Elle
Five minutes later, when the mop is full and so is my despisal for both Rin and Enaj, I slip into the bathroom with the filthy mop water I’d soaked up and head for a toilet to flush it.
But two steps in and I’m stopped by sobs filling the tiny space. The kind that wracks your soul so heavily that you’re mostly just hyperventilating.
I know better than to call out. The last thing I want is for anyone to see me cry. Not publically anyway.
As I dump the water, flush, and head to the sink to wash my hands, I spot a shoe underneath the stall in the mirror’s reflection. Immediately I know it’s Stassi. She must have twenty different pairs of black loafers, but most of them have cute little charms running across the toes or above the heel and these do. This pair seemed to be her favourite, with shooting golden stars.
I hesitate, contemplating if I should give her privacy, or ask if she wants to vent. I want to vent so badly, that I’m ready to do it to my own reflection.
But no, Stassi and I aren’t friends. Why would she care to talk to me? Someone she sees in the dorm every day but never utters more than ten words to at a time.
I reach for the door handle but stop when she hiccups and snorts uncontrollably.
“Stassi?” I call quietly.
Silence.
Okay, she wants to be alone.
Sighing, I reach for the handle again, but the sound of the glossy grey stall door creaking open stops me and Stassi peers at me with bloodshot eyes.
“Hey,” she mumbles miserably. She’s sitting on the closed toilet, tissues balled in her fists.
It must be nice to be so beautiful even when you’re bawling. She looks like a goddess with her perfectly tousled dirty blonde hair, her bright amber eyes and her full lips that look even fuller from crying. When I cry, I look like a lizard, or so I’ve been told. In her lap, her lit phone screen draws my attention.
I recognize Beaussip’s newsletter immediately from its black and silver interface. There’s a picture of Stassi on the front. Two, in fact, one from a few months ago, and one from yesterday at dance practice. I know, based on the cute mint green outfit she’s sporting. The girl hardly ever wore the same thing twice. In the first photo, though, she must be about ten kilos heavier.
“You found my secret bathroom,” she sniffs. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into another student in here before.”
“Yeah, well, if you came thirty minutes earlier, you would’ve seen a snake.”
Stassi’s eyes search my face quizzically, then they fly to my leotard covered in the dirty mop water I’d accidentally spilt on myself.
“What happened to you?” She wrinkles her nose.
I sigh for what must be the fifteenth time. “You first.”
She blinks at me a few times as if contemplating the barter before handing me her phone and getting up to wash her tear-stained face at the sink.
Stassi’s back in èze, but she’s left ten kilos in St. Barts. Or was that in Yves?
A close source says she was interning with her estranged aunt and fashion mogul, Allison Headly. Either way, it seems Stassi can’t keep her story straight. Was she merely relaxing on white powdery beaches in the Caribbean, or relaxing with a white powder of another kind?
Kilos to kilos, maybe…
I meet Stassi’s gaze in the mirror.
“That’s horrible,” I whisper. “Really horrible.”
She gives me a watery smile that I can tell is just a mechanism to stop her from bawling again as she attempts to fix her smudged eyeliner. “I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but for once Zedd’s right. The rumours keep changing every day, but this seems to be everyone’s favourite. They keep snorting and sniffling behind my back. Have you ever seen someone overdose?”
“Almost,” I say, thinking of Jarett convulsing on the couch. But he’d made it through.
I’d hoped he didn’t.
“I have. And I wouldn’t touch that white powder with a fifty-kilometre pole. Maybe if I hadn’t witnessed the effects firsthand, I wouldn’t care so much what Beassip said about me.”
I nod in understanding.
“But what’s worse, is I guess I can’t blame them. How else would I lose weight so fast in three months?”
How did she do it? But I know not to ask. It isn’t any of my business.
“Don’t you want to ask me how?” she asks, cocking her head.
YES!
I shrug casually. “Only if you want to.”
“I had surgery,” she blurts, but she isn’t looking at me when she says it. She’s staring directly into her own eyes as if finally confessing the truth to herself. Once she does, her shoulders relax as if she’s just lifted a massive weight. “A mini vertical sleeve.”
I try to not look alarmed. She’s so young. “That sounds invasive.”
“And permanent.” Stassi nods before adding quickly, “I don’t regret it either. But I can’t share it because people wouldn’t understand. I’m only seventeen. Just eat less! Just exercise more! I dance for four fucking hours every day already.”
I nod sympathetically as she pauses, taking her time to continue.
“I had an addiction. One I didn’t feel I could break on my own. Eating is essential. I couldn’t avoid it. I couldn’t stop… Anyway, I knew neither my brother nor my friends would understand such a drastic decision, so I didn’t tell them.”
