A flash of something white in the fireplace catches my eye. It sticks out of the soot, and I reach out to grab it.
After brushing the dirt and soot off, I realize what it is: part of an old photograph. I see a girl’s body dressed in a faded Madigan uniform. The other half of the picture and her head are torn away, but there’s writing on the back. I have to trace my finger over the letters as if I’m writing them myself to figure out what it says. “Me and him.” This photograph meant something to someone once. I prop it against the wall and promise to tape it up the next time I come. It feels like an appropriate way to honor this place’s history, its story before me.
I stretch out, lying on the packed dirt of the floor, and finally let myself think the thought that has been clamoring for attention since I woke up: I’m eighteen today. When I was little, I learned that most girls celebrate birthdays with big parties and presents and cake. They create a day that’s all about them. It’s a strange custom, but still, I like the idea of it. I decide that this cottage is my birthday present.
The only presents Mother ever gave me were meant to make me more seductive: makeup, clothing, or jewelry—anything that would make me noticeable and irresistible. She once devoted an entire week to showing me how to put on eye makeup for every occasion and every outfit. The week after that, she taught me how to flutter my eyelashes, how to peer through them enticingly, how to use the expressiveness of my eyes to feign remorse or fear or any other emotion I would need. “Eyes are the most important tool you have,” she told me. “You have to control them at all times, or they will give you away.”
Like the mother of the Venetian courtesan and poet Veronica Franco, Mother taught me everything she knew about how to attract a man. Franco’s mother was a courtesan as well, and she trained her daughter to be a captivating, powerful, eloquent woman. She was utterly irresistible, just as I am meant to be.
I fall asleep thinking of Veronica as the rain softens outside. When I wake, the day has grown even darker. It’s dusk, and I don’t know how to get back to campus, but my growling stomach urges me to try.
I leave the cottage behind and head in the most likely direction.
The sky is now deep blue with a netting of gray clouds covering the sliver of moon like a mantilla. The trees are ink drawings: gnarled lines beneath the dark sky. There are no identifying markers that I can recognize, but I stay calm. I can find my way. I’m sure of it.
I walk along the moors as the deep blue sky melts into blackness. The crescent moon offers almost nothing in the way of light, and the wind and the rain grow stronger, battling my every move, dragging down my soaked clothes. The only sound I can hear beyond the roar of the wind is the creaking of the trees, their branches reaching for me as I pass. The ground beneath me feels unsteady, as if it might give way and swallow me whole.
I take deep breaths and keep going. I will not let the immensity of the moors frighten me.
I must have been walking for an hour in the heavy downpour. My legs ache, and the grumbling in my stomach has grown into a roar. My teeth clack together, and though I wrap my arms around myself, I can’t stop the shivers running through me.
I am lost in the shadows of the night.
And then, suddenly, a sound. I hurry to it, to the voice calling my name.
The person I find, however, is the last person I want to see.
“What happened?” Arthur asks when I practically stumble on him. He looks just as drenched as I am, as if he’s been looking for me for hours. The rain slides down his cheekbones like a caress. His T-shirt sticks to his chest, where there are muscles I don’t remember him having. “You’re miles from the cottage. And the school.”
I force myself to look up into his eyes, and I have to blink as the rain streams down my face. “I got lost.” I mean to sound cold, matter-of-fact, like someone who doesn’t need his help. The voice I answer him with, though, is small and shaky. Real.
He takes a deep breath, looking down at me. “We’ll get you back. You need to get warm.”
He glances at me again as we start moving. He curses under his breath, some harsh word I don’t quite catch. “I shouldn’t have sent you out here. You could have killed yourself. It’s not forgiving land. But I wanted—” He stops himself. “I wanted you to have somewhere you could be alone. Be the Vivian I remember.”
I shiver, though I don’t know if it’s from the cold or from his words. I don’t say anything back. I can’t.
We say nothing else for nearly an hour as the rain finally lets up and he leads me back to the school. It’s only when campus is in sight that he stops and looks at me. “I’m not your friend anymore,” he says, scowling. He means to sound gruff, but I can hear the faint waver of uncertainty in his voice.
“I know,” I answer.
“I won’t help you destroy Ben.”
“I know that, too.”
He sighs and looks as if he wants to say something else, but then he shakes his head. His hair has mostly dried out now, and it’s the same mussed, black hair that I remember. He turns away, then turns back. “Happy birthday,” he says quietly. Reluctantly.
I feel my eyes grow wider as I stare at him. Why would he say that? Why would he even remember my birthday?
Before I can think of what to say, he walks away, leaving me to face Madigan on my own. I watch him go, his tall form a black shadow in the dim moonlight. The one person in the world who knows and cares about my birthday. Even if he hates me, too.
I tell myself to focus as I trudge up the hill to the main building. Lightning flashes, lighting up the old gray stones, and I start to run.
I buzz in at the main gate. A teacher comes out, his eyebrows raised and his mouth a tight line of disapproval as he points me to the headmaster’s office. I leave a trail of water along the marble floor as I march. I’m shivering constantly now, which will help me with Harriford.
