I Am Her Revenge (6 page)

Claire intercepts me before I can get far at all. “Where are you going?” she asks. “I saved you a seat in case you showed today.”

She gestures at the table next to Arabella’s. The table of the not-quite-popular-but-upwardly-mobile students, I assume. A group I can’t belong to.

“Thanks, but actually I’m just going to eat quickly and head for the library,” I tell her, stepping around her. “This table’s fine.” I sink into a free seat before she can stop me.

Claire opens her mouth and then closes it. A girl next to me says “hey” to her, and she smiles back, still confused. “I’ll see you later, then.”

I nod and turn to my food.

“I’m Tory,” the girl, the Claire-friend, says, holding out a hand tipped with dark purple nails. Her light brown hair frizzes out of her round head, and I almost long to take a brush to it.

“I’m busy,” I say, turning back to my food. My goal is to be friendless, but not one of the unpopular masses. I can feel her recoil, and then she pointedly scoots her chair away from me. Good.

I pick at my salad quickly, glancing up only to find Ben. At Arabella’s table, of course. He doesn’t seem to have noticed me. Or, if he has, he’s not preoccupied with my strange table selection. Instead, he’s laughing at something the overgrown boy next to him has said. I can see his white teeth. He leans back in his chair and pounds the table, making all of the girls around him giggle.

A group of giant guys, probably athletes, huddle a few feet from the tray disposal, right near the popular table. I grab my tray and stand, trying to time it perfectly as I stride across the dining room. When one turns to leave, I walk right into him, balancing my tray against my hip so nothing spills.

I brace myself by placing an open palm on the chest of the boy, who looks down at it in bewilderment, then up at me. “Sorry,” I say, keeping my hand there for just a touch too long before pulling it away.

“It’s fine,” the boy says quickly, but I’m already leaving. I feel his eyes on my back as I go. I don’t spare Ben another glance. I know he watches me, too.

I try to
pay more attention in classes on Friday. But not to the teachers. Instead I’m focusing on the students around me, the boys and girls of British privilege who dream and struggle to define themselves and everyone else, all in one small space.

Something buzzes within me all morning, though. Something that threatens to break out of my skin. I don’t know what it is until lunch period hits, and I can’t bring myself to follow the crowd into the dining hall.

I have to escape.

I head out into the slanting rain before I can think twice about it, hurrying to get away from campus. I feel as if the school itself is watching me. I break into a run, clambering over the wall and dropping down onto the sovereign ground below. I will show up late to class, drenched and remorseful, and my legend will only grow. I’ll say I got lost. Maybe I really am lost already.

But before I can get far, I nearly run into something. No, someone. Someone tall. I have to swerve out of his way and stop.

Arthur holds his hands out, inches from my shoulders, as if to brace me. But he drops them quickly enough. “What are you doing?” he growls.

I shouldn’t do what I do next, but I can’t help it. With the tip of my thumb on the tip of my middle finger, I hold out my left hand. Our old gesture that meant one of us wanted to escape. It meant I would cover for Arthur while he snuck up to my attic room, and then I would follow him. And we could be alone. Free.

His eyes flick from my fingers to my face, and then he turns so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the moors. He points, straight ahead and slightly to the north. “If you run in that direction about a mile, you’ll find a cottage. You can be alone there.”

I stare at him, but he doesn’t look back at me. He just walks away.

I watch him for a moment, lost in memories of our tangled, painful history. Then one memory in particular snaps abruptly to the surface.

One day, when I was seven, I met a girl at the park. We played hide-and-seek among the trees, our giggles giving us away every time. Mother and the girl’s mother watched over us, and when we’d worn ourselves out, the girl’s mother invited me over for a playdate. I turned to Mother, my eyes filled with hope. She shook her head firmly and insisted we were busy, pulling me by the arm back to the car. I looked back to find the girl watching me, confusion and hurt stamped on her face.

When we got home, Mother pulled me inside and slapped me hard. “Friendship is a weakness!” she yelled. She let me go, and I scrambled to the wall, out of reach. “You cannot be friends with
anyone
. You cannot trust
anyone
. You make people believe they are your friends, and then you use them for your own purpose.” I nodded furiously, but she still wasn’t satisfied. So she called for Boy and Helper.

She pointed one long, narrow finger at me when they came into the den. “She has disobeyed me. She has to learn.”

Everything about that moment is imprinted on my mind. The curtains were drawn, as they always were, so that only a few cracks of sunlight lit the room. The portrait of Mother’s mother, a stern, haughty-looking woman wearing a diamond necklace that Mother had to sell off years ago, sneered down at us from above the fireplace. The rough, chipped-paint wall bore into my back, but still I pressed against it, trying to melt into it. Helper blocked the doorway with his sturdy frame, his face impassive. Mostly, I remember Arthur’s expression as he stared at Mother: confused, angry, scared for me. But it wasn’t me he should’ve been scared for, and I began to realize this just as Mother gestured at Helper’s cane, the ornamental item he carried with him with the round black ball on top of it.

