CHAPTER TWELVE
I slept in fits and starts, wak-ing ev-ery hour to a gnaw-ing sen-sa-tion in my stom-ach. A cold-ness un-like any-thing I’d ever felt. By the time my alarm went off for my su-per-mar-ket dash, I was al-most re-lieved to be up and do-ing some-thing to dis-tract me.
As I was driv-ing home from Sains-bury’s—with a car full of more food than I’d ever bought in my life—I con-tem-plated call-ing my mum and con-fess-ing what I’d done. Not just the de-ci-sion to sit for the por-trait in the first place, but the mis-takes I’d made in the ex-e-cu-tion: go-ing to the sit-ting cold and hun-gry and afraid. Maybe there was some way around it that she’d dis-cov-ered in the last twenty years, a way to unan-chor cer-tain un-de-sir-able con-se-quences. But the no-tion of ad-mit-ting fail-ure—of ask-ing for help, es-pe-cially from my mother—had al-ways felt like a sign of weak-ness.
Catalina sur-faced around twenty min-utes af-ter I’d re-stocked her cup-boards. Her wet hair was wrapped in a lilac silk tur-ban, and the skin on her face was dewy with some kind of serum. She did a dorky lit-tle dance on her way over to the fridge.
“Morn-ing,” she chirped, ty-ing the band of her fluffy dress-ing gown around her waist. “Oh, that break-fast looks good,” she said, ap-prais-ing my plate. “When I die, I would like to be buried in a cof-fin filled with jam. Or be shot out of a can-non into the ocean while some-one blares fla-menco mu-sic. I haven’t quite de-cided.”
I looked down at the plate of food in front of me. Again, an-other jolt of fail-ure, of shame, my warped mind telling me that par-tak-ing in this sim-ple hu-man ex-pe-ri-ence was a sign of poor self-dis-ci-pline.
Yet while I was en-joy-ing the taste of the food, the sat-is-fac-tion in the chew-ing, the milky sweet-ness of my cof-fee, the salty tang of but-ter, the juicy burst of straw-berry jam, the pil-lowy soft-ness of the crum-pets … I was still left with the ache of hunger. The thought of how long I might have to en-dure the feel-ing made panic leap in my chest.
I had to make this right.
“Where were you all week-end?” Catalina asked, pad-ding bare-foot to her cup-board and pulling out a box of loose-leaf tea. She didn’t seem to no-tice the slight dis-crep-ancy in ar-range-ment of her food. “I was kind of hop-ing to rope you into a new DnD cam-paign I’m start-ing with a few sec-ond years. Did you go home to see your mum?”
I took an-other sip of cof-fee—made the way I ac-tu-ally liked it, for once. A small but not in-sig-nif-i-cant plea-sure. “No, I was in my room. I had a mi-graine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She crossed to the sink and filled the vin-tage tea ket-tle. “You know, I re-cently read a pi-o-neer-ing re-search pa-per on mi-graines. My mum gets them. Ap-par-ently they’ve dis-cov-ered this new kind of mush-room that—”
“Hi,” Maisie said coolly, ap-pear-ing in the door-way with her hair in foam rollers. She went to her cup-board, slip-pers slap-ping against the tiles, and took out a ce-real bar.
Catalina smiled. “Morn-ing!” Then, to me: “Any-way, I’ll send you that pa-per, Pen.”
I felt a flicker of guilt at hav-ing lied to her, but I still beamed at the nick-name. No-body had called me Pen since Samara, and though the mem-ory of her stung, it was nice to hear Catalina say it.
Some-thing in me glowed at the idea of hav-ing an-other friend. An-other best friend, if I man-aged not to alien-ate her over the com-ing weeks and months. I just had to be care-ful not to de-clare my undy-ing love, and we should be fine. Baby steps.
Fraser en-tered the kitchen be-hind Maisie, his black hair ruf-fled in count-less di-rec-tions. He grunted a hello and crossed to the fridge. There were traces of glit-ter scat-tered over his cheek-bones, and black smears around his eyes, as though he’d slept in mas-cara. Had there been a cos-tume party at the stu-dent union last night?
“Morn-ing, all,” he said, with a gruff lit-tle mock salute.
At the ap-pear-ance of Fraser, Maisie stood up straighter, then cast me a know-ing, self-sat-is-fied look. “Well, not that any-one seems to care, but I found out what Penny did to Davina. To steal the lead, that is.”
Shit.
Catalina stilled for a mo-ment be-fore spoon-ing tea leaves into a strainer. The ket-tle grew louder as it started to boil. “What are you talk-ing about?”
