Absinthe

by Winter Renshaw

  “Not to mention the alcohol bottles Bree found under your bed last month,” he adds.

  My jaw falls, and it may as well hit the floor. “Alcohol bottles? She’s lying to you, Uncle Vic. She’s jealous and she’s making this up to—”

  His hand lifts in the air, cutting me off. “Since you’ve lived here, Bree’s come to us on a number of occasions to report missing items. Jewelry. Clothes. That sort of thing. We’ve kept our mouths shut because we knew you needed our support to turn your life around, but enough is enough, Halston.”

  “This isn’t fair! Bree just gets to say whatever she wants about me and I don’t get to defend myself?” My voice shrivels in my hot throat. “You’re just going to take her word for this?”

  “We have no reason to believe she’d make any of this up,” he says. “She’s a good girl. She gets straight A’s, does what she’s told. She’s never lied to us.”

  My hand claps across my mouth, and I breathe in through my nose to keep from hyperventilating as I pace the small space at the top of the stairs.

  This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

  “The decision’s been made. Tabitha and I have already decided. I made the phone call to an old colleague of mine this morning.” Uncle Vic pulls in a hard breath. “You’ll be finishing your senior year at Welsh Academy in Brightmore, New Hampshire. It’s a reform school. You’ll live there in the dormitories with a roommate.”

  “You’re sending me to boarding school? No. Absolutely not. I’ll just … drop out and get my GED and—”

  “If you refuse to finish your high school education the proper way, I’m afraid my offer to pay your tuition will be off the table.” His chin lifts as he peers down his nose. I know that look. It’s his way or nothing, and I don’t exactly have eighty grand lying around to pay for college. “Eight months and then you’re done. You’ll emerge a better person, with more discipline, more respect, more poise and grace.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” My eyes burn, but I refuse to cry. “You’re all I had. And you’re just shipping me away, like I’m not your problem.”

  “You were never my problem to begin with,” he says. “But I took you in because you’re family. And I love you. I know it may seem harsh, Halston, but I’m doing this for you. This is going to change the entire trajectory of your life. And someday, you’ll thank me for it.”

  Chapter 33

  Ford

  Sweat beads down my forehead Sunday afternoon, my shoes pounding the pavement as I push forward, running harder, faster, rounding the corner to my house. I pass the Abbotts’ place, slowing down once I reach the foot of my driveway. Slowing to catch my breath, I stretch my arms behind my head before heading inside.

  I couldn’t sleep last night.

  Hell, I couldn’t function this morning.

  The run was a last-ditch attempt to do something productive with my day, but none of it matters. All I keep thinking about is how I lost her. And how fucked up it is to even think of it that way because she was never mine to lose in the first place.

  Five minutes later, I’m standing motionless under the spray of a cold shower, the water harsh and unforgiving. But I’m not sure what I expected. If a sleepless night and a long run couldn’t quell the maelstrom raging inside, a frigid shower isn’t going to help.

  When I’m finished, I accept my defeat.

  With a towel wrapped around my hips, I give myself a long, hard look in the mirror.

  And then I find my phone.

  To: Absinthe@karma.com

  From: Kerouac@karma.com

  Subject: Please read

  Time: 1:21 PM

  Message: If things were different, I’d have made you mine the moment we met. Wait for me, Absinthe. Eight more months and I’ll make you mine forever. I love you.

  Placing the phone aside, I change into clean clothes. When I return, the message shows as ‘read,’ but there’s no response.

  Chapter 34

  Halston

  “Who’s Kerouac?” Bree barges into my room Sunday afternoon, my phone in her hand and a smug sneer on her thin lips.

  I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating for a second, but I manage to keep my shit together. Closing my copy of East of Eden, I sit up on the edge of my bed and shoot her a dead-eyed stare.

  “Who?” I play dumb.

  “Apparently the two of you have had a lot to talk about over the past couple of months.” Her thumb scrolls up and down the screen, her mouth twisting into a wicked grin. “Who is he, Halston?”

  “Nobody I’ve ever heard of.” I exhale, lying back down and unfolding my book.

  Her dull blue eyes flick up. “If he’s nobody, then I probably don’t need to read you this email he sent about ten minutes ago.”

  My heart races.

  “It was really sweet too,” she adds, her tone mocking and saccharin.

  “You’re bluffing,” I say. Kerouac doesn’t do sweet. He never has.

  She flips the screen toward me, though from here I can’t read it.

  “No, no. It says right here. Sent today at one twenty-one PM.” Bree presses the phone against her chest. “I’ll show it to you if you tell me who he is.”

  “It’s an anonymous dating app. We’ve never met.”

  “I knew it. And you’re such a liar.” Her face is pinched, yet there’s a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “Just last night you two were chatting about a kiss. Fess up.”

  “I’m not telling you a damn thing.” My fingers twitch, my skin boiling just below surface level. I’m tempted to lunge at her and rip the damn thing from her bony little hands.

  “What’s eight months from now?” She glances up at the ceiling, counting on her hands as she whispers, “October … November … December … January …”

  May.

  Eight months from now is May.

  The end of the school year.

  Oh, god.

  I need to see that email.

