by Joanna Wiebe
“Is he searching for you, Hiltop?” I elbow my little enemy.
“Guess again.”
No sooner has she uttered those words than Dia’s gaze lands on Teddy, who’s standing next to me. Dia stops in his tracks. His eyelids are heavily lashed. His eyes slide my way and back to Teddy. Most of the students have continued on to the quad, but some stop to watch Dia approach us.
“You,” he says to Teddy. “How do you know this girl?”
A cold sweat breaks out under my uniform. The last thing I want is attention.
“I’m her Guardian,” Teddy tells Dia.
“Her Guardian? You oversee her. You influence her. If I understand right, you brought her back here after she liberated herself.”
“What is your point, Dia?” Hiltop interjects.
Dia and Hiltop meet eyes. You don’t have to read souls to feel the tension between these two. I wish I could slink away unnoticed, but that’s unlikely.
“Ted Rier,” Dia says, “you have a new mission. You will scout the planet for a new home for Mephisto.” He grabs Teddy’s satchel and snaps his fingers.
And Teddy’s gone.
Stunned, I turn and catch my classmate Augusto staring, gape-mouthed, at the now-empty space between me and Hiltop. His gaze meets mine. And then he looks away, busying himself. Has he known all along that we’re dealing with the darkest of all arts here? Does everyone secretly know? Am I the only person who thinks it’s nuts to live like this? Are the rest complacent? Or are they simply smarter than I? They know it’s best not to look closer, as my prosperitas thema, or success thesis, would have me do, but to look the other way. Not to fight the madness of this island’s leaders as Ben and I tried to do, but to play along.
How did we ever think we’d outplay the likes of Mephistopheles?
How does Teddy think we have a chance of destroying him or Dia Voletto? And now that Teddy’s gone, what am I going to do? Take on these devils by myself?
Without the slightest look in my direction or another word to Hiltop, Dia continues up the path. I follow the crowd. I keep my eyes open for Ben.
“Miss Merchant,” Hiltop says, catching my sleeve.
I shove her away. “Stop. Touching. Me.”
“I thought you might wish to meet your new Guardian.”
New Guardian. Dammit! Because Teddy’s gone now. Thanks for nothing, Dia.
“How could you possibly know who my Guardian is?” I ask her. “You’re not in charge anymore.”
“He’s the only Cania staff member available to take on a pupil right now.”
I turn and cross my arms. “Who?”
That’s when I see him. Over her shoulder. He’s standing by the water. I recognize him instantly: his short, cropped hair and his stocky build. The scowl he wears is vaguely familiar—for weeks, he faked friendly smiles for me.
“Pilot Stone,” I whisper. In place of his Cania Christy uniform are janitor’s coveralls. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
One day I won’t flinch at the endless life cycle possible in a world run by demons. I’ll accept that a boy can die in a house fire he set, live again here, die by my own hand, and yet live again here.
“You’re like a cockroach.” I watch Pilot stride toward me and Hiltop.
“You can’t keep a good man down,” he says. “After you so cruelly ended my life, I found myself in Mephisto’s domain.”
“Hell. Where you belong.”
Hiltop interrupts. “But I couldn’t leave my protégé to burn like some common lost soul. Especially not with my followers fleeing in the one moment I could actually use their allegiance.”
“I will always be there for Master Mephistopheles,” Pilot says. A beam of sunlight catches the brooch near Pilot’s nametag. He is one of Mephisto’s now.
“Because you’re loyal? Or because you want to avoid, oh, say, the fires of Hell?”
“Get your student under control,” Hiltop warns Pilot.
“His student?” I repeat.
“Miss Merchant,” Hiltop says, “Mr. Stone is your new Guardian.”
“Hold on, what?”
Pilot’s my Guardian? Whether a student wins the Big V or not rides almost entirely on how much their Guardian is willing to fight for them during the debate on graduation day. If my Guardian hates me, I don’t stand a chance.
“Pilot’s my punishment?” I guess.
