Chapter 38
The day of the solstice dinner was a cold one.
The sisters spent all morning huddled together instinctively under blankets, weighted down, waiting.
Nobody touched their breakfast. There was an unresolved energy in the air, an active and prevailing wind, a distant hint of smoke.
Tension knitted their shoulder blades as usual, this time shielding the collective heart rate of a conserving humpback whale.
It wasn’t time; not yet. Patiently, enduringly, they waited. Time at half speed, they rested. The branches outside their windows rattled. The residents of the Icebox descended to the lower floors, where there was heat.
Then the guests started to arrive.
It was interesting, Nina observed, to see what each sister had felt was appropriate for the occasion, best suited for a meal.
The room was entirely occupied by men. Dalil had brought someone Nina didn’t recognize; someone she didn’t think was even a student.
A boy, not much older than the rest of them.
Someone who looked like he had access to the internet, to ruining a life with the push of a button.
He swayed a little on the stairs, like maybe he’d needed some early convincing.
Wordlessly, Nina came over to help Dalil prop him up.
Alina arrived with her boyfriend, the knockoff Kennedy named Tripp. Nina blinked with surprise, and Alina lifted a brow as if to say, We all make sacrifices. Nina nodded. She already understood that was the truth.
Tessa arrived with someone in military uniform, early thirties.
Nina didn’t ask. Similarly, though she had considered seeking out answers to whatever passed between Tessa and Fawn in the past, she dismissed the impulse almost immediately—it wasn’t her pain or her story, and if Tessa didn’t want to exhume it, then Nina wouldn’t unearth it, out of respect.
There were two cops. A handful of what looked like service workers. Some athletes. Some frat bros. None too old. Perhaps among the oldest was Fawn’s guest.
“Oh, hi, Nina,” said Professor Villanueva. “Your term paper was excellent, I just finished grading it. Really strong analysis.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“Miss Carter told me this was a scholarship dinner?” Professor Villanueva was surveying the sea of guests, observing them with a brittle sense of suspicion, perhaps, that all was not quite right.
Maybe he could feel it, the frequency, the thing Nina had first noticed; or maybe it was the girls who were licking their lips, baring their teeth, panting quietly.
The occasional glint of canines flashing beneath the dining room’s chandelier.
“Yes, sort of. More of a congratulations on the end of the semester dinner. Happy solstice and all that.” Nina cleared her throat and held out a hand that was only slightly shaky with anticipation. She blinked away lightheadedness, a passing dizzy spell. “Can I take your coat?”
“Oh, I can’t let you do that,” said Professor Villanueva, and Nina wondered for a second if she’d imagined it, the certainty she’d felt that he wanted to fuck her.
He seemed suddenly very paternal toward her, like his concern was that she hadn’t eaten enough vegetables in recent days.
He seemed frailer than she’d imagined, still healthy and active but not incapable of being taken down by sixty starving girls.
“There you are, Max.”
Nina’s eyes strayed to Fawn, who came over without acknowledging Nina. Professor Villanueva’s cheeks grew flushed. “Sorry, I suppose I hadn’t mentioned to you that I had Miss Carter last semester,” he explained to Nina. “She was one of my most promising students.”
“Oh, Max, you really don’t need to pretend around Nina,” said Fawn with an air of dismissal. “I told you, she understands.”
“Fawn.” Professor Villanueva’s mouth grew thin, his voice dropping. “We talked about this.”
“Yes, you mentioned several times that it was a mistake. An accident!” Fawn laughed loudly, as if one of them had told a joke over cocktails.
“You accidentally kissed me, of course, how could I forget. And the worst part,” Fawn added to Nina in a performative aside, “is that I didn’t even get the highest grade in the class. He gave it to some dude named Brody.”
“Maybe I should go.” Professor Villanueva looked uneasy. Next to him, one of the seniors—the one who’d first assured Nina about her uterus—touched the side of her dinner guest’s neck like she knew exactly where to slice it open. “I—I think I should leave. I’m so sorry, Miss Kaur—”
“You can call me Nina,” offered Nina. “I mean, we haven’t done anything, so. There’s no need to be so formal.”
Fawn gave another high, distinct laugh. Professor Villanueva glanced hastily around the room.
“Oh god,” said Fawn. “Nobody cares, Max. Literally nobody cares. That’s the fucked-up part of the whole thing.
It’s not like fucking your students is new or creative.
You’re an evergreen cliché.” She leaned over as if to kiss him, covertly removing something from her pocket, and Professor Villanueva shrank instantly away.
“Coward,” snarled Fawn, and pressed a pink stun gun into his neck.
Professor Villanueva shuddered and fell, seizing as he went. There was a slight commotion as the other guests turned to look.
“Oh, no,” Fawn cried out, bending as if to check Professor Villanueva’s pulse.
Nina bent, too.
Across the room, the latch on the dining room turned audibly. At least three girls let out a soft, pleading moan.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nina murmured to Fawn. Her finger did fit perfectly into the dimple of Professor Villanueva’s unmoving cheek.
“I did. But apparently you weren’t listening.” Fawn’s eyes met Nina’s then, hard, angry. An unmistakable fuck you.
Nina understood, finally, that she had been wrong and she had been right. Fawn was honest, Fawn was fake, she was both the friend that Tessa loved and she wasn’t—Fawn was a coin that would fall wherever it needed to for Fawn to wind up on top.
Fawn had never contradicted Tessa or renounced Tessa’s approach to the ritual because it was closest to her own.
But it wasn’t exact, because justice wasn’t necessarily altruistic.
It wasn’t always systemic. The violence in Fawn’s justice was personal, singular.
With a subtle hint of vengeful smoke—that feminine mesquite.
Then, a secondary epiphany, via the usual am-I-a-narcissist internal reckoning: it was never about Nina.
Not the sex or whatever it was—that was probably just lust and convenience—and not the betrayal, either, because Nina never meant enough to Fawn to leave a mark.
That was the truth, and the truth fucking hurt.
Nina could admit that. Her heart shattered because she still fucking had one, thank you very much. It was the end of something. The end.
“I really did love you,” Nina said.
Fawn looked up at her, expression contorted with something that was guilt and envy and the loathing you could have for a person whose pleasure you once craved.
“Bummer,” said Fawn.
It was everything Nina needed to hear.