by Keary Taylor
My eyes scanned the page, and it reflected what he just said.
I felt heavier and sicker than I’d ever felt in my entire life.
Expelled.
That was what the word read, easy and clear.
“Borden, you will not graduate come the end of this semester,” the Dean said. And now his voice shook, just slightly, with disappointment and rage. “Margot, you will not retain your faculty scholarship. Borden, you are to immediately leave the Society Boys’ house.”
“I’ve already moved out,” he said hollowly. He stared at his expulsion letter, looking dead and empty.
Dean Lowell nodded curtly. “I wish to express my exceptional disappointment. The two of you have been nothing but model citizens at this school. You’ve gotten excellent grades, been examples of what this university stands for. You should have had a bright future. But trespassing on school grounds, in an administrator’s office, is something that cannot be tolerated. And this kind of playground drama will not be excused. A bit of school-ground drama could have been settled in a much more civilized way.”
“A bit of school-ground drama?”
I finally snapped. The words bit out of me harsh and loud. I stood up, placing my hands on the Dean’s desk. “The Society Boys tried to kill Nathaniel Nightingale. They stole from us, on multiple occasions. They’ve turned everyone against Borden. You talk about model students, yet you’ve done nothing about those walking nightmares. Why? Because they have money? Because you don’t want to lose funding from their parents?”
“Margot,” my dad said under his breath.
“Yes, it was me who posted the proof for everyone to finally know the truth. It’s time someone started calling out the bullshit that happens at this school,” I said, shaking my head.
“You do not run this school, Miss Bell,” Dean Lowell said, the volume of his voice rising slightly. “You do not get to make the calls. Now, my decision is final, and since you are no longer a student at this school, I will ask the both of you to leave the campus grounds immediately.”
I felt as if I’d just been slapped, and for the first time, it really sank in.
The school where I had lived my whole life, had just kicked me out.
I was no longer welcome at Alderidge.
I tried to swallow around my dry mouth, but my tongue stuck to the back of my throat.
So, I turned, and with Borden, we walked out of the office.
By this time, there were a few students in the hallways. I felt as if I had a huge flashing sign above my head that said EXPELLED. I felt ashamed. I felt angry. I felt…
I felt…
I didn’t know. Maybe I was in shock.
But I felt some satisfaction when they looked at the pages we’d hung. When they started whispering to each other.
The three of us made our way down the hall. And when we turned in front of my dad’s classroom, he stopped.
“I think you know we’ll be talking some more after school,” he said, his tone very controlled.
I just swallowed and nodded.
As I turned to walk back out, I found Nathaniel coming down the hall. His expression was serious, dark and guarded. I was a storm of emotions as I looked at him.
He stopped just in front of Borden and I, and I wondered what he was seeing. Did we look ashamed? Scared? Angry? I didn’t know what I felt, so I had no idea how I might look to someone outside my own head.
“You two alright?” he asked. And I had never heard his tone so measured.
Automatically, I nodded. Borden did the same.
Nathaniel took a deep, slow breath in through his nostrils. He let it out, his eyes drifting away, and I knew, he was at a loss for what to say.
“We need to talk later,” I said. “Can I come by the solarium after your shift is over?”
It seemed as if he were having a hard time meeting my eyes when they came back to mine. He didn’t say anything, but he nodded, and then he walked away, headed toward his first class of the day.
Borden and I stood there for a minute, watching as all the students we were no longer a part of walked around us, on their way to classes we were no longer allowed to attend.
I’d made my decision weeks ago, that this would be my last semester. So really, this didn’t matter. It didn’t really change anything.
But it felt like the two smallest fingers of my hand had been chopped off. They’d been a part of my identity my entire life, and now someone had ripped them away.
I took slow steps forward, counting each and every one of them as I went. Because they were my last. Yes, I might step foot back in this school. I would have to. I was going to have to clean out my mother’s office now. But after I left, everything would be different.
The front doors were within sight, when through them, walked David Sinclair, flanked by all of the other senior Society Boys.
And it truly was like magic, because their gaze only slightly floated over me and Borden, before they moved on. They walked down the hall, and hardly even seemed to notice that we existed.
They walked right on by, not a second glance or a word spoken.
As we watched them go, Borden and I looked at each other, our eyes widening with awe. It was almost as if we could read each other’s minds.
It worked.
We both glanced back and watched as the Boys turned right down a hall and disappeared out of view.
It had worked. We’d finally rid ourselves of them.
But at what cost?
I looked back at the doors, and together, Borden and I slowly walked toward them. And as we walked through them, we both seemed to be holding our breath.
And when we stepped outside, everything did feel different.
I felt…free. I felt a little wild. Untethered. I felt like I wanted to do a million things all at once. I had no time schedule, no restrictions. Suddenly, for the first time since I was five years old, I had no homework.
A little laugh bubbled out of my lips.
“What could possibly be funny right now, Margot?” Borden asked, looking over at me like I was a lunatic.
