Page 7

SEVEN

DANNI

My piano instructor, Caroline Al Sarraj, knows her shit. So she should, I guess—she used to play for the Royal Symphony Orchestra before she became a private tutor. She doesn’t only work for Bramppath—apparently there aren’t enough of us who play piano and the harp, her specialties, for it to be worth it. So, she comes here on Tuesdays and Fridays.

I’m nervous as hell when I play for her—she’s a literal symphony pianist, of course I am—but she doesn’t even try to put her critiques in a compliment sandwich. With Caroline—at least, for the first part of our lesson—it’s criticism on the rocks, hold the ice. Slow down, speed up, more emotion, ease up on the pedal . She even tells me to smooth out my legato, and my old teacher, Mrs. Fitch, always told me I was a natural at legato.

To be clear, it’s the first time I’ve been challenged in piano in a really long time, and I’m fucking living for it. I’m buzzing. Honestly, it’s still blowing my mind that I get to work with someone who’s achieved everything I could ever imagine with her piano career, and then some. I’m reminded why I fell in love with piano to begin with. The knowledge that, if I put in the time and effort, I can produce something beautiful. I can make other people feel what I’m feeling.

It’s kind of like being given a spell book and a wand. Music’s the closest thing we’ve got to practical magic, and I’m finally about to level up after more than a year of being stuck and stagnant.

I think I love it here.

And as much as I appreciate a good compliment sandwich, I’ll admit it makes things ten times sweeter when, at the end of the lesson, Caroline leans back so she can get a better look at me and says, “I see why Bramppath wanted you. You’ve got a lot of talent. I think with some work, you could really go far.”

I’m pretty sure if I smiled any bigger she would’ve been tempted to throw in another critique to knock me down a peg again. As it is, she gives me a stern look up and down, like she’s trying to measure me up for something. I guess I pass, because she gathers up her stuff for the next lesson and walks me to the ballroom door. “How are you settling in?” she asks as we go, her fingertips fluttering down the edges where her rose-gold hijab meets her face. You know a room’s huge when you have to make small talk to fill in the time it takes to cross it.

“Really good, thanks.”

“Have you had the chance to meet anybody yet?”

“Yeah, I have a few friends.”

At least, I think I do. There’s Molly for sure, and Harriet, and Eleanor seemed surprisingly okay with me at dinner last night. Though there’s a chance she was just being nice because I was with Molly, and Harriet is actually my residential assistant—the older student assigned to look out for the girls on the floor with things the teachers don’t need to be bugged over. Lost key cards, spare tampons, that sort of stuff. I read on the Bramppath website that RAs get a discount on their fees in exchange for the trouble of the role, though, so I guess you could argue Harriet’s being paid to be nice to me.

“Already?”

“Mostly Molly Kwon.”

“Oh, you’re friends with Molly? How is she coping?”

I’m thrown by the question. With me, or with fifth year? “Fine, I guess. It’s only been a couple of days.”

Caroline laughs, and even that’s musical. I wonder if my laugh’s musical. I’m pretty sure it’s not. Actually, I’m pretty sure I laugh like a donkey. “No, I mean, after everything that happened in Amsterdam a few months back,” she clarifies.

I guess my blank look gives me away, because before I’ve even come up with an answer, Caroline goes on. “Sorry, I assumed you knew. It was national news here. I suppose it didn’t make it to America, huh?”

She’s looking at me like I just told her I didn’t know trees have leaves or something. Is it weird that I don’t know national news involving a group of girls I just told her I’m friends with? Maybe? But if it’s something that happened months ago, how would I know about it? It’s not like I online stalked everyone as soon as I met them. Is that a normal thing to do? Searching up your new friends? Maybe it is when your new friends are influencers and royalty.

“By the way,” Caroline says, slicing through my thoughts, “let me know when you want to prepare a piece for the performance evenings.”

I wince. Every Friday after dinner, a Bramppath student apparently gets up in front of the whole school and performs something. Poetry, a monologue, a piece of music, a dance. It’s my worst nightmare. Getting up in front of my peers and exposing myself? Giving them something to judge me on and laugh at me about? I’ll pass. But I don’t tell Caroline that just yet. She can spend a little longer blissfully unaware that her newest piano student has a limited future in music at best.

Back in my room, I open my laptop with a weird sense I’m doing something illegal. Skin prickling, I close my door and draw the curtains. I’m not exactly sure how hard it’s going to be to figure out what I’m looking for—after all, what if a story comes up that looks like it’s big news, but isn’t actually what everyone’s talking about? But I figure I’ll just type in what I do know and hope for the best. And what do I know? Molly Kwon. Amsterdam .

And go.

I shouldn’t have worried I might not know which story is the right one. It’s immediately obvious. About a million results pop up, from every news outlet in the country. I scan the list with a sinking feeling.

TEENAGE BOY DIES FROM OVERDOSE WHILE PARTYING WITH PRINCESS ROSEMARY

PRINCESS ROSEMARY AMONG LAST SEEN WITH TEEN BOY BEFORE HIS OVERDOSE DEATH

FRIEND OF INFLUENCER MOLLY KWON FOUND DEAD AT PARTY IN AMSTERDAM

NO CHARGES LAID AGAINST PRINCESS ROSEMARY FOLLOWING YOUNG BOY’S OVERDOSE DEATH, THE PUBLIC DEMANDS ANSWERS

THE PALACE ADDRESSES DEATH OF TEEN BOY WHO DIED DURING A “WILD, DRUG-FUELED BENDER” WITH THE CROWN PRINCESS ROSEMARY

I open article after article, until I have a lineup of tabs so narrow I can barely click on them, and then I get to reading.

