by Arden, Alys
When I went back to the mirror, I waved my hand just to make sure the reflection belonged to me, and then texted a photo to Brooke so she could get a good laugh upon waking – maybe it would get her to call me back. I hadn’t heard from her since our initial call, which felt strange since there was no longer an ocean and several time zones between us. She was probably mad at me for not moving to L.A., or she had adjusted to her new life and was out living it up every day. Or she had already forgotten about me…
I tossed my notebook, Kafka, and some pens into a black canvas tote bag and felt unusually light not being weighed down with art supplies. My keys flew from across the room and fell gently into my palm. That was it. There was nothing else I could procrastinate with. The day was officially starting. I slipped out the front door to hold up my end of the carpool deal. Coffee.
* * *
I beat the sunrise, although I wasn’t so sure it was a race I wanted to win. A glance at my watch assured me the sun would soon make an appearance.
Small flames flickering in the gas lamps on houses led the way through the low-hanging fog, not that I needed them. I could do the walk to Café Orléans in my sleep. Regardless, it felt strange to be out in the semi-dark after being cooped up every night since we had been back in the city. The silence contributed to freaking me out – no bars closing up, no drunken idiots yelling, no sounds of garbage trucks disposing last night’s glut. My usual sense of familiarity with the route was lost.
Chills invaded my body like a virus, giving me the sense that I wasn’t alone. I pulled my cardigan closed and hustled down the last two blocks. By the time I fumbled the keys into the lock and shoved the door closed, paranoia had engulfed me.
Chill out. You’re just nervous about school.
I dropped my stuff on the floor and went straight to the giant wall of beans. While I contemplated which type to brew, the gas lamp’s soft light flooding in through the window flickered, as if temporarily obstructed. A quick glance showed nothing suspicious outside.
I focused back on the task at hand and carefully lifted the jar of dark-roasted Kenyan beans, but another break in the light made my heart freeze.
I walked to the large bay window and scanned the street in both directions. No one, not even a rat.
With one look at the door, the brass deadbolt snapped into the locked position. I hurried through the process of measuring, grinding and filtering the beans, and then the machine hummed on, leaving me with nothing to do but wait for the coffee to drip.
I glanced out the window repeatedly.
It wasn’t until the first rays of morning sun peeked underneath the door and the delicious scent of freshly brewed dark roast filled the air that the knot in my stomach began to untangle.
6:42 a.m. Perfect. Plenty of time before seven. Wait, what if she doesn’t turn up? What if she had only offered the ride to score brownie points with Gabe? I really didn’t want to have to wake up my father to get a ride. I didn’t want to start the day begging him to reconsider.
Quickly, I glugged sugar-free vanilla syrup into one of the cups, as if getting Désirée’s coffee order correct might give me some kind of good juju, and then proceeded out the front door. Between my bag and the two warm cups, my hands were full. I willed my keys out of my cardigan pocket and into the lock.
“Voilà!”The door locked, and the keys dropped back into my sweater.“Merci beaucoup.”
Each click of my heels made by the brand-new saddle Oxfords seemed to echo louder and louder down the desolate street. My pace quickened as the thought of Désirée arriving early and leaving without me chewed at my nerves.
One block later, I suddenly wasn’t so sure if the clicking on the pavement was coming from my shoes alone.
I glanced behind me.
No one.
But as I continued to walk, the sounds seemed a little sharp for my flats. I stopped short to convince myself it was in my head, but the staccato click lasted an extra step.
I started walking again. Faster.
The second set of steps followed suit, no longer trying to hide under the cover of my loud shoes. I contemplated breaking into a run but worried it would make me appear more victimlike.
The rising sun forced me to squint.
Lost in my escalating hysteria, I turned the corner sharply and smacked right into a tall, hooded figure. I fell backwards, but before I hit the ground, his arm swept underneath my back. My arms reflexively shot around his shoulders as he aggressively yanked me into his chest to keep me from falling.
I tried to regain my balance and back away, but his arms enclosed me, trapping me in the awkward embrace. “Let me g—”
“Shhh!” he hissed.
All I could see was the blinding dawn over his shoulder. Again, I tried to break away, but his hand slipped tightly over my mouth. That’s when I realized he was listening.
Like a hunter.
The sharp clicking of heels against cement was still approaching.
My heart pounded with fear, but his intense interest in the person following me brought an unexplainable sense of relief.
I craned my neck sideways and caught the silhouette of a woman with a hooded cloak passing us on the other side of the street.
She turned back and flashed a twisted smile, like she meant to taunt him, and a low growl came from the back of his throat. Just when I thought he might drop me and go after her, his grip tightened once more. His fingers dug into my ribcage, making me wince.
The sounds of her clicking heels faded into total silence, leaving just him and me. My fingers clutched the back of his leather jacket so tightly I began to shake.
I couldn’t breathe. He didn’t stir.
I forced myself to suck in air, and felt my lungs push against his chest. The breath brought in a vaguely familiar scent: leather and soap. His head shifted inward towards me.
“Scusa,” he whispered. His soft words ricocheted off my neck. “Are you okay?”
