Elle
My stomach churns as I watch Gant stumble out of the greenhouse and crawl across the forest floor. He’s muttering incoherently, oblivious to everything, including the shallow spring that he plunges into. When he resurfaces, it’s like he doesn’t even realise what’s just happened.
He looks so pitifully lost and helpless that I shut the edited video off when he tries and fails to get out of the spring for a third time.
“This wasn’t a part of the plan,” I mutter as I glare at Rin.
I’d gotten Gant to admit that he wants me. Yes, little old fire crotch Elle.
I got a good dig, a bout of humiliation and jealousy that I’m sure wounded his gigantic ego when I’d asked about his friend’s dicks. When I’d made it known that, I didn’t want Gant as much as he wanted me.
I’d even gotten more insight into why me. He said he wanted to devour me in any way possible. Aria says I’m a tether to his past. I think it’s both.
But what I didn’t expect was to have the best orgasm of my life in front of Rin Joung, nor have her follow us into the forest.
“Neither was me nearly finding out what colour your asshole is, but here we are.”
I flush.
“This video is way better ammo than the first one. So what that Gant wants to fuck you? The minions will feel betrayed, but they’ll get over it because Gant’s that magnetic. That dark. That mysterious. They’re attracted to him like flies to shit. But this soft, weak side—”
“Having a breakdown is being weak?” I ask, a bite in my tone.
“It’s being a pussy. Just like you’re being. Gant’s mother died. She isn’t the first mother to die, just ask mine. Then there’s his asshole father. Poor little rich boy with his piece of shit CEO billionaire dad.” She pouts dramatically. “How can anyone ever understand his plight? Wait…I know, how about everyone at Beaulieu who has millionaire asswipes for fathers?” She raises her hand. “I do. You don’t climb that ladder by being nice, not even to your own kid.”
I just stare at her, unsurprised but still taken aback by her lack of sympathy. That video made me want to crawl out of my own skin and yet Rin had looked amused at his pain.
“Gant’s circumstances don’t make him special. He’s not the exception. In our circles, he’s the rule.” She bumps my shoulder as she moves past me to peer into the large mirror. The one on the third floor in the library. The same one where Stassi and I started our friendship.
She was right. No one comes in here and I can’t risk being seen with Rin.
I watch her fix her already perfectly straight headband, and run a hand through her already perfectly straight hair.
“That’s fine. I’m starting to learn that I don’t give a fuck about your circle’s rules. I have my own, and I’ll edit the video the way I want and send it to Beaussip myself. I have the email, and now I have access to yours as well.”
Rin spins towards me, eyes narrowed. “You know, there’s many types of bitches, but you’re the worst kind. The stupid, dumb bitch kind.”
I pause midway to the locked door and snort, but before I can retort she cuts me off.
“You had all this mouth about wanting to see Gant go down. You send Beaussip that first clip and maybe the tides will turn on him for a week max. Then what? You’re back to stuffing steak and eggs into your blazer once the senior girls take their heads out of their asses and love Gant again? Because that little interlude he promised you is only going to last until he pops your cherry. Pops that stupid little bubble you’ve cast over him that’s causing him to act deranged. Pathetic. And once it explodes, he’ll be up your fucking ass again in a new way, because the thrill of fucking you sexually will have worn off.”
I just stand there stunned as she fishes a lip gloss out of her purse. It’s not one of the purses she got at the cafe. No, I’d seen those perched on the shoulders of her little sisters as they flitted around campus with the same air as their big sister.
“You heard him last night. He’s mentally struggling to cope with his mother’s loss. He’s trying to find someone, anyone, to blame so he can stop internally blaming and torturing himself. He’s just taking out what he wants to do to himself on you. That’s why he’s so obsessed. That’s why he won’t be satisfied until he finally shatters you, destroying the cause of it all.”
Why me? Why am I special?
Because I’m just a scapegoat. A punching bag.
I want to say she’s wrong, but how can I?
