CHAPTER THREE
“And you’re Davina.”
My pulse skit-tered and flared like a snare drum. I was mor-tally afraid of con-flict—mostly be-cause it in-volved eye con-tact and say-ing the right things, nei-ther of which came nat-u-rally to me. Put on the mask, Pax-ton.
“Nice to meet you,” I added, but it seemed ab-surd given the cir-cum-stances.
She arched a thin black brow. “Lis-ten, I’m not sure what you think you just saw, but it was noth-ing.”
“Okay.”
“Or at least it wasn’t what you think it is.”
I nod-ded, tuck-ing my phone into my back pocket. “Al-right.”
Her eyes flit-ted to my hip, nar-row-ing al-most im-per-cep-ti-bly. She shifted from one bal-let flat to the other. “Did you take a pic-ture?”
“It shouldn’t mat-ter if I did, con-sid-er-ing it was noth-ing.” I kept my tone cool and mea-sured, care-ful not to in-flame the sit-u-a-tion, but it came out more bluntly than in-tended. Story of my life.
“Could you just delete it, please?” She ran slen-der white fin-gers through her cropped hair, mak-ing it stand on end, and vis-ceral envy licked through me. She wasn’t bald-ing by the day.
“Why?” A gag-gle of stu-dents left one of the ter-raced houses from the row op-po-site Kern, and their pops of laugh-ter chafed against the tense sit-u-a-tion.
“I— Look.” Davina sighed, her nar-row jaw clench-ing. Then she dug a hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out a hand-rolled cig-a-rette, perch-ing it be-tween her lips with-out light-ing it. “You and I both know we’re the most tal-ented bitches in this pro-gram.” I frowned. When had she seen me act? “Re-al-is-ti-cally we’re go-ing to spend the next three years com-pet-ing against each other for the lead. But I don’t want there to be any bad blood be-tween us.”
I frowned, not fully com-pre-hend-ing. “There isn’t.”
Was she threat-en-ing me? I tried to scour the words for hid-den mean-ing, but as usual my brain couldn’t parse the sub-text.
Tilt your jaw up, I re-minded my-self. Smile with-out your teeth.
This time the noise Davina made was more of a scoff. “Why are you be-ing like this?”
“Like what?” I was gen-uinely be-mused. I hadn’t said any-thing that could be con-sid-ered in-cen-di-ary or hos-tile.
Davina took a step for-ward, and some pri-mal in-stinct forced my own feet back.
And she laughed; a short, sharp bark.
“Are you … afraid of me?” Her eyes darted from side to side, scan-ning my face like an an-cient text. There were traces of a smirk curled around her mouth, the skinny cig-a-rette still dan-gling un-lit. “There’s no rea-son for some-one like you to be—”
“Sorry, some-one like me?” Fi-nally I al-lowed some heat into my tone, and Davina rocked back on her heels, pleased by the rise.
“You know,” she said sneer-in-gly. “Wealthy. Priv-i-leged. Pow-er-ful.”
I met her spite-ful en-ergy with my own. “You have no idea what you’re talk-ing about.” All the times I’d been pow-er-less as a child crested in my heart.
Davina only rolled her eyes. “Come back to me when you’ve spent a sum-mer sleep-ing in your car.”
“Oh, so you do have a car?” I snapped. “Strange that you had to get a lift with Dr-ever.”
The mask was slip-ping, de-spite my best ef-forts. How had Davina pried it off me so ef-fort-lessly?
“Okay, I’m done play-ing nice,” she hissed, step-ping for-ward again un-til she was so close to my face I could smell the to-bacco and her musky per-fume. “I got Lady Mac-beth be-cause I’m bet-ter than you. And you know that, and it’s why you’re re-sort-ing to petty pic-tures in-stead of prov-ing your-self like ev-ery other stu-dent who earned their place here in-stead of buy-ing it.”
