Chapter 3
THREE
GWENNA
I sleep like the dead—mercifully—and when I wake up, it’s to a quiet room.
Warm, bathed in golden light, empty.
I’m alone .
The sheer uncut relief of being unperceived is druggingly good, such a welcome rush that I almost pull my blankets back over my head and bask in it like a cat in a patch of sun.
Then I remember my mission. And, I notice the white strip of a folded letter slid under the door.
Slowly, I swing my feet to the floor and pick it up, my heart pounding with…not excitement, not anxiety, but something as I slice it open hard and fast enough to draw blood on my index finger.
GWENNA VALE
LATIN 302 — EMRYS
FRENCH 203 — BOULANGER
CALCULUS 101 — NEWMAN
Well. There it is. Typewritten notice of my placement exam results. Calculus can screw itself, but the rest I’m pleased with, and as I sink back down on the mattress, skimming my schedule, I even allow myself a smile.
I’m going to class today.
And soon, I realize. It’s Friday, which means I have—I check the schedule—just French today, at 10:00 a.m. in Lecture Hall 3, which gives me just under an hour to get dressed and into place. I’ll have missed both sittings of breakfast, but so long as I can procure coffee at some point, I’ll live.
Slowly, I stand again. Outside, lime-green and fire-orange leaves alike fringe the windowpane, with just a glimpse of blue sky and cottony clouds beyond—cold, though, judging by the hissing and clanking of the massive iron radiator.
To my left, Morgan’s side of the room is haphazardly tidied—duvet roughly thrown back over the mattress, her strange little trinkets in disarray on the desk while leaving the center clear, a sort of manmade fairy circle—but she has done me the courtesy of leaving a note on the little framed chalkboard beside her desk.
Class. Back c. 3:30.
Friendly , I think sarcastically. Then I chide myself for being such a bitch: clear is kind and kind is clear, as Mom likes to say, and about that , at least, she’s right.
I drag a fingertip along the edge of Morgan’s desk, just for the thrill of it, and for a moment, I consider fishing around in her billions of tiny drawers to see what earthly delights she has in store to traffic to people like Kingston, but I quickly think better of it.
As valuable as it could be to have kompromat on Morgan and her potential drug-dealing side hustle, I also don’t want to risk getting flung even further onto her bad side.
For all I know, she’s got poison in there, and I doubt she’d hesitate to use it.
Besides, knowing that Morgan has vacated the premises for the duration means I can shower without worrying about …
I don’t let myself finish the thought as I rush to peel out of the heavy sweatshirt that served as my nightgown and dart into the bathroom.
The mirror is big, framed, and shows every corner of the white-tiled space, but I studiously avoid making eye contact as I strip out of my underwear and yank at the shower knobs for a blistering torrent of water that drags a hiss out of me when it hits my skin.
Hot water hurts, but hot water makes steam, and steam hides my body, my skin, from view.
Quickly, blessedly quickly, the stall pumps so full of steam that I’m practically in a cloud, and can’t make out anything except for my hands occasionally emerging to squirt out soap and shampoo from the provided bottles.
After a slapdash scrub and a balletic leap to avoid the mirror once again, I wrap myself in one of the picnic-blanket sized towels folded to the side of the sink, give the top several firm rolls to secure it under my armpits, and shove my toothbrush in my mouth so I can go reread my schedule.
I look over the letter at the sink—textbook purchases, where to find the syllabi, et cetera—and am just about to spit out a glob of spearmint foam when I see what’s at the end of it.
Physical fitness test to be conducted at Field House at 8:00 a.m. Monday 9/18.
My stomach plunges.
But what I read next has me actually choke.
Student is required to present promptly with proper bathing attire; failure to appear will be grounds for immediate academic probation.
I barely even notice my hand shaking, the clatter of my toothbrush falling to the shell-fluted sink. A ringing sound hums and zings in my ears, the floor going skewed under my feet. I try to stay cognizant, not to let the panic grip me, but then the towel slackens from my grip.
No.
I clutch at my covering, scramble clumsily for the soggy terrycloth as it crumples to my feet, but I’m too late. My security blanket peels away from me and leaves it exposed.
Instantly, my hands clench onto the counter for balance. I thrust my gaze up, not wanting to see myself, any inch of myself, arms or legs or the pale center of me, but it’s too late. I’m too weak. The mirror pulls me to it like a magnet, and it is there.
