Page 6

SIX

ROSE

After ten or so minutes, I wake up to a thunderous banging. I open bleary eyes and stare at my dim surroundings in confusion, half convinced I’m still at home. Then I piece it together. I’m at Bramppath, in my new room, and Eleanor is screeching at me from outside my door.

“Inside voice!” I call back sluggishly as I attempt to sit up, groping for a shirt in the darkness. No luck. Why must waking up be so difficult?

Speaking of, why on earth is Eleanor trying to wake me up already? It can’t possibly be dinnertime, can it?

Eleanor makes no attempt to lower her volume. “I’ve been knocking for five minutes!”

My head is pounding, and my stomach is churning, and somehow I can hear my own eyes as I force them open. It feels like the hangover from hell, and I didn’t even get the pleasure of being drunk beforehand. At this point, if I weren’t a prefect, I’d simply skip dinner and go right back to sleep. Alas.

Sighing as loudly as I can, I somehow make it to the door and fling it open. Standing on the other side are Eleanor and Danni, with Molly lurking sulkily several feet behind them. They’re all dressed in their formal dining gowns—more or less black graduation robes, only they’re unsecured in the middle, so they drape like open curtains.

Officially, we’re expected to dress business casual at a minimum beneath them. Danni, new as she is, has made an attempt at this, wearing an extraordinarily frilly dress, a button-down cardigan, and a pair of scuffed pumps. Eleanor and Molly, on the other hand, are both in sweatpants and T-shirts as everyone else will be, and the juxtaposition between them makes Danni look somewhat ridiculous. Like a librarian on an important first date.

I’m sure I’m not helping the contrast, given I’m only wearing my bra and a pair of black stockings. Danni makes eye contact with me, then her eyes trail from my shoulders to my feet, before she becomes very interested in the doorframe.

“Good, you’re alive,” Eleanor chirps.

“Debatable.”

“Are you coming dressed like that?” she asks. “You should probably at least put your gown on.”

Danni looks at my chest again at that. I stare at her until she notices me looking, and then I raise a single eyebrow. She promptly returns to looking at the door, blushing furiously. One would think she’d never seen a shirtless girl before.

“Danni,” I say, stretching out her name until it thins. “You clearly have an excellent grasp on the dress code guidelines. Do you think I need to change?”

Her eyes grow so wide I can see the full circle of her iris. “I…” she tries.

“You need to change,” Eleanor says, apparently taking pity on Danni. That’s no fun at all, though.

“You have a stain on your shirt, Eleanor,” I say without glancing at her. “I’m not interested in your fashion opinion. Danni, on the other hand, could hold an audience with the prime minister herself right now.”

Danni studies me, and I’m certain I spot an air of suspicion. “I didn’t want to make a bad first impression,” she says finally. “I know I don’t… it’s just, the handbook said we have to dress up.”

“Well, you certainly did that,” I say evenly, biting back a smile. Her suspicion crosses into outright wariness, and Molly looks fit to strangle me, and I realize I’ve taken my teasing a step too far. “I’m obviously changing, Eleanor, don’t get your knickers in a knot,” I say, moving to close the door. Then, my conscience winning against my crabbiness, I pause and lock eyes with Danni. “You look nice, don’t fret.”

I pull out my most comfortable pair of cotton trousers—my dinnertime uniform—and a soft jumper. I glance in the mirror and discover I look how I feel, and I feel like a slug in salt.

“Rose, you better not have gone back to sleep! We’re going to be late!”

I dress and run my fingers through my hair in an attempt to smooth down the flyaways that formed in my nap. It is a categorically unsuccessful venture, but there’s little to be done about it now. I apply some deodorant, drape my gown over my arm, and throw my door open, just in time to see that Molly has started off toward the staircase, Eleanor and Danni watching after her. Fresh out of patience with me, it would seem.

I let my door fall shut behind me and trot after Molly, shuffling my gown on as I go. “Let’s go, then,” I say over my shoulder to Eleanor and Danni, who scramble to catch up with my brisk pace.

The four of us—five, if you include a recently roused Sidney—walk through the brisk cold of the evening to the dining hall and arrive, despite Eleanor’s fears, bang on time.

In the dining hall I end up seated between Harriet Tomas and Molly, with Danni and Eleanor directly across from me. It’s certainly not on purpose on either Molly’s or my end—I think she was angling to sit where Florence Chan is, a few seats down from me, but in the shuffle for places, she somehow ended up jostled in my direction. I nod at her while the headmaster leads the prayer, wondering for a brief, misguided moment if Molly at least plans on making polite small talk with me for appearance’s sake. Instead, she pretends not to have noticed my gesture, and fixes her gaze on the table.

It hasn’t been like this forever. Even as recently as her party, she was at least speaking to me still. Rather, it’s as though ever since that night in Amsterdam, her opinion of me has deteriorated little by little, day by day. It started with her taking longer to reply to my texts. Then she stopped returning my calls altogether. She would mysteriously vanish whenever I contributed to the group chat, only to reappear when I’d left the conversation. She was hopelessly busy whenever I attempted to make plans.