I see him out front, talking to the secretary. His eyes grow wide when I enter, and I fill my own eyes with regret and fear and misery.
“Are you all right? We were worried.” He steps forward, then looks back at the secretary. She glares at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I wail. “I was feeling homesick, so I went outside, and I got lost. And it was raining so hard, and I didn’t know where I was.”
I hide my face in my hands and let my body shake as if I’m quietly sobbing.
The headmaster stays where he is, held by the force of the secretary’s glare, but I can feel the sympathy radiating from him. “Don’t cry,” he says, helpless. “It’s all right now.”
“Shouldn’t she be disciplined for going off school property?” the secretary asks, her voice cutting through Harriford’s sympathy.
“Now then, I’m sure it was just a mistake.”
I lift my eyes, watery with false tears, and nod. “I won’t do it again, I promise!” It’s a promise I’ll break, of course, but I certainly won’t be caught again.
He nods furiously at me. “There, see?” he tells the secretary. “No harm done. Now go warm up. If you feel feverish or anything, the school nurse will help you.”
“Thank you, Headmaster Harriford.” I attempt a smile through my tears, then glide out of the room.
Mrs. Hallie meets me at the entrance to Faraday, concern etched in every wrinkle of her face. “Are you all right, darling?” she asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I resist the urge to shake it off and nod. “I just need to warm up. I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.”
“No trouble, dear. I was just worried for you.” She looks at me more closely, and I try to keep a remorseful expression on my face. “Hurry along and shower,” she says finally. “And let me know if you need anything at all.”
I force myself to smile at her. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Hallie.”
I claim one of the empty shower stalls and stand under th
e hot water, letting it wash away the shivers.
It won’t wash away my memories, though, which have been coming at me all day. Especially the one of my eighth birthday, when I realized that my world was much darker than I had imagined. That day, I found three stray kittens hiding in the bushes in the front yard. They were so tiny that they almost didn’t seem real. I ran to fetch Arthur, sure that he would know what to do. He took one look at the kittens and hurried inside, sneaking a carton of milk out of the fridge and a couple of bowls from the cabinet. He set the bowls of milk in front of the kittens, softly coaxing them to drink. “You can’t tell your mother,” he warned me. “We’ll take care of them together.”
He helped me carry them up to my room, where we hid them in my closet. But Helper must have been watching us, because not nearly an hour had passed before he told Mother. She stormed into my room, pushing Arthur aside without a word. I clutched the mewling kittens as she towered over me. Slowly, she reached out a hand, and I only had the strength to hesitate for a second before handing her one of the helpless creatures. I remember she kept her eyes on mine as a knife flashed in her hand and she slit the kitten’s throat. I remember the gurgling scream the kitten gave as its life flowed out of it. I think I’ll remember that scream for the rest of my life.
By the time Mother had killed the last one, tears were streaming so thickly down my face that I couldn’t see her gray eyes glaring into mine.
“Remember this, Vivian,” Mother said, her voice calm and cold. “I will kill anything you love.” Then the ice left her eyes and she reached out, cradling my chin in her hand. “I will not let love destroy you,” she said softly.
After she left, Arthur hugged me close and let me cry until I had nothing left.
I knew even then that she did what she did to show me how painful love could be. I knew it was a lesson I needed to learn. A lesson I would never forget.
I shut my eyes tightly against the memory and step out of the shower. Back in my room, I curl up in a blanket on my bed and write a quick email to Mother, telling her that I got closer to Ben while implementing my desirable and intriguing outsider status. I recount the scenes from the literary magazine meeting and dinner the night before and hope that will be enough. I close the laptop before I can read her reply and take out a notebook.
Mother sent several notebooks along with my textbooks so that I could take notes, or at least pretend to, in class, but I’ll appropriate one as a sketchbook. My fingers itch as soon as I touch the paper, and when I find a pencil, I let it fly across the page. I’m sketching my cottage, my new refuge, so that when I can’t visit it, at least I can see it. I can see the rough wooden walls, the wide hearthside, the bit of remaining roof that shelters me from the rain. It’s different from my usual drawings, the ones that show a harsh, cruel world—the world as it truly is.
I keep going, losing myself in these drawings, sketching one of the trees I have seen clinging to the land. And then I sketch Ben. I look for the arrogant features in his face, drawing the enemy as I need to see him. I want to draw Arthur. But I don’t. I can’t quite capture him yet. He’s too unfamiliar, too wild. Instead, I draw an abstract of him, a figure bearing down on the viewer, blocking the way. He’s a force trying to stop me, and that’s how I need to think of him.
The Arthur I used to know was the one person who knew about my art, and he would write poems to go along with my drawings. Ekphrasis, he called it, poetry to echo the beauty of visual art. His poems were like bursts of fresh air in the stillness. We would hide away and spend hours trading sketches and poems, making our own conversation, responding to each other’s creativity. He made my art matter.
I’m so wrapped up in thinking about the way things used to be between us that I don’t even notice when Claire comes in.
“Thank goodness you’re all right!” she yells, startling the pencil from my grasp. “Where’d you go?”
