by Sara Wolf
“A prince?” I gawk.
“I think he’s an Al Farhan prince,” She says very seriously. “But I could be wrong.”
“How many princes could there possibly be?”
“About 2,000 of them. Well, 15,000. But 2,000 in the line of succession.”
I stop walking, my brain short-circuting. No wonder there’s gold-plated snot-rags and Hermes bags and multiple security teams. Ana laughs and tugs at my backpack strap to get me to move again. I snap out of it with all the speed of a flipped-over tortoise.
“Okay, back up,” I breathe. “So everybody here is, like, rich?”
“Mostly. Aren’t you?”
My brain’s suddenly swamped by the unpleasant fact Will’s technically my step-dad. It doesn’t feel real, calling him that. Not yet. Maybe it never will. I shrug.
“By proxy. Like, pretend-rich, I guess.”
“That’s still rich,” She lilts. Suddenly, a thumping rhythm cuts the air and Ana turns and waves at something in the distance on the lawn. No way. No FUCKING way. I take my glasses off, wipe them, and put them back on, but it doesn’t change the fact a real-life big-ass helicopter is just…landing. On a helipad. Built straight into the lawn. A boy gets out, his uniform and backpack clearly visible. He waves back to Ana as he walks towards us, joining the thronging crowd of students.
“Jesus pleasus,” I whisper.
“Hm?” Ana looks over at me. “What’s up?”
“I mean, you guys know about gasoline and global warming, right?”
“Oh, that.” She waves. “You’ll get used to that.”
“Will I?” My voice pitches up. We pass a sign that points to the different buildings, the letters gold-painted. I decide to voice my opinion. “If I see one more useless gold thing I’m gonna heat my body by vibrating like bees do when they defend themselves from wasps.”
Ana laughs behind her hand. “That would be amazing.”
“Helicopter pad.” I repeat.
“Yes.” She asserts.
“But this place is still a school,” I insist.
“Of course.”
“So the actual classes happen…where exactly?”
“The Knight Roux building,” She points to the massive chateau I first saw driving in with Lionel. “Unless it’s exercise. Then you go to whatever field you’ve chosen. You can do football. Or swimming. Rugby, cricket, horseback riding. Fencing, if you think you can handle all the egos.”
“Fencing? Cricket-bugs?” I squint at her as my brain computes. “Horseback riding?”
“Yeah,” She grins, bouncing on what little soles her uggs have. “The school mandates an hour of exercise every day, except weekends. You get to choose what you want to do.”
I double check my itinerary - sure enough, I see INTRODUCTION TO ARCHERY in the last slot every day of the week. Archery? That’s just arm stuff. Either I got super lucky, or someone who knew about my knee recommended I take a non-leg-intensive course. Will and Mom, probably. All I have to do is channel Legolas for an hour, which consists of saying mysterious things and staring off beautifully into the distance - two things I’m great at. I feel tears welling up in my eyes.
“Does this mean I can say goodbye to getting hit in the head with dodgeballs and running fourteen-minute miles?”
Ana flashes me a brilliant white smile. “Definitely. Oh! That smaller building over there is Knight Augustin - the administration building. The teachers and staff who don’t live down in the village sleep there, and Ms. Von Arx’s office is there too.” She pauses. “Do you use tampons?”
“Uh…”
“You should know the bathroom runs out of them pretty fast. So if you’re about to -”
“Spray blood everywhere?”
“- Yeah. It might be a good idea to pull a few and stockpile them, you know, in case.”
“Delicious. Speaking of blood, where do we go to eat?”
“What, are you a vampire?”
“That’s for me to know and you to read fanfiction about.”
Her smile is small. “The dining hall’s in Knight Roux, on the ground floor. I know it’s a lot. Here, do you want my number? That way you can text me questions and stuff.”
I squint suspiciously. “You’re being awfully nice to an American who can only make you a cheeseburger in return.”
She laughs again and I’m starting to really like making her laugh - she’s got a sweet, delicate, chime-like giggle that reminds me of Mom. Not that she’s my Mom. I’m just wildly homesick on my first day but holy shit I am six-goddamn-teen and homesickness is for babies, actually. We step out of the shuffling crowd to exchange numbers.
