Boarding School Girls

by Helen Eve

  ‘I feel safe here,’ she says.

  I look at the decrepit room behind us; the drop before us. ‘There’s no way out!’

  ‘But, you see, there is.’ Before I know what she’s doing, she’s reached into my bag and pulled out the Tarot cards that I’ve hidden from her for a year.

  ‘Why did you convince the Starlets that I could tell fortunes?’ I ask as she shuffles the cards. ‘Why did you want them to accept me? Was it just to get close to Jack?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Maybe I wanted to rebel against my mother even then. Syrena liked you, and maybe I didn’t despise her as much as I thought I did. Or maybe…’

  She leans her head back against the wall. ‘Maybe I just liked you. With no agenda.’

  ‘That’s the most unexpected thing you’ve ever said,’ I tell her. ‘So you never believed I was psychic?’

  She laughs. ‘No one can tell the future. Most of us can’t even see the present.’

  She holds the cards to her chest, and I almost tell her that I don’t believe it either. I’ve waited long enough for a gift that shows no sign of materializing. But then she stretches out her arms, letting the cards fall between her fingers, and flings the whole pack into the sky. For a moment we’re surrounded by our collapsing destinies, as the Empress and the Fool and the Moon and the Tower jostle for topmost position. And, as they catch on the breeze and float away, I see that my mother was right.

  You’ll just know.

  I’ve believed that Siena is impossible to read because she surrenders nothing. But now I see another possibility: that the swirling, swooping darkness I see in place of her future means that, for reasons I can’t consider, she doesn’t have one.

  ‘Don’t come up here anymore,’ I say, my heart beating hard. ‘That’s not a prediction, it’s a … a cri de coeur.’

  Her face is close to mine; her eyes are so blue that, even when I close my own, I still see cornflower. ‘Come on,’ she says, pulling me inside. ‘I want to swap dresses with you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I look at the yellow dress that I’ve borrowed from Madison to ensure that it gets a proper outing. ‘You’re wearing your dream gown. And yellow gives you a conniption fit.’

  ‘My dress hurts,’ she says breathlessly as she wriggles out of the corset.

  ‘I don’t want to wear something painful,’ I protest as she imprisons me inside layers of chiffon and ties a sash around my waist.

  ‘It’ll do you good to learn how to stand correctly,’ she says as she pulls on the yellow dress. ‘And it’ll do me good to wear something I can breathe in unassisted for once.’

  ‘I thought we were the same size,’ I wince, pushing my feet into her unyielding glass-heeled shoes. ‘These are tiny. They must cripple you.’

  She pulls her hair loose, letting long waves crash around her face and to her hips. Shaking herself free of adornments, she weaves gold into my own hair until a burning glow fills my head like fireflies.

  ‘I’m not wearing shoes tonight,’ she says in satisfaction. Her legs are long and brown against the floating yellow fabric, and, barefoot, she looks like a flower fairy. She takes from her bag a swirlingly multi-coloured rose and smiles as she pushes it into her hair.

  I try to memorize the way she looks right now, because she’ll never look this way again, and because I no longer have to hide it.

  ‘You had a boyfriend in Paris,’ she remembers.

  ‘Max,’ I tell her, ‘is short for Maxine.’

  ‘How long have you known?’ she asks. ‘That you were…’

  ‘Since the first time I saw you,’ I tell her, and I don’t know what makes me say it out loud except that perhaps I believe this is the last chance I’ll ever have.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Siena

  Jack and I walk towards Elevation when there are no more excuses. I drag my feet, dreading the anachronistic wedding-themed hall, but he pulls me onwards at top speed.

  ‘You’re very enthusiastic,’ I tell him. ‘Especially as you hate formal events.’

  ‘You’re going to enjoy this one,’ he says as he holds open the door.