She’s standing over me, glancing down curiously at my sketchbook. I cover the drawing of Ben’s conceited face with my hand, but I’m not quick enough. I see a flash of recognition in her eyes.
She looks up to meet my gaze, and I shake my head, silently begging her not to say anything. She doesn’t. She just waits for an answer to her initial question.
I tell her what I told Harriford about my getting lost in the moors.
“Are you okay?” she asks, genuinely concerned. Her forehead wrinkles as she peers down at me.
I nod. “I’m fine. Just stupid, that’s all.”
She looks like she wants to keep lecturing me, but she keeps her mouth shut. Instead, she hands me a small package wrapped in napkins. “I thought you might be hungry.”
She’s made me a sandwich, sliced chicken breast and cheese on thick wheat bread. My stomach rumbles, and I look up at her with what I hope is a thankful expression. “This is perfect,” I say before tearing into it, barely chewing before I swallow.
Claire looks pleased as she settles down at her desk. I don’t understand this girl. But I begin to think that if I had been raised as a normal human being, if I wasn’t a weapon constantly aimed at others, I would truly want her to be my friend.
CHAPTER 7
On Sundays we’re allowed to go into town, and I’m the first one in line for the shuttle. Loworth, the nearest village, is a ten-minute drive, and as soon as I step off the bus onto a muddy sidewalk, I know there won’t be much here for me.
The village is only a small collection of short stone buildings, little more than an intersection of two streets. There are a few generic shops, a pub, and a post office. All of the buildings are frighteningly close to the road, and as I walk past what must be a couple of apartment buildings, I can see right into the windows, where one family is gathered around a kitchen table and one man watches a soccer game in nothing but his underwear. A few elderly women sit outside on a bench, shaking their heads as their quiet town becomes overrun with Madigan students.
I head for the charity shop first, where they sell ratty old clothing and broken pieces of pottery and other strange treasures all jumbled together on rickety racks and wooden shelves. I don’t find any art supplies, but I do discover a blue and white china teacup with the handle missing. If I fill it with water and place some small flowers in it, it will brighten up my desk. Or, I can break it into pieces and make a mosaic. That little teacup, sold for only fifty pence, makes me hum with anticipation.
I also find a pair of beaten-up combat boots that will be perfect for stomping around the moors. They fit well enough, and I put them on as soon as I pay for them.
The drugstore has charcoal pencils, brushes, and adequate- quality paints, and in the bookstore, I find a little journal hidden away in the sales rack. It’s made of worn brown leather and filled with blank, rough-cut pages. Perfect for an impromptu sketchbook and much better than the lined notebook I’ve been using. I’ll just tell Mother these expenses were for seductive clothing or some other necessary purchase.
Suddenly I hear the nasal twang of Arabella’s voice before I see her. I creep around the bookshelves until I spot her with several of her hangers-on, laughing at the covers of cheesy romances. Her friends all laugh the way she does: their hands covering their mouths, the gleeful giggles escaping through the space between their fingers.
I wait until they move toward the teen fiction section in the back before paying for my new sketchbook and slipping out of the store.
I explore for the next hour, wandering around the village in my new boots and peering into more windows. All the buildings are made of stone, built to last. The windows are tiny, some with warped glass panes that must have survived at least a century.
Before I even realize it, I wander into a cemetery. I survey the graves, covered with slate and rising crookedly above the ground, all jammed together under the watchful eye of the church clock tower. The day is gray and misty, and I shiver in the gloom as I shuffle through the
plots, reading about infants and women and men who died all too young. My feet sink into the muddy ground, but I hardly notice. I’m too caught up in the depictions of angels and skulls and crossbones on the headstones around me. I have never been in a cemetery before, but I can’t help but be enchanted by its bleakness. It reminds me of home.
And yet Loworth is nothing like the concrete-and-brick towns I’m used to back home. History seems to shimmer on the air here, and I wonder if I can capture that feeling in a drawing.
I meander out of the cemetery and behind the parsonage, where I come upon a house. It’s a freestanding stone structure, narrow and tall. The gabled roof is pockmarked and missing several of its stone shingles. It rises high above me, and when I crane my neck, I see a flock of ravens shooting into the air, their caws sending shivers down my spine as their giant black wings flap wildly. The gardens surrounding the house are overgrown, their vines strangling a dying tree and climbing up the gray stone walls. The windows are shuttered and dark.
I stop for several moments, staring, as if I expect the house to shake off its stillness and reveal its secrets to me. Or maybe I’m expecting it to sink into the earth that seems to be trying so hard to claim it.
I hear a muffled sound behind me and whirl around. Two people are having a whispered conversation somewhere in the graveyard, and I head toward it. Because there’s one voice I recognize. And it belongs to someone I need to talk to.
G-Man stands in a secluded corner of the cemetery, half-hidden by a straggly tree and a tall obelisk over a grave. He’s handing something to a boy I faintly recognize from the halls, and the boy looks around. I duck behind a wide headstone, pressing my hands against its smooth, cold surface, before he can see me.
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