The worst part is, I don’t entirely understand why. If she had cut me off in one fell swoop after Amsterdam, I wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest. This gradual fading to nothingness, though? It’s bewildering. It doesn’t seem to matter if I press her for an explanation, or speak to her warmly as though I haven’t caught her withdrawal, or give her the space to come to me—and I have attempted each of the above—the result is the same.

She’s shedding our friendship like snakeskin, and there doesn’t seem to be a thing I can do to prevent it.

For just a flash, something akin to despair wrenches at the pit of my stomach, and I take a slow breath and focus on keeping my expression even so no one around me notices. Then, viciously, I jump on that feeling, pressing it down further and further until the emotion is compacted into a tiny pebble, so small I can’t feel it at all. And, to my relief, I’m no longer pretending not to be devastated. I’m simply not. For now, it’s as though I never had a friend called Molly.

As today’s soup—a thick, velvety pumpkin—is placed in the center of the table in a steel tureen, I take a bowl from the stack being passed down the line and turn my attention to Danni, whose eyes are darting around nervously to confirm what everyone else is doing.

On either side of me, Molly and Harriet speak to Danni at the exact same moment.

“Are you having soup?”

“So, how does Bramppath compare to your old school?”

The latter question, asked by Harriet, is far louder, so Danni turns to her. Harriet leans forward and to the side, all but shoving me out of the way. I give a grunt of annoyance at the invasion of personal space, but Harriet doesn’t clock on. At least she pretends not to.

I spoon some soup into a bowl, and pass the ladle to Molly. She takes it from me silently, and I feel nothing.

“It’s different,” Danni says to Harriet. “I’ll have to get used to all the religious stuff. Like the prayers. I don’t know what to say most of the time.”

“Oh, you pick up on it,” Harriet assures her through a mouthful of soup. “It’s like a jingle. You hear the same thing day in and day out and you start hearing it in your dreams before long.”

It sounds as though Harriet and I have very different dreams. Any praying in mine is usually of a distinctly separate sort.

“Anyway,” Harriet goes on. “Are you missing your old school?”

Briefly, I wonder at Harriet’s persistence to speak to Danni. Then I remember I saw the two of them speaking at length at Molly’s party. Harriet is a friend of mine, but more due to proximity than any true compatibility. At some point years ago, Molly, Eleanor, and I started gravitating toward Harriet and Florence at mealtimes, though they’re the year above us, and gradually bonded over alcohol and weed, usually smuggled in by Florence. Though I’m happy to make small talk with Harriet, who’s nice enough, she’s hardly someone I would choose to spend one-on-one time with. In truth, I find her quite dull.

Danni, however, does not seem to share my feelings. “Yeah,” she says, “I miss my friends, for sure. Especially my best friend.”

Well, if these two get along swimmingly, what does that say about Danni? At Molly’s party, I thought maybe I saw a spark of wit about her. Perhaps, sadly, I imagined it. I was, after all, hideously sober and bored.

“That must be weird. It’ll get better soon, though. You’ll forget all about your old friends soon.”

Danni lifts an eyebrow, bemused. “I hope not.”

Harriet scrambles. “No, I don’t mean forget forget. Just that you won’t miss them so badly.”

“Right.”

“Obviously you won’t forget them. God, imagine?”

As much as I want to distract myself from Molly’s iciness, this particular conversation is physically paining me to eavesdrop on, so my relief is monumental when Eleanor catches my attention. “How did last night go?” she asks me, and I can tell at once she’s not asking in the general sense.

“The same as usual,” I say, as quietly as I can get away with. “Passive-aggressive comments from half the people I spoke to, and pity from the other half.”

Eleanor winces. “I don’t know which is worse.”

“At least the pity is coming from a good place,” I say. “It’s the glee I can’t stand. When you can just tell they’re thrilled I misstepped, because they’ve been waiting for it since I was a toddler.”

“ Misstepped is an interesting way to put it,” Molly says, very quietly, and I regret my word choice at once.

“You’re right,” I say calmly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for being honest about how you see things.”

Well, that’s a loaded comment if I’ve ever heard one. Still, at least she’s acknowledging me. “I don’t see it like that at all,” I say. “Honestly, I’m tired. I haven’t slept much.”

“I know,” Molly says. “You were up all night suffering through passive-aggression. I don’t know how you got through it.”

“All I mean to say,” I catch her gaze out of the corner of my eye, “is that I’m running out of patience for people who won’t simply say what they mean. I can handle criticism. I deserve it, even. So, why not dole it out?”

Molly turns to me coolly. “I guess the thing is, you don’t get to choose what consequences you get for your behavior. That’s why they’re consequences.”

Eleanor glances from me to Molly, something akin to panic on her features. “You know,” she says at full volume, waving her spoon at us. “Everyone is so obsessed with pumpkin soup, but I really don’t get the hype. Give me potato and leek any day.”

Molly and I stare back at her blankly.

“Right?” Eleanor prods. “Molly?”

Molly shrugs and pushes her half-empty bowl away from her.

Eleanor turns pleading eyes onto me. She’s spot-on, of course. This is neither the time nor the place for Molly and me to have it out.

Tomorrow, I think, I will make a point of claiming a seat next to Eleanor. Even if I have to chain her to my side.