“But you’re telling me?” I ask curiously.
She shrugs. “You have no friends to blab to and even if you did, no one would believe you simply because they hate you. Simply because Gant told them to hate you.”
Damn. But she‘s right.
Not even fellow scholarship slut Enaj could be bothered with me.
“And it’s only a matter of time before Beaussip suggests it, right after her Ozempic theory, which I’m sure will come out in a few weeks. The terminated pregnancy one already has.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I thought you were an Untouchable. Beaussip still talks trash about you too?”
“Beaussip’s the one exception who can do so openly, but everyone still whispers,” Stassi says bitterly. “I swear, I’m finding out who writes this filth before we graduate. No one’s been able to figure it out since her debut in ninety-six, but there’s a first time for everything. And obviously, she keeps passing on her wicked sceptre whenever she graduates. There must be some sort of underground secret society that runs it and keeps it going.”
I think back to Rin’s laughter when I said she was Beaussip. It may have been a deflection. It may have been the truth, but one thing’s certain. She has some sort of affiliation with Beaussip, so maybe Stassi’s right about some secret society.
Whatever the truth is, I’m going to work it out because while Rin may be the queen bee on campus, I’m the queen bee when it comes to leaking emails. First Gant and now Rin. Before Rin had soaked the screen, I’d forwarded her message trail right into my inbox, Barbieoo7.
“I think we have a common interest,” I say, closing Beaussip’s website and handing Stassi her phone before I can find my name and punish myself even more by reading what Beaussip has to say about me now. “But if you can tell me about your surgery, why can’t you tell Aria? From what I gather, you guys used to be close?” Or so some past articles on Beaussip had shown. I hate myself for it, but I’d scoured the pages for info on Gant and went down a rabbit hole about everyone else.
I told myself it was just to get a leg up, to have more knowledge about Gant and his friend group, but really, I’d sunk into Beaussip’s smear and praise pieces like it was one of my beloved dramas.
My favourite storyline? Aria and éti’s taboo saga.
“Aria’s won the freaking genetic lottery when it comes to proportions and metabolism. She’s got an itty bitty waist whilst still maintaining an ass and tits. She just doesn’t get it.”
“And you think I do?” Given my body issues with ballet, I do, but why is Stassi trusting me at all regardless of my friendless status? Does she actually trust me, or is she just ready to vent to the first person who walks by before she combusts?
She shrugs again. “I think you understand the rumours. You only get about ten new stories a day.”
I nod. “Unfortunately. But if you don’t regret the surgery, then why not screw the haters? Why is it giving you so much anxiety?”
“Because I feel like I failed despite all of my wins. My cholesterol is finally back to a normal range and my blood pressure too. I don’t have to worry about a sleep apnea machine anymore either. I can dance for longer without getting winded, and I’m faster on my feet now.”
“But that’s great,” I say encouragingly.
“But I keep having these nagging thoughts in the back of my mind, like why was I so mentally weak that I couldn’t do it naturally? Why did I have to permanently alter my body to get healthy? I just don’t know how to feel. I feel good and I feel like shit at the same time, you know?”
I nod. I did know. Like how I’m at the school of my dreams—yay—but everything is going to hell in a handbasket.
“Stassi, I don’t know much about the surgery,” I confess. “But if you felt compelled to get it, I don’t think it’s a decision you took lightly, and I doubt it was easy.”
“It wasn’t. We’re talking weeks of a liquid diet. Even now it’s rough. At mealtimes, I can’t eat more than a few bites without getting full. Now, with Beaussip’s story, it’s like I’m under a microscope.” She shakes her head, her curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Lunch today was unbearable. Everyone’s watching me eat and I even caught a few people recording. That aside, the eye rolls, glares, and sympathetic looks have been driving me up the wall.”
“Why eye rolls?” I can’t help but ask.
“Because despite the weight loss, people are thinking, look at that fat pick-me eating all dainty and cute. She’s just doing it to get her brother’s friend’s attention. She probably scarfs down way more later.”
Damn, I wasn’t the only one going through so much drama at meal times.
“At first Zedd was too busy to notice me shuffling food around my plate, but Hale noticed from the start. He tried cornering me today as if I can trust him, but he’s just as overprotective of me as Zedd is.” She blows out a breath. “If I told him I’d never hear the end of it, then again, he seems ready to stage an intervention. He’s learning how to cook now. Just for me.”
“That’s sweet,” I say, wishing not for the first time that I had a sibling. A built-in friend. Then again, I wouldn’t wish my upbringing on a snail.