Sometime later, I sit with one hand covering my mouth, staring at my computer screen. I don’t exactly know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. How is it possible that something this screwed up went down a few months ago, and Rose and Molly—plus Eleanor and Harriet, too—are just going about their day-to-day business like life’s normal? I mean, if it weren’t for the cold war between Rose and Molly, I wouldn’t have even known anything was off.

When I finally pull myself together, I text Molly right away. Maybe it’s weird to message your friend out of the blue to tell them you know about their pretty recent trauma, but ultimately, I figure it’s weirder to know about the trauma while pretending you don’t, so, bite the bullet, I say.

Molly texts back asking me to go up to her room, so I do. On my way, I pass Rose’s closed door, and I slow down a little. I wonder if she’s inside.

What I just read… article after article tearing into her, blaming her for everything, questioning her character, her personality, her intelligence, dissecting her life to use as evidence that she’s unfit, untrustworthy, uncontrollable… it was horrible. It was really, seriously awful to read. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her to see people saying that stuff about her day in and day out.

But I’m still no closer to figuring out if Rose even likes me, so she’s not my problem. It’s Molly I need to check in on right now.

Molly’s calm—smiling a little, even. She closes her door behind her and we settle in, her on her bed, me in her desk chair. I kick off my shoes and pull my knees up to my chest as she speaks.

“His name was Oscar,” Molly says. She’s not looking at me. She’s speaking to the ceiling, with her hands folded on her chest. She kind of looks like someone on a therapist’s couch. “He was our friend. Actually, he was one of my closest friends. And, yeah. Long story short, he overdosed and died. Rose and I were in the room with him when it happened.”

I don’t reply, because I don’t think I’m meant to just yet. Like I figured, when I stay silent, she goes on.

“Rose is the reason we went to that party at all. We were all at her lodge for the holiday break, and someone she knew was throwing a party in the town nearby. Oscar wasn’t the type to drink, or do drugs, or anything. That was Rose and Eleanor. But I found out later Rose basically told him to take these pills some guy had, and no one told me. I… we found him in a bedroom. By then, there was nothing I could do.”

A muscle in her jaw works furiously, and she fixes her eyes on the wall while she steadies herself. I can’t help it; my eyes well up. I’m a crier. I cry at foster-animal advertisements, and happy viral videos, and news articles about suffering people I’ve never even met. But this is even worse because I know Molly, and I like Molly, and knowing she went through something like this breaks my heart. I wipe my eyes with a fist and hope she doesn’t notice. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she has to shut up just because I can’t control my emotions.

“Anyway,” she says. “That’s not the point. I mean, I don’t blame Rose for what happened. It’s not like she was trying to hurt him. But after that, all her focus was on rehabilitating her image. All she wants to talk about is how she can stop people from thinking less of her for what happened. Meanwhile, she saw her friend die, and it’s like… nothing. What kind of person cares more about how they look than the fact that their friend died in front of them?”

I still don’t say anything, waiting for Molly to go on, but then her expression turns pleading, and I realize silence wasn’t what she was after anymore. “It’s not normal, right?” she presses.

“I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you,” I say. Molly looks relieved, and it makes me wonder if she’s been second-guessing her anger at Rose.

“Right,” she says. “So, yeah. That’s the story. And if this is who Rose really is when shit hits the fan, then it’s probably not such a big loss, anyway.”

She says it casually, but her jaw’s way too tense for me to believe that. I try to imagine what it would’ve been like to go through something like that with Rachel, and I just can’t. I’d want to believe that no matter how awful things got, I could rely on her to give a shit about what had happened, at an absolute minimum.

Is that how Molly used to feel about Rose, though?

“So, she really only cares about what people are saying?” I ask. In a weird way, I almost want Molly to take it back, or soften it, I guess. I don’t think I want to believe Rose is like that.

“Yeah. And to be fair, people are saying a lot.”

“I know,” I say grimly. “I saw some of it.”

Being publicly turned on en masse by people who have never met me, like what seems to be happening to Rose right now? I don’t think I could cope. Like, I legitimately think I would crumble.

“Didn’t they get in trouble?” I ask. “I mean, underage drinking, pills…”

From the look on Molly’s face, you’d think I told the best joke she’d ever heard. “When you’ve got enough family money, these things tend to go away,” she says. “Rose has had it the worst of all of them, really. Even if the law lets her get off scot-free, the papers never will.”

From the look on her face, she doesn’t think the trial-by-media Rose is going through really cuts it as a punishment. And even if I do feel bad for Rose after reading some of those articles, I don’t exactly disagree. Not when I know for a fact that if I or any of my classmates back home got caught doing drugs like that we’d probably end up in juvie.

Molly chews on the inside of her cheek until a fold forms by her mouth. She concentrates on her phone for a few seconds, and then she passes it to me. “This was Oscar,” she says, and I realize I’m looking at his private personal page.

Oscar, a thin guy with pale, red-cheeked skin and bright blond hair, wasn’t a huge social media user—he only has about twenty photos on there. But in all of them, he’s smiling from ear to ear. There’s him with a shorter-haired Molly, and him holding a stretched-out ragdoll cat, and him stroking a horse’s neck.

“He loved animals,” Molly says, looking at the screen over my shoulder. “That was his horse, Nutmeg. I don’t actually know what happened to her. I might ask his mom.”

Something about the look on her face—sad and bitter and happy and fond all swirled up together—tells me she wants to talk about him. I mean, he hasn’t come up before. Maybe she and her friends avoid talking about him. Maybe she isn’t sure if she can.

So, I keep flipping through his photos, and say, “He looks like a great person.”

“He was.”

“Tell me more about him,” I say, and in one hit, the sadness and bitterness fade by half, and she smiles almost as big as Oscar did in the photos.

And she does.