Without a word, Helper lifted the cane and swung it, hard. Right onto Arthur’s back.

I screamed. Maybe I begged for her to stop. I don’t know. I don’t know if what I said was even coherent.

Mother grasped my chin in her hand, jerking my neck up. “Yes,” she said, peering into my eyes with a satisfied smile. “It seems that will work. If you disobey me again, he will suffer the consequences.”

I looked into Arthur’s tear-filled eyes, and I knew that I would do whatever I could to make sure he never had to serve as my whipping boy again.

It didn’t work. Every few months, at the slightest provocation, Mother would order Helper to beat his son while I watched. I close my eyes now and take a deep, shuddering breath as I remember the scars that cross Arthur’s back, the scars that exist because of me.

Arthur is out of my sight now, and I look back out at the moors, hesitating. But only for a moment.

I break into a sprint, running in the direction he pointed to, breathing in the clean scent of the rain as the heather tries to cling to my bare legs. The land is one of hills and valleys and mud that threatens to pull me down. The sky is a dark mass of clouds, gray and swirling. The rain grows harder, pelting into me. I can’t see. All I can hear is the deep roar of the rain and the growl of thunder. The day has turned dark, and everything is in confusion.

I run until I feel like something is stabbing my lungs, until my clothes feel ten pounds heavier, until I feel like I’m free from the school and everyone in it. I’m alone. I bend down, trying to catch my breath as the rain pours over me.

I look up to see something solid in front of me. I run to it and find a small, broken-down building of soaked wood, with one lopsided chimney stretching out of it. When I open the door and step inside, the rain can’t find me.

It’s something from another century, this one-room cottage. Someone’s humble home, perhaps. There isn’t any furniture, but there is a hearthside. The roof has caved in at the center, and the rain pours through to form a deep puddle underneath the gaping hole, so I step around the edges to reach the hearth. I sit before its slate stones and pretend there is a fire there to warm me. My shivering stops.

A flash of something white in the fireplace catches my eye. It sticks out of the soot, and I reach out to grab it.

After brushing the dirt and soot off, I realize what it is: part of an old photograph. I see a girl’s body dressed in a faded Madigan uniform. The other half of the picture and her head are torn away, but there’s writing on the back. I have to trace my finger over the letters as if I’m writing them myself to figure out what it says. “Me and him.” This photograph meant something to someone once. I prop it against the wall and promise to tape it up the next time I come. It feels like an appropriate way to honor this place’s history, its story before me.

I stretch out, lying on the packed dirt of the floor, and finally let myself think the thought that has been clamoring for attention since I woke up: I’m eighteen today. When I was little, I learned that most girls celebrate birthdays with big parties and presents and cake. They create a day that’s all about them. It’s a strange custom, but still, I like the idea of it. I decide that this cottage is my birthday present.

The only presents Mother ever gave me were meant to make me more seductive: makeup, clothing, or jewelry—anything that would make me noticeable and irresistible. She once devoted an entire week to showing me how to put on eye makeup for every occasion and every outfit. The week after that, she taught me how to flutter my eyelashes, how to peer through them enticingly, how to use the expressiveness of my eyes to feign remorse or fear or any other emotion I would need. “Eyes are the most important tool you have,” she told me. “You have to control them at all times, or they will give you away.”

Like the mother of the Venetian courtesan and poet Veronica Franco, Mother taught me everything she knew about how to attract a man. Franco’s mother was a courtesan as well, and she trained her daughter to be a captivating, powerful, eloquent woman. She was utterly irresistible, just as I am meant to be.

I fall asleep thinking of Veronica as the rain softens outside. When I wake, the day has grown even darker. It’s dusk, and I don’t know how to get back to campus, but my growling stomach urges me to try.

I leave the cottage behind and head in the most likely direction.

The sky is now deep blue with a netting of gray clouds covering the sliver of moon like a mantilla. The trees are ink drawings: gnarled lines beneath the dark sky. There are no identifying markers that I can recognize, but I stay calm. I can find my way. I’m sure of it.

I walk along the moors as the deep blue sky melts into blackness. The crescent moon offers almost nothing in the way of light, and the wind and the rain grow stronger, battling my every move, dragging down my soaked clothes. The only sound I can hear beyond the roar of the wind is the creaking of the trees, their branches reaching for me as I pass. The ground beneath me feels unsteady, as if it might give way and swallow me whole.

I take deep breaths and keep going. I will not let the immensity of the moors frighten me.

