I see Dasha too.
It was my first lesson with her.
I remember how the classroom had an odd smell of strawberries and polished wood. I scraped my shoes against the floor to hide the worn and thin soles. A few girls whispered, one of them looked straight at me and said I don’t belong here.
I didn’t say anything back, I just stood in the corner for the entire class, thinking if I don’t move, they might forget I exist.
But they didn’t.
When the same girl came back, smiling, something inside me snapped. I grabbed her hair and pulled hard enough that her head hit the edge of the table.
The whole room went silent, and Dasha sent me to detention.
Except it wasn’t really detention. She created a place for the ones who got pushed aside, the ones who were told they weren’t enough. She just called it detention, so no one asked questions.
There were only three of us. A blonde girl, my age, and a boy, older than both of us, sitting in the corner with his arms crossed.
“Don’t mind him,” Dasha said. “He’s here for real detention.”
He never spoke. He just stayed there watching me play piano, watching the blonde girl as she danced on every note I played.
Dasha called him a devil. But to us, he felt like an angel.
Because he stood up for us when no one else did. No one ever laughed at us again—no one even dared to touch us. He made sure of it.
I heard later that his father died, leaving the house in his and his brother’s care. I never asked about his mother. We didn’t talk at all.
But I always had a secret crush on him. Maybe because I felt safe. Maybe because I had always been so alone.
And just like that, the image of him slips away again.
The memory thins. It feels like someone is pulling it from me, thread by thread, the moment Lily lifts her finger from my forehead.
She stares at me. Her eyes turn white as her palm comes to rest against my cheek, and she hums softly.
“Lavender’s blue…”
Deep down, something changed.
There is something my mind is hiding from me.
Eleven
THE CALLER
January 11th, 1993.
Last month, I got a call from a woman asking me to host the Gala, the one held every year by one of the families from the gentleman’s club. This time, they wanted it at my grandfather’s house in San Francisco. I said yes, not because I wanted to, but because I knew what would follow if I didn’t. My name would pass from mouth to mouth, get dragged through mud just because I learned how to say no. I already had enough of that. Enough since the tragedy that hit my family a year ago.
Now I stood in the middle of it all with a raised glass of whiskey, offering it up to every man in a tux and bow tie who pretended to be more than he was. My fake smile spread from ear to ear. I played the part so well, it almost felt real.
And then I saw her.
Her hair caught the light. Brighter shade of red than I remembered. Not the dark ginger I used to compare to cinnamon. For years, I thought her mother forced the color onto her and made her dye it that way. But standing here now, I saw it differently. That shade belonged to her. It brought that fire to her that only she didn’t see.
Aurelia Vale.
The one person who could ruin me. The only woman I had ever wanted.
