Chapter 8
A BOOM LIKE SOMEONE DRIVING A battering ram into a concrete wall wrests Dez from a nightmare about Mo. She opens groggy eyes at an hour that feels obscene. So early that the room’s still dark. Her head pounds. Where is she?
The room she’s in is huge, warm and wood-paneled. She’s lying on a white leather L-shaped couch facing a fireplace on the far side of the room. On either side of the hearth, four large lead-paned casements frame a mountainscape dressed in snow.
Acheron.
The last thing she remembers is …
The bar last night. Villains. Esmeralda’s diamond nipples swaying in Rafe’s face. The deathtrap ski lift and the tryst she’d ruined on the porch. Alice Quinn. That cocktail. And nothing after that.
She pulls a soft fleece blanket tighter around her as a radiator coughs in the corner. The scent of peppermint wafts through the air. The floors are piled with several dozen ornate, antique Turkish rugs. There’s a coffee table heaped with books. A small kitchen in the back left corner.
Dez is wrung out, baffled, and her heart—it feels like someone is standing on her heart. She shuts her eyes again, feeling very far from home. Mo must be out of surgery by now. Is their mother with him? Is it easier for everyone without Dez around?
Where is she anyway? She sits up, rubbing her eyes and the terrible crick in her neck. What time is it? When do classes start? How did she let this happen? She takes out her phone, but the battery’s dead, and she left her charger back in Death Valley.
The steady pounding sound that woke her up increases in frequency and volume. And suddenly someone starts screaming. Dez leaps up, looking around the empty room. There are four closed doors, and behind one of them, someone’s hurt. Possibly dying.
“Hello?” Dez calls, seeking the door where the sound comes from.
The screaming only gets louder.
“Shit,” she says under her breath, because she’s way too hungover to save anybody’s life right now. But she doesn’t have a choice. She barges into the room.
It takes her a long time to make sense of what she’s seeing. And in that time, her full body flushes with another wave of humiliation.
A woman’s naked body dangles from some kind of translucent golden sling attached to a beam in the ceiling.
The way her limbs are threaded through the fabric reminds Dez of aerial yoga, except for the nakedness and the screaming.
Her back is to Dez, her body inverted so her bare feet are level with the bedknobs on the tall, four-postered king bed.
She kicks the bedknobs feverishly, causing the pewter headboard to bash against the wall—the first sound that Dez heard from outside—as another woman circles her, holding a riding crop, wearing only boys’ white briefs, her long, loose dark hair covering her breasts.
Now the dark-haired woman meets Dez’s gaze, narrows her eyes, and presses her mouth to the dangling creature’s spread legs.
The screaming begins again.
Not a death scream, then, but a pleasure scream.
Its decibel pierces Dez’s hungover brain. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t pass out.
Eventually, the screaming ceases and there’s an exasperated groan. “You again.”
When Dez opens her eyes, the dangling pleasure seeker has spun to face her—and it’s the woman from the porch at Villains last night.
She scissors her legs, causing her body to spin in the gold fabric as she releases herself to the floor.
The gold sling comes loose from its tether in the ceiling and floats down around the woman’s shoulders, a shimmering, sheer scarf.
“So,” the woman says, “what’s the story, morning glory?”
“What happened to Felipe?” Dez asks her.
“Felipe is still trying to get it up after meeting you last night.” The woman flings an arm toward the bed, where Dez looks over to see the male model dude from last night lounging naked in the royal purple sheets.
“Excuse me,” Dez says, trying to slip out the door.
“Come back. Don’t be such a prude. It’s past time for introductions,” the woman in the gold scarf says, nodding at her two playmates. “Felipe, Kitty, this is my new roommate, the world-renowned twat-swat Desdemona.”
Roommate?
“I’m not—” Dez starts to say.
“Oh, yes, you are,” the woman says, coming forward to stand in front of Dez. “Very much a twat-swat, and unfortunately, also my roommate.” She sighs. “I’m Yael.”
Dez rubs her eyes. “I thought someone was hurt in here.”
“Seriously?” Yael says, frowning. “Oh, you’ve never been properly fucked before, have you?”
