by Sara Wolf
“So? Your turn. Why were you down there in the deep end?”
“I told you,” He murmurs. “Practicing.”
“For what?”
“Drowning.”
“Planning on doing that anytime soon?”
“Not on my own. But someone might try to help me.” He moves for the gate, and calls over his shoulder; “Put the can in the recycling when you’re done. If I catch it in the trash, it’s detention-town again, population you.”
He walks back first, unlocking the gate and striding over the lawn. Not even a hand wave, or a ‘later’. Because what else is there to say? Nothing. It’s unimaginable, to practice dying. To practice being killed. Hurt.
But we do it anyway.
We, the two of us. It feels so weird, to clump together him and me. To have us standing side-by-side, in my brain.
We both see the red-eyed man.
I trudge through the chilly grass, wrestling with the urge to be sad for Prickland. He’s Prickland. At 18 he’ll inherit the title of Marquess doodoo-Lawrence, or whatever. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need my sympathy. He has Rafe and Maria and Ciel. Rose. He has his duties he loves so much. Loves? L’obligation. It’s all obligation, to him.
The shadow of Knight Augustin crawls over me, and I lean into its walls to rest the knee. Von Arx’s window is closed. I won’t hear anything. She’s gone. But the window’s open.
Just a crack, just enough for something to ooze over the sill, down the brick wall, and into the grass at my feet. Gold.
Liquid gold.
A tiny trickle of liquid sun, spilling out from the planter with the perfect lettuce in it. Like someone tried to water it with gold.
All I can see is the gold robe, waterfalling.
And I run.
30
The Camera (Or, How many medals you should have by now for still being here)
Contrary to popular belief, I’m not going crazy. I’m not. I’m not and I know that because the tuft of white deer hair is still in my underwear drawer, still in its lip balm case, still here after everything. Even if I looked back at Von Arx’s window and the gold dripping shit was gone, the white hair is still here. Which means I’m okay. My brain’s fine.
Maybe.
The worst cure for a bout of existential dread is to stare at yourself in the mirror. I remember one time in Northview, back when I was still the proletariat, Brent Pacheco and I got lumped together for a partner project and he wouldn’t shut up about how he did mushrooms and stared in a mirror and saw himself from the other side peeling back the glass and bleeding all over it. Guy loved Metallica and Rammstein a little too much, imo, but who am I to judge? I still bop to the Dora the Explorer theme song.
The point being, I’m not on mushrooms, so staring into mirrors should be safe. And it is. For the most part. My hair’s still shoulder-length, maybe a little longer. Eyebrows thin like they’ve always been. Less zits, but I chalk that up to the fact I’m forced to walk around in fresh air way more than back home. I’ve maybe-probably put on another three pounds from all the pastries, but I’ve heard way too many stories from Mom about awfully sick people in hospitals to give a shit about something like weight. As long as my body’s still working, still healthy, it’s perfect.
I’m fine.
Julien went missing after seeing red-eyed Larry. Which means I might too. Which means I should probably do a better job of letting people know I’m alive and kicking.
I start a group chat with Ana and Bianca; ‘Hi, remember me? :)’
‘Lilith! :D’ Ana enthusiastically replies.
‘Never text me again’ Bianca proposes.
‘Saint-Verde was soooo boring without you,” Ana pouts with a half-dozen pink flower emojis.
‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Bianca snipes. ‘I have Plato’s Symposium to get through’.
‘Listen,’ My fingers fly. ‘I kno caring isn’t sexy these days or w/e, but I care about u Bianca’.
‘If you truly cared, you’d use proper grammar’.
‘What did you do on saturday?’ Ana asks.
My fingers pause in typing to them about Alistair, how I saw him in the pool. Training to be drowned. It’s not my place to talk about it, is it? He practices it. Expects it, sometime in the future. The poison, the oil-burn scar on his chest. It makes my fear of people getting physically close feel almost immature.
Childish.
