Nobody in Particular(104)
“Before sunrise,” I whisper. I have to leave early, to ensure no one catches me. Squinting into the darkness, I fumble around for my clothes and quickly dress. To provide a dim glow for myself as I do, I prop my phone against her lamp.
“Be careful when you leave.” Danni yawns. “Harriet always lets me off when she catches me, but you’re not her favorite person right now.”
I pause while lacing my right shoe. “Does she catch you often?” I ask.
“Used to. Don’t worry. She never turned me in.”
She rolls over and throws an arm over her head to go back to sleep.
And I stare straight ahead, disturbed.
I accused Molly of blackmailing us because she’d suspected Danni’s sexuality. But Molly had an excellent point. She spent more time around Danni and me than anyone. Of course she would notice our behavior, along with any sudden changes in it.
Someone else, someone who wasn’t quite as familiar with us, might have suspected Danni and I weren’t straight, especially after the influx of articles about us over the past several weeks.
But reading a few articles, and having a suspicion, is not the same thing as knowing somebody is queer. And it certainly isn’t the same thing as knowing for a fact that two people are queer, and in a relationship with each other.
Something has occurred to me about the night of Florence’s party. Something somebody said to me. At the time, I’d read it as a childish insult. An implication that I was being overprotective of Danni. Eleanor had obviously taken it the same way, as she’d heard the whole thing, but she was caught entirely off guard when I came out to her the next day. Still, I should have realized. I had the context to realize.
That night, I’d screamed at Harriet for kissing Danni. In my rage, it hadn’t even occurred to me that it was somewhat odd Harriet would assume Danni was interested in girls at all—with enough confidence to kiss her, even—given Danni surely wasn’t overtly flirting with Harriet. The night Danni and I kissed, it had felt like a game of chicken, with both of us taking gradual steps with our words and body language, carefully assessing if the other felt similarly, and if our hints were landing on soft ground. Even after weeks of what was, in hindsight, blatant flirting, I was hesitant to believe Danni could truly like girls right up until the point of undeniability. Even so, Harriet isn’t me, so though I find the idea of her kissing a girl she wasn’t sure also liked girls odd, it’s not damning.
What is damning is the fact that when Harriet yelled back at me that night, she’d angrily referred to Danni as my girlfriend.
FORTY-SIX
ROSE
I wait until it’s a reasonable time to storm over to Harriet’s room. Not because I particularly care for her sleep, but because I want time to sit with my theory, just in case I find holes in it. The more I think about it, though, the more convinced I am. Even if I allow for the possibility that Harriet simply saw the rumors about us online and was throwing it in my face, it doesn’t fit neatly. Harriet was too confident, too quick.
Harriet, I’m certain, didn’t suspect something. She knew something.
She is up and dressed already when I bang my fist on her door, and she opens it with a look of alarm. “Rose? What—”
My heart begins to thud. If I’m wrong, my next words will destroy everything. I would be giving my most dangerous secret to the person who has more reason to want revenge on me than perhaps anybody I know. But if I’m right, it’s the only way to ensure the truth. I wait until she’s closed the door behind us, then I lower my voice and say, in the most threatening tone I can muster, “I just want to know why you thought it would be okay to kiss my girlfriend with me in the next room.”
Harriet goes pale and she sits on her pristinely made bed. Good Lord, her room is spotless. “I … I’m sorry. I wasn’t … You two weren’t visiting each other as much anymore, and you kept going out with Alfie, and you didn’t even speak at Florence’s party. I thought you might have broken up,” she finishes. She looks sheepish at her poor reasoning—I’m sure she knows as well as I do that it’s not appropriate to kiss a taken person simply because you suspect they might have broken up with their partner. But I couldn’t care less about her thought process. She’s inadvertently given me the answer I’m really here for.
“But you did know we were together at one point,” I continue. “Somehow.”
Her eyes widen as she realizes her mistake. Fear flashes across her features.
“Because you’ve known since November,” I say. “When you contacted the palace to tell them I was seeing Danni Blythe.”
FORTY-SEVEN
DANNI
Mom has to call me three times to wake me up for the meeting with the headmaster. When the ringing finally drags me to consciousness, the first thing I notice is my bed’s empty. Then I remember Rose left super early, and I forgot to set an alarm of my own. I swear and grab my phone.
“I’m here, I’m coming, sorry, I’ll be one second, love you,” I babble, throwing on my uniform. Okay, so I’m gonna be … less than polished. Not ideal, but it’s fine, it’s cool, we’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna be fine.
Oh god, oh fuck, what if I’m not fine?