“Do you honestly think that sitting back and watching the clouds will get you through this?” Tressa gave an odd, cynical laugh. “Come on, Lucas, you’re supposed to be the smart one! We’ve all felt the physical effects, and poor Penny is a prime example of the mental tolls. It’s only a matter of time before the next massive event happens, and if you want to stay strong you need to join us in fighting back. Beatrix is dead, for heaven’s sake, how long do you think before it’s one of us?”
“Not. Interested.” Lucas repeated through obviously clenched teeth, voice wavering as she stared him down.
“Fine,” Tressa muttered. She paced for a moment, brows furrowed, and Lucas hesitantly edged towards the open corridor. Before he could carry out his escape, Tressa pivoted back to face him and tried a new approach. “I won’t force you; perhaps we each should try to play our own tactics. If you won’t ally with Avery and me, at least give us what we want; if you plan to take a back seat, then surely you have no need for them anymore?”
“Ally? Since when did that term come into play?” Lucas retorted scathingly, vainly trying to mask panic. Her honeyed tone clearly not convincing him.
“Since you lot decided to do nothing.” Tressa shrugged without missing a beat. “Stop avoiding the question. Give them to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Lucas pleaded, trying now to dodge around her without much success.
I flattened myself against the wall, trying my hardest not to breathe or cough or step on a creaking floorboard and give away my position. What was all this about? What did Lucas have?
“You know full well what I’m talking about,” Tressa argued, a note of impatience creeping in to the controlled sweetness. “You stole the—”
At that moment, I felt a sneeze begin to tingle at the end of my nose and my eyes began to water. I held my breath and scrunched my face, pleading with my senses to remain silent, but right on cue a snorting half-sneeze half-concealing cough made a loud entrance, sounding louder due to the echo.
Tressa whirled around and faced me in an instant, expression furious.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, eyes flashing.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said, maintaining eye contact and a strong glower. “But last time I checked, the library wing was open to all of us. Oh, and before you ask if I was eaves-dropping, yes I was, so care to elaborate on all that?”
Once again, her face softened into a more characteristic smile a mother might sport having found a darling child eating forbidden biscuits.
“It was nothing, don’t bother about it,” she explained lightly. “How are you feeling? Back to normal?”
“Save your damned excuses, Tressa,” I snapped, sick of the lying. She nearly fainted with horror, aghast I would dare to even think of using such a vulgarity.
With a stunned silence, she marched away towards the stairs, skirts billowing, leaving Lucas and me alone. There was no retort strong enough that she could have used to answer back to that.
“Wow,” Lucas said eventually after what seemed like an eternity. “Strong words.”
“I don’t know where that came from,” I apologized, too irritated to be ashamed. “It kind of slipped out. Anyway, can you tell me what that was all about? What did you steal?”
He wrung his hands with a conflicted sigh, nervously glancing over my shoulder at Tressa’s back as she strode away.
After some hesitation he said, “Do you remember when Beatrix got rid of all our books?” He waited until I nodded assent then continued. “Well…for some time before that, I had been…er, smuggling books back to our chamber for some out-of-lessons reading. I would hide one or two under my waistcoat each day and stow them under my mattress, then when I had finished I would bring them back. For some of the smaller paperbacks, I would conceal them in my sketchbook. I had…erm…a lot accumulated on the day she removed them, and when I got back to my bed I found the ones I had…borrowed…were still there, including a massive thick one with lots of really interesting information. It had a section on outside combat. Well…then recently Avery suspected I had them and told Tressa. I was on my way down to grab some more numeracy practice when she found me.”
“Oh.”
I was now the one awkwardly fiddling with my fingers. Even if Tressa and Avery got their hands on the book, they wouldn’t do any harm to us, so I really didn’t see what the big deal was. Right now, the greatest advantage we had was probably D, and all I wanted was Lucas to leave so I could get the stationary I had been after in the first place.
“I don’t understand why she’s being so nasty!” Lucas shuddered. “She and Avery are taking it way to seriously. It’s bringing on more damage than the trials are at this rate.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I had much to say on the subject – later – but right now I wanted him to drop it and go away.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider backing Fred, Evelyn, and me?” Lucas inquired uncertainly. “Just to prove to the other two there is another way and we don’t have to go all ninja to survive?”
I twirled my hair.
“No,” I answered slowly. “I have my own views, and I think that I either want to work with everyone or as an individual. No in between.”
I didn’t want to admit it aloud, but to be brutally honest I did not want to place myself on the side that went against Tressa and Avery. They were just too dangerous as a team. What ‘taking action’ actually meant I didn’t know, since unless they were planning to confront the Master there was nothing much they could do. More likely, if they’d discovered something like I just had, then I would want to be joining with them rather than ignoring it. I only wondered why they hadn’t just shared their plans in the first place: maybe for reasons the same as mine? Even Lucas had suddenly become dubious about telling us of his own secret stash.
He echoed what Tressa had just said. “Fine. I won’t force you. Watch out for yourself, Penny.”
I nodded.
Lucas, blessedly forgetting his numeracy, turned and went straight back upstairs.
Heart in my mouth, I waited for him to go before hurrying into the library at long last, touching the pocketed letter just to make sure it was still there.