It takes me a few days to realize that they’re the same thing. The same fear. He’s just more prepared than I am. Instead of sitting around and doing nothing about it, fearing it, he makes his own safeguards. His mind maze isn’t a maze at all. It’s a weapons rack, and he’s constantly polishing blades.
I’m scared. Waiting for something bad to happen. Like always. This ain’t a saying I’m planning on overusing, but WWAD? What Would Alistair Do? He’d get some fucking answers, probably.
I know just enough French to ask a couple people in the common room where the dorm matron is, and they point me to the laundry room. She’s folding extra sheets there, her blonde hair tied back in a braid and her freckled face lighting up when she sees me.
“Bonjour. You’re Lilith Pierce, are you not?”
I stutter for a half-second. “Uh, I stand out that much?”
Her smile is the soft, quiet sort. “Oh yes.”
“Um, Miss -”
“Please, call me Evelyn.”
“Evelyn,” I say. “This might sound weird, but I think someone came into my room while I was sleeping.”
Her eyes go wide. “Oh no. When?”
“Last week Wednesday. Way early in the morning.”
“And you haven’t lost your room card?” I hold it up for her, and she inspects it, nodding. “The security hasn’t mentioned seeing any unusual activity, but I’m sure they’d let us check the tapes.”
“Tapes?” I start.
“Of the hallway in your dorm that night. If anyone came in, we could see them on there. Come, follow me.”
Good sign, if they’re willing to show me evidence. There’s a 50% chance not everyone here at Silvere is a cultist - just most of them. Or none of them. I still haven’t decided. I follow Evelyn down the utility halls behind the common room we aren’t usually allowed in. It suddenly strikes me how many nooks and crannies these old buildings have.
“Uh, there aren’t any, like, secret passages, right?” I ask. Evelyn makes a little laugh.
“Goodness no. Those were all sealed up during the refitting.”
“All of them?”
She smiles patiently over her shoulder. “We’ve taken every precaution to ensure your safety here at Silvere, we assure you. And we’ve assured your parents.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you -” I start. “It’s just -”
“You don’t have to believe me. The cameras will show you. This way, please.”
She waves me into a room with SÉCURITÉ engraved on the door. It’s weird to be on the other side of the security camera, for once. The room is bigger than it looks from the outside, with a massive newsroom-esque desk and two security men sitting at it in their usual dark suits and gargantuan outlines. There’s a panel in front of the desk entirely made up of monitors, and not the cheap kinds. Half of me was expecting tiny, black-and-white CCTV monitors - the kind you see in heist movies and shit - all crammed together in a tiny, sweaty room. But, like the rest of Silvere, even this tiny room is decked out to the nines in money - big screens, fancy keyboards, air-conditioning, and programming that seems to automatically flip the screens between different views of the hallways. The common room, the back doors, even the laundry room - everything’s monitored. The individual dorm rooms seem to be the only exception.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Evelyn chimes as she steps into the room. “Forgive the intrusion - Lilith here had a few concerns about the security of her room, and I wanted to address them.”
One of the security guards swivels in his chair to look me up and down - with sungla
sses on. Indoors. On a Friday morning. Riiiight. The other security guard doesn’t even look at me, but he has sunglasses too. Fighting off the screen glare, maybe? But that’s a fuckin’ stretch.
“Lilith?”
I look up at the voice to see Ciel standing at the desk on the opposite end. His smile’s bright, a little faltering as he sees Evelyn.
“Eve,” He starts.
“Ciel!” Her eyes widen. “What are you doing here?”
“Ah, Alistair asked me to look through some footage,” He says smoothly. “And you? Here to help Lilith, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Evelyn’s giggle is more flirty than I’m comfortable with. She’s at least ten years our senior. But I guess Ciel just has that effect on everyone, even older women who have no business looking at him like that. Not jealous, I swear, it’s just straight-up creepy.
“How can we help?” The guard asks. Evelyn turns to me.
“What’s your room number again, dear?”
