Obsession

by Marie Robinson

  What about Cordelia though? She was running from Melissa. Maybe she did it, or maybe she was nearly a victim too.

  “You will all be confined to your rooms until further notice.”

  The students seem to take her words as a dismissal as they all stand up in an eerily synchronized manner that makes me rush to my feet. We all file out and towards the stairs, only the bravest whispering to one another.

  When the short hall that my room is down appears, I step out of the line. A hard shoulder checks me and I stumble to the floor with a shout. I roll over to glare at the rude student to see Nikolai grinning down at me, the other students smiling but giving him a wide berth as they move around him.

  “What was that for?” I grumble at him as I get to my feet. My left knee aches but I refuse to let him see me wince.

  Nikolai’s smile is the type that can charm anyone; it’s one of those smiles that says oh, shucks, ma’am, and gets everyone to believe him. He could smile his way out of prison, I’m sure.

  That’s not the smile he’s giving me right now. This smile is terrifying. I am the mouse and he is the hawk, circling and waiting for the right time to dive in and snap my neck.

  “Watch where you’re going, Miss Wollstonecraft,” he says as he crosses his arms. Victor comes to stand beside him, his hands in his pockets as he waits with obvious disinterest. Malcolm walks by, his eyes glazed, lost in his thoughts. “Remember you don’t belong here. You are nothing here. And accidents happen. Today is a reminder of that.”

  I frown, horror dawning. “Did you—”

  Nikolai steps close to me, nearly pressed up against me, and I feel like I’m staring down the barrel of a gun. One flinch, one wrong move, and I know that Nikolai’s gloved hands will be wrapped around my neck.

  “No,” he says, and I believe him strangely. “But she was worth more to this world than you and that’s an injustice. There is evil in us all, and I will eradicate it. You should leave this place, Mary. We don’t want you here.”

  The last of the other students pass us, watching the three of us warily, and the two boys step back into line behind them.

  Fine. I don’t want to be here either. I stomp back to my room, slamming the door harder than necessary. I rip my suitcase from underneath my bed, tears burning my eyes. I don’t know if I’m angry or hurt, or most likely a mixture of both.

  I fling my clothes in from the small drawers, uncaring of how haphazardly they get shoved in. Wrinkles don’t matter, not to me. All that matters is leaving.

  “Miss Wollstonecraft.”

  Mrs. Browning’s steely voice stops me, and I blink away tears as I stare at her in my open doorway. Did she open it without me hearing? Or did it bounce open from the force I used?

  “Mrs. Browning.”

  I wring the poor shirt in my hand, nervous. She watches me, then looks to the shirt in my hand and then to the suitcase on my bed. She stares at it for long enough my mouth goes dry. But her face is as placid as a calm lake, not a single ripple of emotion to give away her thoughts.

  “Where were you at the time of Melissa’s death?” Her eyes are back, boring into mine. But there’s no suspicion in them, and she’s asking it more as if it’s routine than she’s interested.

  I swallow, my face flushing at the memory of Malcolm pressing into me. “On a balcony near the roof. With Malcolm.”

  She raises one thin eyebrow when I say his name and I want to bury my face in shame. I stutter, trying to explain.

  “There was an… incident in Nikolai’s lab—”

  “What happened?”

  Mrs. Browning’s face goes from placid to razor sharp so quickly, I think of the documentaries on the Great Whites and how they hunt.

  “I don’t know.” I don’t tell her about the ghost, she’d think me insane. “I just know that Victor told Malcolm to get me out of there after Nikolai seemed to get hurt.”

  She frowns, and looks over her shoulder as if she’s debating leaving me and checking on her precious geniuses. But her duties seem to overpower those urges as turns back to me.

  “You’ll find it impossible to get past our security, Mary,” she says, returning to her brisk tone. My hope of escape drops. “However, a dramatic attempt at running away is unnecessary. I’ve made contact with your father. He’ll be here in three days to assume custody of you.”

