by Huss, JA
“Whoever is doing this,” Cadee muses, “is very good with the photomanipulation.”
“I have to agree.” Isabella chuckles. “Do you think that’s a real King Charles spaniel in my lap?”
She’s looking at Cadee, who laughs. “Do you think that’s a real Persian cat in mine?”
They are pictures of us, but we are in poses that never happened in front of places that are not the High Court College campus.
“Someone is putting a lot of effort into you three.”
I turn and see Lars. Valentina and Selina are behind him.
“Yeah,” I agree, looking back up at my portrait. “They sure are.”
Lars suddenly turns to the crowd and says, “All hail the fucking King, you stupid plebs. Bow! Now!”
Suddenly there is a great shuffling behind me. And when I turn, every guy is down on one knee and every girl is doing a very low curtsey. All heads are bowed.
“Lars, come on, man. Knock it off.”
Lars leans in to me and whispers, “Fuck you, Cooper. You wanna be the goddamned King? Then be the fucking King.”
Valentina and Selina both bow low as well. They say, “My Queens,” simultaneously, like this is all some prearranged pageantry.
I look at Cadee. She shrugs.
I look at Isabella. She beams. She loves this.
“OK, everyone up. Carry on.”
They all get to their feet and resume whatever they were doing before we arrived.
“I’m hungry.” I look at Isabella and Cadee. “You guys are hungry, right? Let’s go to the cafeteria. I need to get out of this fucking building.”
“Cafeteria?” Lars scoffs. “My king. The royal breakfast is waiting for you in your private dining room.”
“What private dining room?” Cadee asks. “We only have one dining room here.”
“That’s right.” We all turn to find Mona walking towards us. And do I detect discontent in her voice? Her rebel style is long gone now. All the other Fang and Feather initiates are in jeans, t-shirts, a few girls are wearing miniskirts—but all in all, they are casual. Not Mona. She is dressed like… I don’t know. Some classy, put-together person from the middle of the last century. “Just the one dining room,” she confirms. “And now it’s only for you three. Congrats, my royal bitches. Now the rest of us have to eat across campus.”
She gives us a slow clap.
Then I spot Dante on the other side of the room. Hands in pockets. Leaning against a wall. Sunglasses on so I can’t see his eyes.
But I can imagine what’s going through his head right now.
This was supposed to be him, after all.
I look back at Mona. “Guess it sucks to be you, doesn’t it?” Then I offer my right arm to Cadee, my left arm to Isabella, and I escort them down the hall to our new private dining room.
Fuck it.
If I have to play the role of King, I might as well make the most of it.
That’s what Dante would do if he were me.
Later that week I’m walking out of my groundwater modeling class when Jack sidles up to me. I don’t stop, or even slow, but he keeps pace and says nothing for several seconds.
“Can I help you, Jack?”
He takes a breath. Like a deep one. Like maybe he’s about to lie to me. I’ve never thought Jack was much of a liar, but I’ve been known to be wrong, well… pretty much all the time, so it’s highly likely that I am. “Your equipment arrived.”
“Equipment?”
“For your geological study underneath the tomb?”
Oh. Right. That. “OK. Um… thanks?”
“You’re getting started on it today. It’s already there at the tomb. I’ve assigned Victor English to help you out.”
Now I stop walking and turn to him. “Since when are you involved in my research project?”
“Since now, I guess.”
“That’s not an answer, Jack.”
He shrugs. “Our father is a busy man, Cooper. You know this. He can’t babysit your project, so he told me to do it.”
I get what’s going on here. Jack is baiting me. He basically just said, Cooper, you are an imbecile fuck-up who can barely manage to wipe his ass and tie his shoes. But never fear, big brother is here.
Big Brother is right.
I smile at him. “Well, thanks, Jack. I have no idea what I’m doing. And I had a question.”
“Shoot, Coop.”
“So… you know… I was like… calculating the density of the soil and I got to thinking. Do you think we’re gonna have a problem with the fine-grain sediments?”
“What?”
“High electrical conductivity?”
“Cooper, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh. OK. Well, I phrased it as a question to like… be inclusive. But actually, what I’m really saying is that ground-penetrating radar is probably not gonna work.”
I do my best not to smile. I think I mostly succeed.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s got a lot of limitations. I’ll do it. Especially if the equipment is already here. Plus, the more bullshit I can put in that Capstone paper, the more legit it will look. But what I’m really saying is that I think we need a bigger gun.”
“Explain.”
God, I love that look on his face. He seriously has no idea what I’m talking about. And let’s just be honest here, I barely know what I’m talking about and this time next year I’ll have an actual degree in this shit. But it’s still funny. “Have you ever heard of seismic scanning?”
“Cooper, you know I haven’t. Just get to the point.”
“OK. Calm down, big brother. It’s um… you know, seismic scanning. It pretty much speaks for itself.”
“What does it do?”
“It finds voids underground. And maps them up in pretty colors.”
“Isn’t that what the ground-penetrating radar does?”
