. Mum’s intentions may be good now, but isn’t that what the pathway to hell is painted with?
No, I need to stay. I need my education.
“It’s going great,” I lie, gazing over my shoulder and into the dark room at Aria and Stassi’s beds where both girls slumber soundly beneath the covers. “I’m getting on well with my roommates. It’s like a big slumber party all the time.”
I bite my tongue on the last bit tasting the metallic twang of blood. Maybe I’d gone too far on that part. Both girls largely ignored me, but more than that, they pretended each other didn’t exist.
“What about ballet classes? How are they coming?”
“Not at all,” I mumble before clarifying, “My first practical ballet class is tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to it.”
LIAR!
The entire school already knows that I’m a weak dancer thanks to Beaussip and Gant’s hefty bribe and the use of a body double just to get me admitted into Beaulieu proves it.
I’d had so much confidence in my abilities at my old school. I was the best. The stand out. The golden child of the group. What would I be here at Beaulieu? I’d made ballet my identity, and now, I suddenly feel like a giant fraud awoken from a false reality I’d wholeheartedly believed to be true. That I’m a good dancer.
“You’ll do great,” Mum reassures me, but I don’t feel any better. “I know I don’t say it enough Ellie, but I’m so proud of you. For sticking to your dreams. For earning that scholarship. For going back to that…to that awful place with those awful memories that I allowed to happen for far too long.”
My stomach burns fiercely at the word ‘earn’, but my heart swells at her accountability. At least her awareness was growing. Slowly, but surely.
“The girls down at the deli couldn’t believe it when I told them,” she says with a watery laugh. “Beaulieu Academy. I may as well have told them that you were marrying a royal and moving into Buckingham Palace.”
Well, I’m being bullied and assaulted by a pseudo-royal. Does that count?
I chuckle nervously, watching the trees dance in the breeze. In the moonlight, the lake on the fringes of campus glistens, as does the pointy roof of the greenhouse nestled a few kilometres beside it. It’s hard to believe something so beautiful, so downright alluring, could be fatal.
A chiselled face and black eyes zoom to the forefront of my mind, the perfect example of tantalisingly lethal.
I physically swipe away his smug face with a swat of my hand through the cool night air.
When it disappears, I’m once again greeted by the breathtaking landscape and I can’t help but feel like a massive fraudulent piece, marring its beauty as that word ‘earn’ replays on a loop in my ear. Because the truth is, even if I’m shameless enough to stay, I know that I don’t deserve to be here. I wasn’t good enough to earn it.
I didn’t earn it.
“You didn’t have to tell them about it,” I murmur.
“Of course I did! I know I was hesitant given the circumstances.”
If only she knew how right she’d been.
“But I was just being paranoid. If you’ve taught me anything, Elle, it’s how to be brave. We can’t cower in fear. Not anymore.”
I freeze. Where was my mother who hid under countertops, and what had a half week apart done to her?
“I took your advice,” she goes on. “I joined the ceramics class.”
I reach for the ballet charm on the tarnished necklace at my throat. My near-death experience at the lake had completely ruined the metal, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to take it off. Somehow, it gave me hope. Hope that both Mum and I can improve ourselves during our time apart.
And maybe when we reunite, things will be normal.
The way it should’ve been if Jarett had just abandoned us from the start.
“That’s great,” I say, feeling hope bloom in my chest. “You won’t ever regret investing in yourself.”
“The bills might,” she sighs before laughing pitifully. “I got a little desperate and bought two scratchers tonight.”
“Won anything?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
“Two bucks. I put it toward the petrol.”
“Those can get addictive,” I scold her gently.“ It’s meant for the system to win, not you. Jarett wasted thousands on those things.”
“I know. It was a weak moment.”
A weak moment for money, or nostalgia? My stomach roils at the thought. Is she missing Jarett? Is she missing seeing his shitty scratchers everywhere?
“But I didn’t call to bog you down with my drama,” she says, trying to lighten her tone. “I want to hear more about your school life. Any boys?”
