I feel suddenly restless, so I resort to greeting people.
“Welcome, welcome—make yourselves at home,” I sing, gliding through the upper floor. My heels don’t wobble. My dainty golden necklaces don’t shift. My dress—a champagne silk slip that cost far more than it looks—falls just right. I hug, I air-kiss, I field compliments about the charcuterie boards as if I assembled them myself.
The Kappa house is a chandelier of sound. Ice clinks, laughter glittering in shards. Someone plugged in the string lights I ordered, and the whole room turns soft and expensive, like a magazine photo I crawled inside. I belong here. I always belong here. Everyone expects Callista Vale to know what she’s doing, to know what’s next, to know who’s worth knowing. I am a compass and a brand and a rumor you can’t kill.
My phone buzzes in my palm. I glance down at the screen in the shadow between the foyer and the staircase. My frantic heart nearly stops. This is the bad news I’ve been avoiding all day.
Dad:We’ll “revisit the budget” next semester. Focus on your grades and image.
Translation: He cut me off.
I smile bigger, so my face doesn’t break in half. My Dad and I have a strained relationship. My mom ran away with another man, and since then, he has resented me because I look like her. Things got worse when he married a younger, prettier womanand had kids with my step-mom. My step-mom absolutely hates me and sees me as competition for his attention.
Over the years, she has poisoned his mind. First, he shipped me off to a boarding school. Then he wouldn’t even visit. Now he thinks I’m a spendthrift with a shopping addiction just because I spent a thousand dollars to buy stuff for a charity event I was hosting that was going to benefit war veterans. My step-mom hates that I have better style, better taste, and better looks, so she lies to my Dad that I’m wasting money on expensive designer clothes.
He doesn’t even care if it’s true, because deep down, he resents me. That means I’m going to have to spend this semester living on almost nothing.
I should be used to it, to his anger, to his neglect, to his hate. But it plunges into my chest like a knife every time, cutting me deep, making me feel unloved and unwanted.
Suddenly, the social success means nothing, and I’m back to being a little girl, clinging to my father, begging him not to send me away to boarding school, telling him I’ll be a good girl. And watching my step-mother laugh in that shrill voice of hers as she reminds me that my step-siblings don’t like me, and they don’t need me around.
My knees tremble and I dash for the bathroom. But I’m caught on the way by one of the girls.
“Cal! The florals are perfection,” Lila trills, sliding an arm through mine. Her perfume is gardenia and envy. “And the donors from the alumni board love you. You got the Merton twins to RSVP to the gala? How?”
“Asked nicely,” I say, voice airy. “And threatened to seat them by the bathrooms.”
My cheekbones ache from being convincing. I slip down the hall and into the far bathroom, the one with the dimmer on the sconce.
The lock clicks. I press my back to the door and let it all drop, the smile, the pose, the choreography. For a second, I’m just a girl in a dress, breathing too fast.
I grip the vanity and bow my head. The polished marble is cold beneath my palms. The room hushes. I count my breaths like rosary beads.
You’re fine. You’ll fix it. You always fix it.
Except that a leak in the hull is still a leak.
I unscrew a lipstick I don’t need and stare at the bullet like it can redraw my life. In the mirror, a perfect stranger blinks back: glossy hair pinned in a sharp French twist; silk skimming a body trained into obedience. I feel like I’m pretending to be something I’m not. My father is a lawyer. We’re not rich. When my parents were married, he didn’t make much. He got a few promotions when I was in middle school and high school, so we’re upper-middle-class. I know I’m lucky to have grown up with financial stability, but most people at Allister are far more privileged than I am. Their parents own private jets and multi-million dollar mansions. They’re the kind of people who I want to organize events for, the kind of people who would pay me big money to do something I love doing. But fitting in with them means wearing a mask, presenting a façade of affluence that may not always be true.
My eyes sting. I blink hard. Tears wobble, betray me, spill anyway.
No. Not now. Not today.
I brace my knuckles against the marble and breathe through my teeth. It hurts in my chest, a stitch that won’t release. The text replays. For one more year, until I graduate, until I can start my business, I’m still financially dependent on my dad. Between my sorority responsibilities, studies, and networking, I don’t have the time to get a part-time job. The part of me that’s twelve and learning how to smile through a family dinner that felt likea board meeting wants to take this dress off and make a scene. But if I do that, if anyone sees that I’m not the perfect, polished hostess that I pretend to be, I won’t even have an event planning business to fall back on in a year.
Footsteps whisper outside. Laughter, a knock against the wall, the house alive with people who only know one version of me. My throat tightens more. A sound slips out. It’s small, humiliating. I clap a hand over my mouth and will every part of me to behave.
A soft click behind me makes me aware of a new presence.
I freeze.
The door eases open, even though I remember locking it. A tall shadow slips in before I can move, taking up too much space and not apologizing for it. The door shuts soundlessly.
I see him in the mirror first.
Dmitry Antonov looks like wealth doesn’t impress him because he invented a meaner version of it. Dark hair combed neat, a black button-down open at the throat, sleeves half-rolled in the kind of arrogance you can’t fake. He’s not from our world.
He’s so big, there’s so little space for me in the bathroom anymore. He sucks up all the air and everything else, shrouding himself in dark miasma like a true crime lord.
