I reluctantly leave the most comfortable bed I’ve ever sat on to go and take it from her. Just as she promised, there’s my name in the same swirling script the writing on the invitation was in.
“How did they get my size?” I mutter. It feels almost… creepy.
“Market research,” Saint jokes, looking at me, as if she expects for me to be in on it. When I don’t crack a smile, she frowns. “Well… we don’t want to be late, do we?”
The cotton dresses are old-fashioned, with lacy, high necks and shin-length hems. The nipped-in waist and tight sleeves look like they belong to an era one hundred years before, and the back is secured by tiny buttons that feel like pearls. The only saving grace is the fact that there isn’t a dumb matching hat.
“I feel stupid,” Saint says once dressed, giving voice to my own feelings. But while I feel uncomfortable, she sounds more put out than anything.
With a few minutes to spare, we leave our room, even though I could be happy spending the entire two weeks just exploring there. I cast it one more excited glance before we make our way to the common room.
Opening the door, I’m not sure what to expect—maybe solemnity—but instead, it’s full to the brim with a gaggle of girls, all speaking loudly over one another, dressed in the same white cotton and lace.
“Adina? Adina!”
Penthesilea’s freckled arms fold delicately around my shoulders. My arms go around her automatically, though I’ve never hugged Penthesilea in my entire life. She pulls back, beaming, her fiery red hair framing her face, complementing the angelic rose and cream of her skin.
“P-Penthesilea,” I choke, because she’s here. Why is she here?
Pierce’s girlfriend is here, competing in the same competition that I am, and suddenly, it all feels very much like a setup.
“I’ve been looking for a friendly face. There are some girls from Edgewater, but not many. There’s a girl from Nightingale-Bamford too. You know, the all-girls school?” Penthesilea says. She speaks to me as if we’re friends, as if we’ve shared something more than a few friendly words and a Remington. Not that she can ever know that.
“Oh? Oh, really?” I stutter. I turn to examine the competition, which is easier than looking at Penthesilea.
There’s a girl I recognize from the lacrosse team at a boarding school two towns over. Another girl or two who might be from the private country day school nearby. Other girls, girls who mean nothing, girls who might mean everything. Girls who don’t need to be here as badly as I do.
And then, as if that all wasn’t enough, there’s Esme Alderidge, her signature diamond choker exchanged for a single rope of pearls, like that will make her seem more adult. Her little follower, Hawthorne, apparently has followed her even into the Finish, and lurks in her shadow.
Unsurprisingly, Saint and I are the only ones of color.
Esme notices me at the same time as I notice her and she sits up, her lips curling into a sneer too wide for her face, but the door edges open, and there is Dr. Remington again.
The giggles and whispers and gossip taper off at once, her presence creating the much more serious air I was expecting. Only Penthesilea seems unchanged.
“Oh, Aunt Leighton is here,” she says, even letting out a soft little giggle. She latches on to my arm as we turn to her.
Aunt Leighton?
Dr. Remington moves through the room with purpose, cutting between two girls—one mousy and towheaded, the other a bony brunette. She stands next to the piano and plucks one key almost absently, and yet it feels so very practiced. The glass in her hand is filled with wine that’s so richly red, it looks nearly black.
Somehow the whole effect is that she seems to darken the golden and blue parlor room even though she’s smiling.
“Welcome,” she says softly, and this time there’s no comfort in her voice, “to the Finish.”
CHAPTER 6
“TWELVE GIRLS STAND BEFORE ME—all exceptional and bright, in your own ways.” She takes a long sip of her wine and turns swiftly on her heels, like she’s relishing making us wait. Her gaze flits over each of us, bouncing back and forth, to and fro. “But each of you has arrived here unrefined and raw. We will rectify this.”
Penthesilea is still at my side. Saint is lounging on a chaise, her posture bored though her face seems a little more alert now.
“Our family founded the great Edgewater Academy, some two centuries ago, a boys’ school with the mission of creating a new and brighter generation of young men with each class. The Finish was established fifty years after the foundations of Edgewater were laid, in response to a question raised by one of our very own, Matilda Remington,” Aunt Leighton says. She moves with a deliberateness that would be captured lovingly on thirty-five-millimeter film.
Matilda Remington is not a name I know, but Penthesilea startles, sitting up taller. I follow her gaze to the oil portrait of a woman on the wall, amongst a plethora of other paintings. Matilda looks nothing like her descendants, except in the shape of her eyes and the way she holds her chin up, so that she has to look down her nose.
“Matilda Remington was an exceptional woman. Brilliant and shrewd with an eye for detail. She knew that she and many other women of her status were being underutilized by their families. That they had more to give. Her husband had seen that in her, and Matilda wanted to demonstrate to her sons that she was not an exception to the rule in her brilliance.” Aunt Leighton waxes on poetically, a lecture that is so carefully constructed to have us hang off her every word. She is a storyteller, better than anyone I’ve ever seen or heard. “Matilda fashioned the Finish to uplift and mold young women in the same way Edgewater did young men, a representation of the Remingtons’ generosity and commitment to the development of the future. Even after Edgewater was made coed in the last midcentury, we continued this tradition of the Finish, championing women in industries that are traditionally male dominated and committing ourselves to our mission of propelling them upward. For what are women if not the progenitors of the future?
“And here we are, six generations later. Your time in the Finish will teach you skills that are vital to your survival in this world. Girls with aimless ambition are the easiest to snuff out. But girls who learn to channel it become women who conquer. I should know. I was once in your very place.”
Another sip brings a heavy pause, perfectly cultivated, and some of the girls break out in whispers.
“Aunt Leighton won the Finish the year Pierce’s uncle graduated from Edgewater. They ended up attending Harvard together. Fell in love. Married,” Penthesilea whispers in my ear, just in time for Leighton to lower her glass again, ending the gossip in a silencing wave.
“There will be three events, each with an opportunity for lessons and the cultivation of useful skills leading up to it. Those events are the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. With each event, you will be ranked according to performance, and rewarded when you succeed. But with each event, there will be also be a… culling.” There’s a twist to her mouth that sets my teeth on edge.
The other girls titter, like they know what she means, but I look around, searching for the joke. My eyes catch on Penthesilea again as she sits upright in rapt attention, and my stomach sinks to the pit of my pelvis. I turn sharply in my seat, attempting to refocus even as her presence, her clear front-runner status, tugs at my confidence, unraveling it slowly.