Page 32 of Dance of Thorns

The other outcast. The one other soul at Thornfield who clearly did not belong there. I was there because my father was a notorious gangster with a lot of money to throw at fearful admissions boards. She was there because her grandmother,who had raised her, worked for Don Cesare Marchetti, whose oldest daughter, Dove, was already a student.

Dove somehowentirelyskipped the part where all the other shitheads at school bullied you for being mafia. Probably because she managed to integrate into the upper-class closed-door club of the elite. She partied with them. Dated them. Blended in.

But not me, and not Lark.

I suppose our meeting was inevitable, like celestial bodies caught in an orbit. The two weirdos.

The first time we met, she caught me smoking and asked to bum one.

She sat with me, and we talked.

It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t awkward. It was the most natural conversation I’d ever had.

She told me how her grandmother was the housekeeper for the Marchetti family, and how they had generously paid her tuition to Thornfield, too, since she and the ice queen herself, Dove, were besties.

I always found that funny: the two birds, Dove and Lark, being friends, despite also being complete opposites.

Dove was all about cocaine with the cool kids, designer clothes and snobby attitude, and don't forget Scott, the quarterback boyfriend.

Lark was like me: anti-everything. Wearing as much black as the school’s dress code would let her get away with. Metal music on her headphones. Darkness lurking under the surface.

She was my best friend that year.

My only friend.

It’s not like she fixed everything. The next day was the same shit, different day. But thingsweredifferent . I had Lark. Someone to make the day-to-day existence in that snobby shit-hole bearable.

Until she went out one night, crossed paths with the wrong piece of shit, and got herself killed.

For years, I was so fucking angry that Lorenzo Cielo was killed the night the Marchetti men crashed into that house where he had Dove and Lark, after he’d taken them from the club they’d snuck into, two nights before.

So. Fucking. Angry.

Because that motherfucker wasn’t the only one who never walked out of that apartment alive.

Lark didn’t, either.

For ages, I felt cheated that I didn’t have a responsible party I could punish for that night.

But then I realized I did.

Dove instigated that entire night. She talked Lark into going out and using their fake IDs to get into that club. Lark didn’t party. She didn’t drink. She didn’t go looking for trouble.Dovedid.

But it wasn’t Dove who paid the price that night.

It was Lark.

Lark, who started as my friend, turned into the girl I loved—even when she had her dark moods—and then morphed again into the girl I was going to marry.

She died, and Dove walked away without a fucking scratch.

The two of us are in this room right now because of the sins of the past. And now, she’s going to atone for those sins.

I watch with an eyebrow cocked as she deftly takes off her clothes. This isn’t about being sexy,obviously. She might as well be loading a dishwasher. And I get that she’s used to changing in front of people, because of ballet. But that's not why she’s so nonchalant about it right now.

She’s doing it to thumb her nose at me. She thinks if she doesn't cry, that's sticking it to me.

Would I prefer some tears? Maybe.