  “May,” she finally says. “What’s so special about May?”

  “How should I know? Guys say a lot of shit that doesn’t make sense.”

  Lifting the phone to her face, she smirks. “If things were different, I’d have made you mine the moment we met. Wait for me, Absinthe. Eight more months and I’ll make you mine forever. I love you.”

  He loves me …

  Kerouac loves me.

  My stomach flutters, yet at the same time all I see is red.

  “Give me my phone,” I say, teeth clenched. “Now.”

  “Never.” She shoves it in her back pocket. “It’s no longer your property.”

  “Give it to me!” I’m not one to scream. I generally find it pointless and weak, a last resort that does nothing more than declare to the other person that you’ve lost all control, but I do it anyway. I don’t recognize my voice like this, but it’s me, screaming at the top of my lungs like a crazy person.

  I suppose love makes you do crazy, insane, lose-all-control-of-yourself things.

  He loves me.

  And fuck. I love him too.

  Charging at Bree, I reach around, attempting to take it back, but in the process, I push her against the wall, knocking down a gaudy abstract portrait that falls to the ground and shatters on the hardwood floor, sending the two of us to our knees.

  We’re surrounded by glass. Tiny invisible shards dig into my stinging palms.

  “If you don’t tell me who it is, I’m going to show this to my father,” she says, carefully flicking broken glass off her bloody knuckles. Bree’s out of breath, but she doesn’t seem deterred. “If you tell me who it is, I’ll delete the app. Nobody will ever know.”

  “I’m not negotiating with you.” I will not be blackmailed by this bitch.

  “Fine,” she says, pushing herself to a standing position. Brushing the hair out of her face, she holds her head high. “Eight months from now is May. May is … Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and … graduation. This guy says
he can’t be with you until May, so … is it a teacher?!”

  I say nothing.

  “Oh, god,” she says, expression fading. “It’s Principal Hawthorne.”

  My nose wrinkles. “No, it isn’t.”

  “He couldn’t stop staring at you that night at dinner. He got all weird watching you and Thane, and then he left when you guys left. And that one time, after school, when he needed to talk to you alone … and I saw you two talking at the drinking fountain that day …” She paces the room, stepping over the shattered art. “Wow. Oh my god. Wow. This is … this is major.”

  “Aren’t you a real fucking Nancy Drew.” I roll my eyes. “Too bad you’re still wrong. You’ll never figure it out.”

  “It’s absolutely Hawthorne. I see it on your face. Your nose twitches and your voice gets a little higher. You’re lying,” she says. “As a future education administrator and mandatory reporter, I need to report my suspicions to the appropriate authorities.”

  “Bree.” The broken, guttural tone in my voice is both a plea and a threat, though in this moment she doesn’t appear to care either way.

  “I’ll tell my father what I suspect and let him take it from there.” She heads to the door, only it swings open, banging against the wall and startling us both. “If he’s innocent, as you say he is, then he’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  My uncle stands in the doorway, eyes bugging. “What’s going on up here?”

  His gaze lands on the shattered frame, and I suspect he senses the thickness of contempt in the air.

  “We were just talking about her little love affair with Principal Hawthorne.” Bree slides my phone from her back pocket, handing it over. “Sorry. Alleged love affair with Principal Hawthorne.”

  “Why do you have this?” he asks, taking my phone, my entire life, with a single impatient grab.

  “It was going off earlier,” she says. “I went to shut it off, but a message popped up on the screen. I think you should take a look. Just press that green app right there. You can see every email and message they’ve exchanged since summer.”

  “It’s not Hawthorne,” I say. I’m a terrible liar, but I’m not going down without a fight. I’ll fight for him. He doesn’t deserve this. He did nothing wrong. It was all me. I pushed him. I wanted him, and I recklessly crossed the line every time he told me not to.

  Victor’s gaze moves between the phone and my bewildered expression. How one botched homecoming night could go from bad to worse over the span of a few hours is beyond me, but there’s no going back.

  I’d say the damage has been done, but I have a feeling it’s only just begun.

  Chapter 35

  Ford

  “Victor, hi. Come on in.” I pull the door wide and step aside, instantly regretting my decision to let a man with murderous eyes set foot in my house. But when my boss pounds on my door in the middle of a Sunday evening, there’s got to be a good reason. “Everything okay?”

  “I need a word.” His tone is brusque and impatient, his eyes narrowing and his complexion ruddy.

  Exhaling, I point toward the living room.

  Victor stands dead center, not sitting, not making himself at home. With arms folded, he examines me from head to toe.

  “When I first interviewed you, I was impressed with your professionalism,” he says. “Several candidates made the short list, many of them with impressive job histories and Ivy League educations, reference lists a mile long, extraordinary recommendation letters. They gave all the right answers. They knew exactly what I wanted to hear. They exceeded my expectations in each and every way. And then there was you. You were well-spoken and efficient. You didn’t bullshit. You had full control of yourself, a commanding presence. You were easy to respect, Ford. It was easy for me to overlook the fact that you’re new at this. It was easy for me to make an exception for you.”

  Victor pauses, moving toward the window and glancing outside at a passing family of bicyclists. I really wish he’d get the fuck on with this.

