Page 10

ESCAPE

As soon as Caleb pulled his car out of the driveway, she grabbed her duffel bag and placed it on her bed.

She didn’t intend to bring much when she left the house today. It was supposed to be like any other morning where she carried the single duffel containing her uniform, makeup, and personal items she might need.

She took the opportunity the day before, when Ricky cut her hours, to go home and pack two suitcases of clothes, shoes, and essentials, while Caleb worked. She didn’t pack anything that occupied the primary space of her bedroom. Caleb would have noticed.

With time to spare before the end of her usual shift, she called Charlotte to arrange storing her suitcases until tomorrow when Blaire would make her escape. She wouldn’t take the chance of someone seeing her bringing them to the diner. She learned from her prior mistake.

She moved around the room grabbing the last items she wanted to take—a few novels, her favorite jasmine-scented perfume, a photo album, and a small jewelry box that held pieces of jewelry her mother gave her and passed down when she died. The only real things that meant home to her.

Blaire looked around her room and sighed.

This place wasn’t her home. When her mother married Caleb’s father, they moved here to live, leaving behind the small townhouse they had occupied after her father passed when she was three.

This space had become tainted. The initial happy memories made in the year before their deaths were painted black with the sick and twisted delusions of someone obsessed; marred with actions that would haunt her forever.

Blaire could never call this place home.

She wiped her eyes and stared down at the framed photograph in her hands of her mother and her sitting in a field of sunflowers with huge smiles on their faces.

Blaire’s mother had taken her to the mall and purchased matching sundresses specifically for the photo shoot. The pictures happened a month before the car accident, but the prints only came in several months after her death. Aside from the digital proofs, her mother never had the opportunity to see how the prints turned out.

She dropped the picture on top of everything else in her duffel bag with a heavy sigh.

After they returned home the evening of the photo shoot, while they were playing a game of cards in her room, Caleb casually mentioned the dress made her hips look big. She didn’t know how to take it—if felt mean, but he presented it as being helpful, so at the time she rationalized the insult. He’d been such a nice guy from the time they met. They spent a lot of time together, and he stepped right into the role of big brother. Her friends with older brothers complained about their meanness as normal, but his criticism affected her more than she wanted to admit. Deprived of a father or sibling most of her life, she longed for his approval. It led to gaslighting herself as his critiques grew more numerous and personal.

She never wore the dress again. It was tainted by a monster’s game.

She left it hanging in the back of her closet next to her Magnolia Heights uniform.

Her heart pounded, anticipating how safe she might be behind Blackthorn’s gates. During the one year she spent at Magnolia Heights, she learned many of the students’ parents tried to get them admission into Blackthorn Academy’s university program, but all were rejected. Even the great Wilcox name couldn’t get Caleb within their walls when her stepfather tried to get him accepted. No one she knew would be there, and no one she knew would suspect she’d gone there. That fact gave her hope.

Arriving at the diner, Blaire put on a show like it was any other day. If Ricky saw her leaving, or if she didn’t show up to work at all, he would immediately call Caleb and she wouldn’t make it. She waved at Ricky, who stood at the cash register ringing out an elderly couple. He grunted at her as she made her way to the red door, passing through the kitchen into the staff room.

She didn’t see Charlotte in the staff room, or her luggage, so she hoped Charlotte waited for her outside.

Blaire glanced back before moving to the alley door and slipping outside, where she found Charlotte sitting on one of her suitcases.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this. Blackthorn Academy? Why in the world did they offer a scholarship to go there? I don’t know of anyone who’s gotten the chance to go there.” Charlotte stood quickly, talking fast. “They’re so… secretive. Are you sure it’s a good idea?”

Blaire shook her head and sighed. “I honestly have no idea. The lady refused to reveal any information to me until I signed a bunch of legal documents, and I won’t know anything until I get to the academy, but I need to go… you know I do.” She took a deep breath to steel her resolve.

A cold breeze down the alley sent a chill down Blaire’s spine.

She glanced up. Professor Velastra waited at the end of the alleyway next to a black sedan sporting tinted windows.

The professor looked as elegant as before in a burgundy chiffon blouse tucked into a black pencil skirt, paired with platform stilettos in black. When she noticed Blaire looking, she lifted her hand in acknowledgment. Blaire nodded before returning her attention back to Charlotte.

“I know you do, but please be careful, and call me as soon as you get settled. We can still get together for a movie, you know. You know Blackthorn students are in the valley all the time… kind of hard to miss them, really,” Charlotte said with an awkward laugh.

She wasn’t wrong about that.

Blaire expected to feel out of place around them. They stood out.

Nodding, she tied her duffel onto one of her rolling suitcases. Charlotte gasped. Blaire turned around. Charlotte held her hands over her mouth.

“What? What’s wrong?”