  “My—father?” I sit on the edge of the bed, my breath escaping me. “I…” I trail off, confused. “I don’t understand. How? Why?”

  “He was not as difficult to contact as your mother must have made you believe,” she said. Her voice softened a miniscule but noticeable amount. I wonder if she’d ever had children. She’s never spoken of her husband. Is he still around or did he die? I get an absurd thought of Mr. Cornell being her husband, but that feels more impossible than her actually being married. “As to why,” she continues, “he’s your father. He rightfully has custody of you. He was relieved, you know. To hear that you are well and somewhere he can reach. He’s flying in from across the country the soonest he is able.”

  “I’ve never met him,” I admit staring at my knees. “I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  She makes a noncommittal noise and steps back through the door into the hall. “You will remain here, just as all the other students are remaining in their rooms. Additionally, we now have an excess of uniforms and I expect you to wear them for your remaining time here. Just because your time is coming to an end does not mean you are allowed to skip your duties or schoolwork. Is that understood?”

  I assume she accepts my nod as she doesn’t say anything else. I look towards the door and I realize she’d brought a small tote of uniforms. A new excess… my eyes go wide. Are these Melissa’s uniforms? The thought of wearing a dead girl’s clothing makes my stomach heave.

  Not bothering to move the suitcase, I curl up on my bed. I don’t know what to think or what to feel. The last twenty-four hours have been insane, and I just want to take a break from it all. I want a day without confusing boys who catapult between cruel and seductive. I want a day without waiting for another ghost to show up. I want a day where I can feel safe.

  The father I never met is coming for me, though. I’ll be out of this place. Maybe he can keep me safe from the monsters, and if he can’t—I can run away from him.

  There’s a knock on my doorjamb but I ignore it. If someone wants to come in, let them. I’m done with today.

  “Mary.” Victor’s soft voice banishes the suffocating indecision from the room but I can’t bring myself to sit up.

  He crouches down in front of me, his dark hair falling into his face, his ink-black eyebrows slightly furrowed as he stares at me.

  “Why are your eyes always so red?” I whisper. I’ve wondered about it since I first saw him. I’d thought it was because of his strange sleep habits but he never seems tired.

  “I’m addicted to opioids.”

  His frank answer has me sitting up in surprise.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” I stare at him and suck my lower lip between my teeth. “Can… I have one?”

  He watches me for a heartbeat and I wonder if I’m stupid to ask. I’ve never had anything stronger than over-the-counter pain meds and I’m certainly not in any physical pain right now. Not even my knee is sore anymore. I’m about to take it back when he rises and holds his hand out to me.

  “Come on,” he tugs me upwards. “Not here. My room.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Once more I find myself being tugged along by Victor. Thankfully, he didn’t take us through the wall passages; I’m not sure if I’m ready to go back in there after my latest experience. He stops at each corner to make sure the path is clear. Once, one of the cleaning staff surprises us, turning towards us in the hall. He’s looking down at a clipboard and Victor and I hide down another hall, Victor pressing his body close to mine as if he could force me into the wall itself. I could feel his heart beating steadily a
gainst my chest, so calm compared to my own; neither of us daring to breathe as we wait for the man to pass us. Then he’s pulling me through the manor again. We don’t run into anyone else on the way to his room, though we hear people talking loudly enough to have us rushing our steps.

  When he closes the door behind us, we’re both out of breath and share a secretive smile.

  “That was exciting,” I whisper, though the need for quiet has passed. There’s something about being in Victor’s room that feels... clandestine.

  “Nothing like sneaking around when there’s a potential murderer on the loose,” he whispers back before shoving off the door and walking towards his desk. Am I really going to get high with him? It’s not like me... then again, I don’t know what I am like except that I’m always on the run. He pulls out a small plastic box, similar to the ones I’ve seen people store beads in. Except instead of beads, there are various pills, and even bags filled with powders. After grabbing a soda from the mini fridge, he gestures for me to sit on the bed and I do, sinking into the comfortable mattress with a sigh.