One shoots to the front of my mind again. One who’d just seen and palmed my naked breasts, kissed my sternum and called me dove. One who told me never to insult myself because I’m his and he has the best taste in the world.
Heat sears up my neck, and I press it against the cool metal bars to extinguish it.
No, I don’t like his crass attention, or so I keep telling myself. I hated the way his long, calloused fingertips had grazed my nipple and sent a shock of electricity down my spine straight to my core. I hated his black eyes that roved over my breasts like they were the best things he’d ever seen. I hated the feeling of his forehead pressed against mine, and the word ‘dove’ rolling off his tongue. I hated all of it.
I hate him.
“Absolutely not.” I clear my throat. “These blue-blooded boys aren’t relatable at all. An entirely different breed that I have nothing in common with.”
A shadow darting beneath my window causes me to jump. It moved so fast that I’m not sure if it’s an animal. Then again, it was too big to be a cat, racoon or dog, the only roving animals I’d encountered on campus. My eyes flick to the surrounding forest line. There aren’t wolves around here, right?
But it sounded like padding at first. Like four paws…
Now it sounds like two feet.
Pressing my nose between the bars for a closer look, my eyes sweep the deserted pathways and rose bushes for a sign of movement. When I catch sight of it again, I see two separate things. First, a dark blob, then in another flash of silvery moonlight, all I can make out is a head full of pin-straight black hair.
Mum chuckles. “Well, what about any friends outside of your roommates?”
“Rin,” I breathe, watching as the dark figure emerges into another short strip of moonlight before disappearing again. I know it’s her from the glittering headband, which I now realise is her signature. Tonight’s piece, in alignment with the autumn season, resembles an assortment of crystalized leaves arranged almost like a subtle tiara.
Of course, she thinks she’s some sort of queen. Queen Bitch, I suppose.
She’d burnt me with whatever was inside her insulated cup. I hadn’t noticed the angry red spot until this morning and the moment I acknowledged it, it began burning like a bitch. Gingerly, I touch the sore mark above my left breast that will surely get worse with time. If I hadn’t been wearing my blazer, who knows how much worse it could’ve been.
How much worse could it have been if the food attack hadn’t started forty minutes after everyone got their lunch? The leftovers had been lukewarm by then, not steaming like at the start.
I don’t want to think about it.
“That’s a pretty name,” Mum’s voice chirps enthusiastically through the speaker.
She is pretty alright. Pretty sneaky. “We saw her on the front steps, but you wouldn’t remember.”
“No, I was caught up in the sheer magnitude of the campus.”
“Well, she’s coming over to hang out, so I have to go,” I say as I watch Rin inch down the path. “I love you.”
Mum’s I love you too, barely makes it across the speaker before I hang up, save the clip of the couple for later and slip the phone into my pyjama pocket.
I’m not going to be a sitting duck anymore. This could be my big break the moment I get some dirt on Rin to stop her from messing with me. No one’s allowed out of their dorm rooms after ten p.m., so where’s little Miss Perfect off to?
I gaze back at the bedroom door and curse. I can’t sneak out the front door, and neither can Rin. So how did she do it?
I scan the row of windows beside mine where I know Rin’s bedroom must be. Five panes down, and I spot one that’s slightly ajar.
She’d climbed out!
The breeze blows again, rustling the leafy ivy that climbs the black brick and I gaze at it apprehensively, before reaching out and giving it a firm tug. Sure it had held Rin, but she’s barely bigger than Aria. I pull again, but the vine only digs into my flesh painfully, with no signs of breaking.
Below, I can’t see Rin, but she couldn’t have gotten far. If I don’t follow her now, who knows which branch she’ll take once the pathway splits.
Grasping the ivy, I heave one leg over the railing, then the other, and begin my descent. I keep my gaze at eye level and ignore the pulling sensation behind my navel that’s trying to rip me backwards toward my death. Well, at least into a litany of stab wounds via the awaiting rosebush below.
