I Am Her Revenge (12 page)

I make my
move against Arabella the next day by targeting her two best friends, Lily and Anna. I find them talking in the hallway by their lockers that Wednesday morning, clustered around Arabella. The hallway is filled with chattering people, all of them happy and mindless. The perfect spot to make a scene. I approach Arabella and her friends with a smirk firmly in place. They watch me coming, confusion marring their faces. “What do you want?” Arabella asks, cocking her hip and placing her hand on it.

I ignore her for a moment, looking around to make sure we have everyone’s attention. Everyone around us has stopped, waiting for the girl drama to erupt. I focus on Lily and Anna. “Careful she doesn’t do to you what she did to Emily,” I say in a loud conspiratorial whisper. “I heard they were both having an affair with Mr. Park, but she turned Emily in so she wouldn’t get caught herself.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Arabella scoffs.

I raise my eyebrows. “Then why did you get such a good grade in the course? A bit suspicious, don’t you think?”

It’s not at all suspicious, considering Arabella is a fairly good student, but Lily and Anna look at their friend with uncertainty.

“You two know about her slutty sister, right?” I ask. “Looks like it runs in the family.”

As Arabella fumes, I laugh and move on down the hall. Everyone watches me as I go, some of them smiling, most of them whispering to their friends, covering their mouths with their hands as their awe-struck, ridiculing words slip out.

I allow myself a small private smile as I walk away from the scene. Mother told me to keep provoking her, and I’ve certainly done that. Arabella will have to fight back now, and as soon as she does, she’ll reveal to Ben how shallow his group of friends really is.

After the last class a few days later, I finally find Arthur, and the knot in my chest that I’ve been trying so hard to ignore for the past three weeks loosens. He’s trimming the tall hedges at the front gate of the school, and I hurry over to him, looking back over my shoulder to make sure no one’s watching me. There are a few students wandering about in the rare sunshine beaming down on us, so I’ll have to be discreet.

“I have to talk to you,” I hiss at him.

He looks up, surprised, holding his shears in the air as he watches me rush past him. I don’t stop until I’ve reached his shed, and he’s right behind me to let me inside. He brushes against me as he pushes his key into the lock, and instead of moving, I look up at him. I reach just to his shoulder, so when I look up at his face, I see the cut of his jawbone and the smooth planes of his cheeks. It makes my breath catch in my chest.

He opens the door and gestures me inside.

“What’s going on?” he asks, his expression now impassive as he crosses his arms and looks at me.

“Where have you been?” I ask, crossing my own arms. I want to put as much distance between us as possible, but the minuscule shed, all of it cluttered with books and papers, makes it difficult. My arms almost touch his, even though I have my back pressed against the wall. “Your father was here.”

“I know,” he says with a sigh. “I saw him creeping around the edges of the school, so I got off campus as quickly as I could and told the administration that I had a death in the family so I could stay away until I was sure he was gone. I had an errand to run in London anyway.”

“What errand?” I ask.

“Nothing you need to worry about.” There’s something he’s not telling me, but I don’t press. “What was he doing here?” he asks.

“What do you think? He was spying on me.”

“Did you talk to him? Did he mention me?” He’s watching me intently, and I notice the dark circles under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept at all the past three weeks. He must have been so terrified to see his father wandering around the school, so close to this new life he created for himself.

I surprise both of us when I reach out and touch his arm. I’m trying to calm him, but it only startles him, and he jumps back from my touch, nearly crashing into the wall. I pull my hand back, and a strange feeling courses through me. Embarrassment, I realize, as I feel my cheeks begin to flush. Why on earth had I thought to touch him? That’s never been my reaction before.

I cross my arms again and try to regain some semblance of composure. “I talked to him, but he said nothing about you. He’d been spying on me that morning, but you were gone. Then he showed up in my history class.”

“What did he say?”

For a moment, I don’t know what to tell him. “He didn’t say anything about you,” I repeat, and then I close my mouth determinedly.