And that’s when I notice it, past Ana’s head of braids as she bends over my screen to input her name. The stream of people from the Knight Belmont building and the stream from Knight Lyon melds halfway as they filter into the Knight Roux building. Little groups break off, greeting each other with yawns and smiles and fist-bumps. It looks like Northview High on any given morning, except everyone’s dressed up fancy and there’s a lot less white people. I mean, Northview was majority white kids, with a lot of latinx and some asian kids and a smattering of black kids. Silvere is different, though. There’s still a lotta white kids, yours truly included, but everybody looks like they’re from everywhere. And everybody looks beautiful. By that I mean everyone just looks…good. I can’t put my finger on it, and I can’t figure out if it’s just me or the tapwater in Europe, but all the boys are uniquely handsome in their own ways - energetic and lanky with winning smiles. And the girls; oh hell, don’t even get me started. They’re downright angelic - perfect hair, perfume, vibrant laughs. Most of them roll with minimal makeup and still manage to look fresh out of a magazine.
I gawk as a guy walks by with his backpack completely covered in anime girl pins. He’s absolutely adorable - with a head of perfect brown curls and long lashes.
“Even your anime nerds are cute, Ana. Where’re the zits? The awkwardness? The overwhelming stench of week-old armpit?”
Ana looks up briefly from my phone. “Didn’t you have hygiene classes as part of sex ed?”
“Oh my god,” I stagger back. “I forgot. European governments aren’t made up of abstinence-only puritans. They actually teach you about sex here! I’m gonna learn about sex!”
Three girls walking past us in very stylish boots give me a Pity Look. Ana snorts her laughter this time.
“Congratulations.”
“Hey, it’s a big deal for me. Up until right this moment I thought babies came from storks.”
My eyes scan the crowd half-instinctually for a head of silky golden hair. That guy who saved me yesterday had a uniform on, so he must go here, right?
“Looking for someone?” Ana hands me back my phone.
“Uhhh, no. I’m just not used to seeing so many well-adjusted teenagers in the same ten-mile radius. There’s gotta be at least one gremlin-looking motherfucker at this school.” I slowly point at myself with newfound horror. “It’s me. I’m the gremlin, aren’t I?”
“To your credit, you’re a very funny gremlin.” Ana smiles.
I’m about to blurt a thank you when a commotion knots up the crowd by the big entrance stairs of Knight Roux. The sea of blue-and-white uniforms tightens around one spot like a school of fish, like a whirlpool forming. The flash of camera lenses as people point their phones at something is unmistakable.
“A fight?” I ask.
Ana sets her lip. “There’s only one person who’d -”
“Let him go!” A girl shrieks. Ana finds a tree root to stand on and I tiptoe to see over the crowd. Three people are in the center - a guy on the ground doubled over, a girl with long red hair kneeling at his side, and a super tall, broad-shouldered guy looming over both of them, thumbs hooked in his pockets cockily.
“Or what?” The looming guy asks, folding himself in half to taunt her on her level. “Are you gonna call your daddy?”
“Fuck off, Strickland,” The doubled-ov
er guy grunts.
“I don’t feel like it,” The guy called Strickland smirks. “But you clearly do.”
My foggy glasses make their faces hard to see. I clean them on my shirt as Ana groans.
“Deus. Of course it’s him again.”
“Again? Who is that guy?”
“Alistair Strickland,” Ana sighs. “The bane of all our existences. He likes picking fights almost as much as he likes bossing us around.”
I shove my clean glasses on my face at last and squint. The guy on the ground’s got a bloody lip - from a punch? - and the redhead girl looks pissed. Said Alistair Strickland, on the other hand, has confidence oozing out the ears half-hidden beneath his chaotically tangled mop of black hair. Two people flank him - a petite, milk-white girl with a svelte platinum bob and a walnut-tanned, ridiculously muscular guy whose uniform looks like it’s about to pop all its buttons. Their backs are to me, so I can’t see their faces, but then the platinum-bob girl flips her hair at the bleeding guy and says two disdainful words in French;
“Un gaffe.”
“That’s Maria Sauveterre,” Ana whispers to me. “She doesn’t say much, usually. She and the big guy - Rafael Perez, Rafe for short - are step-siblings, and Alistair’s cronies.”
“Cronies? That’s a weird word for ‘friends’.”
