Chapter Eighteen We Are Never Ever Ever Getting Off This Island
Jude is gone. Not just stepped back gone, which would be embarrassing enough. But gone gone. Like Elvis has left the building gone.
What the actual hell?
My stomach plummets and humiliation burns my cheeks as I start cleaning up the last of the mess we’ve made of my aunt’s office. And by we, I mean him.
A bitter anger simmers in my heart as I clean. Anger at him for doing this to me again. And even more anger at myself for letting him.
When he ditched me freshman year to hang out with Ember and their other two friends—Simon and Mozart—I promised myself I’d never trust him again. And now, the first time he so much as looks at me in years, I let him pull me back in like the last three years never happened.
Like I didn’t spend the first half of my freshman year crying myself to sleep, reeling from loneliness and confusion at being discarded by my best friend the same day my favorite cousin, and only other real friend, got sent to the Aethereum.
I’m not sure who’s worse—Jude for being such a jerk or me for being so incredibly gullible. But even as I ask myself the question, I know the answer.
It’s definitely me.
Jude’s just being Jude, horrible as that is. I’m the one who knows better than to trust him, but I slipped up and did it anyway. And now I’m the one left standing here, totally mortified.
Instinct has me reaching for my phone to text Serena and tell her about this latest disgrace. But then I remember. I’ll never text her again, never talk to her again. Never see her again.
A scream wells up inside me, and this time it’s a million times harder to swallow it down. But somehow I manage it, even as grief rocks me to my core. Pulling me down. Pulling me under.
I fight my way back up, grabbing antiseptic and a few cotton balls to treat the last of my wounds. I focus on the pain, use it to beat back the sorrow for at least a little while longer.
When I can breathe again, I bandage up the bites and put the first-aid supplies away before closing the cabinet door. Then, after sending a text to my aunt Claudia letting her know that all is well, I grab my backpack from the ground and head for the door.
But I’ve barely made it into the hallway before I catch sight of my mother striding down the hallway, a very unhappy look on her very pinched face.
She catches sight of me and pauses for a moment before arrowing straight toward me. Her Calder-blue eyes are locked on my face like a heat-seeking missile while her red stiletto heels click out her displeasure with each commanding step she takes. Normally I’d be glancing around, looking for an escape route—dealing with my mother when she’s dressed in her red Chanel pantsuit is never a good idea.
But right now, I couldn’t care less about how this ends. I’m too angry, too sad, too hurt to run away. Serena’s death is a gaping wound inside me, while Caspian’s acceptance at my first-choice college is lemon juice poured straight into that wound.
So instead of running, I stand my ground, eyes locked with hers as I wait for her to unload so that I can do the same.
But instead of launching into what’s bothering her right away, she stops in front of me.
And waits.
And watches.
And watches.
And waits, until I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin.
Which is exactly how she wants me to feel—not only is she a master strategist, she’s also a master manipulator. Plus, she’s in the wrong here and she knows it, which means she’ll wait forever to talk.
But knowing all of that doesn’t make it any easier for me to wait her out. It definitely doesn’t make it any easier to stand here like I’m some kind of lab specimen while she studies me with her signature narrowed gaze, her head cocked to one side.
But whoever makes the first move dies—my mother taught me that long before Squid Game ever could—so I keep my mouth shut and my eyes open as I wait some more.
Finally, she sighs—a long, slow exhalation that has skitters of anxiety racing along the back of my neck. I ignore them, and eventually she says, “Your shirt has several holes in it.”
“The monsters were—”
She cuts me off before I can go further. “I’m not sure why you’re presenting that as a valid excuse.” She shakes her head, and for the first time a touch of exasperation creeps into her tone. “You know prevaricating is not acceptable. The menagerie is perfectly safe.”
I stare at her for a second, not really sure what I’m supposed to say to that. I suppose I could argue with her. But instead, I settle on classic old avoidance.
“Fine,” I say shortly. “I’ll change after class.”
“You represent this school, Clementine. You’re a Calder. You need to be above reproach at all times, and that includes following the dress code.” She throws up a hand. “How many times do I have to tell you? If you don’t follow the rules, how can we expect any of the other students to do so?!”
“Yes, because me having a messy uniform is going to lead to total anarchy in the rest of the school.” I start to brush past her, but her red-tipped fingers reach out and grab my arm, aggravating the fresh cuts and keeping me from walking away.
“You don’t know what will lead to anarchy,” she insists. “And neither do I. These students have had difficult lives. They’ve made some pretty terrible mistakes. A dress code may seem trivial to you, but keeping things regimented, orderly, uniform, is how we keep them on an even keel.”
Ah, now I get why she’s so worked up.
Nothing gets my mother more on edge than when a strange power surge happens and one of the students manifests their magic despite the school’s most stringent efforts. Today it was Ember bursting into flames, but it’s been other students and their magic in the past. We may have state-of-the-art technology combined with some really strong spells to lock powers down, but accidents do happen. Especially during power surges.
This makes me think of Serena and her powers and how she died because she never learned to control them.
Another wave of grief knocks the air out of me. This one nearly flattens me, and I slap back at my mother and her ridiculous words before I even make the conscious decision to do so. “And here I thought keeping them alive was the way to keep them—and the school—on an even keel.”
The moment my words hit, she reels back like I’ve physically slapped her, but I’m not sorry for saying them. Not in the slightest. Because focusing on dress codes and rules and the status quo seems pretty ridiculous to me when the status quo isn’t preparing Calder Academy graduates for the real world—it’s getting them killed, again and again and again.
My mom, however, doesn’t see things the same way I do—not if the way her jaw snaps shut is any indication. And though the look she shoots me warns me that now would be a really good time to close my mouth, I can’t do it. Not now. Not this time.
