by Sofia Daniel
“I admired your silent dignity, and I couldn’t get over the image of you towering over me with fists flying and tits trembling. I wanted to be your friend.”
“Just friends?” I asked.
“It’s the best of both worlds.” He grinned. “Sebastian and Kash are my closest companions, and we’ll get to spend more time together by sharing a single girlfriend. And, by having three studs at your disposal, there’s less social pressure on me.”
Usually, I would roll my eyes at that, but given his family situation, I could see why it might be easier not to have an official girlfriend.
Leopold slowed down the jeep to join the Finchley Road, a long, bustling stretch of hotels and restaurants and high-street stores. Over the Christmas break, I’d gotten to spend time with both him and Sebastian, and I felt completely comfortable in their company.
Prakash continued to be an enigma. He would sit with us at dinnertime and chat amiably with the boys, but he still didn’t warm to me, and I couldn’t understand why.
“I’m not sure about Prakash,” I whispered.
“You and Kash were getting on well enough the night of your accident.”
“What happened?”
“Seb and I drove up to Carlisle because you’d both gotten drunk. I distinctly saw you snuggled up with him in the back seat of this jeep.”
I twisted around to see if the wide, leather seat would trigger any memories. It didn’t. “How on earth did I get from being escorted home by you three to the bottom of a mountain?”
“Hopefully, with Master Chang’s protocol, snippets of memory will return.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Don’t look so down.” He turned into a side street and parked in the courtyard of an elegant hotel. “Let’s order some lunch before we make the long journey north.”
Spending time with Leopold made up for Sebastian’s absences. Something seemed to bother him, and I wasn’t sure what. Perhaps now that his leg had healed, and he had started football practice, the academic requirements of the academy had become onerous.
On Monday morning, I opened the door to my room to find a huge box in my path. Its contents were a three-month supply of Master Chang’s herbs in transparent sachets I needed to tear apart with my teeth. Each contained about a third of a pint of boiled herbs that looked like sludgy coffee and tasted like ass.
As I slid the box into my room, I found an envelope on the parquet floor. It contained a message demanding that I meet Mrs. Benazir at breakfast. My stomach tightened, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the Board of Governors’ having an emergency meeting.
Crumpling up the note, I headed down the stairs toward the headmistress’s office. She sat behind her desk with her salt-and-pepper hair loose from its bun and swept down one shoulder. As I walked further into her room, Miss Claymore stepped out from behind the door and into my line of sight.
I cleared my throat. “You wanted to see me, Mrs. Benazir?”
She pointed at the empty seat opposite her desk. “Your average this week was eighty-five.”
I sat and answered, “It’s because I’ve been on painkill—”
“That is unacceptable and is not what we agreed.” Her eyes hardened.
Her words hit me like a fist to the gut and knocked the air out of my lungs. She was an even bigger sociopath than Bianca Byrd. “How am I supposed to maintain high grades with people assaulting and bullying me?”
“You were fine last term following the incident with those girls.”
“What?” My hands bunched into fists.
I was about to launch into a tirade when Miss Claymore stepped forward. “While the incidents are regrettable, I am doing my best to combat the victimization of scholars. Mrs. Benazir wants to know what we can do to help restore your averages.”
The bulk of my anger escaped my lungs in a long stream of air. Even though I suspected Miss Claymore covered up for her boss, it was reassuring to know that at least one member of the faculty cared about the students.
Turning to the deputy head, I said, “When people don’t get punished, they feel they can escalate the bullying without consequences. And worse, it encourages copycat attacks in the younger students.”
“Let me look into this matter,” Mrs. Benazir said in a tone that implied she would do nothing of the sort. “In the meantime, your grades are still an issue.”
My eyes narrowed. “Give me a month to recover from my physical injuries. Please.”
“Two weeks.” Mrs. Benazir steepled her fingers. “And after that, we will reconsider your bursary.”
I stood and held my fists at my side to keep from smacking her miserable face. “Is that all?”
“You may go.”
Anger powered my steps as I stormed out of the room. What a callous old bitch! How dare she berate me on my grades and not provide a safe learning environment?
“Miss Evergreen?”
I turned around to find Miss Claymore three feet away. I let out a weary breath, hoping I hadn’t come across as too rude. “Yes, Miss?”
“Please, come to my office.” Miss Claymore took the nearest stairwell to the next floor up.
Shoulders slumping, I trudged after her. Was she going to berate me for my attitude toward Mrs. Benazir? As I entered her room, the scent of leather filled my nostrils from the tomes on her bookshelves, and I glanced at the ridiculously luxurious chaise lounge.
The deputy head walked around her desk and tapped on her computer. “Your English and Economics grades are dragging down your averages. Are you having problems absorbing the material?”
I rubbed the back of my head. “If it’s math-related, I can follow along with the calculations during prep because it’s easier to focus on equations and short paragraphs. But my mind wanders at large expanses of text.”
“Which explains why you’re excelling in all but those two subjects.”
I nodded. This is what I liked best about Miss Claymore. She at least investigated matters instead of making dismissive statements like the headmistress.