  At first I think I’ve walked into a weird parallel universe where I enter one door and exit in another location entirely. But we’re not in the darkroom, where I’ve spent so many solitary hours memorizing faces I’ve never bothered to speak to; learning about perspective and tone and composition; placing and shaping and working students into a semblance of unity and free will that doesn’t heed popularity or status or money. We’re in the hall, surrounded not only by my photographs, but by their human forms.

  ‘You did this?’ I ask Jack incredulously.

  He kisses me on the forehead. ‘You did it, Siena. I was just a witness.’

  Cameras flash endlessly as we pass through the crowd. Usually I make for the centre of the room, because no one worth knowing congregates anywhere else. Divisions are usually as obvious as if people are in containers. But tonight I can’t find the Starlets, or the Stripes, or the Council, because the dance floor is as unified as the pictures on the walls. I don’t even stand out. People whirl around us in an odd time lapse of today and yesterday as if we’ll always exist here in every guise we’ve ever taken, and as if we don’t exist at all.

  ‘You did it!’ squeaks Cassidy. ‘You’re back together, and you’re winning!’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet. People are still voting.’

  ‘It’s just a formality,’ Phoebe says. ‘Your entrance with Jack is the moment everyone was waiting for.’

  ‘So I’m not getting elected for my intellect?’ I ask wryly.

  ‘No,’ she says with a flash of honesty. ‘But you’ve got a whole year of being Head Girl ahead of you. No one will underestimate you after that.’

  Madison is crying, but I think this time with happiness. ‘You’re wearing my dress. It looks as beautiful as I knew it would, if you just gave yellow a chance.’

  Libby elbows her out of the way. ‘Something’s happened,’ she says anxiously. ‘I know you so well, Siena. I can always tell when something’s wrong.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ I agree. ‘After all, you’re paid to know.’

  Colour drains from her face. ‘I…’ she manages. ‘Give me a moment to explain.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your motivations. But please tell me why my mother considered this necessary. Was it a complete lack of faith in me?’

  ‘No.’ For a moment she sounds as if she cares. ‘She worried that your compassion would obstruct her – your – ambition. I was a means of keeping you distant.’

  ‘Like an exhibit?’ I ask. ‘Pinned into shape behind glass?’

  ‘Exactly. And, obviously, to keep you on the straight and narrow, away from corrupting influences. I failed on that front.’

  ‘I believed you were my Fairy Godmother,’ I say. ‘But all this time it was Syrena.’

  ‘That child,’ mutters Libby. ‘The sooner she’s in military school, the better.’

  ‘She’s not so bad.’ I smile despite myself. ‘You just have to get to know her.’

  ‘Next you’ll be saying that Romy isn’t so bad either. You know I’d be as loyal to you without any payment. Whereas she…’

  ‘Libby, I know everything,’ I say. ‘Including how you fell down the ladder. This means the end of the Starlets.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to,’ she protests. ‘Even if you don’t want to continue, I could…’

  Romy laughs loud and long as Libby explains ways in which the Starlets could succeed with me in a less prominent role. Her voice fades as Jack and I are propelled to the stage.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Romy

  Siena’s life snaps into alignment as she takes her place beside Jack, accepting her title but refusing her crown. The Starlets and Stripes surround her in a circle that pulses and jumps and screams, and she lets Jack raise her hand above their heads and punch the air as they take in a victory that rains star-shaped con
fetti. Somehow she’s transformed Temperley High, but not, as it always seemed she would, for worse.

  More people join them onstage and push and jostle and kiss her and shake his hand until finally, finally, Jack wraps both his arms tightly around her, so tightly that I know she can believe no one else is there.

  ‘I need my dress back,’ she says as she hurries off the stage. She pulls me into an alcove where we swap clothes once again, and she arranges her hair into its usual order and dons the crown and sash.

  ‘I need an official photograph,’ she explains. ‘Then we can change back.’

  ‘Don’t worry; I have nothing better to do than endlessly swap outfits with you,’ I say, but she’s already beckoning Jack and gesturing at Libby.

  ‘Can you fetch Tristan?’ she asks Libby. ‘He takes a very soft-focus shot.’