Luckily, I’m only in a coma. I don’t need the Big V the same way everyone else at Cania Christy does. So I don’t need Pilot the way other students need their Guardians. Hiltop is silently following my line of thought.
“If you think you can simply wake up and escape the competition,” she says to me, “never forget that it only takes the tiniest increase in your pentobarbital drip for your coma to become a little less…terminable.”
“You can’t kill me, Hiltop. There are rules.”
Fact: I don’t know if those are the rules, but it seems like they ought to be! Demons can’t just run around knocking off the people they want to abuse.
“Rules can be bent. Accidents happen.” She forces me and Pilot to stand shoulder to shoulder and holds us tight, watching us squirm. “Now, if the two of you can try to get along, I’m going to watch Dia Voletto bumble his way through his introduction.”
As she strolls away, Pilot shoves me. “You’re gonna regret the day you ever met me, Merchant.”
“‘Gonna’? As in, future tense?”
“Let the record show I have no intention—zero, zilch, nada—of helping you,” he says, his chest puffy with some delusional sense of power over me. “But I will insist that you change your PT. Looking closer is total crap, plus you’re kinduv good at it, so that doesn’t work for me. I’m thinking something like…fitting those birthing hips into a size two. Or having a straight smile.” I run my tongue over my teeth; the tooth Ben inadvertently straightened for me last week is crooked again. “That should guarantee your death.”
“Piss off, Pilot.”
Leaving him swearing after me, I take off to the quad, where I look high and low for Ben. I wind my way closer to the stage. I try not to react when students, noticing me, jab me with their elbows and whisper, “Murdering Merchant.” I don’t care; I just want to find Ben.
Far beyond Valedictorian Hall, I spy Hiltop walking with Dr. Zin. He has his suitcase and his black doctor’s bag. He’s leaving. I stand on my tiptoes, looking for Ben. Where did he go? He wouldn’t get expelled, would he? He couldn’t! Ben isn’t even a student here.
“Attention, students,” calls Dr. Weinchler, who is at the podium with a dizzying array of new-to-our-world demons sitting, leaning, and standing behind him. He’s notorious for speaking quietly and stammering through his words; when almost no one notices him, he glares around in frustration and his wispy white hair floats side to side.
“Attention,” Weinchler repeats. “Be quiet.”
Pilot arrives at my side, grumbling, just as a striking woman dressed in green, with emerald-colored streaks in her wavy hair and a long jade vine tattooed on her arm, swaggers up behind Weinchler. She whispers something to him that makes him grin and replaces him at the podium.
Unlike Weinchler, this woman commands attention.
She doesn’t have to do more than be here for the hundreds of people in the crowd to fall silent and stare, in jealous awe, at her. I’ve always thought of myself as relatively comfortable in my skin and cool with how I look, but looking at this woman, all I can think is, How easy it must be to be her. No, in truth, all I can think is, I wish I could be her. Hating the insecurities that thought reveals, I force myself to stand straighter, hold my head higher, and hope that Pilot’s looking at me now just because he’s plotting ways to hurt me, not because he’s taking pleasure in the jealousy written all over my face.
The island as a whole, barking sea lions and rustling leaves included, goes silent waiting for the woman in green to speak.
“Good afternoon,” she says at last.
I w
ant to have her voice.
When I tear my eyes from her, I notice everyone else is transfixed, too. It’s not because this woman is beautiful, though she is. No, it’s like she’s the sum of the parts I wish I had; maybe everyone else is thinking the same thing. We all envy her.
“My name is Invidia, and I am pleased to welcome you, students, to the inauguration of the second headmaster in the sixty-five-year history of the Cania Christy Preparatory Academy.”
As we applaud, I wonder about her name. I know Invidia is from the underworld; it goes without saying that she’s a demon of some kind. But while all of Mephisto’s followers have common names, like Kate Haem and Eve Risset (two of the most evil secretaries that ever lived), this woman’s name is classic Latin. Invidia. Perhaps all of Dia Voletto’s followers have Latin names. I make a mental note to look up the meaning of Invidia after the ceremony.