All I could do was nod. He retracted from around me, but his cold fingers paused at the back of my neck. Chills radiated throughout my entire body as Niccolò’s face showed from underneath the hood.
“Fancy running into you here,” I squeaked.
His shoulders tightened when I spoke, but he just looked down at me with a blank stare. I couldn’t get my eyes to unlock from his.
A memory flashed in my head, too fast for me to catch it. Or déjà vu. Or something. Again, I had an overwhelming feeling that I’d seen him before.
He inched closer, until our bodies were practically touching again.
Is he actually going to kiss me?
His eyes looked peculiar, almost as if he was in some kind of trance. Something in his expression made him seem uneasy. Him being uneasy made me uneasy.
“Yesterday…” My voice shook. “I forgot to ask, have you had any luck finding your family?”
He pressed his incredibly red lips together until they became white. I immediately regretted asking. If he had had good news, he would have mentioned it.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry… What are you doing up so early?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but, before a word could come out, he snapped it shut again.
“Are you okay?” I quickly asked, having caught a glimpse of his mouth.
He nodded. The bright morning light washed out his pale face.
“Your mouth… I think it’s bleeding?”
His jaw tightened. Is my close proximity making him nervous? Maybe he just doesn’t want to admit that he’s hurt? Beneath his pinched lips, I saw his tongue circle over his teeth. He looked like he was struggling not to implode.
“Um, are you sure you’re okay?” I raised my hand to his jawline, but he swatted it away and licked his lips.
“Oh my God, you are bleeding.” I stood on my toes to investigate. “What happened?”
This time when my hand touched his face, he covered it with his own. I trembled, unsure whether I was terrified or
excited by his touch. His head lowered closer to mine.
A loud squawk broke the silence.
He blinked. His gaze slid over to the crow flapping on top of a street sign. He stared at it for a long beat, again like a hunter. The moment… our moment, whatever it was, was over.
“Do you think that is your crow?” He finally spoke. “The one who attacked you?”
“Ha. How could I tell?”
He forgot to snap his mouth closed – the lines of his gums were stained with blood – when his attention turned back to me, I was staring.
“I bit my tongue, and it won’t stop bleeding,” he mumbled. “It’s not a big deal.” He picked up the one cup of coffee from the ground that, miraculously, had not been destroyed in the tumble.
Lights flashed, and a loud horn honked.
“Do you want a ride or not?” yelled a voice from the driver’s-side window. Désirée had followed through after all.
“That’s my ride, I have to—”
But he was gone. As was the crow. Just me with the single cup of coffee in hand.
My hands shook as I wiped the drips on the cup with the cuff of my sweater and then hustled to the passenger-side door. I prayed that the surviving coffee was the one with the vanilla as I stepped over a giant java puddle.
“Was that who I think it was?” Désirée asked as soon as I opened the door.
“Uh, Niccolò?” I handed her the cup of coffee.
She looked at me with one eyebrow raised as I climbed into the giant SUV.
“What?”
“Oh, don’t look at me with those doe eyes, sister. Parting ways with one of the hottest guys on this side of town before seven o’clock in the morning?” A wicked smile spread across her face. “I just might have underestimated you, little Miss Adele Le Moyne.”
My face burned. “It’s not what you’re thinking, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Riiiight.” She tapped her perfectly manicured nails on the steering wheel.
“Well, I’m sure you’re going to believe whatever you want to believe,” I snapped. The quickness with which I had slipped back into Parisian boarding-school mode startled me, but my defenses were sky high after the bizarre run-in.
“Hmm, maybe I really did underestimate you.” She put the car into drive. “Whatever, I don’t really care if the two of you were having an early-morning romp.”
I caught sight of my reflection in the window – a small smile fighting my lips. Just the idea that Désirée thought I stood a chance with Niccolò boosted my ego. But it also made me wonder why he had been out so early. Had I busted him in a walk of shame, coming home from a late-night fling?
It was certainly plausible. In the city’s current state, there was nothing else to do before sunrise, and nothing was open that early. He was hot enough to have met someone so quickly. A twinge of jealousy bubbled. What the hell, Adele? You don’t even know this guy.
“What’s the deal with his brother?” Désirée asked. “Does Gabe have a girlfriend?”
As happy as I was for the conversation to move from me to her, I worried that I didn’t have enough intel on Gabe to satisfy. “I don’t really know.”
Her face scrunched.
“If he does have a girlfriend, I’d assume she’s in Italy. He and Niccolò have only been here about a week.”
Her expression relaxed, and she turned on the radio. “I’m going to take Claiborne; it’ll be a lot faster.”
“Traffic?”
“There is no traffic, Adele. No one is back in the city. They’ve cleared most of Claiborne, so it’s faster to drive down. How do you not know this? Don’t you drive?”
“No, I was in Paris for my sixteenth birthday.” I refrained from telling her I didn’t even have a learner’s permit.
“Don’t you ever leave downtown?”
“Not really.”
When we pulled onto Claiborne, I quickly understood what she meant. The multilane avenue was almost completely empty. Despite it being rush hour, we were one of only a handful of cars on the road.
“Jesus, is that…?”
“Yep, the water line.”
