Chapter 18
Eighteen
Morgan
The dark circles are thick enough for me to feel.
They weigh me down, bags underneath my eyes, and my spine curves forward from too many sleepless nights. It’s easier to let it bend rather than force a straight line.
Even I have my limits, my body is telling me to stop pushing it too far and get some rest. The daily orders have been given. My task?
A locker room, attached to the private gym I use to exercise in.
Does Milkin somehow know?
There’s no maniacal glinting glee in her gaze when she bestows the order, along with a benevolent sweep of her hand. She goes down the row, ignoring the way Daisy digs her bony elbow into my side simply because she can, and when Milkin faces me…
“Be grateful,” she snaps, taking no pains to disguise her savage glee. “You’ll work alone but it’s a private room. Think of how much work it would be if I sent you to clean the men’s locker room. It’s filthy.”
Yeah, excellent.
Milkin pauses like she expects me to kiss her feet in gratitude. Effusive praise has never been my deal.
“Why is Morgan getting the private room? She’s done nothing to earn it,” Daisy gripes.
“Does my reprieve upset you?” I mutter from the corner of my mouth.
She snorts and lifts her pointy chin high enough to give Milkin a front row view of the inside of the girl’s nose. “I just don’t think it’s fair.”
I smile sweetly at Milkin. “I’ve been on my best behavior.”
If they knew about my nightly jaunts, I doubt I’d get the simpler detail. The dark-haired girl who sleeps near me watches us, silently, her blue eyes rounded by curiosity.
Milkin rubs the bridge of her nose. The stray hairs poking out from the underside of her bonnet are fuzzy and wiry. “Daisy, I have no time to argue with you. Harbi wants the grand hall cleaned and I can’t trust Morgan to help with it. Not like I need to explain my decision.”
Daisy sniffs and her body tenses like she’s ready to launch a counterargument.
Milkin points a glare in Daisy’s direction and the maid goes quiet.
“That will be all.” Milkin claps her hands. “Off with you.”
Daisy hikes a leg out to trip me, but I somehow manage to sidestep her at the last minute. It’s not my most graceful move but it keeps me from landing on my face.
“Good luck!” She and the blonde who tried to steal my necklace both honk out a laugh.
I slouch through the hallways dragging the broom behind me, its bristles leaving a soft hiss in my wake. Exhaustion puts it mildly. Every tugging step takes me further from the cot and closer to the private locker room I’m tasked to clean.
I’ve glanced inside it before but nothing more than a stolen glimpse in the night when I’m alone.
The taunt and the giggles tell me more than any explanation. The curved edge of the bucket drags from my other arm, my muscles limp.
My limbs are too strung out from last night’s workout to operate properly today. It’s something I should have thought about before I pushed myself hard like striking at phantom enemies will somehow erase the note I’d left in the book.
It’s going to make this impossible task even harder. I dig inside me for the familiar anger I’ve used as fuel all my life and find nothing but the smallest cough of emotion.
Those dregs won’t help me clean the locker room. It’s not enough to get me through the next hour.
“Too bad.”
I suck in a breath and press to the wall when the bell rings and the classrooms open at the same time.
Students flow into the hallways, released from their classes and laughing together.
Red and gold school uniforms mark them as the same. They know their place.
How many of them will actually make it to graduation?
I shut my eyes and wait for them to pass. If any of them pretend to hide their pity, I won’t have to see it. It’s better that way.
Ignoring the things I’m not ready to face yet.
The creaky joint in my elbow protests when I lift the bucket off the ground. Cool water laps over the side and immediately soaks between my toes.
Ether take me.
Finally, the halls empty again, and the chatter dies to a low drone in the distance. A second bell dings, the final warning before being tardy, and I push away from the wall.
The students have left detritus in their wake.
Stray papers and lost pens, hair and thread and drink spills, lost buttons. Crumbs from snacks shoved into hungry mouths before professors scolded.
It’s not my problem.
Not this time, anyway.
On any given day, Milkin might change her mind, and decide my silence is troublesome rather than relieving.
I take the turn at the statue of a small pirouetting girl done in cast bronze, her fingers reaching into the sky like she’ll brush the underside of a cloud if she’s lucky enough. Two doors down, a gold-plated sign hammered into old wood says the gym is for private use only.