  ‘He’s dancing with Sam.’ Libby glares at Jack as he laughs. ‘Only because he doesn’t like to lead. I’m tonight’s photographer.’

  Libby frowns as Siena twirls and smiles. ‘You look too happy.’

  ‘It’s hard not to look happy tonight,’ Siena says. She arranges herself and Jack into a formal embrace, carefully holding his right hand with her left so that her fingers are obscured. ‘You need to send this to my mother as soon as possible.’

  Libby looks stricken. ‘I already sent your mother a picture of your winning moment. Was I not supposed to?’

  ‘You sent her mother a picture of the other dress?’ Siena asks. ‘The yellow dress?’

  ‘She ordered me to,’ says Libby feebly. ‘She wanted a picture at the instant you won.’

  ‘We have to go home.’ Siena pushes Libby away. ‘Right now.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I say hurriedly, although I don’t know why. ‘Stay here.’

  She looks amused, despite her evident worry. ‘I’m coming straight back.’

  She blows a kiss, and I watch her, framed underneath a time-lapsed arch that depicts her as a cheerleader, a fairy, a schoolgirl, a hockey champion, a ragged orphan and a pink Cinderella. Light frames her like a halo in which all her past selves seem not to have been cast off, but absorbed.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Siena

  I lean forward in my seat. A beat of anticipation about finally having something substantial to share with Stella is overtaken by the possibility that she may no longer be interested in hearing it.

  I lead Jack to the back of the house, where he holds me against the wall and kisses me, and I laugh because his eyes are blazing with an intensity that frightens me, and I don’t know how else to make it dissipate.

  ‘Wait for me here.’ I run up the stairs and push open the door where Stella and Syrena should be sleeping like sisters who share everything and want for nothing, because they have each other, and know that, even in sleep.

  Syrena’s head is resting on her hand, her face lit by the spinning stars of her constellation lamp. But she’s alone, and she doesn’t stir as I touch her softly rounded cheek.

  ‘How could I have thought that any of this was your fault?’ I whisper. ‘And, if it were, how could I have thought that mattered?’

  I return to Jack after checking the other bedrooms. ‘I can’t find Stella.’

  He pulls a face. ‘Don’t make me go into the party,’ he says as we walk to the front door. ‘My dad’s going to ask me about my exams.’

  ‘He’ll be pleased with you,’ I remind him. ‘We’ve achieved something tonight.’

  ‘You could at least have brought Syrena as protection,’ he says. ‘Does she still have the heretic’s fork Edward gave her for Christmas?’

  I laugh, and the murmur of voices in the dining room immediately hushes.

  * * *

  As I push open the doors and take in the enormous white cake with its elegant figurines of me and Jack on a towering top tier, the silver stars dusting the table, and the confetti covering the plates as though Elevation is at once my wedding day and my funeral and my salvation and my ruination, I’m too late to save this little girl who would have listened to anything I told her and copied any example I set her. As the example I set was one of lies and detachment and an inability to love, this is what she’s become.

  Stella sits in my place, wearing a white dress that obscures every bit of the child she was this afternoon. She’s no longer that child, because she’s beautiful in a way that will make people watch and covet and love and despise her without ever caring why. Her beauty has the power to strip away everything that makes her worth knowing.

  Every time I’ve greeted Stella since she could walk, she’s reached me as fast as she can travel. But tonight she can’t move, any more than I can. We’re deadlocked, and trapped, and condemned. I see too late that the detachment I’ve strived for has kept me from the people who value me for what I am, and moulded me into a symbol of thwarted ambition.

  ‘You deceived me,’ Seraphina tells me with a flick of her mobile phone on which I see a girl in a yellow dress, barefoot and loose-haired and incandescent with undignified happiness that’s entirely at odds with her plans. ‘Now you see that you’re replaceable.’

  Jack’s face is sweet and inherently trusting. ‘I can’t see you anymore,’ I tell him in a voice steady and cold enough for him to believe me, because he must have a chance of avoiding the damage that I’ll otherwise cause him, no matter how hard I fight against it.