He stares at me with those intense brown eyes, trying to work something out in his mind. His cheekbones seem even sharper as he frowns. I keep my expression carefully blank, not sure what he’s looking for.

One of the skills Mother taught me is how to stay silent when you sense someone wants to tell you a secret. Making them speak first makes them nervous, and they’re more likely to tell more than they meant to.

Arthur’s too smart for that trick, though. “If you see him again, tell me as soon as possible. If he finds me here, everything will be ruined.”

“
What
will be ruined?” I ask, exasperated.

He shakes his head. “Just trust me.” He smiles a little, something small and sad, as if he realizes how impossible his request is.

I nod and head for the door. There’s nothing more to be learned here. But just as I get my hand on the latch, Arthur steps up behind me. I freeze. I can feel his warm breath on my neck, the heat radiating from his body. “You and Ben have been sneaking out,” he whispers.

I don’t turn around. I don’t trust myself to move. “How did you hear that?” We ran away to the cottage last night, where Ben accepted another white pill and kissed me under the stars.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asks, his voice so sharp it cuts into my skin.

I turn the latch and rush out into the fresh air. No one is around to see, but I run back to Faraday like I’m escaping a wildfire.

A couple of
days later, after the last literary magazine meeting of November, in which we vote on whether swear words will be allowed in the final publication (they pass unanimously), I come back to my room to find a girl I don’t know sitting on Claire’s bed, alone.

Surprised, I stare at her dumbly for a moment. I haven’t seen her in the halls before. Suddenly, I realize who she must be.

“Hi!” she says brightly, springing up and holding her hand out to me. “I’m Emily, Claire’s friend.”

She’s tall and willowy, with cropped brown hair that accentuates the angles of her face. Her light brown eyes have an almost almond shape to them, and her smile reveals a small but perfect row of white teeth. She’s much more naturally beautiful than I am, and almost as striking. I try to smile. “You’re the girl who used to live here,” I say, shaking her hand quickly.

“So she’s told you about me,” Emily says, settling back down on Claire’s fluffy pink bed and watching me carefully.

“She said you were great,” I hedge.

“And?” Emily prompts with an embarrassed smile.

“And that you got kicked out for sleeping with your chemistry teacher for a good grade.” I make sure to leave any sense of judgment out of my tone.

“The story that never dies,” she says ruefully.

“Did you?” I ask, though I know the answer.

She raises an eyebrow at my bluntness, but laughs. “Please,” she answers, rolling her eyes. “Mr. Park is, like, in his thirties. Disgusting. Someone forged those letters to make it look like my handwriting and sent them to the headmaster. I just don’t know who would have done it.”

Claire walks through the door I’ve left open, nearly tripping over her own feet when she sees the girl I’m talking to.

“Emily!” she cries out. Emily jumps up again from the bed and pulls my much-shorter roommate into a hug.

“I snuck in to see you,” Emily announces, holding up a backpack. “I brought sandwiches, so you have to skip dinner and catch up with me.”

I grab my own backpack so that I can escape to the library. “I’ll leave you two to it.” I walk out the door as the squeals and exclamations of “It’s been
sooo
long” continue.

I wait until two hours after dinner before I head back to the dorm, ducking my head and running as rain sputters down from the sky. I want Emily to be gone, to have my sanctuary back.

But when I enter the room, she’s still there, and Claire is even bubblier than usual. They sit on the floor, a mound of bright foil candy wrappers between them. Their laughter fills up the room, pushing off the gloom of the evening outside.

“Vivian!” Claire cries out, as if it’s been years since she’s seen me. “We’re breaking into my candy bar stash. Do you want any?”

They both beam up at me. I shift my weight from one foot to the other, wondering if I should head back to the library. But the prospect of going back into the cold, spitting rain holds even less appeal than submitting to a night of girl bonding.

“Sure,” I say finally, settling down on my bed.

“One for you,” Claire declares, handing me a chocolate bar with a flourish. “And one for you.” She hands another to Emily. “Don’t worry. There aren’t any peanuts in it,” she says with a smile.