All of it.
The mottled pink shine of taut burn scars spidering up to my elbows.
And the silvery-white lines—cut, carved , now healed—above my heart: one across, one down.
Fuck, I think. Fuck .
Proper bathing attire.
Grounds for immediate academic probation.
This will never work.
I want to scream.
I want to smash the mirror until my palms are ragged and bloody.
I want to hide.
NO, GWENNA.
No. I won’t do any of that. I don’t do any of that.
I don’t do any of Dr. Riggs’s breathing exercises or cognitive reframing techniques either.
Instead, shaking, I step back, stumble to the floor and sit, legs folded, fully naked, and give in to the voice in my head.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
It’s not a prayer, not exactly—technically, it’s from the writings of an obscure medieval female mystic called Julian of Norwich .
But it does make me feel better.
I exhale.
Monday. A lifetime away, practically. One thing at a time.
Slowly, I raise my head just enough to look myself in the mirror.
I can do this. I will do this.
Somehow, I will figure it out.
For now, I have to go to class.
On unsteady legs, I rise back up, blood rushing to my head, and succumb to the breathing exercises as I dress as quickly as humanly possible, tugging the first clean clothes from the top of my suitcase, pulling the sleeves of another black sweater as far as they will stretch and sheathing my legs in the blackest opaque tights I own.
And as I do, something flutters to the ground, gentle as a butterfly.
A handkerchief.
Kingston’s handkerchief.
Frowning, I stoop to retrieve it. I didn’t even realize I still had the thing, and I certainly don’t want to keep it.
Then again, I realize, I don’t want to engage with him again, either. Certainly not now that I know he’s the stepbrother of the roommate who, at best, begrudges my very existence.
I look down to where I’ve been absentmindedly rubbing the hem and see a line of dark thread beneath my fingertips. Two simple rows of stitches: one across, one down.
A cross?
My heart stutters.
Or a sword , Gwenna. Think about it.
I stuff the thing in my pocket and leave for class.
Seminar room three is at once cramped but high-ceilinged, and as soon as I walk in, I’m hit with a dilemma: where to sit.
This isn’t St. Catherine’s Preparatory anymore, where we’re assigned by last name, but it’s also not a cafeteria full of students who’ve known me since the fifth grade and have already decided they’re not going to let me sit with them.
I’m unmoored, unknown, and, I realize as the door clicks shut behind me, the last person here.
The professor is a stylish, middle-aged woman with the deep-dyed crimson hair only actual French women seem to possess. She weaves me in with a smile that is accommodating, if not fully friendly.
“ Ah, la voilà ,” she says. “ La nouvelle. S’il te pla?t .” She indicates the classroom, a large square table with a small handful of students gathered around it.
I nod. “Merci.” I sigh and do a quick calculation: two girls next to each other, one with long, dark straight hair, pouting lips, and tan skin like she’s just gotten back from Saint-Tropez, the other I recognize as the student worker from the administration building yesterday, blonde hair and skin the color of skim milk with some freckles and a ski-jump nose.
They both give me studiously blank expressions and then turn back to their books.
Besides that, there are two painfully scrawny guys with glasses, and one guy who seems to be twenty going on forty-five with a thick ponytail and an actual briefcase. He gives me a kind of “Hello, milady” look that gives me a full-body reaction.
No thank you. None of that.
I’ve been standing still too long, so I choose the move of least resistance and sit at the end of the table.
“ D’accord—on commence ,” says the professor, her French as fluid and chill as a mountain stream. “If you could take out the poem assigned for reading, the Hugo. You’ll discuss in groups to prepare for the writing of your explications de texte . And I,” she adds ominously, “will form the groups. ”
With quick flicks of her fingers, she separates us off, a move I suspect she has done only to break up the blonde girl and her brunette friend.
To my great fortune, the brunette is assigned to me.
I pick up my bag and slide to the seat next to her.
“ Enchantée ,” she says, in a cardboard accent. I pull my sweater sleeves down out of habit.
“ Moi aussi ,” I reply, hastily pulling everything and everything out of my bag, stopping just short of dumping all the contents out entirely before rooting around for my book of poetry and a pen.
I wait for her to make the first move, given that, you know, she’s been taking this class for three weeks and knows what poem was actually assigned, but nothing.