Dez stares at Yael’s translucent golden scarf, feeling more like a loser than she ever has, which after last night should have been a challenge. She reminds herself Yael knows nothing about her.
It’s not anybody’s business that Dez has slept with enough people to know how to ask for what she likes. But it’s true that no one’s ever made her scream like Yael was just screaming. No one’s ever made her kick a bedpost while upside down.
“I’ll leave you guys to it,” she says, backing out of the room.
“Too late. I’m already untied.” Yael follows her into the room with the couch where Dez woke up. “I want to know more about you, Dez. Your fascinating life. How ever did you find yourself here with us?”
Dez looks around the room, her mind still hazy about last night.
“I don’t mean here to this room, which I’m sure you don’t remember. Simon and I had to carry you up the tower after the ski lift.”
“I took the ski lift?” Dez says, incredulous. “Who’s Simon?”
“Your other roommate and your competition,” Yael says, and Dez hears how Yael relishes the doubled-edged nature of the situation. Silk and switchblade, sugar and spice. “He’s a first-year, like you.”
“And you’re …”
“I’m a last-year.”
“Got it,” Dez says. She doesn’t. “Are there years between those two?”
“Lifetimes,” Yael says crisply. “I’m a legacy. So in a way, I’ve always been here. Every suite on campus houses a mix of first- and last-years, unfortunately—”
The front door opens, and a gangly, raven-haired man about Dez’s age walks in chewing a large and fragrant croissant.
He wears a topknot and has dark, less-than-perfect skin, and his baggy gray flannel shirt smells strongly of patchouli.
He carries a violin strapped to his back like he’s a traveling minstrel singer.
“Simon,” Yael says, gesturing at Dez. “Look who’s up.”
When Simon clocks Yael’s lack of attire, his eyes widen and he staggers backward. “Nice scarf,” he says like he’s choking.
“You like it?” Yael purrs, and strokes the fabric.
Struggling to look away, Simon turns to Dez, nods a greeting, and then, holding his croissant in his mouth, puts out his hand.
“We met last night, but you probably don’t remember.”
“It’s kind of a blur,” Dez says.
“Well, don’t worry, you already told me all about yourself.”
“I did?”
Simon takes another noisy bite. “Saint of a mother, rascal little brother, dead-end job—”
“What?” Dez says, her chest constricting as her hand glides over the bulge of the pill bottle in her pants.
“I’m fucking with you,” Simon says. “You were total dead weight.”
“But that stuff you just said—”
“Wild guess.” Simon shrugs. “Whoever gave you that drink is an asshole.”
On that they can agree.
Dez decides Moses would like Simon. He’d probably even like Yael. And both of Dez’s roommates would already love him.
If Mo were here, he’d tell Dez to give her new roommates a chance, that relationships are as important as the work.
Dez nods at Simon’s croissant. “Is there breakfast somewhere?”
“There was breakfast,” Simon says, tossing the last bite in his mouth. “Now it’s over. And the chef was not happy because you were supposed to work the breakfast shift.”
“I was supposed to what?” Dez says.
“First-years have to earn their privileges here,” Yael says. She drops onto the couch and waves her scarf in the air like she’s conducting a silent symphony. “Be glad you weren’t put on maintenance crew.”
“I didn’t know,” Dez says, rubbing her pounding temples. “So, what, am I fired now?”
“Maybe.” Simon shrugs again. “I’d get there early tomorrow and kiss the chef ’s ass.”
“What time was I supposed to be there?”
“Six.”
“What time is it now?” Dez glances out the window, confused.
“Almost nine,” Simon says.
“But the sky’s still dark.”
“Yeah.” Simon looks at Yael. “It’s always night here.”
“No, really—” Dez says.
“No, really,” Yael says. “Last-years are doing a lot of night shoots this term, so we designed special filters to give the school the look of permanent darkness.”
“Tell her about the customizable moon,” Simon adds.
“The sun never rises here?” Dez asks.
“It rises,” Yael says. “We just don’t see it.”
“That seems like something you should tell prospective students,” Dez says.
“It was all in the literature that came with your acceptance letter. Along with your work study assignment,” Simon says. “You didn’t read any of it?”
“Not even the part about the dress code?” Yael says icily. “It clearly states no hideous crap.”