Gant’s answer. Aria’s guess. Rin’s words. I think all three are true.
He’ll fuck me and it’ll be done. Then he’ll do something even worse than before.
“Don’t say I didn’t try to help.” She shakes her head, turning back to the mirror. “Damn, you’re delusional. He pissed on you in public, and you’re afraid of betraying him by breaking what little trust you’ve established in becoming his confidant. Bitch, please. Who gives a fuck? He doesn’t. He won’t. Soon he’ll be so fucking bored he’ll string your cum rag from the flagpole to humiliate you all over again. And when you finally shatter, it’ll be like you never existed for him at all. You’ll be stuck on his ass permanently and six years from now, he’ll be posting videos with his cute little family and there you’ll be thinking about the one time you were kind and above it all.”
“Who’s the guy?” I ask and her eyes flash to mine in the mirror, her brows wrinkling.
“What?”
“Who’s on social media with his new wife showing off date night outfits before she bakes him bread from scratch?”
“My father. Remember? Gant isn’t an exception and neither am I. But my mother’s story won’t become my own because I’ll never allow myself to become like her. Like you. These teenage boys don’t give a fuck about us. Gant’s going to suck you dry like the emotional vampire all men are. And when you’re so dried out that you shatter, you won’t ever be able to feel whole again. You’ll try to glue yourself back together with filler and designer shoes, but you’ll never be the same. Don’t let that happen, Eloisa. Don’t do for him what he’d never do for you. Give grace.”
“Why are you telling me all of this? You don’t give a fuck about my well-being either.
She stares at me for a long time before tilting her head. “You’re right. I don’t. You don’t even care about yourself. Send the video to Beaussip or don’t. But now I have my leverage.”
I gawk at her.
“What? You didn’t really think those bullshit codes would deter me? If you don’t want the tail end of that video getting out, leave me the fuck alone from now on. We’re not in business together anymore. We’re done.”
She swooshes her hair over her shoulder, unlocks the door and clicks away in her heels.
When I follow her a second later, I’m startled by Aria who’s glaring at the back of Rin’s head with a stack of printed papers in her hand. From the title, it’s the twelve-page ballet history essay that’s due on Monday. The one I hadn’t started yet. She must’ve come from the private lab.
“Why were you talking to Rin?” she asks, lifting a brow.
“It wasn’t by choice. I bumped into her in the bathroom.”
“What did she want?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmmm. Really?” It doesn’t sound like a question.
I swallow. “Just her normal digs.”
Aria watches Rin again who’s steps away pretending to flip through a graphic novel. “She’s painfully predictable. Painfully boring.”
She is, but she had some surprisingly good insight, bitterness aside.
Rin doesn’t acknowledge us but her hair flip before she clicks away lets me know that she’s heard us.
“Are you ready?” Aria asks as we descend the staircase all the way to the ground floor.
“More than ready. Desperate even.”
“You need a drink that bad?”
Despite being eighteen for a few weeks, I never jumped at the chance to finally drink legally. I guess when your fridge is always loaded with beer and boxed wine, it isn’t that tempting, especially when the empty containers are always chucked your way.
“It couldn’t hurt. The past few days, no, weeks, have been exhausting.”
“Tell me about it. You’ve clearly been living it up with Gant. At first, no one could pay you to leave the dorms, and now you barely make it back before curfew. Well, until a few nights ago when you didn’t make it back at all.” As it turns out, Aria had covered for me, telling Ms Trix that I was spending the night in the nurse’s ward before offering her some liquored chocolates. An hour later, she was out like a light and when I crept back into the dorm at five a.m. she was still snoring. All the late-night watches in an attempt to catch her alleged stalker had really worn her out, chocolates aside.
“You and Gant are getting closer. Dance lessons aside,” she says as we bank around the library and face the forest.
I didn’t think I’d be reentering it so soon.
“I suppose,” I say, and Aria shoots me a disbelieving look.
Okay, we definitely are.