I laughed again and shook my head. “Homework,” I said, knowing I was indeed smiling like a lune. “For the first time in almost my entire life, I don’t have to stress about homework again.”
It took a second, but Borden did huff out a laugh. He shook his head and looked ahead. “I’m going to get a call from my father the second I get back to my apartment, and I can guarantee you one hundred percent he’s going to tell me I’m cut off forever, and you’re gleeful about not having homework?”
I shook my head at my own ridiculousness. “I’m sorry, Borden,” I said, meaning it. “I know this is awful and it’s definitely going to hit me hard later, what this all really means. But yes, for just this moment, I’m just really freaking grateful I don’t have to do homework tonight.”
Borden laughed. And then he laughed some more. And then we were both laughing and crying and holding our middles and looking up to the sky.
So much had changed in the last two days. My head was spinning from it all.
“Hey, do you have anything better you need to do right now?” I asked as a thought occurred to me.
“Apparently not,” Borden said with a chuckle.
“I’ve got an idea. It would be helpful if you came with me.”
Chapter Twenty
I marveled that evening as I walked back home by myself. It had worked. Really, this was the true test. And it had worked.
Borden and I had gone and grabbed the three rocks that had now stayed gold for a few days. We’d gone into town and taken it to a jeweler. He’d been suspicious and asked a lot of questions. We’d done a lot of lying and thankfully, we were both getting quite good at it. In the end, the man had bought all three lumps of gold. And now I had a huge amount of cash in my purse.
I felt nervous on the walk home. Borden tried to insist on walking me home, but I’d told him I was fine, despite how I actually felt. This
was more money than I’d ever had in my entire life, combined. It was enough to buy myself a car, a brand new one. But I had other plans.
Now that I wasn’t in school, I needed to pay my own way around home.
I wanted to pay my own way to the UK when we went in a few weeks.
And I needed to start saving up. Because now that I was done with school, every other plan I had was accelerated.
I was going to start saving up to go to the owners of Asteria House and make them an offer. I needed to start coming up with the money to make the repairs needed to make it livable.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and got everything I needed to make Dad’s favorite meal—meatloaf with mashed potatoes and asparagus. I took my time, making it the best I could possibly do. I even cleaned the house, top to bottom. I wanted him in as good of a mood as possible.
When he walked in, he looked around and sniffed the air. And I instantly felt the mood surrounding him lift just a little.
“You hungry?” I asked, offering a nervous smile.
He didn’t say anything, just nodded and followed me into the kitchen.
I dished him up a plate and set it in front of him, an extra-large portion that should keep him happy and full.
“Today was interesting,” he said after a few minutes of silent eating.
“Oh, yeah?” I asked, nervous to step into it all.
“I was getting a lot of particular looks today in class,” he said, meeting my eyes as he raised an eyebrow. “And there was a lot of behind-hand whispering. And most of them weren’t being particularly quiet.”
“I’m really sorry I embarrassed you, Dad,” I said, jumping right into my apology. “I never meant to make you look bad.”
He made a little grunt noise. “Actually, everyone seemed quite thrilled that for once, someone had dared to stand up to the Society Boys.”
My eyes widened as I looked up at my dad.
“They were all quite impressed at the way you and Borden threw caution to the wind and went after them so directly.”
I covered my smile up with a hand over my mouth. “Really?”
At my amusement, Dad glared at me. “The students might be singing you two as heroes. But that doesn’t mean I’m not exceptionally disappointed and a fair bit angry.”
That sobered me instantly. “I know.”
Dad took another bite and I could see the gears turning in his head as he thought. “And you should know. I’m not even a student, and I could hear the rumors and speculation running rampant already. People are wondering if you and Nathaniel broke up.”
I felt all of the color drain out of my face. “Why would they think that?”
Dad gave me a look, one that said he was questioning my intelligence at the moment. “Because you were with Borden, getting in trouble. They’re thinking you and Borden are a couple now.”
I sat straighter, my gaze falling to the tabletop. I hadn’t even considered it, what it would look like. Borden and I were together all the time.
But yesterday was different.
“Are you and Nathaniel broken up?” Dad asked, his tone a little softer and quieter. “Is there something going on between you and Borden?”
My eyes rose to meet Dad’s. I stared at him for two solid seconds, not knowing exactly what to say.
“I don’t know what’s going on with me and Nathaniel,” I said. “As you saw on Saturday night, we still have a few disagreements on how we deal with conflict. We need to talk.”
Dad continued to hold my gaze. “And you and Borden?”
I blinked twice. Something twisted in my stomach. “Me and Borden, nothing. We’re friends. He…” I paused, trying to explain it. “I’m not the kind of person who can just sit back and let people walk all over me or hurt the people I love. That might work for Nathaniel. But I can’t. And Borden isn’t asking me to be someone different than who I am.”
“That sounds a little bit like the start of a relationship,” my father said quietly.
I sat there in stunned silence. My stomach was doing strange things. It was angry and confused, just the same as my heart. “It’s not,” I said shortly. “I love Nathaniel. We might have problems, but that hasn’t changed.”