“I would like you to reconsider your obligations.” She leaned forward in her seat and fixed me with those dark eyes. “Your sister is currently running an average of seventy percent, which puts pressure on you to exceed ninety-five.”
“Right.”
“Relinquishing your responsibility for her will drop your grade requirement down to ninety, which only requires an improvement of five percentage points.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“If Ashley can’t maintain her grades, I won’t obligate myself to compensate for her.”
Miss Claymore gave me a soft nod. “A wise choice.”
Her words removed a layer of tension that had plagued me since I had agreed to maintain a higher average to enable Ashely’s entrance into the academy.
If she couldn’t make an effort to maintain her grades and stabbed me in the back at every opportunity, I no longer wanted to take on the effort of keeping her around.
“By the way, can I leave the swimming team?” I asked.
The deputy head nodded. “I am also willing to tutor you in English and Economics until your grades exceed ninety percent.”
A breath caught in the back of my throat. That was incredibly generous of Miss Claymore. “Umm… Why would you go so far to help me, Miss?”
“A promising scholarship student also struggled to maintain her grades after being bullied and humiliated. I failed her, and she committed suicide.”
I gulped. She was talking about Corrine Gibbons.
The older woman’s dark eyes twinkled. “I also wish to nurture your wonderful potential.”
Warmth spread through my chest. Despite everything that had happened, she still believed in me.
“Report here in your free period at the end of the week.”
“Yes, Miss,” I said, still brimming with joy. “Thank you, Miss.”
Miss Claymore’s
phone beeped, and the older woman stared at her screen. “Mrs. Benazir wants me to inform you that one of the parents wishes to meet you on Monday morning.”
Anxiety twisted through my stomach. “Mrs. Brunswick?”
“Mr. Byrd,” she replied.
“Bianca’s father?”
Chapter 8
For the rest of the week, I couldn’t focus on anything. Not on prep. Not on my missing memories. Not even on the three gorgeous guys who occupied half my time. Cormac and the kings thought I was still suffering residual effects from the ‘accident,’ but they were wrong.
The thought of meeting Bianca’s father made my stomach churn. It didn’t matter that Mrs. Benazir would sit in the room with us. If the man was anything like his daughter, he would be vicious and wouldn’t care that Bianca had committed a crime.
Late one evening after finishing my prep in my room, I texted Uncle Trevor to ask how he was doing. I would feel better with someone at my side for the meeting with Mr. Byrd and wanted to know if he was free.
He texted back to say that Aunt Hortense had returned hospital needing a blood transfusion from complications surrounding the cesarian.
With a sigh, I wished Aunt Hortense a speedy recovery, set down the phone, and rested my head in my hands. There was no way I could pull Uncle Trevor away from an already stressful family life to deal with my crap. He had done enough for me, and I couldn’t add to his troubles.
A knock on the door broke me out of my thoughts.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me,” said Cormac.
“Come in.”
He stepped inside and let the door click shut behind him. “What’s up with you?”
“I have a meeting next week with Mrs. Benazir and Bianca’s father.”
Cormac didn’t reply, so I raised my head to see his reaction. His face slackened, and all the color drained from his cheeks. My stomach muscles tightened. I had already dreaded meeting Mr. Byrd, but Cormac’s reaction made me think he knew something dangerous about the man.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
Cormac backed into the wall and clasped his chin. “You know he’s the managing partner of—”
“Byrd and Byrd, the international law firm?” Saying the words made my stomach roil.
“Did Mrs. Benazir tell you what he wanted?”
Slumping further in my seat, I sank into the wave of hopelessness drowning my spirits. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a male version of Bianca pounding me into intellectual mincemeat.
With no willing witnesses or proof that I hadn’t forced alcohol down my own throat at the initiation, I expected that an intelligent lawyer might get the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the case.
“No.” The word came out an elongated groan.
“What do you think it’s about?” Cormac crossed the room and crouched at my side. He balanced one hand on the edge of the desk and the other on the back of my desk chair.
I gazed down into his concerned eyes. “Bianca approached me the other day, furious that she had to give the police genetic samples. When she couldn’t convince me to drop the case, she offered to tell me who had tried to kill me.”
His brows drew together. “If anyone tried to kill you, it was her.” His gaze flickered to Ashley’s empty bed. “Or…”
A shudder ran down my spine. “Not even Ashley could be that wicked.”
Cormac broke eye contact. Probably because he didn’t have the heart to tell me he thought I was being optimistically naive. “What did Bianca say exactly?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to repeat it.”
“What?” He pulled himself to his feet and placed a hand on my shoulder. “If it was something dangerous, you need to tell—”
“I-it wasn’t,” I blurted. “And I told her it was out of the question.”
Cormac stared down into my eyes, silently urging me to continue.
I ran a hand over my brow. “She wanted me to play the pull-a-pig game with you as the victim.”
His face twisted into a rictus of rage, and his nostrils flared.
My heart galloped a panicked beat, and I scrambled to my feet. “I refused to do—”
“No.” He raised a hand. “I’m not blaming you. Just… shocked that she’d go so far.”