  Turning back, he lifts his brows. “So, tell me, Ford, what the hell you were thinking when you decided to involve yourself with my goddamned niece?!”

  I knew it.

  I fucking knew it.

  All those times Halston swore up and down she’d never let it slip, that she’d never tell a soul …

  She lied.

  When we messaged last night, she was furious with me.

  This is her retaliation.

  I imagine her reading my email, laughing at my ridiculous declaration of love, and then running off to Uncle Vic so he can give the knife a final twist.

  If she wanted to get back at me, if she wanted to hurt me for hurting her …

  … mission fucking accomplished.

  I hope she’s happy.

  “Because this involves my family, we’re going to keep this quiet,” Abbott says, chin tilted down, voice low. “But I expect your resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow. And if you so much as think about contacting my niece again, I’ll make sure you never set foot in a school ever again. In fact, I’m going to recommend you find a new career altogether. There’s no way in hell I’m going to recommend you for any job in the education field after this. I was wrong about you.”

  The disgust in his voice is unnecessary. I’m already disgusted with myself. I knew better.

  I nod, saying nothing because there’s nothing more to say.

  I’ll resign tomorrow.

  I’ll leave Rosefield.

  And as for Halston, she better hope we never cross paths again.

  Chapter 36

  Halston

  Nobody smiles here.

  I walk behind the headmistress Tuesday morning as she spouts impressive facts to Uncle Victor, reassuring him he did the right thing.

  “Our success rate is second to none,” she says. “Many of our girls go on to be doctors, lawyers, and CEOs. Of course, most of those girls started with us in their younger years, but I just know Halston will do wonderfully here. We’ll be sure to make the most of the short time we have with her.”

  She doesn’t look at me when she speaks, and she seems quite smitten with Vic. He’s wearing his power suit, his gray hair slicked back.

  He keeps a stern presence, rarely making eye contact with me. I didn’t speak to anyone Sunday, refusing to leave my room. It wasn’t until my stomach was growling at two in the morning and hindering my sleep that I finally snuck down for a bowl of cereal.

  Aunt Tabitha tried to hug me goodbye Monday afternoon when we left for the airport.

  I kept on walking.

  And as for Bree, I hope I never see her again.

  The headmistress is still schmoozing as we pass the cafeteria. Girls glance up at us with dead eyes, their mush breakfasts resting on beige trays, mostly uneaten. This place feels like a bad dream and a horror film all mixed into one with its limestone, Gilded Age exterior, the weeping willows lining the circle drive, the sconce-lined walls, and the sweeping ceilings that make every footstep echo. The only thing it’s missing are bars on the windows and ravens quoting “nevermore.”

  “The rooms are this way,” the woman says, pointing down a long corridor lined with oil portraits. “Each girl has one roommate and each hall has one communal bathroom. Twenty girls to one bathroom. The curtains rise at five o’clock each morning and lights are out by eight PM sharp. We have one hour of recreation before bedtime each night, and we encourage our girls to work on their homework between dinner and their final class of the day.”

  We pass an exit with glaring red letters. It seems out of place in a home that appears to have frozen in time one hundred years ago, and for half of a second I think about walking away.

  But I have no money. No car. Nowhere to go.

  And I’d be throwing away a free college education, my only shot at a decent future.

  Girls in gray dresses begin to fill the hall, all of them walking in a straight line, eyes forward as they disperse to their rooms.

&nb
sp; “Would you like to meet your roommate, Halston?” the woman turns to me, her pencil-thin mouth curling.

  Victor turns to me. I nod.

  Stopping outside a room labeled “The Katrina Howell Suite,” the headmistress tells Uncle Vic about “Our dear, sweet Kat, who went on to become the US Ambassador to Norway before meeting and falling in love with the Duke of Pendleton …”

  When she finally stops rambling, she raps on the door three times before barging in.

  A girl with shiny dark hair and deep set aquamarine eyes gazes up from a thick book. She doesn’t seem the least bit startled about anyone barging into her room. Didn’t even flinch.

  “Lila Mayfield, I’d like you to meet your new roommate, Halston Kessler,” the woman says.

  The room is small, the two twin beds maybe five feet apart, but the ceiling is sweeping and the windows run from floor to ceiling. We each have a desk and a wooden wardrobe but nothing else. This is nothing more than a glorified prison cell in a gilt mansion.

  “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” The headmistress places her hand on Victor’s forearm. “If you’d like to come with me, we have a few forms we’ll need signed. I’ll send someone for her bags shortly.”

  She leaves the room first, and Victor’s eyes meet mine.

  I’ve never known him to be an emotional man. He holds his cards close, his heart forged of tungsten and coal. But his eyes shine, glassy.

  “We’ll visit in—,” he says.

  “Don’t bother,” I cut him off. I don’t want them to visit. I don’t want them to call or write. I don’t want to see them a month from now and have to pretend like everything’s kosher, like he didn’t just toss me to the side like I’m someone else’s problem now.

  He stops, lingering for a moment, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s regretting his decision, though even if he were, it wouldn’t matter. Victor Abbott doesn’t apologize for anything, and he never admits he’s wrong.