Another thing Dez can thank Rafe for. He gave her a single cryptic piece of paper, made her sign on the dotted line, and return it.
“Is there a student store or something?” she says. “I do need new clothes. And a phone charger.”
“Uh, maybe check your closet?” Simon says. “As for the phone … useless here, I’m afraid.”
“No service,” Yael confirms. “Simon and I dropped his out the tower window and watched it shatter yesterday.”
“You broke your phone on purpose?” Dez asks.
“Apparently,” Simon says. “If you’re a very good little first-year, they give you an encrypted phone. Next year.”
“That’s a joke, right?” Dez says.
“Encryption?” Yael says.
“I don’t trust it,” Simon says.
“You wouldn’t, tinfoil hat.” Yael laughs at him. “Let me enlighten you on the vast conspiracy: Rich people are running things. Get over it.”
Dez tries tuning them out. She remembers what Rafe said last night about how once she saw Acheron’s technology, she’d forget laptops existed. What she won’t forget is that her phone holds the only voicemail she’ll probably ever get from Asher Ibrahim, and now she can’t even listen to it.
“How do people call home?” Dez says.
Yael stares at her.
“I need to be able to reach my family—” Dez says.
“Acheron is an immersive experience,” Yael says. “Within a few days, you’ll be so invested in your films, the outside world will all but cease to exist.”
“No,” Dez says. “Not for me.”
Simon swings his violin forward and plays the chorus of “Hotel California.”
Yael cracks up. “Stop freaking her out, Simon. She’s barely hanging on. That’s your room over there, Dez.” She points at the closed door behind her. “You must be dying for a shower.”
Dez is. And she’s no more eager to stand here talking to Yael than Yael is eager to talk to her.
“Hey, Dez,” Yael calls softly when Dez is almost at her door. “Guess who I got to work with last summer?”
Dez isn’t in the mood. “I give up.”
“Samantha Cisneros.”
“Seriously?” Dez says, turning around. Samantha Cisneros is one of Dez’s artistic idols, the director of several of her favorite films. “You got an internship with Cisneros?”
Yael nods from the couch. “Acheron made it happen. And right before she died. So, just saying, even when this place breaks you—and it will—it’s still worth it.”
Dez nods, closing herself in her room. She lets out her breath.
So far, all her interactions with her fellow students have gone far worse than expected, but at the same time, the amenities at Acheron are all far nicer than she dreamed.
She looks around her new room in quiet disbelief.
She runs her hand along a soft white duvet on the king-sized sleigh bed in front of her.
A colorful woven rug underneath pulls the room together.
Two stained glass lamps on two end tables, and a bookshelf filled with books.
On top of the bookshelf is a folder with her name on it.
The orientation packet she should have read last night.
And which she’ll have to read later once her headache subsides.
She opens the door to the bathroom. She’s never had her own bathroom in her life.
Now she has her own clawfoot tub. She looks in the closet, amazed to see it filled with tailored, professional clothes.
She checks one of the sizes and understands all this is going to fit.
All this is hers to wear while she’s here at Acheron?
She sits on a salmon-pink cushion on the sill of a large bay casement and draws the white blinds aside to look out at the view.
Her room faces east. Through the snow coming down with blizzard force, Dez perceives the outlines of a triangular-shaped lawn.
The tri. A vast stand of snowcapped pine trees beyond it.
And somewhere out there, far away, her brother and her mother.
Dez closes her eyes and puts her palm against the glass.
For the first time in a long time, she has enough privacy to take a moment and let everything all the way out.
But she fears if she opens that door, she’ll never be able to close it.
What she needs to do now is the opposite.
Condense all the worst things in her life to an infinitesimal spec inside her.
Take everything that happened at the Dairy Barn, to Mo, with the police and Rafe and that drink last night and Yael this morning and her fucking golden scarf and make it very small. Lock it away.
There’s a knock on her door.
“You okay in there?” Simon calls.
Dez is tempted to answer honestly, but the words die in her throat.
“Look,” Simon says through the door. “Since I know you didn’t read the—”
“If you say literature one more time—”
“Just saying orientation starts in fifteen minutes,” Simon says. “I’ll wait for you out here.”