“Without further ado,” Invidia says, “allow me to introduce the gentleman you have all been anxiously waiting to meet.” She pauses to allow more clapping. With an elegant flourish, she welcomes Dia Voletto to the podium. “Headmaster Voletto!”
If Mephisto and his legions are physically simple or unattractive by design, Dia and his crew might have been created just to be gawked at, stared after, and maybe even yearned for. I could never see Dia Voletto as anything but the underworld führer he is—but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate art when I behold it. Like most interesting art, Dia is composed of imperfect pieces that, together, are unlike anything the world has beheld before. He’s beautiful. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed that: in the corner of my eye, I spy Harper and the Model UN from Hell preening.
“Look at this!” Dia exclaims as he takes his place at the podium and gazes at us all. “Such wonder! Such splendor! Such beauty! Students, thank you for this warm welcome, and please accept my sincere apologies for thrusting such a change on you so swiftly. I assure you, under my leadership, this school will rise to be the haven of joy and opportunity you all wish it to be.”
The sunlight, which has been flooding the normally cloudy island, glistens off his dark, wide irises. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear there was something charming about Dia Voletto.
“That, of course, brings me to the matter I wish to discuss with you.”
I watch Harper and her gang move closer to the stage, the better to bat their fake eyelashes at Dia. When they move, they reveal Ben, who’s standing just behind the gap they’ve created, the gap that two large boys quickly fill. I try to peer between their massive shoulders even as they snap at me to turn around. I’m this close to waving to get Ben’s attention when I stop.
Because he’s not alone.
Garnet Descarteres is standing next to him.
Garnet. As in, Ben’s ex-girlfriend, Garnet. As in the former valedictorian who traded her soul to be with Ben again. What’s she doing with him? Hold on, why’s she stroking his arm?
I face forward before either of them can see me looking.
My heart is thumping so loudly, I’m sure it’ll give me away.
That can’t be what it looks like, I think. Maybe she was dusting a bee off his sleeve. Or maybe not. I want to look again, to pick up cues, hints, or suggestions, but I don’t dare. I tell myself what Ben told me: that he wasn’t interested in her, that it had always been me, that from the day his funeral service was held in my family home—from the day I saw him in his open casket, and felt compelled to sketch him in those few moments before the mourners arrived, and tucked that sketch into his casket…and, finally, hoping no one would come into the reception room, kissed him on the cheek—it had been me. Ben told me I was the girl with the blonde hair he’d been waiting for. Not Garnet. Not Garnet.
“Hey,” Pilot jabs me hard in the side. “Pay attention, psycho.”
I ignore him like the pesky blackfly he is.
“Oh, wait, your mom’s the psycho.”
Ben wants to be with me. I’m sure he does. Yet I can’t seem to fight the clouds of doom, self-loathing, and sadness rolling into my mind. Ben and Garnet? Could it be? So freakin’ soon?
“And she tried to kill you, didn’t she?”
That’s enough! I hiss at Pilot, “Let’s not compare parents. Your dad’s Sexcapade of the Century hardly qualified him as Father of the Year.”
I gave him what he wanted: a reaction. He smiles.
“I’m gonna make your life a living hell,” he says.
I glance at Ben and Garnet again. Yup, still there. Still side by side.
“Take a number,” I tell Pilot.
On stage, two men position a large, covered canvas on an easel. Dia stares in wonder from the men to us to his team to the world he’s about to call home, with its woods colored in 100 shades of green, with its jagged stone still wet from last night’s ice storm, with its vast and wild Atlantic Ocean spreading toward an azure and butter yellow horizon that is, only now, clouding over. Dia seems to be in love with it all.
“This, my friends,” Dia has his fingers on the canvas’ cover, “is the matter at hand.”
He whips back the cover and reveals an architect’s sketch.
“It’s called Cania College,” he says as he runs his hand over the surface of the large drawing. “And it is my masterpiece.”
If he was trying to start his reign with a bang, he’s done it. His audience, imaginations captivated by the possibilities that a college— something to graduate to—presents, explodes with applause. I’m a little less enthusiastic. Just last night, Mephisto told me he planned to expand. And now Dia’s doing it. Could they be plotting something bigger together? They seem to loathe one another, but I’d be a fool to take anything at face value here.