  “This bed is so much better than mine,” I admit, leaning back on my hands. He doesn’t respond as he sets the box on the bed next to me and flips it open. “Are you like the school drug dealer?”

  “In a sense,” he admits. “How much do you weigh?” When he sees my frown, he continues. “I’m not just going to hand you the same pills I take. You don’t belong here, but it won’t be my fault if you leave here in a body bag.”

  “So thoughtful,” I drawl sarcastically. “I’m about one-fifty? Give or take. I might be a bit less now that I’ve been working my ass off, literally, scrubbing this place.”

  “Such a shame that is,” he replies, making me blink. But he’s not looking at me; he’s pulling baggies out and produces a small gram scale. Victor is seriously... making me a custom drug. “To answer your question more thoroughly, I don’t just provide drugs for recreational use. With so few girls at the school, they have their pick of sexual partners. We may be geniuses but that doesn’t always translate into common sense—”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “—so when accidents happen, some of them feel more comfortable coming to me instead of Mrs. Browning,” he continues as if I didn’t say anything.

  “Really?” I’m not surprised at the drugs. “There’s that much sex at this school? Isn’t there, like, sex ed?”

  He snorts. “Yeah. It can be summed up as: Sex is for procreation. Sex is a distraction to your genius. Don’t have it.”

  “So, naturally, everyone wants it?”

  “Naturally,” he agrees as he cracks open the soda, which I realize is just a berry-flavored sparkling water. He pours the fizzy water into the small cup he’d measured out the powder in and swirls it around. “And it’s just not the girls, obviously. Some students prefer the same gender. I don’t think that’s the case with any of the girls, from what I’ve heard from Cordelia, but if they do spend that time together, I don’t think it’s exclusive.”

  He hands me the cup and I take it, looking at the slightly cloudy bubbly water skeptically. Cordelia’s words come back to me, and I hesitate.

  “Did you do this for Cordelia?” I’m quiet, but I know he can hear me since he stills as he’s replacing all the baggies. He doesn’t look at me as he responds.

  “Cordelia wanted something I wasn’t willing to give,” he replies. “When I told her that I wasn’t interested, she took it badly. She’s the person who isn’t used to being rejected.”

  “I can see that.”

  I watch the bubbles float from the bottom of the plastic cup, where they burst at the surface. What the hell am I doing here?

  The bed sinks next to me as Victor sits, watching me. “This seems reckless, for you.”

  I shrug. “I’ve had a really crap twenty-four hours. Hell, the last month has been awful.” I drink it down before I can second-guess myself and set the empty container in Victor’s outstretched hand. “I feel like I need to be reckless right now. How soon?”

  He tosses it in the trash. “Ten minutes, maybe twenty, before you start feeling it. For me, it’s nearly constant now. I’ve got a schedule.”

  “You weren’t lying about being addicted then?”

  Victor shakes his head. “One of the downsides of being so smart with access to essentially any chemical compound requested. Like I said, genius doesn’t always translate to common sense. But don’t worry, you won’t get addicted after one time. And I gave you a fairly light mixture. You’ll still feel it, but hopefully tomorrow you won’t feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.”

  We’re silent after that and my knee starts to bounce. I don’t even realize what I’m doing until Victor’s hand is on my leg, fingers digging into my thigh. But unlike the last time, when I look at him, he holds my gaze.

  He’s drop-dead sexy and I’ve done my best to ignore that. Since the moment we met my first night here, Victor has made his opinion clear on where I stand. I’m so far down the totem pole, I’m below it. I questioned his intelligence publicly, and earlier today even figured out something that they were overthinking. He ignores me to the point where he probably doesn’t remember I exist. So why does it feel like I’ve suddenly become real the moment his hand touches me?

  “Malcolm kissed me,” I blurt out, making him blink slowly. I regret telling him immediately when he pulls his hand away.

  “Really?” He sounds bored but he’s getting up and I feel like I’ve ruined whatever connection we had.