She has to know. It’s the only reason why she’s sent me to this place, where I know the corners of the room better than the cracks along my knuckles.
I’ve handled every practice weapon, stomped across every square inch of the mat.
But I’ve never pushed the door open to the right of the main entrance.
It hasn’t mattered.
I steel myself and head into the gym with my head held high. There isn’t a spot of dust on any of the shelves and cobwebs are banished the second they even think to exist.
I’ve used the gym in the hush of midnight but didn’t think about who cleaned it before.
And once I see inside the adjacent locker room, things will change. The gym will be branded by ownership and my own tender grasp on it will fall away. Someone else uses this space during the daylight hours.
The locker room will surely mark their presence. There will be little things, kicked off shoes or spare uniforms. There will be towels with monogrammed initials in the corner, perhaps.
I draw out of my head and find I’m inches from the door.
Acid surging in my veins, I head inside, and pull up short. The elite, my mind supplies, and my face twists in a sneer.
The ultra-lux private locker room has rows of mahogany cubbies empty and waiting to be filled with changes of clothes and exercise accouterments.
The benches are padded with velvet cushions in a rich red. My tired mind conjures images of people like Evie lounging on those cushions with attendants waiting to feed her grapes.
Choke on them.
I’d slap the grapes right out of her mouth. Or his.
Even the image isn’t enough to help me with the exhaustion.
This is a space designated to the top tier of the school, those who rule the roost as sure as any monarch. Most places for public education have their own versions of royalty.
I’ve been using one’s private gym.
This is a space that screams privilege—similar to what I used to take for granted before I understood what it meant to scrub floors.
Maybe Milkin really did mean this as a punishment.
“Hello? Anyone?” I call.
I don’t want to walk in on something I shouldn’t. The bucket sloshes and water splashes, threatening to dampen those blighted cushions. Will the lye stain velvet?
I really don’t want to find out. I’ll have to scrub this place top to bottom. If the cushions don’t need it…
Groaning, my back already pleading with me for a day off, I cut through the room. The showers wait through a curved arch.
Will there be mold growing along the grout lines?
Or worse, some unknowable thing lurking beneath the drain ready to snatch at ankles? Both will benefit from the caress of stiff bristles over the cracks and crevices.
Cleaning a single bathroom is a half day chore under the best circumstances. Cleaning two private showers in addition to the rest of the locker room and changing area… And I don’t even want to consider what the toilet looks like.
Oh, Ether. Is there more than one? Those will need to be scrubbed within an inch of their lives.
And Milkin made this sound like a favor.
My lips twist south, the frown a permanent part of me now.
I drop the bucket without caring how much more water sloshes. Carefully I pick my way along the tiled floor, the showers to the left and alcoves and hooks opposite.
The showers are pristine, like everything else in this place. Even the grout lines are spotless.
“Thank the Void,” I mutter under my breath.
At least I won’t be scrubbing hair clogs and soap scum.
Everything here is maintained to an impossible standard—not a water spot on the mirrors, not a single towel out of place.
The relief should make me feel better, but the perfection still churns my stomach.
I rest my hand against the cool wall and suck air into my body like I’m slowly suffocating and I’m too silly to notice it.
Would I still feel this way if I’d been one of the riders here?
Not like I’d ever get to use this bathroom.
These facilities aren’t for people like me no matter what my mother does.
“Did, Morgan,” I correct. The sound of my voice brings me back from tears. “What she did. Past tense.”
I set the broom against the wall and consider the rest of the tools I brought. There’s a container of polish for the mirrors, and three types of cleaning cloths. The broom, the dustpan…
My arsenal for maintaining perfection that’s already been achieved.
And all I want to do is sleep.
I crane my neck from side to side, but the stubborn aches remain. The stretching only deepens them until a twinging tendon pulls from the corner of my ear all the way along my shoulder and side.
There are no windows here to judge the day’s passing but I’m pretty sure I can sneak a few winks, if I’m careful.
Even a twenty-minute nap will rejuvenate me. Right?
My wishful thinking sounds as dubious as I feel. But the second the whisper of a promised nap lands inside me, my knees sag.
“Okay, got it,” I tell my body. “You’re rebelling.”