Emily laughs, tucking her long legs underneath her, completely at home in this room that used to be hers. “I have a severe peanut allergy,” she explains, looking up at me. “If I have a peanut, the doctors say I might die, so I have to have an EpiPen with me at all times.”

I nod, trying to seem concerned.

“Hey, did you ever find your EpiPen?” Claire asks, tearing open a new candy bar for herself.

“Nope. Had to get a new one,” Emily answers. She looks back at me, and I meet her eyes. “I lost it a few weeks before they kicked me out.”

Her words have set off a subtle alarm in my head, quiet but insistent.

Claire asks Emily about her new school, and I pretend like I’m fascinated, but really my mind is racing.

Is it strange that Emily lost her EpiPen around the same time Mother was targeting her and trying to get her out the way so I could enroll in Madigan? Could there have been some plan to kill Emily and make it look like an accident? Would Mother and Helper have gone that far to ensure that I got a spot? The thought makes bile rise in the back of my throat, and I take a shaky breath.

When the lights flicker for lights-out, we all hurry to find our pajamas and get ready for bed.

“Aren’t you going to say goodnight to Victoria?” Emily asks Claire as she pulls a toothbrush out of her bag. I have no idea who she’s talking about until Claire, biting her lip, glances at her laptop. Only then do I remember that Claire’s Ava is named Victoria. It’s been at least a month since I’ve seen her interacting with it.

“I think I’ve outgrown her,” Claire says with a weak attempt at rolling her eyes. “I don’t need some digital doll telling me how cool and posh I am anymore.”

Emily frowns but says nothing, studying her former roommate with curious eyes.

She sleeps on the floor that night, her breathing slow and untroubled, and I spend the long, dark hours staring up at the ceiling and trying not to think.

Emily sneaks off campus the next morning, and life returns to normal.

But “normal” is beginning to feel claustrophobic. All of my free time must be spent doing homework or kissing Ben or kissing Ben while doing homework. And we’re all crowded together on this hill, living on top of each other. I can’t avoid Arabella’s glowering looks in the hall, though the cautious looks her friends show me are definitely amusing. I’ve even had to give up my cottage, the one place I thought I could be alone. And I’m suffocating.

I drag Ben out to the cottage more and more over the next two weeks as December falls over us, pulling him away from school on weeknights and weekends, any time we can get away. Even if I have to act around him, at least there’s only one person in the space around me.

“What’s your family like?” he asks one night when the wind is howling so loudly outside the cottage that we almost have to shout to hear each other. We’re standing next to the fire he’s just built, rubbing our hands together and trying desperately to warm up. The world outside has grown colder and more unpredictable, the wind and rain heavier, wilder.

Mother has prepared me for this question. “I never knew my father. He abandoned my mother when he found out she was pregnant. He didn’t want anything to do with me, so I didn’t want anything to do with him.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

I shrug, a little gesture to suggest that I’m trying to act like it’s not a big deal, even though on the inside it
is
a big deal. I stare unblinking into the flames.

“So your mum raised you?”

I bite the inside of my lip. “She brought me up in her image. She controls every little thing I do. Everything. That’s why I was homeschooled for so long. She wanted to mold me herself. I’m not allowed to make any of my own decisions. And if I disobey her . . .” I stop and shudder delicately.

I can feel him watching me, and he shifts closer now. “What did she do to you?”

This isn’t part of the story Mother devised, but for some reason I can’t stop myself from telling him. “One time,” I say slowly, “she got so mad at me that she took the fireplace poker and branded me. Here,” I say, lifting up my shirt and showing him the inch-long burn mark on my hipbone. “She said I was hers.” I had walked in on her yelling at the portrait of her mother over the fireplace, and I can still see the wild roll of her eyes and feel the poker singeing into my skin.

He breathes out one long, sad sigh. He reaches his hand out, trailing the back of a finger along the raised skin, and I shiver. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I resist the urge to shift uncomfortably. I don’t know what to say to that.

Luckily, he speaks first. “My father’s not as bad, not nearly,” he tells me. “But he’s still an asshole.”

