Chapter 9 #2
Carefully slashing her paintbrush across the canvas, Ivory says, “I can’t imagine living life that bitter.”
“Bitter?” I echo. “No, Ivory, she isn’t bitter. She’s rotten, right down to the crumbs of her.” Quickly changing the subject when Scarlett comes stomping into the studio, I gesture at my canvas. “What do you think? Is it missing something?”
“Color,” Ivory is quick to offer.
“God, no!” I counter.
I don’t miss painting. Nor do I miss using color now that I’ve come to appreciate the complexities of using charcoal.
All kinds of charcoal. Vine. Willow. Compressed.
Pencils. Nothing beats the feel of a worn-down nub gripped between my fingers or the rough slide of it against a canvas’s texture.
Each controlled stroke breathes life into my monsters.
Creatures who’ve kept me company, kept me safe, and comforted me through the very worst and loneliest of nights.
“Alice.” The tone in Ivory’s voice has me bracing for a chiding. “You can’t spend all your time surrounded by those… those beasts.”
Ivory glances at March, something she does often when she knows he’s not looking at her. And when she’s not looking, he watches her as well. And right now, he’s focused on his canvas.
“Bet?” I retort.
Ivory beams me in the face with a clean rag. “Stubborn, that’s what you are, Alice Knightly. Stubborn as hell, and one day, it’s going to bite you right in the—”
“Good morning,” Professor Katzinski greets us.
He’s late, as usual. And he’s dressed in his normal eclectic attire.
This time it’s purple paisley pants paired with a black-and-white striped shirt.
His fluff of salt-and-pepper hair is slicked back, and the outer tips of his white mustache are curled.
He looks like a wacky sixties throwback.
“I trust you all had a pleasant weekend?” Without waiting for replies, he drops his leather satchel on his chaotic desk and then claps his hands.
“So, let’s see… Where did we leave off on Friday? ”
Professor Kat, as he’s known, strolls around the room, dropping suggestions and praise to those students he missed last week.
He beelines directly for March and forces the notoriously grumpy former Hilltop linebacker to explain his drawing.
March, of course, keeps it clipped and simple, explaining that…
well…he likes skulls. When Professor Kat tries to push him, March tells him that his art isn’t that deep.
It’s just a skull, nothing more and nothing less.
Class rolls on quickly, with Scarlett’s scathing glares frying me the entire time.
But I do a damn fine job of ignoring her, getting lost in my drawing.
In the shape of the caterpillar and the billow of smoke emanating from the hookah pipe.
Next stop is Management of Arts and Literature.
March looms behind Ivory and me as we shuffle down the elegant corridor of Juniper Hall to the micro lecture room where the always punctual Professor Maleen is waiting.
Her brown hair is piled high in a messy bun atop her head, swaying precariously as she scribbles on the whiteboard.
Seats fill fast with many of the same people from Painting IV.
Most Briar Rose students share a goal upon graduation—to follow in their powerful family’s footsteps.
This, thankfully, keeps the art department small and intimate, and when Ivory and I take our usual seats near the front of the room, she leans toward me to whisper, “You know why Scarlett hates you, right?”
I slide her a sideways glance, my interest piqued as I pull my laptop from my bookbag. “I most certainly don’t,” I whisper back.
“Jealousy.”
“What does she have to be jealous about?”
“Come on, Alice, you honestly don’t see that she’s been in love with Maddox, like, forever?” Ivory pulls her laptop from her bag and opens it on her desk. “She even tried to make a play for him a few months ago.”
Instantly sick, every muscle in my body goes taut with tension at the idea of Maddox and Scarlett together. “No friggin’ way.”
“Yes, way,” Ivory retorts.
“Did they…? Did he…?” Oh, my God, I can’t even say the words, the question sticking like a thorn in the back of my throat.
“Alice, no. Ew, no.” She adds a shudder for good measure, easing my mind.
Too bad my stomach is still in a tight knot. “What, exactly, happened between them?”
Professor Maleen begins class, so Ivory switches to texting.
