But I am tired of being a good girl. I’m tired of obeying.
I don’t need a babysitter. I certainly don’t need a woman whose medical degree bought her a cushy job at a pricey private clinic telling meIt must be difficultandIt wasn’t your fault.
Not that anyone else agrees on that point. Wyatt handles me with kid gloves, as they all do.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just stopped cooperating.
Leonie is in the Godwin House foyer when I return. She jumps a little when I kick the door shut; she was waiting for me. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“How was your first day of classes?”
“Fine.” I don’t know why she’s talking to me. Not knowing makes me suspicious.
“We’re making dinner in the kitchen. If you wanted to…” She doesn’t seem to know what word she’s looking for to finish the sentence, just stares at me with these big brown eyes.
I think about letting her hang there, awkward and off balance. It would be a nice kind of social vengeance—repayment for that horrible night in the common room, for the invisible walls the four of them constructed to keep me out.
But I can’t let them make me that person, so I relent. “Sure, I’ll help.”
I know this isn’t Leonie’s idea, of course. Ellis sent her. It’s the only explanation, the only reason any of them would tolerate my presence for longer than absolutely necessary. But when I get into the kitchen, they’re all there—sharp elbows and broth-splattered cookbooks and wooden spoons rapping against countertops—and Kajal passes me a gingham apron, and somehow it’s easy to slip in among them.
“We’re making balsamic mushroom ravioli,” Clara says, tipping her head toward the wooden basket of shiitakes at her side. She’s sliced what looks like half a pound already, soil ground into the cutting board.
“I’m not a very good cook,” I admit.
Ellis glances up from where she’s set up shop at the end of the island, a steel pasta-maker affixed to the side of the counter. She has a bit of flour swiped across her cheek. “None of us are. But we need someone to fold the ravioli, if you think you can manage that.”
I can manage it.
Their conversation resumes around me, effortless as placing the needle back on a vinyl record and continuing where the melody left off.
“I can’t believe I’m with Lindquist this year,” Clara moans from her spot in the corner. There are too many girls in the kitchen and too few tasks, so after she finished with the mushrooms, she set up with her books open in her lap and a fountain pen fiddling between her fingers. “She hates me.”
“You were with Yang last year?” asks Kajal.
“Yes. And now I’ve been cruelly abandoned.”
“Yang only advises first- and second-years,” I comment, pinching the edge of a ravioli. “It’s Lindquist, MacDonald, and Wyatt for juniors and seniors.”
“I know,” Clara sighs, “but I’d hoped she might make an exception.”
It’s so like the conversations we used to have in Godwin House before I left. Although perhaps ours were more vicious; we’d created the definitive ranking of Dalloway English faculty, an algorithm including points for toughness, intelligence, susceptibility to various late-work excuses, and probability of dying of old age before the semester ended. Lindquist was at the top of our list, MacDonald at the bottom (although the algorithm, to be fair, didn’t favor an instructor who lived in Godwin House and could know for sure that our essays were late because we were up all night partying, not because our third grandmother died).
“Who are you with?” Leonie asks, meeting my gaze and offering a tentative smile. And although I still suspect she’s sympathetic only on Ellis’s orders, I smile back.
“Wyatt.”
“Kajal’s with Wyatt, too,” Leonie says, gesturing toward Kajal herself, who crushes another garlic clove under the flat blade of her knife and doesn’t look up.
I’m not used to feeling uncertain in social situations. My junior year at Dalloway—the year before everything fell apart with Alex, before that climbing trip and its aftermath, my subsequent withdrawal from classes—I was popular. Or if not popular, then at leastenvied;my mother sent large allowances every month and had little interest in how I spent it, so I wasted all that money on tailored dresses and hair appointments and weekend trips to the city for my Godwin friends. And although I was far from the richest girl at Dalloway, the way I chose to spend my money bought me a certain immunity from social faux pas. Everyone has awkward moments; I was forgiven mine.
At least I didn’t have tobuymy friends,Alex had said the night she died, cheeks blotchy with rage; and even then I’d known she was right.
But I don’t have any interest in buying the friendship of Ellis Haley or her cabal. I find it hard to care about social hierarchies these days.
Alex would have been proud.