I must have been walking for an hour in the heavy downpour. My legs ache, and the grumbling in my stomach has grown into a roar. My teeth clack together, and though I wrap my arms around myself, I can’t stop the shivers running through me.

I am lost in the shadows of the night.

And then, suddenly, a sound. I hurry to it, to the voice calling my name.

The person I find, however, is the last person I want to see.

“What happened?” Arthur asks when I practically stumble on him. He looks just as drenched as I am, as if he’s been looking for me for hours. The rain slides down his cheekbones like a caress. His T-shirt sticks to his chest, where there are muscles I don’t remember him having. “You’re miles from the cottage. And the school.”

I force myself to look up into his eyes, and I have to blink as the rain streams down my face. “I got lost.” I mean to sound cold, matter-of-fact, like someone who doesn’t need his help. The voice I answer him with, though, is small and shaky. Real.

He takes a deep breath, looking down at me. “We’ll get you back. You need to get warm.”

He glances at me again as we start moving. He curses under his breath, some harsh word I don’t quite catch. “I shouldn’t have sent you out here. You could have killed yourself. It’s not forgiving land. But I wanted—” He stops himself. “I wanted you to have somewhere you could be alone. Be the Vivian I remember.”

I shiver, though I don’t know if it’s from the cold or from his words. I don’t say anything back. I can’t.

We say nothing else for nearly an hour as the rain finally lets up and he leads me back to the school. It’s only when campus is in sight that he stops and looks at me. “I’m not your friend anymore,” he says, scowling. He means to sound gruff, but I can hear the faint waver of uncertainty in his voice.

“I know,” I answer.

“I won’t help you destroy Ben.”

“I know that, too.”

He sighs and looks as if he wants to say something else, but then he shakes his head. His hair has mostly dried out now, and it’s the same mussed, black hair that I remember. He turns away, then turns back. “Happy birthday,” he says quietly. Reluctantly.

I feel my eyes grow wider as I stare at him. Why would he say that? Why would he even remember my birthday?

Before I can think of what to say, he walks away, leaving me to face Madigan on my own. I watch him go, his tall form a black shadow in the dim moonlight. The one person in the world who knows and cares about my birthday. Even if he hates me, too.

I tell myself to focus as I trudge up the hill to the main building. Lightning flashes, lighting up the old gray stones, and I start to run.

I buzz in at the main gate. A teacher comes out, his eyebrows raised and his mouth a tight line of disapproval as he points me to the headmaster’s office. I leave a trail of water along the marble floor as I march. I’m shivering constantly now, which will help me with Harriford.

I see him out front, talking to the secretary. His eyes grow wide when I enter, and I fill my own eyes with regret and fear and misery.

“Are you all right? We were worried.” He steps forward, then looks back at the secretary. She glares at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I wail. “I was feeling homesick, so I went outside, and I got lost. And it was raining so hard, and I didn’t know where I was.”

I hide my face in my hands and let my body shake as if I’m quietly sobbing.

The headmaster stays where he is, held by the force of the secretary’s glare, but I can feel the sympathy radiating from him. “Don’t cry,” he says, helpless. “It’s all right now.”

“Shouldn’t she be disciplined for going off school property?” the secretary asks, her voice cutting through Harriford’s sympathy.

“Now then, I’m sure it was just a mistake.”

I lift my eyes, watery with false tears, and nod. “I won’t do it again, I promise!” It’s a promise I’ll break, of course, but I certainly won’t be caught again.

He nods furiously at me. “There, see?” he tells the secretary. “No harm done. Now go warm up. If you feel feverish or anything, the school nurse will help you.”

“Thank you, Headmaster Harriford.” I attempt a smile through my tears, then glide out of the room.

Mrs. Hallie meets me at the entrance to Faraday, concern etched in every wrinkle of her face. “Are you all right, darling?” she asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I resist the urge to shake it off and nod. “I just need to warm up. I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.”

“No trouble, dear. I was just worried for you.” She looks at me more closely, and I try to keep a remorseful expression on my face. “Hurry along and shower,” she says finally. “And let me know if you need anything at all.”

I force myself to smile at her. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Hallie.”

I claim one of the empty shower stalls and stand under the hot water, letting it wash away the shivers.

It won’t wash away my memories, though, which have been coming at me all day. Especially the one of my eighth birthday, when I realized that my world was much darker than I had imagined. That day, I found three stray kittens hiding in the bushes in the front yard. They were so tiny that they almost didn’t seem real. I ran to fetch Arthur, sure that he would know what to do. He took one look at the kittens and hurried inside, sneaking a carton of milk out of the fridge and a couple of bowls from the cabinet. He set the bowls of milk in front of the kittens, softly coaxing them to drink. “You can’t tell your mother,” he warned me. “We’ll take care of them together.”