I’d had seven more lessons with Gant since his breakdown and he’d kept his word. He’d touch me. Tease me. Kiss me. Make me cum, but he would barely let me touch him, and no matter how much I shamelessly whimpered and pleaded, he wouldn’t fuck me. I still don’t understand why, because I refuse to believe for one second that Gant Auclair truly cares enough about me to want to be ‘special’ before we fuck.
It has to be another little game of his.
Or maybe he can’t accept not being special.
On another note, things were heating up dance-wise. All I have to do is look at Gant and my muscles would begin to burn and ache. I could just look at the studio’s speakers, and Cinderella’s classical ballet soundtrack would play in my ears given the number of times we’d rehearsed with it. Gant’s instructions were excellent, meticulous, and borderline brutal. Mistress must’ve noticed an improvement because, for the past week, her once ultra-specific critiques of my every move have been minimal.
“So that means the interlude’s going well?”
“It is,” I hesitate, again not knowing how much to share with Gant’s bestie. “But we mostly just talk.”
About that green car. After our gruelling private lessons, Gant would flick through every single nineteen forties and fifties car model known to man, asking me if any rang a bell, seeing as he’d only spotted a blur of dark green in real-time. We also had the back fender from the fuzzy screenshot of the crash video, but it isn’t enough and I’m proving to be of poor help.
I’m not a car person, perhaps because I couldn’t even afford a bike. Whenever someone said a model type, I simply envisioned a box on four wheels the way kids always drew them.
I remember the ornament being silver and tall, with a trail. But was it wings? A flowing dress? I know the headlights were round, but did they have little metal bars running across them to form checkers? Was the roof domed or flat?
I don’t know and seeing as there are thousands of cars that match the little description I do have, it may as well not be a description at all.
Surprisingly, Gant never showed his frustration, but mine is coming to a boiling point.
I want to find the car.
I want to find the driver.
Because…maybe just like Gant, I want to shift the blame because I do feel guilty for my role in the email leak. So are we a little alike in that we just want to absolve our own guilt?
“The last thing I’d expect to do is talk inside that monstrosity,” Aria says, jutting her chin towards the glistening pointed roof of the old greenhouse as we work ourselves deeper into the forest.
“Tell me about it.” I sigh.
“Wait, are you actually disappointed? I thought you weren’t sure about taking things all the way.”
“I wasn’t.”
“And now?”
It takes me a moment, but I finally verbalise it. “I want him. Badly.”
“Telling the truth is so freeing, isn’t it?” Aria coos.
“But it’s like he doesn’t want me.” At her lifted brow, I go on as we circle around a boulder. “It’s like he wants me to…love him first.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted? To be in love with the person?”
“Yes, but no. I didn’t just want to love them. I wanted them to love me back and Gant can’t. Not when he still blames me for everything.”
The more I think about it, the more I realise that I’m not truly seeking justice for Madame. I want justice for myself. Like Gant, I want to point a finger too. I do want to get rid of my guilt, but is it just to clear my own conscience? Or because I want Gant to view me as being innocent in it all too? So that maybe if I was innocent, he didn’t have to hate me.
And if he didn’t hate me…No.
“How do you know he still does? Maybe your talks have shifted his perspective?”
“Maybe…”
“You want to know why I said I was neutral on the first day of school? Why I didn’t jump to Gant’s defence?”
“To avoid severe awkwardness in our room?”
“You have no idea how awkward my family dynamic is. That would’ve been a cakewalk. It’s because your presence is bringing Gant back to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“He played lacrosse with the boys last weekend.”
Lacrosse…I remember him mentioning it when we first met.
“Gant was really lost for the past two years. You’re the connection between those years. Between those events. Your answers, no matter how small, are giving him some sort of closure. He’s coming back. You can’t tell because you’ve never known the Gant from before, but we do and we’ve missed him. Finally, we can see little slivers of him again because you’re bringing him some kind of comfort.”
I pause and Aria’s already ten steps ahead before I can catch up again.