“I don’t know why. Bianca is capable of anything.”
He gave his head one of those shakes a dog would make when they’d just come out of the water. All the anger disappeared, and his face softened back into its usual pleasant expression. “You’re right. I came to ask if you were thirsty.”
“I’ll make you a cuppa.”
He grinned. “I wasn’t trying to trick you into making the tea.”
“Come on.” I looped my arm through his. “Let’s go upstairs.”
The scholars’ common room was only a quarter-full, with a few first years crowded around a third-year girl with pink glasses playing chess in the corner against a boy in our year. The girl was some kind of prodigy. I longed to watch the game, but I hadn’t spent much time with Cormac since the auburn-haired twins had made those snide comments about us needing to kiss each other.
Cormac reached the counter at the end of the room and hovered his hands over the two boxes of tea. “Earl Grey or English breakfast?”
“I’ll make it.” I reached for the box of English breakfast, which he preferred, and placed a teabag in two clean mugs.
“Then you’ll think I called you out here to be my charlady.” He poured an unholy amount of milk in each mug then added boiling water from the kettle. “You know, Corrine used to make fun of me all the time. She said I couldn’t make a cup of tea to save my life.”
I glanced at the pale drinks. “She might have had a point.”
Cormac bumped me on the shoulder. “You’re just saying that.”
“Do you need another teabag? This is more like watered-down milk than tea.”
He beamed, and the expression made my heartache. I expected that his sister always complained bitterly about his tea-making skills.
We sat side-by-side on a threadbare sofa, enjoying our tea. Cormac balanced a plate of chocolate hob-nobs on his lap and kept nudging me in the side to take one. I shook my head. Since Mom and Dad died, I’d lost my appetite for chocolate.
Maybe it was because Mom and I used to buy bars of Dairy Milk and dip them in our tea. I wasn’t ready for another reminder of what I had lost.
“Cormac,” Two boys from the year below flung open the door and barreled into our common room. “Something is going on!”
Cheers and raucous laughter from further down the hallway cut through the peaceful atmosphere.
Cormac placed his plate on the coffee table and stood. “I’d better see what’s happening.”
I set down my tea and rose. “It sounds serious.”
As we walked toward the door, some first years followed after us, their eyes alight with curiosity.
“Stay in here, where it’s safe.” Cormac’s voice hardened. “I mean it.”
The younger students returned to the chess game, and we stepped out of the common room into a hallway filled with cheers and catcalls and closed the door behind us.
Cormac clenched his teeth. “The noise is coming from the sixth-form common room.”
I gulped. “Right.”
The last time I had been in that room, Geraldine had offered all the boys a ten-thousand pound reward for taking my virginity. But I doubted that she would give me any trouble now that she knew I was pressing charges for assault.
Cormac and I stepped through the doors of the sixth form common room, and a gust of freezing air blew over our skin. Instead of the fight I expected, everyone gathered around the open windows. Some even hurled down open cans of soda from the wall of vending machines.
I spotted Leopold on the far right window, rushed to his side, and grabbed his elbow. “What’s going on?”
He spun around, face shuttering. “Nothing. Let me walk you to your room.”
I tried to walk around him, but he blocked my path. “What’s happening outside?”
A group of girls rushed around the window spot he had occupied and roared with laughter. Whatever they murmured to each other was obscured by the roars and bellows from some of the male occupants of the room.
“You don’t want to see this.” He grabbed me by the shoulders.
I stood on my tiptoes. “Leo—”
“Willow.” The hands around my shoulders tightened, and Leopold fixed his panicked, aquamarine eyes on mine. “Listen to me.”
“Your sister’s been pigged!” screeched a passing girl I was sure had been at Ashley’s initiation. “I can’t wait until it’s your turn.”
All the blood drained from my face and into my plummeting stomach. “W-what?”
“You heard me, Pigsty.” She continued to the window, casting me a nasty sneer over her shoulder.
Someone from the other side of the room shouted, “Look at that pig getting roasted!”
A ball of dread hit me in the gut. There was no time to demand explanations. I had to go down and see for myself. Rushing through the people streaming toward the window, I headed toward the common room door.
Leopold grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?
“I can’t just stand by and let them do this.”
“You’re protecting her after she let those girls violate you?” he said.
Irritation clawed at my skin. I wasn’t a doormat or someone willing to forget such a terrible betrayal, but I wasn’t heartless, either. Leopold’s nostrils flared, mirroring how I felt, but if he thought allowing something terrible to happen to Ashley was justice, he didn’t know me at all.
Staring into his aquamarine eyes, I said, “I’ll never forgive her for that, but if I stand by while anyone’s being assaulted, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“You know those assholes might turn on you?” he asked.
“That’s no reason not to fight back.” I yanked my arm out of his grip and sped down the hallway, nearly bumping into Prakash at the top of the stairs.
He held me steady. “What’s going on?”
“Willow’s about to start a fight, and she’ll need some backup,” muttered Leopold.