Ana scoffs. “Alistair Strickland is the second cousin of three Belgian princes. He doesn’t have friends. He has subjects.”
My eyes bug out. “Wait, you weren’t kidding about, like, actual royalty? Is that even - I mean I know England has a Queen and all, but -”
Ana shrugs offhandedly. “His father is some kind of CEO in Tokyo, but his mother is a marquise.”
“Bless you.”
“No, marquise is a title.” Ana corrects. “Below a duchess, above a countess.”
“Noted. And who’s the guy he’s beating up?”
“A groundskeeper who works here, I think.”
My glower is instant and aimed right at Alistair. “Taking our anger out on the hired help, are we?”
I try to look anywhere but the groundskeeper’s bleeding lip. It’s just blood, Lilith. Just a little. Don’t freak out here, on the first day, in front of the first nice person who’s bothered to talk to you. All of a sudden, Alistair kneels down at eye-level with the bleeding groundskeeper, his voice deep and exhausted and faintly accented British - not all the way, but just enough that it’s noticeable.
“Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. I warned you last week. And instead of listening, you kept doing it. Do you need me to write it down on a sticky-note for you?”
It reminds me acutely of a cat playing with a half-dead mouse. This is the last straw for Gabe’s pride, and he lunges for Alistair. There’s cheering and swearing and grunts, and in a blur of movement my eyes are too morning-groggy to follow, Alistair wins out - pinning Gabe on the ground with a knee between his shoulderblades. Like a fire-arrow, the redhead girl flings herself on Alistair’s back and beats it with her fists, screaming in French. I can’t understand her, but I get the gist; she’s trying to defend Gabe. Alistair, completely non-plussed at the assault, just sighs wearily over his shoulder;
“Rafe.”
On cue the big-huge muscle guy lumbers over.
“Get the little bird off me, would you?”
Rafe encircles the furious girl with his thick-ass arms and extracts her from the sitch like a crane lifting a crate away. She looks small as a doll as she flails uselessly against his hulking body. The crowd shuffles with nervous half-laughter and a low rumble of cheering and I’m the only one frowning.
“Hey, uh, where the flying fuck are the teachers?” I ask.
Ana leans in so I can see exactly where she’s pointing. “See that green thing on Alistair’s shoulder?”
I squint - sure enough, there’s some sort of embroidered green badge on Alistair’s shoulder. Ana points to Rafe’s shoulder, and then to quietly glaring Maria - both of them have green badges on their shoulders, too.
“Please tell me those are ironic weed leaves,” I whisper.
“Worse. Disciplinary badges. The school has this tradition of a student-run disciplinary squad. Usually it’s just for running in the halls, smoking in the bathrooms - small things. But Alistair’s pretty fanatic about it.”
“Yeah. Looks like he thinks it’s a free license to beat the shit out of people.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Why doesn’t Von Arx stop this?”
“Von Arx is Alistair’s grandmother. She just uses her maiden name.”
Suddenly it all clicks into place. “Oh. Oh no.”
“Oh yeah,” Ana exhales. “And it sucks.”
“Okay, so; Big Asshole, Little Asshole, and King Asshole,” I point to Rafe, Maria, and Alistair in turn. “Got it.”
“Well…” Ana hedges.
“Well what? He’s just taking advantage of the power dynamic to beat the shit outta someone. Not only is he King Asshole, he’s King Classist Asshole!”
Ana doesn’t outright agree with me; she just watches the altercation silently with her dark eyes. Anger bubbles up in my throat. This might be called ‘disciplinary’ in six-figure terms or whatever, but in cup-noodle-for-dinner terms we call it plain old bullying. The crowd gets rowdier, shoving each other out of the way to see. Now this place finally feels real to me, and not like some gilded champagne fever dream. The chaotic energy of a fight feels like regular-ass high school. The roaring anger, the voraciously curious onlookers, the complete lack of social niceties; all the uncomfortable energy buzzing in me since the first-class ticket finally finds a place to rest. No matter where you go, people fight. People love spectacle - even the super-smart, super-rich, and super-entitled. And in a sick way, that comforts me.
Or at least up until Alistair grinds his boot gratuitously into Gabe’s back, and the poor guy yelps like a stepped-on dog.
“Consider yourself fired, Gabe. Effective immediately.” Alistair drawls. Gabe can barely force his voice out of his swollen mouth.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!”