“I think he’s bringing you comfort too.”
“Me?” I ask incredulously as we pant uphill.
Aria turns to me then. “You haven’t had a nightmare about your father in almost a week. Your therapy sessions with Gant must be helping.”
Lately, I’d been feeling so well-rested, that I just assumed it had to do with the bullying easing up. But then I think about Gant and how my heart flutters every time I see him in class or before a lesson, and not because I think he’s going to whip out his dick and give me another shower, but because lately…he’s been my peace.
Yeah…
I am losing it.
By the time we get to our hiding spot, it feels like a damn hour later and through the thinning trees I can make out the fringes of the tiny neighbouring town.
“How are we going to sneak in two backpacks of liquor?” I ask as we heft the bags onto our backs and the bottles clink with every step.
Before Aria can answer me, a voice stops us dead.
It’s cold and smooth, yet so quiet and so loud at the same time. It takes me a second to identify it given that I’ve heard it only once before.
étienne.
“I promised you, didn’t I?” he asks.
Aria pulls me behind the nearest tree trunk and we both peer around the edge in the voice’s direction. étienne’s standing behind the greenhouse talking to…
The girl whips her long black hair out of her tear-streaked face.
“Rin,” I hiss, but Aria swats my arm to get me to shut up.
“And I always keep my promises.”
“You better if you want us to work out.”
My heart slams to a stop as Aria draws in a breath. Us?
“When are you going to make it public? I can’t keep waiting.”
“The time isn’t right yet. We have to execute this with grace and patience.”
“Patience is painfully boring,” Rin hisses, and Aria and I both know that she knows exactly where we’re hiding as she stalks back toward campus. It’s étienne who seems oblivious to our whereabouts as he slips into the greenhouse.
As the world begins to spin again, Aria readjusts the strap over her shoulder and storms off towards Maple House the moment Rin disappears into the theatre.
“Do you want to talk about—”
“No,” she says firmly, and I zip my lips all the way back to the dorm. Of course, I know nothing about Aria’s personal life, but I know enough to understand that whatever I just saw felt worse than cheating between a couple who aren’t even together.
Seriously though. Rin? Fucking Rin of all people?
Through the living room window, Ms. Trix is animatedly talking Stassi’s ear off about something or another just like we’d predicted when we sent her a text to keep Ms Trix distracted.
A tug alerts me to Aria pulling the backpack off my shoulder and onto her stomach so that she’s wearing both. “I’ll drop off the drinks then I’ll re-enter through the front door so Ms. Trix can check me in for the night.”
I nod as she reaches for the ivy-covered latticework.
“Do you want me to wait for you?”
Aria shakes her head like I knew she would and begins to climb as I keep a lookout. She’s as graceful as a cat in her movements. In no time, she’s climbing onto the balcony and disappearing into our room. I know she needs a few minutes alone. Maybe I could stall Stassi while she composed herself.
If she could compose herself.
Fucking Rin.
“And get this,” Ms. Trix tells Stassi as I come through the front door. “Lex was talking about his ideal woman and he described me to a T.”
“Really?” I ask, much to Stassi’s bewilderment as she’s already turning on her heel to bolt upstairs. I flick my eyes up to the ceiling and she thankfully catches on quickly that we need a few more minutes.
“Tell us exactly what he said,” Stassi says, leaning forward on the bannister and feigning interest as Ms Trix sucks on another liquored chocolate.
“Natural blondes with big, chocolate eyes,” she says, blinking her newly brown eyes at us. As she does the lenses move unsettlingly, showcasing slivers of ocean blue. They’re too big. Like doll’s eyes.
Stassi and I blink at each other before peering back at Ms. Trix’s alien-looking orbs.
“Aren’t your eyes blue?” I ask tentatively.
“And you dye your hair, right?” Stassi asks, eyeing the shadow of dark roots in Ms. Trix’s hair part.