  ‘I love you,’ he tells me.

  ‘That’s why I have to let you go,’ I say, even though my lips are numb and I can hardly speak through the pain tightening across my chest.

  Jack’s father pushes him out of the door and I flinch away as he reaches for my hand. I argue with Seraphina through a pulse of panic and guilt, and I stare past her to Stella, frozen in her seat, her enormous eyes dark and frightened. I run outside, thinking of nothing but ridding myself of beauty and vanity so that she can see me once without this gilding.

  I pick up a lighter and wrench off my sash and dress, so that I’m just wearing my slip. Throwing down the dress, I hold back the sash as I set the dress on fire. There’s a dull roar in the airless humidity as flames tear through silk and dupion and chiffon, because the dress, despite having held me in its thrall like iron bars, is substanceless and snuffed out in seconds.

  Stella has followed me outside. She reaches for the sash that hid such deception for so many years, and I snatch it back. ‘Stay away from this.’

  Pulling out her hateful sapphire comb, I watch golden waves of life-saving hair tumble to her waist. ‘Always wear your hair like this,’ I tell her, ‘and don’t listen to anyone who tells you differently.’

  She’s crying. ‘Where are you going?’

  I put my hand to her cheek. ‘There’s something I have to do.’

  ‘Don’t leave me.’ Her voice is the last thing I hear as I close the car door behind me.

  * * *

  At school, Elevation is still in full swing, the fireworks due just before midnight. I try to stay on course, but before entering the tower I turn to see the Starlets dancing under a spotlight. It occurs to me how complete they are without me and how little they need me, even if I’ve believed myself to be their cornerstone. Without me they have Libby, and without Libby they have Phoebe, and it continues in ever-changing circles as they change and fight and regenerate and endure, whether I’m there or not.

  I run up the stairs and climb the ladder, and I stand amongst detritus and discarded splendour and doom. And, as I have a hundred times before, I climb out of the window and stand on the ledge.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Romy

  I stay at Elevation for the sake of appearances, taking advantage of the distraction as my phone rings to leave the pounding dance floor.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask Jack, smiling. ‘Trouble with the mother-in-law?’

  The urgency of his voice makes me move immediately. ‘I need you to find Siena.’

  Woodlands is deserted, and Siena’s room unlocked and unoccupied.

  �
��Where else would she go?’ he asks as I run back outside. ‘The tower?’

  ‘No,’ I say with certainty. ‘I asked her not to go back there, and I’m sure she was listening.’

  ‘She’s there,’ he says. ‘Look, I just know. Please.’

  He’s right, because on the bottom step of the spiral staircase I see her shoe, its glass heel sparkling in the dim light.

  ‘Are you coming?’ I ask him. ‘I can’t do this alone.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ he says. ‘Just make her stay.’

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Siena

  How long will you love me? I often asked Jack.

  Usually he told me forever, or for infinity, or quoted an incomprehensible sci-fi line, but on one occasion he paused. It was a warm day and we were sitting in a grassy corner of the courtyard, and he pointed up at the tower. Until the clock stops ticking.

  I was offended, because a ticking clock seemed so impermanent and transient in relation to his usual responses. But he explained, more fully than I considered necessary, that the clock hadn’t missed a single beat since the school was built, and that there was a back-up generator to ensure that nothing like a power cut could affect it; and that there was in fact only one way to stop the clock.

  We can be confident that that will never happen, he said. So it’s the same as loving you to infinity. And beyond.

  I remove my binding sash, letting the frills of my lace slip swirl and dance, and I wind it around the centre of the clock as tightly and as many times as I can. I hear shouts from below as students call my name; and eventually the sounds settle into a chant that rises on the windless air and surrounds me.

  The clock doesn’t want to stop. The ticking continues after the hands have stalled, straining as I tighten the tourniquet and stifle it with all my weight.

  Chapter Sixty