The words were like whips across my back, raw and true, and I loathed her for how eas-ily she honed in on my deep-est in-se-cu-ri-ties. But I couldn’t let her see that. Pride ran through the Pax-ton women as un-de-ni-ably as our cop-per hair and green eyes; a per-pet-ual un-der-cur-rent of stub-born-ness.
So in-stead I said sweetly, “So much for ‘we’re the most tal-ented bitches in this pro-gram.’”
She laughed again, high and cruel. “Oh, I’m tal-ented. I’m so fuck-ing tal-ented that I had to choose be-tween Do-rian and the Royal Bal-let School.” Her ex-pres-sion was al-most feral. “You’re just rich.” She made the fi-nal word sound like a hideous dis-ease.
Tears stung at my eyes, and I hated my-self for it, I hated how easy it was to make me cry. In an in-stant I was four years old, my knees grazed and raw, my nose snotty and pink, sob-bing and sob-bing for a mother who was too co-matose to com-fort me. I’d never been taught how to reg-u-late my emo-tions, and so they of-ten ran away from me, gath-er-ing speed as they hur-tled down-hill.
Be-fore I could re-spond to Davina’s jibes, the ro-tat-ing doors of Drum-mond swiveled be-hind me.
“What’s go-ing on?” Maisie’s voice was filled with a kind of vi-car-i-ous thrill.
I turned to face my room-mate. Catalina stood next to her—at least a foot shorter, with soft curves and elfish brogues—hug-ging an an-no-tated script to her chest with one hand and an open li-brary text-book with her other. At the sight of my pink-rimmed eyes, she took an in-stinc-tual step for-ward, her head tilt-ing with con-cern.
Yet that Pax-ton pride pre-vailed. I didn’t want Maisie to feed on the drama like a leech. I didn’t want Catalina to com-fort me like some pa-thetic kid.
“It’s noth-ing,” I mut-tered, star-ing down at my an-kle boots. They weren’t yet worn in, and I could feel my skin be-gin-ning to blis-ter and bleed. “Don’t worry.”
Davina shot me a fi-nal glare, tun-dra-cold, and stormed away. Her foot-steps were al-most silent on the pave-ment; she glided with an im-pos-si-ble el-e-gance.
“What was all that about?” Maisie asked, not even both-er-ing to hide her ex-cite-ment. “Was she giv-ing you a hard time?”
“It’s fine.” I picked at a flake of loose skin on my lip; a com-pul-sive habit my aunt Polly al-ways lec-tured me about. “Just a mis-un-der-stand-ing.”
Catalina’s brow fur-rowed with con-cern. “I heard what she said. It’s not true, you know. You to-tally de-serve to be here. You slayed your au-di-tion. Slayed it like Smaug. Ab-so-lute Bard the Bow-man en-ergy. Which you should be pleased with, since he is at least my sec-ond-fa-vorite Bard.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket, and I pulled it out to see Mum was call-ing me. The thought of talk-ing to her right now made my stom-ach cur-dle. I slipped it back in un-til it rang out.
We started walk-ing to Kern.
“Thing is, though,” Maisie said earnestly, “even if you weren’t quite as good as the rest of us, so what? Use the tools at your dis-posal, I say. And if those tools are your mum’s name and your fat bank ac-count, so be it.” She held up her palms. “It’s a cut-throat world. No judg-ment here.”
For some rea-son, Maisie’s pas-sive-ag-gres-sive sup-port felt even worse than Davina’s ven-omous on-slaught. I cringed away from her words, fight-ing the urge to curl up in a ball like a hedge-hog.
Would I ever know if they were right?
Frus-tra-tion ebbed at my tem-ples. My brain nat-u-rally grav-i-tated to-ward in-dis-putable facts. They were a com-fort blan-ket to me, bring-ing or-der and struc-ture to an un-wieldy world. It was why I loved chess so much as a child, the pieces mov-ing along ranks and files ac-cord-ing to pre-de-ter-mined rules, the math-e-mat-i-cal cer-tainty that if you made the best cal-cu-la-tions, you would win. There was no luck or opin-ion in-volved. No un-fa-vor-able rolls of the dice, no beg-ging your op-po-nent to sell you a prop-erty in Mo-nop-oly.
