Chapter 3
Weariness weighed on my bones as I trod up the final flight of stairs that led to the East Wing of campus and my dormitory, Ash Hall.
Before I met August in freshman year, I’d spent most of my time between classes in Ash Hall or deep in the bowels of the Labyrinth, nose-deep in tales of ancient mariners, woodland faeries, and medieval kings.
Gwen often teased me for my propensity for woolgathering, as she called it.
Our dormitory was messy, even by my standards.
Gwen often said that it looked like a tornado had torn through the room, leaving few survivors aside from a stack of unread textbooks and an archaic lamp on the small oak desk.
Silver barrettes and half-used lipsticks scattered our shared vanity.
Gwen, something of an amateur botanist, had decorated our dormitory with flowers, dried herbs, crystal trinkets, and several volumes of books dedicated to the identification of poisonous mushrooms. Evening primroses and purple stalks of sea lavender were strung up to dry.
In contrast to Gwen’s delicate floral oasis, my side of the room was cluttered to the point of pandemonium.
The shelves were strewn with Gwen’s many trinkets.
Seashells, coral, and fossils were precariously stacked against botany texts flanked by a pair of heavy bookends to hold the clutter together.
Last spring, my mother, in a rare display of maternal affection, had sent a few handmade glass art tiles for decoration.
I loved the disorderliness of our dorm, and firmly believed the mess added to the room’s character, even if it bothered Gwen at times.
I found Gwen in her usual spot, sprawled across her bed, surrounded by stacks of textbooks and loose pages torn from her notebook. She wore thick-framed red glasses and an expression of unbreakable concentration as she read, her cropped pink hair pulled back behind her ears.
As I closed the door quietly behind me, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
My mother, Eleanora, often complained that I’d inherited my father’s fiery temper and a stubbornness that would test the patience of even the most pious nun.
But in appearance, I more closely resembled her, with my long dark waves and striking blue eyes.
Appearance was where our likeness ended.
On a whim last summer, I’d asked Gwen to cut curtain bangs across my forehead.
I’d desperately wanted to look like someone else—anyone else, really, other than my mother.
A sly smile tugged at the corners of Gwen’s lips. “You’re getting in quite late.”
I tossed my bag onto a chair with a sigh and collapsed onto my bed. It was hard not to adore Gwen. A stellar student, she often outperformed even upperclassmen in lectures. Her cropped pink hair and signature blue overalls made her easy to spot around campus.
I’d told her all about my illicit liaisons with August last term, knowing she would take my secrets to the grave.
Like most students at Ouverham, Gwen came from a wealthy family.
But unlike our peers, she didn’t bother feigning superiority; she had little interest in societies or hazing rituals.
I respected her for that. It would’ve been so easy for her to join them, to be accepted as one of them in a way that neither August nor I ever could be.
As for her obsession with botany and whiney, blue-haired pop-stars—I certainly wasn’t in a position to judge anyone for their peculiarities.
Without tearing her eyes away from the book she was reading, Gwen said, “We can talk later. You look half asleep already.” She started and dropped her book. “Oh, I almost forgot! August left a package for you while you were out. I put it on your desk next to the one from your mom.”
The package from my mother, sent with a hasty note explaining the contents, had sat on my desk for over a week. She’d asked me to go through some of my father’s things, including a journal, postcards, and a few manuscripts. I hadn’t felt like wading through any of it just yet.
I opened the new package, and my heart sank.
It contained an old T-shirt with The Gargoyle, Ouverham’s student-run newspaper, emblazoned on the back, a toothbrush I hadn’t seen in months, and a book of poetry by Isadora Calloway.
Things I’d left or forgotten at August’s dormitory over the course of our relationship.
“When did he drop it off?” I asked.
“He came by earlier, around three.” Gwen frowned.
So August had planned to end things at least as early as this afternoon.
“Is everything… okay with you two?” she asked.
Things were far from okay, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
Not now, when everything still felt so raw.
Avoiding her concerned gaze, I mumbled a noncommittal reply about being tired and climbed back into bed.
Pushing all thoughts of August and my encounter with the mysterious Casimir Wrayburn out of my mind, I counted backward from a thousand until my eyes fluttered closed and sleep dragged me into darkness.