I give it to her, and she tells the guard what night to bring up, and for a moment there’s only the low, dull hum of the monitors and the rhythmic tapping of two keyboards. Ciel flashes another smile my way, a ‘sorry this is so awkward’ smile.
“That footage is the same one you asked us to pull up, Lautrec,” The guard finally says. Evelyn looks surprised, and I dart my eyes over to Ciel.
“Is that so?” He marvels. “Interesting.”
“Were you -” I swallow. “You were looking for the deer, weren’t you?”
“Deer?” Evelyn blinks. “What deer is this?”
“The white one,” Ciel says. “The good-luck deer. I told her about it, earlier.”
“That’s so sweet of you, filling her in on Silvere customs.”
“Not at all.”
I open my mouth to argue it, but Ciel’s brilliant smile aimed at me stops me cold. Okay, so he spun the truth a bit. So what? We all do that for the adults when they won’t get off our backs.
The room isn’t small, but it’s smaller than the forest at least, and the smell of roses wafts at me, around me. Strong this time. It doesn’t make any sense - why do all the security guards have that same smell following them? Why would…do these guys even patrol the rose garden? They’re in this little room. Maybe they switch out at noon or some shit. Honestly, at this point I’ve got bigger shit to concern myself with than rose-stink.
The guard brings up a perfect - albeit greenish night-visiony - view of the hallway outside my dorm room. Evelyn points with a finger.
“There! That’s your room. Let’s see…”
We watch the footage unfold in green fast-motion, and Evelyn chirps to rewind and slow it down. The guard makes a few deft key-presses, and the footage resumes at normal speed. My door, closed. Still closed. No white deer. Not even a hoofprint or a jut of antler. Just…nothing.
Something in me deflates, something with sharp edges and old thorns. So it was a dream. This confirms it. Of course there’s no deer, because it’s a fuckin’ dream. Which means the white fur in my underwear drawer is a dust bunny, or a shedding off someone’s faux-fur jacket, or something. Something else. Coincidence - the only one I’ve been able to prove thus far. I turn to look at Ciel, jumping a little when I see his gray eyes laser-locked on me already. Watching me. For what - my reaction?
“Oh,” Evelyn’s soft voice brings me back. “There’s you.”
She’s right. On the monitor, I see myself poke my head out of my doorway.
“It looks like you’re following something,” Ciel insists. And he’s right, too - my face swivels down the hall slowly, like I’m watching something walk down it.
The deer.
“I was sleepwalking,” I start. “I guess? I don’t do that, like, ever, but -”
The surreal-me in the footage walks over to the window tentatively and on tenterhooks. That was the moment I got scared of the deer. Except there is no deer. It’s just me, crossing the marble floor and latching my hands to the cold windowsill, looking out of it. My heart starts thumping, the exact fear of the dream still lingering in my marrow, but the camera doesn’t point outside. I can’t see the forest, or Knight Durand, at all. After a while I turn and go back into my room, waving the keycard to get in.
“Well,” Evelyn puts her hands together. “That solves that. I’m so glad. Considering you’re our newest student, I wouldn’t want you to feel unsafe in your own home. If you have any further concerns you can come to me.”
“You can come to me too, Lilith,” Ciel assures me. Evelyn practically squeals.
“Oh, isn’t that nice? You’ve made a friend!”
Her voice fades in increments, and then all at once as my eyes focus on the monitor. Not the screen. The bottom of it, where the black plastic frame and the pixels meet. Just above the sleek logo, something moves. Something not on the screen, but overflowing into real life. At first I think it’s water, because it oozes like water, leisurely. But the monitor’s still working, so it can’t be waterlogged. I squint - electronic-juice, maybe? That stuff that you see when a screen cracks, all black and liquidy? No, this isn’t black at all.
It glimmers.
Gold.
Just like Von Arx’s window, the barest trickle of gold liquid oozes over the monitor frame, dripping down it and onto the keyboard next to the guard’s finger.