  “We got to talking about how I’d never been kissed, and then he sort of... volunteered. But then we heard Cordelia screaming and...”

  “And now you’re here with me, getting high.” Victor seems amused now as he toes off his shoes and grabs his laptop before joining me on his bed again. “Do you like murder mysteries?”

  I kick my own shoes off and sit next to him against the ornate headboard, as he pulls up a streaming site on his laptop. “What is it with you guys and death?” It’s somewhat rhetorical, but he answers me all the same.

  “We’ve all had experiences with it, for one reason or other,” he says softly. “Grief is strange. Some people get over it... and some people become obsessed.”

  I can’t argue with him, so instead I get comfortable, still feeling completely sober. He points at the opened sparkling water and I pass it to him without comment, watching the first of the show—the first person on the screen is almost always the victim. He tilts his head back before swallowing and I realize he’s taken something too. It actually makes me more comfortable, since I think I’d be embarrassed getting high while he’s sober. What if I do something ridiculous?

  “I’m not going to, like, run through the place naked and screaming, right?”

  I can feel his body rumble with the low laugh and I stick my tongue out at him.

  “If you do, I promise to record it.”

  I roll my eyes and poke him in the stomach. It must be kicking in. I don’t think I’d ever be brave enough to do that otherwise.

  “Fine,” he drawls out. “If you get naked, I promise to keep you in my room.”

  My face is on fire, even while I can feel my body responding to that idea. He’s so close, our legs brushing together, our shoulders inches apart. If I thought his scent was overwhelming wrapped in his blankets, sitting here next to him in his bed is suffocating in the best of ways. It’s like I don’t need air to breathe anymore, I can survive on him alone.

  “Would you have sex with me?” I’ve forgotten about the show completely.

  He raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t bother to look at me. “Right now? Probably not.”

  “Oh.” I’m both disappointed and relieved.

  “Malcolm was your first kiss,” he reminds me. “Less than two hours ago. You don’t need to go right to sex, especially while on drugs for the first time.”

  I must scrunch my face up because he’s laughing again, a freer sound than I’ve heard from him before. H
e’s so high-strung usually, stuck behind the Great Wall of Frankenstein. This time, though, I don’t feel like he’s mocking me, and grow bold again.

  “I’m pretty sure we were about to do more than kiss if we hadn’t been interrupted.” I twist to look at him, trying to see his reaction, but he snakes his arm around my waist and tugs me against him.

  “Shut up and watch the show.”

  I sigh dramatically, but I’m grinning stupidly. As the detective and his friend race around the city trying to solve the murder, my thoughts fly. I’m both disconnected from my body and hyper aware of everything. Victor’s hand is on my hip, his thumb moving in slow circles, just a scant half inch away from my skin. I know what Malcolm’s hands on me feels like, but now all I want is to know what Victor’s feels like. For his part, he seems riveted by the show, and I doubt he even knows that he’s throwing me all helter-skelter with his touch.

  Biting my lip, I consider what I’m about to do and if I can handle his rejection. He sure as hell won’t be gentle about it if he isn’t interested.

  Focusing on the show with an intensity I haven’t had the entire time, I carefully place my hand on Victor’s thigh. His thumb stills and I can feel his leg tense for a moment, but in the same breath, he relaxes again. In victory, I lean my head against his shoulder, still watching the laptop screen, though all of my focus is on him.

  We’re in battle with each other, challenging each other with subtle movements with the intensity of missiles.

  He gains ground in our war when his hand slips up under my shirt, just enough that his thumb and forefinger tease the skin above my waistband. Every small swipe of the rough pad of his thumb sends electric volts through my body. That tiny touch is enough to make me want to pant, to fling myself at him, and I wonder if I could survive anything more if this is sending me into spirals.

  In retaliation, I mirror him, dragging my fingers carefully over his pants in a way that it can be considered an unconscious movement. His breath hitches as I let my hand slide towards the inside of his thigh.