But as I got up and rinsed my empty plate, I found my mind going deeper and deeper into everything. How we handle conflict is a huge part of a relationship. As we’d now proven, Nathaniel and I took very different approaches. And it had come up twice now, causing a huge rift.
Where did that leave us?
So over the next three hours, while I waited for him to get off his shift in the library, I laid in my bed, feeling utterly sick to my stomach, trying to sort out what needed to be said and what had to be done.
At eight-fifty, when I got out of bed to walk to the solarium, I didn’t know. I had zero answers.
So, feeling like a nervous wreck, I walked across the grounds, no longer as a student, but an intruder.
Light was softly glowing as I walked down the stone path to the solarium. I knew there was something really wrong when I knocked first instead of walking right in.
Nathaniel had been lying on the couch, but sat up when I walked in and shut the door. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace, and that was the only light. His face was cast in an ethereal glow. He looked like a mystical god. His features were already sharp and brooding, enhanced ten-fold right then in the dim firelight.
Nervously, I walked around and sat on the edge of his bed.
And that was yet another indicator that something was wrong. I didn’t sit beside him. And I didn’t know if it could be fixed.
Neither of us said anything for several long moments, and I had to appreciate them…these couple of seconds where nothing had yet been said, and so nothing could quite be called broken.
For a few seconds, I could pretend that everything was still the same.
But it wasn’t, and we had to be grownups and deal with our problems.
“You just left, and I was really worried for you all day,” Nathaniel said, pushing us into the dark unknown.
“I knew you would try to talk me out of how I needed to deal with things,” I said. “And I didn’t want to jump into a fight right then.”
“I think that shows us we have a problem,” Nathaniel said. And just barely in his voice, I heard grief working its way to the surface.
“Apparently we do,” I said.
We were both quiet for a few beats, and I knew, neither of us knew where to go from here. What did we start with? What was owed and what could we really fix?
“I’m sure you heard some rumors at school today,” I said.
Nathaniel nodded, but didn’t say anything else.
“I did get expelled from school,” I started, stating the easiest thing to explain. “Apparently there were several witnesses who saw Borden and I going in and out of the Society House and the school on Sunday. I don’t know who these witnesses are, so there won’t be any memory altering to fix it this time.”
And this time, we were guilty of what got us expelled.
From the look on his face, I knew Nathaniel was wrestling with the ethical implications of what I’d just said.
“It could have been a lot worse,” I said, my voice hoarse and tight. “I didn’t sleep the entire night, Saturday. I spent all night trying to come up with a plan, a way to bring them to justice. I came up with a few different plans. And this was the least of them all.”
“And did it work?”
I looked at Nathaniel when I heard the sharp tone in his voice. He looked off to the side of me, his jaw tight.
“Did you make them pay?” he asked. “Did you bring them to justice?”
And I realized then that he was right.
In the end, what kind of justice was it that we’d done? We’d pulled a prank on them, a practical joke. We showed the student body the truth about their grades, but what could they ever do about it? And in the end, Borden and I paid for it with our educations.
How juvenile I had been.
I should have gone with one of my other plans.
I should have made them pay in a real way.
“Don’t you patronize me, Nathaniel,” I said. My voice dipped low and dangerous.
“You’ve never walked down these roads before, Margot,” he said, his voice matching mine. “You’ve never had to deal with true confrontation in your life. I tried to warn you that—”
“Stop,” I said, my tone sharp and loud as I cut him off. “It won’t do us one bit of good to go down that road of I tried to warn you. Because I also tried to warn you that I couldn’t just do nothing.”
Nathaniel looked at me, breathing hard through his nose as he tried to reclaim his calm. “But Borden. Borden you could go and be yourself with?”
And that was when tears pooled in my eyes. That was when I started to crack, when my hold on this started to slip.
Because I saw it there in his eyes, the emotion in Nathaniel’s that said he was hurt, but that he was also sorry.
“It was just one day,” I said, the words hardly audible. “One day and one instance where he offered some emotional support and connection that I needed. The whole school is apparently making their own assumptions and spreading all kinds of gossip. But it was one instance.”
“I’m really sorry that it wasn’t me that could give you what you needed then,” Nathaniel said. His voice was unsteady with emotion. Because we were sliding further and further down this rocky hill.
I shook my head. “You’ve been exactly what I needed in every other instance.”
He shook his head. “Yet this keeps coming up. This keeps being a problem. And I don’t know how it goes away, Margot.”
I shook my head, too. “This shouldn’t be a definer. This shouldn’t be the decider of anything.”
A tear pushed its way out onto Nathaniel’s cheek, and I couldn’t stay away any longer. I got up and crossed the space to him. I knelt with my knees on either side of his hips, straddling his waist.
I reached up and brushed a thumb over his cheek, wiping away the tear.
“And yet resolving conflict is a part of a relationship,” Nathaniel said as he studied my face. His eyes lingered on mine, slid down my nose, focused on my lips, my ears. “And we keep failing at it.”