Ivory: He rejected her OF COURSE
Ivory: She’s been in a bad mood ever since
That fucking bitch.
I shouldn’t care who Maddox dates, fucks, or whatnot. But I do care, especially if that person is Scarlett McQueen.
Me: First art and now my sloppy seconds.
Ivory hides her smile behind her hand because she knows.
She knows. Her sister never gave a damn about art until my work gained attention while we were at Hilltop.
After I got accepted into Krobes, Scar announced she was majoring in art as well.
And now she went after Maddox? She’s so weird in a Single White Female sort of way.
Ivory: Its whatever
Ivory: Ignore her eventually she’ll move on to a new target
Me: One can hope.
Doubt it, though, but I don’t share this opinion.
Class drones on for what seems like an eternity, and while I should pay attention, I’m not.
My fingers fly over the keyboard, absently taking notes as Professor Maleen’s rusty voice fills the lecture hall.
Today, she’s explaining how the ‘dark’ artists of the Renaissance period expressed their freedom from strict religious dogma.
Normally, this subject would keep me rapt because I’m a dark artist, but not today. Not after the bomb Ivory dropped on me.
All I can fixate on is that Scarlett made a play for Maddox.
How far did she get before he rejected her?
Of course, I didn’t expect Maddox to remain chaste while I was at Krobes. Hell, I expected him to bone half of Wonderland. Just not Scarlett. Anyone but her—because while I was there and he was here, I regretted leaving every single day. And it only got worse after Rook started stalking me.
That’s when things got dangerous.
But I’m not thinking about that sonofabitch. I’m safe in Wonderland, surrounded by my friends. Tiger Lily Manor is practically a fortress, and so is Briar Rose, and eventually—hopefully—enough time will pass that he’ll forget all about me…
If he hasn’t already.
When the police went to serve him with the restraining order, he was gone. Poof! Vanished like a fart in the wind.
The bell chimes, ending class. This is where Ivory and I part ways to go to our respective electives, mine being graphic design, and hers, French.
We’re barely out of the lecture hall when March slams his shoulder into Ivory’s.
I open my mouth to rip him a whole new asshole, but she stops me with a shake of her head.
“It’s fine.”
Scowling, I say, “To hell it is.”
Her shy grin and the way her cheeks bloom with color as she watches him storm down the corridor tell a whole story. “He’s harmless.”
March O’Hare is the polar opposite of harmless.
He’s a beast of a man, with shaggy brown hair and angry eyes.
He’s feral, downright frightening, with that threatening demeanor hiding a devilishly good-looking man.
And he’s built like a brick shithouse, tall and wide with solid muscle and a legendary temper.
I hate to admit it, but I understand why Roman kept him as a ward.
And by ‘ward,’ I know exactly what being under the care of Ivory’s father entails for the boys he collects, using them as his arsenal.
I hate, hate, hate that Maddox is one of his soldiers, but the alternative is worse. He’d have no outlet for the mania that rages inside him, and while I know he does awful things, I justify them by telling myself he does them to bad people.
My following two classes zip by in a blur, and once the school day is done, I step outside and welcome the warm afternoon sun. I stroll toward the parking lot, and when I reach my SUV, I bite back a groan when “I Miss You” by Blink-182 sounds much too close…
…because it is, dammit.
Maddox parked his Dodge a few spots away from my vehicle.
He’s got the windows open, with that song drifting from the radio.
Fucking asshole. He crawls beneath my skin, infecting me with himself.
Always has, and even after being away from Wonderland—from him—I’m still tainted by him.
Ruined. Our first kiss should have been our last, but nope.
I screwed that up royally. I wish I could rewrite the past. Erase the grief and guilt with a snap of my fingers.
Fall into his arms and let the world fade away around us.
Make the terrible memories just…go away and stay away.
But I’m not made of magic. I can’t undo the past, and when I hauled ass out of Wonderland, I ran not only from the ghost of my father. I also ran from Maddox because I was slipping under the tide, and I had to make the heartbreaking choice to drown alone or take him with me.
I spared him and drowned alone.