No messy hu-man emo-tions. Just logic. Beau-ti-ful, sim-ple logic.
Yet I would never be able to quan-tify Davina or Maisie’s com-ments, never be able to prove them true or false in any real sense. Why had I grav-i-tated to-ward a pro-fes-sion that was built on art, in all its glo-ri-ous sub-jec-tiv-ity? Why hadn’t I pur-sued math, or physics, some-thing with right an-swers and de-fin-i-tive for-mu-las?
If I had been cast as Lady Mac-beth …
But I hadn’t. Davina had—be-cause of the spe-cial al-lowances Dr-ever had granted her.
As we en-tered the oval atrium of Kern, an ugly idea sur-faced. I now had pho-to-graphic ev-i-dence of Davina and Dr-ever at my fin-ger-tips. Could I use it to force Dr-ever to re-cast my ri-val? He might name me Lady Mac-beth in her stead. If he did, then I’d know I had the act-ing chops to be here. And I wouldn’t have to ad-mit to my mother that I had failed.
I thought of my ten-year-old self au-di-tion-ing for Mary, hid-ing her soiled un-der-wear in the girls’ loos, mor-ti-fied that her very best ef-forts still hadn’t been enough. I thought of the tur-moil I’d put my-self through to get here. I thought of how good it would feel to re-ceive a stand-ing ova-tion, af-ter al-most two decades of wish-ing I was enough.
For all my flaws, in-de-ci-sion was not one of them.
As soon as the idea had come to me, I knew I was go-ing to do it.
Davina would sur-vive. Like she said, she was ex-tremely fuck-ing tal-ented.
Call it black-mail, call it ex-tor-tion, but I’d al-ways been told that Do-rian was a cut-throat world. Be-sides, Davina was hardly morally unim-peach-able. Even though re-venge was not my pri-mary rea-son for the ploy, I couldn’t deny the forked tongue of sat-is-fac-tion at the thought of wip-ing the smug-ness from her face.
“You go ahead,” I said to Catalina and Maisie, stop-ping abruptly just out-side the lec-ture hall. “I’ll meet you in the sem-i-nar.”
Catalina stopped too, rest-ing a hand decked in gold rings on the back of my el-bow. “Are you sure you’re al-right?”
“Yeah.” I forced a smile, de-spite the shame bay-ing at me. “Just need to grab some-thing from the li-brary.”
The Nar-ciso Tre-visan Li-brary—named af-ter one of Do-rian’s most es-teemed alumni—was al-most de-serted, since it was so early in the se-mes-ter that even the fi-nal year stu-dents hadn’t started pan-ick-ing about their dis-ser-ta-tions yet.
It was housed in an-other old red-brick build-ing, with gleam-ing check-board floors, ma-hogany book-shelves with gilded slid-ing lad-ders, and the aphro-disiac scent of old pa-per and ink. There were count-less dis-play cases filled with trin-kets and mis-cel-lany: old pro-grams and strange props, golden com-passes and cu-ri-ous hour-glasses in which the sand was sus-pended mid-trickle. The wood-pan-eled walls were hung with more oil paint-ings, plus a row of or-nate masks from the school’s first-ever pro-duc-tion of The Mer-chant of Venice back in 1894.
Af-ter find-ing a quiet nook in the clois-ter near the print-ers, I played back the video on my phone, paus-ing it at the point of the cheek kiss. Davina’s fin-gers were rest-ing lan-guidly on Dr-ever’s shoul-der, and his eyes were closed in a way that could’ve been ei-ther sen-sual plea-sure or ex-is-ten-tial de-spair. Her other arm was am-bigu-ously placed—it might have been rest-ing on the gear-stick, but it was also sug-ges-tive of some-thing far more ca-reer-jeop-ar-diz-ing.
I took a screen-shot of the still, then added a text over-lay. A sin-gle block-capped word, both an in-struc-tion and a threat:
RE-CAST.