I hold my breath, waiting for him to continue.

“He’s planned out my whole future for me. I’m going here, just like he did.”

My eyebrows knit together. “Your father went to Madigan?”

He nods. “Both my parents did. It’s where they met.”

Mother never mentioned this, and that makes it feel even more significant. I shouldn’t be surprised, because I’ve always known she and Collingsworth met at a school in Britain, but she always made it seem as if she’d researched Madigan from afar. I try to mask the confusion tumbling through me and focus on Ben.

“After I graduate,” he continues, “I’m supposed to go to Oxford, because it’s so prestigious. Never mind that he didn’t, you know, even bother to apply to university. Then I’ll work at his company and, when he thinks I’m ready, take over the business. He started a major tech company a year after high school, even though he knows absolutely
nothing
about computers. You know Avas?”

“Of course,” I say, my eyes growing wide as I feign surprise, even though Claire told me about Collingsworth and Ava my first night here. “That’s his company?”

Ben nods glumly. “It’s all he bloody cares about. Money and power. He’s about to start a line of girlfriend Avas. He says they’re for boys who want more practice talking to girls, but it’s basically porn. He’s turning everyone’s childhood best friend into a digital porn doll because that’s where the profits are. He always says, ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ He’s too lazy to even come up with his own damn catchphrase.” I press my lips together and try not to show my surprise. That’s the phrase Mother always spat out at me, as if the taste of the words was too bitter. Of course. They’d been bitter because she’d been repeating
his
favorite saying.

Ben takes a deep breath. “He certainly never gave a flying fuck about me.” He stops, blinking hard.

There’s nothing I can say. He doesn’t want my pity, I know that much. He just wants me there. So I move closer to him, wrapping my arms around his middle and resting my head in the crook of his shoulder, where it fits so well. He wraps his arms around me and touches his lips to the top of my head, a strong seal of a kiss. It’s not like our other kisses, which are born out of desire and need. This one is more powerful.

I interrupt the moment to ask the question Mother instructed me to in her last email. “What about your mother?”

“She died when I was eleven,” he says, almost in a whisper. “My dad shoved me off to boarding school not long after. He couldn’t deal with me.”

“I’m so sorry. What was she like?”

Ben thinks a long moment before answering. “She was . . . soft. Gentle. She had this way of sort of, um, sort of floating around the house and making everything brighter. She was very light, so light that she often didn’t make any noise while she walked. Dad used to call her the ghost of the house, because she would always appear out of nowhere.” He pauses, stepping out of my hug and looking down at his hands. “My dad killed her.”

The statement hangs in the air, and it takes my breath away. “What do you mean?” I croak out finally.

“She had the biggest heart, and he broke it. She hardly had any family, just an aunt who sent her to boarding school when she was eight. When she got pregnant with me, she was about to start university, and he made her withdraw. He was all she had, besides me. And he cheated on her constantly, with women who could never hope to be as beautiful as she was.” His voice grows sharper, and I know when he looks into the fire that he’s picturing all of the things he’d like to do to his father to punish him. “He didn’t even notice when she got sick. He didn’t even care when she was too weak to come down for dinner or get out of bed in the morning. By the time she finally got to a doctor, the cancer had spread too far to be treated.”

He presses his hands against the wall, pushing it with all his strength. “I promised my mum before she died that when I fell in love with a girl, I’d treat her right. She didn’t want me to be afraid of marriage, so I promised her that when I found the girl I loved so much that I couldn’t stand to be without her, I’d marry her. And that I’d, you know, I’d keep loving her.” He stops pushing the wall, his arms falling to his sides and his chin dropping to his chest, but he doesn’t turn back to me.

I step toward him cautiously and put my hand on his arm. “We can’t rely on our parents,” I tell him, making my voice soft and wistful. “We have to make our own destinies.”

He looks at me for one long, hard moment, and then sweeps me into his arms. That night he takes two pills and clings to me as if I’m the only thing keeping him attached to this earth.