Chapter 21 15 March 2017
Hannah cast Mr Harris a sympathetic look as she left the classroom and stepped into the hall.
Their seminar leader had been looking slightly frayed around the edges by the end of class, and she couldn’t blame him.
Madison had been in peak form this morning, flirting openly one minute, making the poor man flush dark red beneath the shirt collar, then switching on her phone and texting in open defiance of Prescott’s classroom devices policy.
It was gross, but flirting with teachers and brazenly flaunting the rules were par for Madison’s course – and everyone feared the DuPonts too much to do anything about it, especially the younger teachers.
In the hall, Hannah pulled her phone from her bag, fingertip straying habitually to Instagram.
Tap, open. This morning’s post was fairly innocuous, as The Upper Edge posts went.
The comments, however, were not. An initial barb from Ethan Astor had turned into a full-blown Oliver Morgan hate-fest with Ethan leading the charge.
She looked up, searching for her friend, but he’d been first to exit the classroom, and his back had already vanished down the hall.
Fuck these people. She switched off her phone, jammed it back into her bag.
Hannah’s fall semester resolve to stay off Instagram had swiftly deteriorated, but she knew better than to comment on the posts of Prescott’s most notorious gossip account.
Oliver, on the other hand, just couldn’t help himself, and it always, always went down like this.
She wheeled around, looking for Ethan, before remembering he was only a junior, wouldn’t be in the tangle of seniors milling about the first floor after seminar.
Right. She drew in a deep, steadying breath, reminding herself that Oliver was his own person.
He’d been suffering their classmates for years, and part of him seemed to like getting into it with them online; he’d told her once that he felt most alive on the internet.
Maybe he’d be a social media sensation someday, when Prescott and its haters were far behind him.
‘You cool?’ Hannah felt the brush of fingertips against her blazer sleeve.
She turned to find Beatrice Whitmore beside her, a small frown tugging at the corner of her berry-red mouth. Today, her tight black curls framed her face in a soft halo. It seemed that Hannah had been standing in the centre of the hallway, motionless, for at least a full minute.
‘Fine. Just… yeah, I’m fine.’ She gave Beatrice a smile.
They’d been classmates for six months now, part of the same seminar group, at all the same parties, but it struck Hannah that this might be the first time they’d ever had a one-on-one conversation.
Beatrice was quiet and supremely stylish, friendly with Elle and Madison and the rest of them, but she always managed to rise above the drama of the week. How, exactly, did she do it?
‘Cool,’ Beatrice said, turning to go.
‘Actually,’ Hannah spoke up. ‘Can we talk for a minute? About Bash?’
Really, about Ami, but saying so might scare Beatrice away.
In the Orchard Hannah was upfront, sometimes even blunt.
But lately, she hadn’t been able to get the words out.
She wasn’t proud of herself, but as the year progressed, it had gotten harder and harder to explain her new life to Grace. Easier to just stop trying.
She pushed back her chair, dinner settling like a rock in her stomach.
‘May I be excused?’