I awoke hours later, bleary-eyed and groggy, to the sound of Gwen’s soft snores.
Through the window, I watched as streaks of orange and crimson gilded the morning sky, gradually rising into a collusion of violet as the sun rose higher.
My encounter with the strange boy called Casimir continued to haunt me.
Each time I tried to drown out the thought of him, he stubbornly floated to the surface, bloated and obscene as a corpse.
Any remaining hopes of falling back asleep were shattered by the noisome cawing of crows outside of my window, so I decided to rouse Gwen and grab breakfast before the first block of classes began.
“C’mon Gwen.” I gave her a gentle shake and received a disgruntled growl in response. “GWE-EN!” I sang. “Aren’t you hungry?” As if on cue, my own stomach snarled noisily. “I know I’d just about kill someone for a waffle right now.”
At the mention of waffles, Gwen’s right eye peeled open.
“Come on,” I whined. “They’ll sell out if we don’t get down there.”
Gwen was many things, but a morning person was not one of them.
She unleashed a string of mutinous grumblings but then sat up and yawned.
I smiled. Victory.
As we neared West Campus, my eyes were drawn to a towering hemlock tree, its branches coiling upward like crooked gray tentacles that twisted starkly against the cerulean sky.
A pair of rounded French doors that opened to the atrium greeted me.
Ornate stone columns rose like cascading waves to support an architrave, adorned with botanical motifs and delicate floral details.
The college was an ode to Art Nouveau in all its naturalistic beauty and imperfection.
And yet, there was something grotesque in the immoderation of its design—untamed and unrestrained, wild and winding, replicating the natural landscape’s beauty and inherent danger.
Ouverham College and the eponymously named town were located on the Isle of Lorn, just off the coast of Maine.
The campus itself skirted a slip of wilderness known to locals as the Lacunae Forest, a mile or so from the coastal bluffs.
Aside from the college and a few grand manors dotting the cliffside, the isle consisted of a single pub, a few shops, and a seaside hotel primarily patronized by students’ families.
As Gwen gabbed at my side—something about an insipid fundraiser the college was throwing—my anxieties concerning Casimir returned with a vengeance.
What if he broke his promise? What if, right now, he was telling everyone who would listen that Arden Farrow got dumped?
I groaned internally as I imagined the weeks of whispered insults and speculative glances I’d have to endure.
Or worse, what if no one believed we’d been secretly dating in the first place?
I gnawed on my fingernails as I hurried down a western corridor.
And why had Casimir been so fucking interested in my attending Ouverham?
Asking all those questions… It was like he was determined to piss me off.
But why? Was that just his sick idea of entertainment?
The way his eyes had glimmered with amusement, his tone taunting…
It almost felt like he’d been—but no. He definitely hadn’t been flirting; I was sure of that.
But he’d gotten under my skin, which was probably his goal all along. The asshole.
I ground my jaw in irritation and resolved not to allow him a second victory.
We stepped through the wide doors of the Tusk in the hopes of securing a fat stack of waffles.
Officially titled Norlander Hall, most students referred to the dining hall as “The Tusk,” a nickname bestowed for its curved, bone-like entrance doors, or for its notoriously hard biscuits, depending on who you asked.
Two dozen long tables stretched the expanse of the hall, framed by arching windows, while wooden buttresses curved overhead like the ribcage of a whale.
With our waffles stacked high and our maple syrup secured, Gwen and I moved to sit at an unoccupied table to discuss last week’s Ancient Greco-Roman History class, taught by the odious Professor Skinner.
Bald, unpopular, and as prejudiced as he was power-hungry, Bartholomew Skinner had rubbed me the wrong way from the very first moment I set foot on campus, and I was certain the feeling was mutual.
He was known for waxing poetic about the moral sanctity of rigid gender roles, often employing Greek mythology to support his outdated perspective.
Enduring Skinner’s twisted, misogynistic versions of the stories I’d heard as a child was a special brand of torture.
During last week’s long-winded lesson, Skinner had droned on and on about Penelope, loyal wife of Odysseus, until half of the class was slumped over their desks. I think I heard Hugh Langburg snoring.