“Are you -” I look at him, but his sunglasses are fixed ahead on the footage. Ciel’s staring at the footage too, at the freeze-frame of me going back into my room, but his gaze doesn’t flicker down to the gold at all, either. I whip my head around to Evelyn but she’s just smiling at me, looking between me and the monitor.
“Is something wrong, Lilith?”
She can’t see it. None of them can see it. No one in this room can see it but me.
“You’re joking, right?” I ask. “This is a joke.”
“What?” Evelyn’s face goes slack. “No, I’m quite serious. If you have any questions or concerns you can always come to me. That’s a Silvere guarantee.”
She smiles, but I can’t bring myself to smile back. She had to have seen it. She was looking right at it. Why are they acting like it’s not there?
“I’ll walk her back,” Ciel offers me his arm, and Evelyn beams.
“Very well. Have a good day, Lilith.”
I can barely croak out a; “Yeah. Thanks.”
They’re acting like nothing’s wrong. Like it’s all normal peas and carrots on a plate when it’s actually a whole pig’s head - still alive and blinking. My elbow’s laced in Ciel’s but his warm presence can’t cut through the foggy disbelief swirling around in my brain. He didn’t see it, either.
Someone forgot to switch off the hallucinate-vividly oven upstairs, and now the house is burning down.
The liquid gold. The same stuff I saw for a second leaking out of Von Arx’s lettuce plants.
“I normally try not to say this to girls, for obvious reasons,” Ciel says suddenly. “But you look a bit…terrible. Are you okay?”
I’ve avoided Ciel’s face so much in the past few weeks, I don’t know what normal is for him, anymore. I know he smiles a lot. I know he looks pleasant like it’s his job. I know looking light and mildly amused at all times is the easiest way to chase off unwanted attention for him. Which is why the way he’s looking at me now is weird. More than weird. Unsettling. He’s staring, but not like Alistair does, in one suffocating laser beam until you break. This is a softer drilling, the sort that has a hundred pins and needles, all of them looking for a way in. The weakest part. The point of entry of least resistance.
And that look screams to me that I can’t tell him the truth. I want to. I so desperately want to tell someone I’m hallucinating gold liquid apropos of literally nothing - no head injury, nothing - but I can’t. Not now. Ciel is - Ciel’s not the person to tell. I can feel it. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He’s the one in a million chance. He’s the winning lottery ticket. He’s the one. The one who makes my fears quie
t, and my body comfortable. So why won’t the rest of me just trust him, too?
“No, it’s cool.” I force a smile. “I’m cool. Thanks.”
“There you go again,” He sighs.
“What?”
“Putting on a strong face.”
“I’m not -”
“Please, Lilith, don’t insult me. I’ve spent thirteen years with Alistair. I know what acting tough looks like.”
This cotton-candy-spins a little laugh from me, pulls it out thread by sweet thread.
“Fair enough,” I say.
“You saw something in there, didn’t you?” He presses suddenly. “Something that scared you.”
His hand weaves down and to mine, fingers in fingers for a split second and it’s everything I’ve wanted but it doesn’t feel right and I pull away like a red-hot fire poker’s insinuated itself into my hand. Ciel’s face falls, but he covers it expertly with a grin.
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m - I’m the one who should be sorry. Sometimes I can’t tell people things, and it’s not like I don’t trust you, it’s just -”
“It would feel odd,” He finishes kindly for me. “Right?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“Then,” He releases my elbow, the common room bustling around us again. “I’ll just have to wait. For whenever you’re ready.”
He waves, and for a second my stomach churns watching his gold hair float over a sea of brown and black and less bright blonde - floating away from me.
Dripping away.
If weird things are going down, I need weirder answers.
WWAD?
Bother the shit out of people, probably.
And in my case, I need to bother the shit outta people who know more than I do.
Bianca always heads towards the east side when our Econ class is over, and I swivel my head furiously over the lunch crowd looking for her elegant posture, a sheet of ash-brown hair. There! Going into the bathroom.