The smug-ness on Maisie’s face in-ten-si-fied. “I swore I wouldn’t say any-thing. But if you want to con-fess, Penny, now’s your chance.”
Stom-ach flip-ping, I weighed my op-tions. Ei-ther I could stay silent on the mat-ter, and risk los-ing this bur-geon-ing friend-ship with Catalina, or I could tell her, and risk los-ing this bur-geon-ing friend-ship even more.
Hav-ing not been born with a cer-tain so-cial skill set that most peo-ple seemed to in-nately pos-sess, I didn’t know how to mis-di-rect, or feint, or lie by omis-sion. My brain much pre-ferred frank-ness, both in oth-ers and in my-self. So if Catalina was prob-a-bly go-ing to hate me any-way, it might as well be over the truth.
Be-sides, the idea of more peo-ple know-ing about Davina’s shady an-tics gave me a small pulse of sat-is-fac-tion. Let her rep-u-ta-tion suf-fer over this.
“I caught Davina kiss-ing Pro-fes-sor Dr-ever and took a pic-ture,” I said lev-elly, as though dis-cussing the weather. Fraser, who’d been rel-a-tively de-spon-dent un-til now, looked up with bleary in-ter-est. “Then I put the pic-ture on his desk.”
“Davina and Dr-ever are to-gether?” Catalina blinked three times in quick suc-ces-sion be-neath her owlish glasses, her hand hov-er-ing over her mug. “That’s so messed up.”
Fraser rubbed at his fore-head, a car-ton of full-fat milk in one hand. “Hard yikes.”
Maisie’s eyes nar-rowed. She ob-vi-ously wasn’t ex-pect-ing me to so read-ily ad-mit my own role in the pro-ceed-ings. “It wasn’t how it looked. With Davina and Dr-ever.”
I so badly wanted to let slip that I knew Davina was hit-ting on the pro-fes-sor—try-ing to weaken his will—but that would re-quire con-fess-ing I’d over-heard their con-ver-sa-tion in the stair-well last night. So in-stead I said, “Well, it was clearly enough to trig-ger a guilty re-ac-tion in him.”
“So you black-mailed Dr-ever?” Catalina’s gaze searched me.
“Yeah.” I drained the last of my cof-fee, let-ting the ex-tra-sug-ary dregs coat my tongue in heady sweet-ness.
“Why?” she asked cu-ri-ously. “Did you want the lead that badly?”
There was so much I could say—yes, but also no, be-cause I was ter-ri-fied of ac-tu-ally be-ing on stage, of be-ing per-ceived in gen-eral, but I needed my mother to know I was as much of a win-ner as she was, and I needed to prove to my-self I had the tal-ent to be here, and and and—
I set-tled on a half-truth. Part of the story, but with the other, darker half eclipsed. Two sides of the same moon.
“I didn’t force him to re-cast me.” I read-justed the thick woolly scarf I was wear-ing in a fu-tile at-tempt to warm up. “I have a strong sense of jus-tice, al-right? I hated the thought of her sleep-ing her way into the role when some-one else might have been over-looked be-cause of it.”
Maisie snorted. “Some-one else be-ing you.”
“As it turns out, yes.” I lifted my chin, mim-ick-ing my mother’s enig-matic smile.
Ev-ery-body loves a win-ner, Penny. Since ar-riv-ing at Do-rian, her voice seemed louder than ever in my head.
Fraser, who had lifted the car-ton of milk to his mouth and started drink-ing ravenously, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Good for you, Pen.”
Maisie glow-ered.
“Wow.” Catalina leaned back against the edge of the counter. “They told me Do-rian was in-tense, but…”
Self-ha-tred clamped around me. I wanted so badly for Catalina to like me, to re-spect me. To think I was a good per-son. I couldn’t lose her friend-ship al-ready.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have done it,” I ad-mit-ted, turn-ing to Maisie. “It was you who told me the ru-mors about Davina sleep-ing her way into the role, Maze.” I bolted on the cute nick-name, hop-ing be-yond hope that it would ab-sorb some of the venom from the sit-u-a-tion. “I thought it was the right thing to do. But then again, I’m fun-da-men-tally not a chill per-son. When-ever I saw some-one cheat-ing on a test in school, I told the teacher.”
Catalina seemed to re-lax her shoul-ders a lit-tle at my light-hearted self-dep-re-ca-tion, but Maisie shot me a filthy look.
Stalk-ing off to-ward the door, she mut-tered, “All I’m say-ing is don’t start a fight you can’t fin-ish.”
“Bro,” said Fraser, eyes widen-ing at Maisie’s vague threat.
Her words rekin-dled the flames of dread in my gut.
What was Davina plan-ning to do?