Alistair gives a bitter scoff. “I’ve heard that one before.”
There’s another blur, and his fist crunches sickeningly against Gabe’s face. Shit. He’s serious…seriously got issues he’s taking out on people who can’t fight back. The injustice of Gabe’s bloody lip, the red dripping down to the green of the grass. Blood pooling. Blood pooling on an old carpet, around my knee, on my hands. It hurts. It hurts to look at -
I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, trying to refresh my brain. The crowd parts just then, and Alistair stands up and turns and I can finally see the dickhead properly.
What is it with this school and its weird infestation of attractive people? They’re like roaches - if roaches were made of freakishly clear skin and good cheekbones. If the guy who saved me yesterday was the sun, Alistair is the dark side of the moon, his hair jet-black and tornado-chaser messy, like he’s never brushed it in his life. His eyebrows are another story - precise and thick and intimidating. But it’s his eyes below that make me look twice - I’d recognize those wicked eyes anywhere; Von Arx’s. His are much darker than hers. No starburst pattern, just shadowy green copper gleaming out of the bottom of the ocean. And unlike his grandma’s queenly haughtiness, Alistair wears the openly self-satisfied look of a cat with a canary in its mouth. His nose is prominent, his jaw stone-cut, his neck strong down to his broad shoulders - he’s nowhere near as big-huge as Rafe, but he fills out his blazer considerably.
He’s sure as shit not incandescently hot like Ciel, or even conventionally attractive like the anime-pins guy, but there’s something about him. Something that keeps me studying his face longer than I should. Quick question, God; why give all the intangible charisma to violent assholes like this guy? They’re just walking booby traps for anyone naive enough to fall for them - like Mom fell for Dad.
Suddenly, as if on cue, a half-dozen adults in sweater vests come running. Even rich kids have the good sense to scatter, and
the crowd quickly evaporates. Alistair sees the approaching adults and lazily hefts himself off Gabe. There’s a flurry of worried French as the teachers swarm Gabe and pick him up off the grass. They pry the redhead out of Rafe’s huge arms, and Maria gets in a glaring contest with a teacher who tries to ask her questions.
Weirdly, none of the teachers ask Alistair anything. Or confront him. They barely acknowledge him, even though he’s standing right there with bloody-fucking-knuckles. They just walk around him like he’s a fixture in the topography, a statue - never quite meeting his eyes. Except he definitely tries to meet theirs, watching them defiantly as they walk by, as if he’s silently daring them to say something. Anything.
“Those are the teachers, right?” I look at Ana. “Isn’t there some gold-plated dungeon they can throw him in?”
She sighs. “Like I said; Alistair Strickland doesn’t have friends. Or teachers. He has subjects.”
“Everybody? Even the adults?”
Ana knits her lips and doesn’t say anything. Are we supposed to stand here and just watch this happen? Are the teachers so worried about Von Arx and losing their jobs they never reprimand him? I stare at Alistair’s back as he wipes his knuckles idly on his uniform pants.
“C’mon,” Ana finally nudges me. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
The smell of breakfast - fresh bread and warm honey - wafts through the air, the only pleasant thing that manages to pierce my bubble of fury and disgust. The crowd’s all but gone. The teachers help Gabe to hobble somewhere - nurse’s office, probably. Rafe and Maria linger on the lawn, waiting for Alistair like loyal flies on a heaping pile of shit, but he waves them off. They finally head towards the Knight Roux building side-by-side, cutting an almost amusing silhouette of verylittle and bighuge.
This isn’t how things go down in real life. People don’t just get to walk away scott-free from doing shitty things, no matter how much money they have. Not in my world.
Alistair pauses on the immaculate grass, cracking his neck casually. His untucked shirt is blood-spattered - red on white - and I flinch away. His belt’s barely buckled, and his pants have dozens of dirt and grass stains on them - but the old kind, like he barely washes. Related to royalty? This rude, violent ass? As-fucking-if. Out of all the footwear in the world he’s chosen to wear scuffed, ancient black leather boots that make my fall-apart-at-any-second converse look practically new. But it’s not the shoes that get me - it’s his injuries. A few scars mar his olive arms. What, does he get in bladed accidents a lot? Or does he actually fight people that hit back, occasionally?