Drinking in the cold room like sour medicine, I made a beeline for my rickety wooden desk tucked in a lonely corner where it sat untouched and collecting piles of dust. Throwing aside nostalgia and firmly refusing to become lost in memories of fonder times with Beatrix, I threw open the top of the desk to reveal a yellowing pile of stale paper and curdled ink pens messily arranged from their last use several weeks ago. I sat down on my stool and set out the writing tools. Licking the nib of the pen to start the flow of ink, I searched for the right words to communicate the excessive amount of things I wanted to say. Perhaps the best thing would be to start off small, then see if I even received a reply.
Dear D,
My name is Penny, I’m fifteen years old and facing the exact situation you described in your letter. You cannot begin to understand the full extent of the questions I have for you! Finding your note was somewhat of a miracle for me – I don’t know where to begin! Can you tell me your full name so I know how to properly address you? Did you really live here as well, and if so when and who with? Where are you now? What were some of the challenges presented to you when you faced the trials? Would it be possible to meet you? How, what, when, why, where, who…I want to know it all, nothing held back! Please answer, though I know it is a long shot. It would change my life, and perhaps even save it.
Yours optimistically,
Penny
I reread my letter several times to make sure I had included all that was sufficient for my first reply. My hand had stayed mostly neat and clear, which was good, and I hadn’t ranted like a madwoman, staying with the most pressing questions and leaving out all the extra.
Now what to do with it? I couldn’t exactly hand it to D myself. I decided to keep it and wait for results.
&n
bsp; I folded my letter neatly in half, put it safely in my pocket and placed the pen and rest of the paper back inside my desk. All I could do now was wait.
I ascended the staircase and prepared to rejoin my friends, pausing outside of the common room to tuck a stray hair behind my ears and smooth my ruffled dress.
“Hello everyone!” I greeted them all brightly. “Miss me?”
They looked up from their activities and gave me forced smiles, but there was no life to the gesture. They were all beaten and more strained than ever, without even a ray of sunshine such as the letter I had. Nobody mentioned why I’d left in the first place out of politeness, though I half wished they would. It was annoying, seeing them all sitting together like nothing was wrong, when in actuality they were all sneaking about behind each other’s backs – myself included.
Today, though, the quiet did not last very long.
“That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen,” Avery drawled loudly, smirking at the area where Evelyn was sitting cross-legged with Fred and attempting to show him how to sew. Every so often he would make a silly mistake, resulting in jovial laughter from to two of them before a relapse of dreary silence.
Fred stiffened, but did not look up from his stitch. Instead, he stuck his tongue out in concentration and continued sewing a small tear in the leg of his trousers as if Avery hadn’t spoken at all.
“Only just past fourteen, yet already acting like an old married couple! I tell you, it’s wrong.”
“Avery, shut up,” I warned, surprised Tressa hadn’t already intervened.
“Why?” he countered maddeningly, clearly wound up and ready for an argument. “It’s not even as if they like each other! You’d have to be blind to not see Evelyn’s only using his fat behind to hide from the trials!”
The cruel words seemed to reverberate around the room for a tantalizing moment whilst the meaning of them sunk in.
Then Fred threw down his needle and approached Avery in two big strides, expression perfectly calm, although he was shaking just a bit.
Tressa leaned casually against the mantelpiece as if faintly amused though unimpressed by the show, waiting patiently to see what would happen next, whilst Lucas and I hovered on the brink of intervention.
“Insult me all you want,” Fred ordered. “But don’t you dare bring her into it! What’s she ever done?”
It showed just then exactly how much larger Fred was that Avery, not only in mass but also in height; he must have been a good half-foot taller, though still not quite my size. Fred didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body, but this new loyalty to Evelyn brought on a whole new twist, one I didn’t quite understand. For a split second I actually felt scared for Avery. Then I remembered what he had said and decided I would be pleased if Fred punched his stupid loud mouth.
“Now I’m terrified,” Avery snapped. “And in answer to your question, she’s done absolutely nothing. She never does anything, which is the point I’m trying to make: she’s only latching onto the only person idiotic enough not to see that she’s using him, because she doesn’t know how to do anything herself.”
“Hey!” Evelyn argued, just realizing what he was implying.
“Shut up, Avery, or I swear…” Fred growled. It was odd to hear him use such a deadly tone, and no one knew how to react.
“You what? Smile at me?” Avery tutted, shaking his head in a scolding manner. “Please. These threats coming from the person who’s so wrapped up in a girl that he’s refusing to see how shoddy everything else is getting around here.”
“Shut up!” Fred yelled so loudly we all cringed. “SHUT UP!”
“I dare you.” Avery opened his arms wide, nonplussed.
“Avery,” Tressa cautioned in a mild tone, not overly worried. I couldn’t believe her coolness, and it was very unusual for her to have not intervened as it was.
“Stop it,” I interjected, unnerved. “Beatrix is only two weeks dead, and I know we’re all feeling down, but really this is quite unnecessary.”
Fred took a long, shuddering breath and gave Avery the filthiest look I had ever seen besmirch his usually kind face, then with enormous effort he turned around and went back to his comfortable spot on the carpet.
