4. Bruised Shapeless
Bruised Shapeless
Desdemona
The first time I ever saw Elias Lennox, he was sitting in the back of a classroom. I’d been sent there by my science teacher to return some borrowed textbooks. I spotted Elias and froze in the doorway.
We’d all heard of him: the foster kid adopted by the powerful Pearson family.
He was standing with his back to me, and the first thing I noticed was how thin he was.
In my family, everyone is tall and strong and athletic, and at Spearcrest, thinness is only ever a result of a carefully curated aesthetic.
But Elias was thin in a way I’d never seen before.
His blazer hung on his shoulders as if from a coat hanger, not a sixteen-year-old boy.
He was standing by the bookshelves at the back of the classroom, eating an apple with one hand, the other raised to the books, fingertips brushing the spines.
He pulled out one of the dusty paperbacks—I had to squint to see that it was an old edition of Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe.
My heart tightened, though to this day I don’t know why.
Raucous voices coming from the other end of the corridor startled us both.
Elias shoved the book into his backpack, and I retreated out of the doorway.
He rushed out of the classroom so fast he didn’t even see me.
He brushed past me as I plastered myself back against the wall, leaving behind him the faint smell of apples and cigarette ashes and book dust.
The next time I saw him, three months later, he was standing against a wall in Julian’s family’s ancestral home, having knives thrown at his head. I stared straight into his face, and the fury I felt was almost suffocating.
Why? I wanted to scream at him, to grab his skinny shoulders and shake him. Why are you letting him do this? Why are you letting them treat you like this?
You’re better than this. Show them.
When Mum came to Spearcrest, they all looked down on her, too.
Her parents weren’t rich or famous, they just happened to work at the school.
Everyone assumed that, just because Mum wasn’t one of them, she was less than them.
But she didn’t allow them to dismiss her.
She worked harder than everyone else, carving and clawing her way out of the chasm of their disdain.
Why wasn’t Elias doing the same?
I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t stand it.
When Julian cut open his face, Elias didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even flinch. Like the violence meant nothing, like it wasn’t enough of a problem to even get a reaction out of him.
Is this how little you value yourself? I thought.
I got my answer moments later, when Julian threw down a wad of money and Elias bent down to pick it up. And I came to understand, over the years, that Elias Lennox’s self-respect isn’t non-existent.
It’s just coin-operated.
I pull the envelope of money out of my pocket.
Elias is watching me carefully. He’s filled out over the last few years—the Spearcrest diet agrees with him.
There are muscles roped into his slim shoulders, his long arms, his lean torso.
I try not to stare, but I’m an athlete, the daughter of an athlete.
I can’t help but admire the machinery of muscles beneath flesh, the same way I admire the physicality of my opponents when I’m on the court.
I can’t help but linger on his scars. Who gave them to him?
Why? How many people did he allow to hurt him before Julian?
How many did it without his permission? It’s an unnerving thought; it makes my heart catch uncomfortably.
But Elias doesn’t know what I’m thinking—if I stare at him too long, he might assume something else altogether.
Something that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Maybe that’s why he asked me to sit on his bed instead of offering me his desk chair, why he’s in my space, touching my face.
He doesn’t want me to forget that he’s a boy—a young man—already inhabiting his adult body, and that I’m a girl, no matter how tall and strong I am.
That girls and boys can’t be alone in a room together without that one unspoken thing being there.
I shove the envelope at his chest, eyes snapping back to his.
“Here.”
The money feels so disgusting that I can barely stand to touch it. Under my uniform, my skin crawls with goosebumps. But Elias, who seems to be enjoying himself enormously, doesn’t take the envelope.
“How much?” he says.
He doesn’t deign to glance at the cash. His hands are in his pockets, his body language loose and relaxed. His thick dark hair falls forward on his eyes, which are deep-set, almost black in the dim light of his desk lamp.