When my bare feet hit the cobblestones, my lungs finally begin to function again as I dart into the shadows.
Through the first-floor window, Ms. Trix is perched on a chaise, her back to the pane. She’s scrolling through Mr. Lex’s Instagram, seemingly analysing a photo he posted with another teacher I’d seen around campus. She’s kissing his cheek. Beside Ms Trix’s hip is a bottle of cooking sherry, which she grabs and takes a massive swig from. That should hold her off from her last bed check for at least an hour.
I follow the direction Rin headed off in, and within minutes I see the hem of her silky nightgown disappearing around the theatre and past the dining hall.
My stomach liquifies and sinks through my ass as I realise where she’s headed.
Towards the greenhouse.
Towards the lake.
It’s only been two days since the incident, but I don’t care if it’s been two years.
Sounds like something Gant would say.
I shake off the invasive thought.
Gant or no Gant, I don’t want to get within ten kilometres of the lake, or any body of water, for that matter. Not even a fountain.
But Rin…
Our opportunity to get some leverage…
What good would leverage do me if I’m dead in the water?
We should feel right at home by the lake…
There are dozens of sitting ducks there. We’ll blend right in.
…
Fuck.
I’m about to chase after her when a security cart zooms into view, making a lazy circle around the quad. I dart, and flatten myself around the side of the nearest building, hoping the guard’s too lazy to make a complete round.
As the soft hum eventually moves away, I hedge around the dining hall and sprint toward the greenhouse, pretending the giant ink dot behind it doesn’t exist. But as I duck into the greenhouse’s shadows, I don’t spot Rin.
I’m about to creep towards the other side when a male voice stops me in my tracks. It sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.
So, is Rin secretly hooking up with some mystery man? Is that who she was hinting at meeting on the first day of school when she said, “You’ll see?”
Unless he’s a teacher, or already taken, I don’t see how some late-night tryst can help me. Half the school probably hooks up after hours.
But as the boy’s angry whispers reach my ears, I quickly realise it isn’t Rin’s fake, airy voice that’s responding. In fact, I’ve never heard this girl’s voice before.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” the boy hisses. He’s obviously livid, but his tone is even and measured. It’s like how Gant’s was in the auditorium. Frighteningly calm.
Goosebumps erupt over my bare arms, but they have nothing to do with the night’s chill.
“I didn’t want to come here,” a soft, feminine voice laced with fear responds. “I told my father it was a bad idea.”
“You’re damn right. What part of I want nothing to do with you doesn’t he understand?”
“I-I don’t know. But I didn’t come to make any problems, I swear Z-.”
A muffled sound, like skin-on-skin contact, fills the air, followed by the vibration of glass a few panes up. Had he pushed her into a wall?
“I told you to keep my name out of your fucking mouth. Just the sound of it on your lips repulses me.”
I flinch, undoubtedly with the girl he’s barking at like the damn dog he is.
What the fuck was his problem?
“Why do you hate me so much?” she asks pitifully and my heart breaks with hers that I know is shattering into a million pieces because I can hear it. And I can hear the words she isn’t saying, just by the hollow croakiness in her throat.
Why don’t you love me?
“Because you exist. You’re a stain on my life that I can’t get rid of no matter how much I try. Everywhere I turn, there you are. You either get out of Beaulieu by the end of the term, or I’ll make you wish you had. That girl, Eloisa? Her life will seem like a fairytale compared to the way I’ll dog walk you.”
Suddenly footsteps sound, and I shrink behind a nearby bush, pressing my back tight against the building as the steps get closer.
In the moonlight, a flash of dirty blonde hair streaks past me, but not before I catch sight of the boy’s face.
Zedd.
By the time he passes and there’s enough distance for me to emerge from my hiding spot, it’s too late to see the girl whose retreating form is already halfway down the path in a full-on run.
And of course, Rin’s nowhere to be found.