“You see,” Dia explains when the clapping finally slows, “with the recent emptying of that strange little village on the southern tip of the island, an opportunity to expand has presented itself.
“We have yet to secure a contractor to manage the job, but we have unwavering faith that the right person will be found. The right person can always be found, for the right price.”
The subtext: some mourning dad, or mom, somewhere is about to give up his contracting business to get his dead kid into this place.
I glance in Ben’s direction. He and Garnet are gone. Are they together because he thinks I’m in California? Or could there be more to it? Perhaps Ben and Garnet were playing me. But to what end? As the ceremony comes to a close, as everyone fans out, and as Pilot continues whispering to me all the ways he’ll ruin me, I realize what’s happening: I’m letting all the darkness here get to me—the devils in charge, the slimy Guardians. Ben isn’t like them. He’s not.
But then why was he with Garnet?
“You’re on your own,” Pilot snaps at me. “Enjoy the long, slow walk toward your own death.”
Ignoring him comes easily. I head toward the woods—so I can go to Gigi’s and dispose of her remains like I promised—but I run smack into Harper. She has her hands on her hips. Her clones are arranged in a circle around her, but they’re one short: Tallulah Josey isn’t here.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back, Murdering Merchant,” Harper says.
“It wasn’t by choice.”
Plum chimes in. “Is that your excuse for that big hair of yours, too?” Chorus of oh snaps. She high-fives the Model UN from Hell. “As in, not by choice? Get it? Your hair?”
“Yeah, thanks for explaining that, um, sick burn.”
Harper eyes me. “So how does it feel?”
I hope she’s not talking about Ben and Garnet. I haven’t even had time to sit with that yet; I’m sure as hell not ready to talk about it, especially not to her.
“Having my life stolen from me?” I ask. “Or standing here and gossiping with my favorite gang of dead girls?”
“How does it feel to know you’re going to lose the Big V to me now that Headmaster Voletto is here?” Harper juts her butt out and begins gyrating on the spot. “I’m gonna be twerking up on that fin
e man, and you can kiss your chance to win good-bye.”
“What’s twerking?”
“How long have you been in a coma?” she asks in a fluttering, glittery huff. “Look, just keep your stuff neat ’n’ tidy on your side of the room, got it? I don’t know how small your trailer was back in C-A, but we keep it spick-and-span ’round these parts.”
Wait. She’s not saying what I think she’s saying, is she?
“I’m rooming with you?”
“There’s gotta be a reason your boxes of poor bitch junk are all over my place. Nothin’ to keep secret from you anymore, moron. You’ve graduated to the big leagues, I guess.” She crosses her arms. “And don’t get too excited. You can’t kill me like you did your last roommate.”
“What?”
“Murdering Merchant on her murdering rampage. You shot Gigi before you offed Pilot. You’re a total psycho.”
She and her team whirl—in unmistakably perfect timing—and strut away. I’m about to shout that I had nothing to do with Gigi’s suicide, but why bother? The truth doesn’t matter on Wormwood Island. Avoiding a thousand death stares—do people really think I killed Gigi?—I head toward the dorms. Reluctantly.
I stop dead when I spot Ben and Garnet standing outside the boys’ dorm.
They don’t notice me. So I tuck behind a tree. And peek out to watch them.
Six or seven boxes are stacked against the dorm’s stone walls. Garnet is holding one as she leans, balances, and kisses Ben, who’s crouched to hoist up another box, on the cheek.
Feeling hot all over, I watch his reaction. This will be the test. Was he faking with me? Is he still into her? Did he lie to me about the two of them?
He smiles at her.
And I want to die.
Maybe I’m already dead, and this is Hell.
This is definitely Hell.
Garnet disappears through the front door, leaving Ben outside. My stomach is in my throat. It was only hours ago that Ben was kissing me. Was that all BS? Who kisses someone and then goes back to his ex-girlfriend?