“Yes. Minus the pretty colors.”
He lets out a long breath. “So? Are the colors important? What’s the difference?”
“Oh. Well, seismic scanning…” I put my arm around his shoulder and make him walk with me as I explain using as many fancy words as possible. And by the time we reach the dock where my boat is, he has agreed to increase my budget by fifty thousand dollars because he lost track of what I was saying pretty much the moment I started talking. Fifty grand is way more than I need, but that was the point.
“Good idea, Cooper. I’ll have a check for you by the end of the week. Do I need to find you a team?”
“No, I have one in mind.”
“Excellent. We don’t want outsiders involved if we can help it. But we need this done by Christmas.”
“Oh.” I wince.
“What?”
“Well, that’s a problem.”
“Why?”
“We need permits for that. I’m gonna be setting off a couple hundred tiny explosions, right? The government typically frowns on that shit unless you get permission.”
He’s shaking his head the whole time I’m talking. “No permits.”
“I don’t need them for the radar, but yeah, dude. We have to have them for the seismic shit.”
He sighs. Clearly my project is above his pay grade. Which was the point, actually. I don’t need Jack babysitting me the entire year. “I’ll talk to Father. But just get us something. Quick. If you do the radar stuff today, can you tell us something tomorrow?”
I laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“No.” I laugh again. “Jack. This is science. It doesn’t move very fast. And since Victor English and I are the only ones on the job, we’re probably gonna fuck it up… oh, at least a dozen times before we get it right. And then we have to interpret the data using complicated software and… yeah. That’s the hard part. So… two months?”
Now it’s his turn to laugh. “You have two weeks.”
Then, without another word, he walks away.
I star
e at his back for a few moments. Smiling.
Because that went way better than expected and I didn’t even prepare for it.
I’m starting to feel smart.
Maybe this geological engineering shit really is my thing?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - CADEE
The memory of the tomb fades as the weeks pass. In fact, it doesn’t take very long at all to push the whole experience into the back of my mind and pretend that nothing of any real consequence happened.
Leela played a pretty big part in that little bit of mind trickery.
The first time she showed up outside my life drawing class I didn’t think much of it. She’s some kind of Swan Queen in her own right. Much higher rank than me, that’s for sure. And she definitely knows what’s going on here, so I figured that putting up with her is kind of my job. Part of my royal duties, so to speak.
Leela hooked her arm into mine and asked me if I wanted to have lunch with her in Monrovia. I was finished with classes that day and I knew Cooper was going to be busy with his project until evening, so I agreed. Plus, this is how you play the game, right?
Just go along.
Be one of the girls.
She took me to the restaurant in the Monrovia Hotel and we had a long talk.
I call this Cadee’s conditioning part two.
Part one was the creepy rite and then the gifts the next day. See, they hit you with this crazy shit all at once. Make it very overwhelming. Scary. Creepy. But once you realize you’re not actually going to be carved up in the name of Satan, you relax.
You take it all in.
You start thinking critically about it.
This is where it gets tricky. Because if all the creepy people are not always creepy, then there’s a part of them that doesn’t scare you.
Ax actually explained this to us last summer before everyone went their own way. He’s kind of the expert on this stuff. He’s been living through a nightmare since he was born, so we took notes.
Anyway, he said, “And if you’re not always scared of them, if you’re not always in a state of fear, then you accept it. You break this creepy person—or idea, or whatever—down into two categories and eventually you learn how to avoid the scary part of them by staying on their good side.”
So that was Cadee’s conditioning part one.
Part two of my conditioning was normalizing things.
This is where Leela comes in.
So that first time she met me outside of class we sat at a table for two that overlooked the lake. The day was brisk and cool. The leaves were brilliant red, and yellow, and orange. The wind was tossing them around, creating little tornados, and the sky was just gray enough to be dramatic, but not gloomy.
“You know,” Leela said, “it’s not all that different.”
At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. “What’s not that different?”
“The tomb.” She paused here, maybe to give me an opportunity to respond. But I wasn’t gonna say shit. This was her party, not mine. “Have you ever been to a sex club, Cadee?”
“Do you think I’ve been to a sex club, Leela?”
She snickered a little. “Point. But that’s my point as well. You’re very… young. But also very… inexperienced. It’s not that different. Lots of people go to sex clubs.”
Do they? Do they really?
But I didn’t say anything.
“And I’m not trying to be disparaging here, Cades.” It took every ounce of willpower not to roll my eyes at her use of my nickname. “But you’re naïve. So I’m telling you, I understand if you’re upset that Elizabeth decided to”—she cupped her hands around her mouth to make a little tunnel for her words to travel through, and whispered—“suck Jack’s dick right there in front of everyone. But it’s not any different than a dom-sub relationship in a sex club. Mostly”—she paused to beam a smile at me—“theatrics.”
“Oh.” I pretended that her enlightenment was an epiphany. “Right. I can totally see that. But… I’m not upset about it.”