“Fine. Coward,” Avery jeered.
He was being so horrible! When Fred refused to acknowledge him, Avery seemed to wonder for a moment whether to back out or throw another blow. “It’s a shame this romance is going to be such a short one. If you weren’t going to betray each other’s lives when the day comes, I would be rather interested to see how it plays out! It’s a pity you’re both so vain and selfish reall—”
In a breadth of a second, Fred had pivoted from his graceful retreat and had punched Avery in the face so hard that the sound reverberated like a gong across the room.
Avery stood there, stunned for a moment, a look of anger and pain crossing his face along with an odd, hollow sadness.
Then it was gone and he leapt at Fred with a strangely pitched cry. In perfect synchrony, Lucas and I leapt into the fray and each seized hold of a boy, careful to avoid the increasingly vicious blows being dealt.
My arms wound tightly around Fred’s middle, trying to drag him away from Avery, who was struggling against Lucas with equal fervor.
“Tressa!” I shouted desperately as I received a hard wallop in the face intended for Avery. “Do something!”
She smiled faintly, appearing to inspect her nails with complete calmness as if the heated duel was not happening right in front of her.
“Let go!” Avery yelled angrily, trying to both kick Fred and throw off Lucas at the same time, shaggy hair an awful mess and face alight with a deep rage.
“Tressa!” Lucas and I begged again.
“Oh, all right.” Tressa sighed reluctantly, taking her time in slowly pushing away from the mantelpiece and entering the fight. She lightly stepped in between the two brawling boys, and after another deep sigh artfully took them both by the scruffs of their necks and clonked their heads together.
“Do stop it.”
A trickle of red dribbled out of a shallow cut on Avery’s lip where he had bitten into it. Fred was mostly unscathed, though his clothes were all untucked and his breathing heavy.
Avery threw one look of utter dislike at Fred, opening his mouth as if to start another quarrel, but decided against it, clenching his jaw shut instead and angrily storming from the common room, slamming the door behind him as he went.
“What did he mean, calling me ‘a girl’?” Evelyn fumed. “He’s known me his entire life! It would’ve been nice if he could’ve at least addressed me by my name.”
Fred buried his face in his hands, mumbling, “I’m sorry. I just lost it… That was particularly low, even for him.”
“How could you just stand there, Tressa?” I hissed. She was once again slumped nonchalantly by the fireplace inspecting the arrangement of her petticoats. “How could you do nothing?”
“They both deserved whatever they got, arguing so heatedly over nothing,” she replied smoothly, not even looking up. “It wasn’t my problem.”
“Not your…?” I echoed in disbelief. Before, everything had been Tressa’s problem, and now…now it was as if she didn’t care. When everything was falling apart, she was leaving us.
“No. It was a bother, but quite honestly I felt it was nothing I had to concern myself with too much.”
“I can’t believe you. You disgust me,” I snapped, searching around vainly for a decent word or two to describe the depth of feeling welling up inside of me.
For all I cared now, the cold-hearted figure staring mistily out of the window was as nasty as the Master Himself, and as much as a traitor as we had believed Beatrix to have been.
I couldn’t stay there in the same room as her.
On impulse, I threw one last dirty look over my shoulder at Tressa before storming out of the common room and chasing along the corridor to find Avery.
I noticed as I searched that the
door to one of the empty rooms was slightly ajar, so I popped my head in and sure enough was rewarded with the sight of Avery standing over by the fogged-up window, alone in the otherwise barren room.
There were only two other empty rooms in the manor, all on this floor, and as far as I could see they possessed no greater purpose than to fill up space. This one was covered in neutral striped wallpaper with a single off-white metal fireplace perched between once-magnificent plasterwork adjacent to the dirty paned windows.
“Avery?” I called uncertainly. “It’s—”
“Penny,” he interrupted briskly, not turning around. “I know. After fifteen years, I can actually tell who you are by the sound of your voice.”
“I’ll leave,” I threatened, not impressed.
“Fine. Good. Splendid.”
I paused, unsure whether to leave or not, irritated he had called my bluff.
“Or not,” I decided, sweeping over to stand resolutely beside him, ignoring the rude grumbles that my actions caused. “Fancy telling me why you decided to have a go at poor Fred? I know we’ve all been under pressure, but it’s unusual of even you to take it that far.”
“Go away and stop trying to be Tressa!” Avery groaned, turning away from me to sulk over by the window. His choice of the empty room had clearly not worked to his advantage, as now there was nowhere for him to hide as I simply followed his footsteps.
Now it was my turn to be violent. Suddenly, I had had enough and seized him by his shaggy hair forcing him to face me, our equally startled eyes meeting reluctantly.
“Listen to me, Avery,” I said in my best dangerous voice. “I don’t know what the heck is going on between you and Tressa, I don’t know why you’re all being so nasty, and I don’t know why you’re taking it out on the ones who are trying to stay out of your way! But you better figure it out, or the trials won’t be the one killing you, I will be. I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense!”
Finished with my monologue, I threw Avery down and looked away as the tears once again threatened to overflow. I waited for him to slash back at me, but the retort never came.
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