Page 18 of The Bargain

For a second, I consider telling Blaise, but he wouldn’t get it. Everything always falls into place for him. High grades without having to study hard. Endless parties without ever being exhausted or burnt out. A little sister who adores him.

“I’m alright,” I say quickly. “Don’t worry.”

“My darling cousin.” He tilts his head. “You wouldn’t be lying to me now, would you?”

My phone buzzes. Normally, I would never allow myself to check it while in class, but this time, I reach swiftly into my blazer pocket. I swipe my screen and my heart sinks when I see that the text waiting for me isn’t from Ophelia.

It’s from an unknown number.

Unknown: Meet me tonight, love. My bedroom.

“Who’s that?” Blaise asks with a delighted smirk.

I delete the text and shove my phone back into my pocket.

“It’s nothing,” I answer him, mind already a thousand miles away. “It’s nobody.”

7

Building Fortresses

Elias

October starts with a storm and a phone call. The storm lasts three days; it rattles the windows of the Old Manor classrooms, damages several roofs, and uproots the black mulberry tree in the arboretum. The phone call lasts fifteen minutes—the exact duration of the time slot Mr Pearson’s admin team have set aside in his calendar.

It’s been the same slot ever since I started at Spearcrest: quarter past five, every first Monday of the month except for December and August.

I was sixteen years old when the Pearson family formally adopted me—only two years away from officially aging out of the foster care system.

It’s rare for things to happen this way—I’ve been reminded many times. Nobody wants a sixteen-year-old boy. Like a textbook that’s been scribbled all over with smudgy genitalia.

So when the news came that the Pearsons, the shiny white-teethed, clean-skinned, Burberry-clad family from the news, had filed the paperwork for my adoption, I didn’t actually believe it.

Even Miss Cooles and Miss Singh, my caseworkers, didn’t look like they believed it. They looked at each other and laughed, and Miss Cooles patted my arm with an awed smile and said, “What a godsend, eh?”

I laughed and nodded and didn’t tell her that God had never once sent anything my way—that if he existed at all, then he must’ve lost my address a long time ago.

Not that I blamed him. I had more addresses in my young years than some people collect in a lifetime. I don’t blame God for any of it.

What would be the point? It wouldn’t fix anything. I’m smart enough to know that the universe is too big, and that I’m too small, for my suffering to be calculated or personal.

The Pearsons had enough connections and power to get the adoption processed in record time. They didn’t have enough connections to guarantee Mr Pearson being voted Member of Parliament—that’s where I came in. Overnight, I was plucked out of my underfunded, overrun state school and parachuted into Spearcrest Academy, which looked like a fairy-tale castle.

Spearcrest Academy, I came to learn, cost over £50,000 a year—not including uniforms, formalwear, school trips, private music lessons or specialist tutoring, exam fees and discretionary spending.

That’s a lot of money to spend on a scrawny nobody, you’d think.

I thought so—until I overheard Mr Pearson on the phone with his campaign manager.

“He photographs well,” he’d said. “Scrappy but grateful. And he doesn’t sound like he was scraped off a council estate.”

And it’s not like I believed I was adopted because I’m charming (I’m not), or easy to love (also no), but it still came as a shock. A bit of research told me that Mr Pearson, newly announced parliamentary candidate for the South-East, was under fire for allegations of classism, nepotism, outdated views on foster care reform, and so on and so on. Adopting a rough-around-the-edges scholarship kid? Not so much redemption as clever PR.

Miss Cooles had called it a godsend.

It was only ever just good optics.

Although the storm’s finally passed, it’s still raining heavily outside my bedroom window when the call comes in. I glance at the time. Just got to get through the next fifteen minutes.