But I do lower my voice, making it more conciliatory than accusatory as I continue, “Is it really any wonder so many students die when they graduate from here when we give them absolutely no life skills?”
At first my mother looks like she wants to just ignore my attempt at actual discussion, but then she just sighs heavily. “I assume this little tirade means you’ve heard about Serena.”
“You make it sound like she’s a weather report. ‘I assume you’ve heard about the storm moving in?’” An extra-loud burst of thunder picks that moment to rumble across the sky, as if underscoring my words—and anger.
“That isn’t my intention.”
“Maybe not, but it feels like it is—not just with Serena, but with all of them,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, sighs again. “We did the best we could to turn their lives around. We kept them safe while they were here. But what happens after they graduate is totally out of our control, Clementine. Do I feel bad that Serena’s dead? Of course I do. Do I feel bad about the other former students who have died? Of course I do. But you have to understand that their deaths are what they are—sad, unfortunate accidents.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? How can you possibly think it’s okay that students from this school that you’re in charge of, this school that you keep reminding me is our family’s legacy, can’t live outside its walls?”
“Now you’re being overly dramatic.” Another round of thunder—this one low and long—shakes the building, but my mother ignores it. “First of all, many of our students go on to live very fulfilling lives. And secondly, you’re putting words in my mouth. I have never discounted the sadness nor the import of their deaths—”
“You just said their deaths ‘are what they are,’ just another unpleasant fact of life we have to accept. What is that if not discounting it?”
“It’s being realistic!” she snaps. “The students who come here are troubled, Clementine. Very, very troubled. They have burned down buildings. They have blown things up. They have killed people in terrible, terrible ways. We do our absolute best to rehabilitate and help them while they’re here. We give them a place away from some of the darker consequences of their powers. We give them a chance to avoid prison, a chance to breathe, to heal—if they take us up on it—as they come to grips with who they are and what they can do. We give them anger management and therapy and choice mitigation. But none of it negates the fact that when they leave here, away from our close supervision, bad things can happen to them no matter how much we try to prevent it.”
“Dying is a little more than just bad, don’t you think?” I ask incredulously. “There has to be a better way to help these kids than what we’re doing. You know Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t want this to—”
“Don’t you dare try to tell me what my mother and father would want when you’ve never even met them!” The reasonableness has left her tone, and all that’s left is cold fury. “You think because you were born on this island that you know how things work here. But the truth is you don’t have a damn clue.”
I don’t argue with her about having met my grandparents— there are some things I know better than to bring up, and my ability to see ghosts is one of them—so I focus on the rest instead.
“If I don’t know, tell me!” I implore. “Explain to me why you think this is the only way—”
“It is the only way! If you’d stop daydreaming for a second about leaving the island, you might just figure that out.”
“And why do you think I’m so desperate to leave, Mom? Could it be because you keep me prisoner here, too, just like everyone else? I’ve never even been off the island! Do you know how bizarre that is? And then you tell me I can’t go to college, that none of us fourth gens can. And I find out that’s a lie, too, that Caspian’s getting out of here as soon as he possibly can. And going to my dream college. How do you expect me not to be frustrated?”
Her face, already closed, shuts down completely. “I’m not going to discuss this with you right now, Clementine.”
“Because you don’t have an answer?” I ask caustically. “Because you know you’re wrong?”
“I am not wrong!”
“But you are. What’s so wrong with me wanting to see what it’s like out there? To feel what it is to actually be a manticore? The students are all missing out on that experience, that core part of who they are, and it’s literally killing them, Mom.”
“We’ve tried it your way, Clementine. We did. And it didn’t work. You think things are scary now? You should have seen it before. Students died regularly while under our care, and we couldn’t stop it until we tried this. It works. They’re safe, and that’s what matters.”
“You mean they’re safe for now. That’s not the same thing.”
“You—” She breaks off as her phone notifications suddenly go wild. “I need to go handle this. And you need to drop all this talk of changing things here. It’s not going to happen. Things are the way they are because they have to be, whether you like it or not. We already had several students get hurt today in that power surge. There’s no way we can let them have their powers back permanently.”
“I don’t believe that—”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe!” Her voice snaps like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far. “It only matters what is. Now knock it off, Clementine!”
But she’s not the only one who’s been stretched past her breaking point. “Or what?” I shoot back. “You’ll ship me off to prison—off to die—like you did Carolina?”
Quick as a snake, her hand shoots out and connects with my cheek. Hard.
I gasp, stumbling backward under the onslaught even as my gaze slams into hers. “You’re not leaving this island, Clementine. Not to go to the Aethereum, not to go to college. Not for any reason. The sooner you get that through your head, the better off you’ll be.”
My cheek throbs hotly, but I fight the urge to press a hand to it. That would be a weakness, and I don’t show weakness—not even in front of my mother. Especially not in front of my mother.
“You can say that all you want,” I tell her. “And you might even believe it. But once I graduate, I’m leaving this nightmare behind me as far and as fast as I can.”
“You’re not listening. When I say you’re never getting off this island, I mean you’re never getting off this island.” She smiles thinly. “But don’t get too upset about that. Nightmares aren’t nearly as bad as everyone thinks they are—I would have thought you’d have figured that out by now.”
Fear rolls through me at her words, drowning out the anger and the pain and the horror and leaving nothing but a cold terror in their place. “You can’t mean that,” I whisper.
“Try me.” And just like that, she turns and walks away, her bloodred stilettos tap-tap-tapping out the sound and the fury of her withdrawal from the field of battle. At least until she gets to the end of the hall and calls, “Just remember, Clementine, dreams can be prisons, too. And that’s worse, because—unlike with nightmares—you don’t see the trap coming until it’s far too late.”