“You’re not?”
“No. I mean…” I shrugged. “Whatever. It’s weird, but also… interesting.”
She stared at me for a million years that ended up only being three seconds. And I’m not a mind reader, but I knew what she was doing. Ax explained this too.
He said, “When people are conditioning you to accept something, they never trust you. Everything you do is a test.”
I thought Ax was right before Leela popped into my life, but in that moment when we were sitting there at the hotel, I got my proof. Because she said, “Interesting how?”
And while she was having her million-year pause, I was figuring out what I would say next. Something she wanted to hear. Something that related back to her world. And I came up with… “It forms a sense of solidarity.”
“Hmm.” Leela pressed her lips together. I could tell she wasn’t really buying my indifference. A girl like me got whisked up into a crazy ritual in a tomb that involved some kind of baptism and a girl sucking a man’s dick?
Yeah. No. She wasn’t convinced.
I needed to pump her up with some truth, or I would fail her test.
So I said, “I never fit in anywhere, Leela. I was always an outsider and now I’m all alone. So that solidarity I just mentioned, it’s really more about…” I used a dramatic pause to choose my words carefully. “Belonging. I want to belong to Cooper.” I shrugged. “Maybe you think that’s stupid, but I don’t care. I want to belong to Cooper.”
“And Isabella?”
“I like Isabella. She likes me too. I think. The bigger the family, the better I like it.”
And that was that. Leela believed me.
But the funny thing is, even though I was kinda lying, I wasn’t really lying.
I do want to belong to Cooper. I’m not jealous of Isabella. And all that shit they do in that tomb is very interesting. Even if I wasn’t trying to get secrets from them and even if I wasn’t searching for justice, I would still find the whole thing interesting.
I would still be very curious.
I would still want to know more.
Leela started showing up a lot after that. Even in my room. Every day for two weeks I had fresh flowers delivered with my morning room service.
Yes. Room service. Living in my building was like living in a five-star hotel.
But that wasn’t all Leela did. Every afternoon—if she didn’t meet me outside of class—there would be gifts delivered to the building. There is a little office just to the side of the great room and that’s where our residential advisor lives. I’m sure this RA guy is probably a Fang and Feather wannabe like Victor. And every day when I came home, he would call my name—loudly, so everyone could hear—and let me know that I had a delivery.
These deliveries were not brown cardboard boxes from an online warehouse.
They were gifts. And they were all from Leela and Jack.
And every time I got one, I would make a big deal there in the great room and read the card aloud. “‘To Cadee. Love, Leela and Jack.’” Every day, almost. “‘To Cadee. Love, Leela and Jack.’”
These gifts always came with exquisite wrapping. Because it’s not really about the gift, is it? It’s about the impression the gift gives off.
So they were glossy boxes with satin ribbons or fresh flowers in a gorgeous vase. The presents were fairly small, at least in footprint. Little jewelry boxes. Stuffed animals. Candy. Coffee. Chocolate. Things like that. Nothing really expensive, but it wasn’t about the money.
It was about being set apart.
I’m still not one of them.
Now I’m above them.
Literally. Since my room is on the roof.
At this point everyone in that dorm—even the boys, but especially the girls—was now very focused on me. I’m pretty sure that was the point of the gifts and the visits from Leela. But Mona was extra special interested in what I was up to.
She cornered me outside on
e day between classes. “What the fuck are you doing, Cadee?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play mind games with me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re falling for it, aren’t you?”
“Falling for what, Mona?”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I was born yesterday?” Then she pointed her long glossy-red fingernail in my face. “You’re not the Queen here, Fugling. She’s playing you.”
“Aren’t we all playing each other, Mona?”
She just looked at me. And when I turned my back on her, she didn’t call out and she didn’t follow me.
Anyway, back to Leela.
She must have access to Cooper’s research schedule, because on the days when he needed an early start, she was there. Pulling me out of bed for elaborate breakfasts at the Monrovian Hotel in town. Or going to the spa for an impromptu mani-pedi. And just last Friday, right after mid-terms, she met me after class and took me into the city to shop. We ended up staying the whole weekend.
Cooper was pissed. But I was already out of town, so what could he really do?
Leela bought me clothes, and jewelry, and we dined in the best restaurants. She even introduced me to other members of Fang and Feather. Old men, mostly.
They leered at me, but no one was inappropriate.
Then, just before we left, I got lip injections while she got Botox.
I’m looking at my new plump lips in the mirror right now. Puckering them up. “What do you think?” I make fish lips for Cooper.
He tilts his head a little. “They look a little fake.”
“But that’s the point, right?”
He walks over to me, the floorboards creaking with each step. We’re staying at the inn this week because it’s Thanksgiving break and everyone was kicked out of the Hunter dorm for vacation.
We’re going to the Valcourt mansion for Thanksgiving dinner this afternoon because Ax decided to go to Valentina’s house for dinner at the last minute, and my dinner party—the one I’m throwing here at the inn—isn’t until tomorrow.