Everything we drove past—an abandoned supermarket, a dilapidated bank, a gym, a hamburger chain, a laundry mat, a pizza joint, a housing project—everything had the same distinct mark of the Storm left on it: the water line. As we moved from block to block, the five-foot-high line continued alongside us.
Neither of us said another word for the duration of the ten-minute ride.
Eventually the houses became bigger, the cars became fancier, and everything became shinier. It was like we had entered another world.
No matter how many times I’d been uptown, its beauty never escaped me. Even in the aftermath of the Storm, St. Charles looked like a scene from an oil painting. Giant oak trees created a canopy over the long avenue of historic mansions, further preserving the feeling of exclusion.
Most of the damage on this side of town had been from the wind tossing cars around or ripping roofs off, and since St. Charles sat atop a natural levee, there had been less flooding, and more people had been able to return home. Uptown being far livelier than downtown was a weird role reversal – the lack of damage to the Lower Garden District shocked me almost as much as seeing the damaged areas of the city. I was overjoyed for these residents, but it was frustrating that the people with the most money seemed to have experienced the least amount of damage. I was going to have to bury that thought if I wanted to survive my junior year at the Academy.
Désirée easily maneuvered the sprawling SUV into the school parking lot and cut the engine.
“So, do you have any advice for me?”
“You only need to remember one thing to survive at Sacred Heart,” she said without looking my way. “Stay away from Annabelle Lee Drake.”
“Who is Annabelle Lee Drake?”
“My bestie.” Her fake tone was back to accompany her fake smile. It was as if she had switched on her uptown persona. She grabbed her bag and exited the car, slamming the door behind her.
As soon as I shut my door, a sharp noise signaled the activated alarm. I took it as a sign that I was now on my own. My heart sank a little, but what had I been expecting? That Désirée Borges and I would walk onto campus, arms locked, as she shouted introductions to all her friends? I took a peek at my reflection in the car window and tried to wipe the terrified expression off my face.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered and followed the gaggles of uniformed teenagers towards the large iron gate that surrounded the campus, protecting the city’s finest youth from the proletariat.
Chapter 16 Uptown Girls
There was no denying that the school grounds were magnificent.
The Greek-revival estate had a connected wing on each side and a white balcony that wrapped around the entire second floor. A large crucifix that had a green patina sat atop the small cupola on the roof. Workers bustled about, busy getting the courtyard landscaping back to its pre-Storm state.
As I walked through the giant iron archway that spelled out Sacré Cœur,I remembered riding up the hill on the back of Émile’s Vespa to the original Sacré Cœur in Paris. From up top, we had watched the sun set over the city. The view from the hilltop basilica had been worth the trip to Paris in itself. Despite the symbolic pair of hearts sculpted every few feet into the concrete base of the building, I had a feeling that this Sacred Heart wasn’t going to be as romantic. One heart had a flame and a dagger piercing the center, the other was wrapped in a crown of thorns. I didn’t know a whole lot about Catholicism, but it seemed kind of twisted.
Wandering into the main building, I tried not to gawk at the other students. The halls were full of the kind of beauty only money could buy: glistening teeth, shiny coifs, sparkly jewelry on French-manicured fingers, and these were only the obvious details. Hair extensions, nose jobs, and even breast implants enhanced some of the more permanently modified minors.
The hallway buzzed with ener
gy. I wondered if it had always been this lively or whether the recent integration of Holy Cross’ all-boy student body had anything to do with it. I tried to muster enough courage to approach a group of students that looked my age, but chickened out when they looked at me. Pathetic.Instead,I walked over to a lonely-looking tween whose nose was buried in a book.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where the administration office is?”
Her face lit up as she pointed me in the right direction, and then looked a little sad when I thanked her and walked away. Please don’t let that be me in a week. I looked at my watch and hustled through the office door.
“Miss Le Moyne, I presume?” asked a white-haired lady.
“Yes. Hi, I’m Adele—”
“Here’s your schedule. They’re waiting for you inside.”
I pocketed the small card and paused in front of the set of closed oak doors; I had never been inside a principal’s office. She motioned for me to go in. I exhaled loudly – the doorknob began to turn on its own. I frantically grabbed it and looked back at the secretary to make sure she hadn’t seen anything unusual. Luckily, she was hunched over, cleaning her glasses on her blouse.
Principal Campbell’s office was classic feeling: navy-blue brocade drapes, walls of books and lots of framed accolades. A middle-aged woman in a red skirt-suit, reading glasses, and a tight ashy-blonde French twist stood behind a large oak desk. She looked more like a high-powered CEO than a high school principal. Across from her sat two other students: a boy with skin as dark as espresso beans and a close-shaved head, who looked even less excited to be there than me; and a short, buxom blonde with large ringlets cascading down her back, who appeared born ready for this meeting.
I felt a moment of relief when I realized I wasn’t going to be alone in this endeavor. Maybe the three of us could band together as newcomers? I might actually be able to survive this place in a group of three.
All six eyes followed me from the entrance. I snuck a glance at the clock on the wall. I was still two minutes early, which at Sacred Heart apparently meant that I was late.
“Please take a seat, Miss Le Moyne.”