Elias has strong cheekbones and his nose is a little crooked, but his mouth is full and expressive. When I look at him, I have the horrible feeling that I’m looking at a ripe, beautiful fruit that’s been bruised shapeless.
You probably don’t know it yet, but you’re going to grow up to be painfully beautiful.
I drop my gaze.
“Twenty thousand.”
“Twenty thousand?” There’s a mocking inflection in his tone, a faux surprise that makes me want to recoil. “That’s a lot of money, you know,” he says softly, almost playfully.
That’s a lot of money for me, is what he means. That’s nothing to you.
I don’t reply, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor, feeling myself step out of the discomfort of my body, the discomfort of the moment, wishing myself off and away. Elias lets out a small laugh.
“Show me,” he commands.
He says it low and dirty, like he’s asking me to take off my clothes.
I force my body to move, picturing an engineer programming machinery. The comforting separation between operator and device. I open the envelope, pull out the two wads. My voice sounds hollow and far away.
“There are two hundred fifty-pound notes in each wad. Twenty thousand total.”
He nods thoughtfully, takes the money from my hands, fingers brushing against mine.
His touch is acid, a sore, insistent burn.
It makes me want to amputate the sensation away.
Elias, curious as a feral being, turns the ridiculous blocks of bank notes in his hands, flicks through them, tearing open the paper bands.
He bites one of the notes between his teeth, testing it, his eyes never leaving mine. Something about the motion, the shamelessness and defiance of it, of setting his teeth to this dirty money, sends a strange heat spiralling down my stomach.
Adrenaline, I remind myself. Everyone knows fear and desire are easy to confuse.
I swallow, and Elias’s eyes drop to my shuddering throat before flicking back up to mine, brimming with such black satisfaction it chills me to my bones.
“My academic career,” he says, barely raising his voice above a whisper. “My only chance at a decent education. My future professional prospects. My freedom.”
He raises the money between us. I can’t bring myself to look at it.
“That’s how much you amount it to, love?”
My face is so hot I can practically feel the blush burning in my cheeks. I’m caught in a trap I can’t even chew my own leg off to escape, a trap of my own making. Because Elias is right, isn’t he?
“You’ve added up the sum total of my entire life, and that’s what it’s come to,” he says. “Twenty thousand pounds?”
Yes, I want to scream. And—
How is it so different to letting Julian slash your face for money?
But that’s the truth he’s trying to run in my face, isn’t that it?
I’m no better than Julian. I never was.
“I can pay you more, if that’s what you want.”
“Nah,” he says. “That’s not what I want.”
And with a single snap of his thumb, he flicks the wad of cash upwards, sending an explosion of money up into the room.
The notes flutter through the air, brushing against the sloped ceiling, falling in slow spirals.
They land on old textbooks, on a battered shoebox poking out from under the bed, against the radiator rattling with too much heat.
I feel it closing in on me: the stale warmth, the smell of cigarette smoke and cheap aftershave, the suffocating smallness of his room.
This is where he lives. This is where I’ve come to kneel.
“Keep your cash, love,” he says. He sits back into his chair with a grin, money still falling all around us, fluttering forlornly to the floor. “I got something else in mind.”
And I know by the darkness of his gaze, by the triumphant twist of his full mouth, that he’s going to ask for a far heavier price than any monetary sum.
“What is it?”
“Take your money back,” he says. “Then I’ll tell you.”
“Keep it,” I bite out.
“Don’t need it.”
And I realise it’s not about the money. I see it in the way his eyes gleam, in the crooked curving of his lips, in the way he slumps back into his seat, relaxed and expectant all at once.
“Get on your knees, love, and take your money back.”
I swallow, dread and humiliation a sickening potion in my belly. I look from him, from his bare torso and dark curls and long, open legs, down to the floor of his bedroom where my money lies scattered, useless and insulting to us both.
“Is that your prize?” I ask him.
He laughs. “Not even close.”