“I’m a natural blonde,” she says, checking herself out in the large mirror over the console table and fluffing her hair. “And I know what you girls are thinking. Trixie, lots of women here have blonde hair. Mrs. Bellary, Ms. El-Agha, Ms. Spew. But mine’s the blondest.” She shakes it for volume.
“I think peroxide helps with that,” Stassi whispers under her breath.
“Speaking of Ms. El-Agha,” I say, getting an idea as Ms Trix turns her crazy eyes towards me. “She and Mr. Lexington have been spending a lot of time together in the library. Are they working on some school project?”
Stassi gives me the side eye.
We both know damn well the only project they’re working on is P in V content. We’d caught them making out numerous times behind the library where we hid to eat lunch.
Ms Trix’s smile falters. “Maybe he’s helping her with her resume. He’s amazing at that sort of stuff.”
“Is she quitting?” I ask a little too happily.
“More like supplementing. You know being a librarian doesn’t pay as much as a professor position, which is already sparse as it is.”
She isn’t alone in the job search arena. I look up at the ceiling, where Aria should be shuffling around, setting up our makeshift bar.
“He probably was just helping her search the help wanted ads.”
“No,” I say. “I think he was asking her out. I mean, she does have big, brown eyes.”
Stassi looks at me sideways as if to say why the hell am I sending Ms Trix on a spiral? Because Ms. El-Agha is an unfair bitch with a favouritism problem. She had sent me and Mum an invoice for the computer damage, right down to a chip in the tile where I’d fallen. I’d gone into Mum’s email and deleted it before she even opened it. Instead, I’d forwarded it to Gant, who forwarded me the paid receipt less than five minutes later.
Stassi and Aria were right. I did need him. For now. And that’s exactly why I need this job at Libeulles to gain some independence.
“And weren’t they together on social media recently?” I ask, recalling the photo Ms Trix was looking at the night I chased after Rin. “Seems like they’re getting pretty serious.”
Ms Trix clears her throat and pulls out her phone, her thumbs swiping furiously over the screen, ready to begin another bout of cyberstalking. “Elle, you have another package under the staircase,” she says without sparing us another glance as she darts down the hall.
The box is bigger this time, and pewter, with a big silver bow tied on top.
When I open it, there are dozens of leotards and tights, all in the colours I need for the upcoming semesters. There are three pairs of pointe shoes and enough bandages and blue jelly pads to last me until Christmas. I push them aside to uncover shampoos and conditioners and even a deep treatment, under which I find a new school uniform wrapped in a separate bag. All the things I told Mum I needed. All the things I’d put on my wishlist to make it easier for her. I didn’t expect her to get me everything. If she’d bought me even a quarter of it, I would’ve been over the moon.
I am over the moon.
Or at least I should be.
“You don’t have to feel guilty anytime someone gives you something, you know,” Stassi says, pulling me out of my thoughts and reading my expression. “You deserve treats, too. Everyone does. You’re not hurting anyone but yourself by refusing to use them and hiding them under your bed.”
So she’d noticed Gant’s black box of panties I’d have yet to wear. Because I’m almost always in leotards, he hasn’t noticed that I haven’t been following his orders yet.
I shoot Mum a quick thank you text with a promise to call her later.
In our room, Aria’s already laid out the bottles and cups on her bookshelf like a makeshift bar. She’d pulled Stassi’s desk in front of it and placed both their desk chairs on the opposite side.
When she returns from her check-in with Ms Trix, her eyes are red as is her nose, but Stassi has the good sense not to ask once I throw her a warning look.
Together, Stassi and I push Stassi’s dresser in front of the door. The last thing we need is a surprise appearance from Ms Trix or any of the other girls who are still keen to get me into trouble.
“Okay,” Aria says, not meeting our gazes and busying herself with the Top Ordered Drinks in Bars list again on her laptop. “Since we have no idea who Libeuelle’s target audience is yet, let’s start with the classics and work our way to the trendier drinks later. How about a whiskey sour?”
It looks like she could use one.
Or two.
Or ten.