“Zedd’s super sweet in his own way, if you can believe it. I hate the look on his face when I can’t finish something, or when I can’t even tolerate it at all. He thinks it’s him. That he’s messing up the recipes somehow. He’s becoming obsessed with making authentic cuisine. Lately, he’s been obsessed with curries and masalas.”
“Sounds delicious.”
“It is. Or it was. My stomach can’t handle it yet. If ever.”
Damn. No more spicy or savoury foods? Potentially ever?
“I just want everyone to leave me alone. It’s hard enough to deal with my own feelings surrounding the surgery, my body, and my eating. I don’t need feedback from everyone else, too.”
I got that. That’s why I’m keeping my trap shut now. She doesn’t need feedback. What’s done is done, so how about some encouragement?
“I don’t think I’m mentally strong enough to withstand two days of a liquid diet, much less weeks. I think you should give yourself more credit.”
“Maybe…” she trails after a pregnant pause. “Where do you eat lunch? I haven’t seen you in the dining hall since, well, the incident.”
I’m glad someone on campus has enough couth to not bring it up outright. Rin and her roaches do that enough as it is.
“Yeah, well, if I don’t want to wear my lunch, it’s best I avoid the hall altogether. I just slip some stuff into my bag and hide out. Loser behaviour I know.”
“No, that’s genius. I can’t hide and make up excuses all the time, but a few library detours for homework or extra dance sessions would be plausible. Competition season is coming up after all. We could steal a few bites together, then escape.”
“You want to eat lunch with me?” Damn, I hate how awed and pathetic that comes out. But I’d be lying if I said loneliness isn’t getting to me mentally.
“You’re the only one that understands now, and you haven’t given me lip for it, so why not?”
For the first time in days, a smile cracks the corners of my lips but it quickly falters when she says, “Alright, your turn to spill. Why are you covered in filth?”
I rehash the Rin incident as quickly as I can, but I omit a few details. Like the fact that I forwarded Rin’s email trail to myself. And any details of the photos I managed to see. I let her know that I think Rin may be sending Beaussip content though. I mean, Aria had already said that she suspected Rin in front of Stassi anyway.
Stassi’s face grows redder with each word, and by the time I’m done, I’m positive her complexion matches my hair.
“We can’t let her get away with this.”
We? I liked the sound of that.
“I won’t. But first, I need a plan.”
Stassi nods before assessing my leotard. “That was your good one, right?”
So she’d noticed. I guess everyone had, seeing as I only have three and this one looked relatively new. Keyword looked.
“Was,” I confirm miserably. “At least I have others, unlike my uniform…”
My uniform’s so fucked, the teachers keep pulling me aside to talk about my presentation.
“I have a uniform you can borrow, and don’t worry, it’s not a size sixteen like me. It’s an eight. What size do you wear?”
“An eight.” I nod.“But why do you have a size eight uniform if you wear a sixteen?”
“My mum bought it as motivation. She wants me to be an eight by next semester.”
That’s drastic, surgery or not. That would mean halving herself in a few months. More than half, actually.
“What do you want to be?”
“A toned ten? I don’t know. I’ve been curvy my whole life. I like being curvy.”
“But your mum doesn’t approve?”
“If she had it her way, I’d be a double zero like Aria.”
“Did she pressure you into having the surgery?”
Stassi shakes her head. “It was actually my idea, although she was thrilled with my decision. She wants me to be a runway model since I’m five foot eight, though that’s on the shorter end. And not a plus-sized one. I think she’d keel over and croak.”
“Just remember, it’s your decision.” I try to assure her.
“I wish it were that simple. You don’t know my mother.”
True.
“I don’t. But it doesn’t change the fact that your life is yours.”
She gazes back at her reflection in seeming contemplation before she eyes the empty mop bucket. “You know. Your life is yours too. You don’t have to let Gant ruin it all year just because you chose to stay after he lured you here.”
I chose to stay.
I can also choose my next move even if I couldn’t choose Gant’s.
But you can predict his moves.
“This year doesn’t have to be so hard if you learn how to play back.”
Play back.
Aria’s earlier words resurge in my mind for the hundredth time that week.
The interlude.
The distraction.
The desolation of Gant’s army.
If I just give him what he wants…
Still, I may not believe in fairytales, and I may be bursting with lust over his handsome face, but I at least want to be in love with the person I let into the deepest parts of me. Even if it’s fleeting.
And I don’t love Gant.
I hate him.
That’s the hard part to contend with, even knowing it may ultimately get me what I want. Peace, a dethroned Gant, and a smoother ride to graduation.
“I wish it were that simple.” I copy her words and a sad but tiny smile cracks her lips, then mine because we both know nothing’s fair.
But knowing it doesn’t change anything.