For a moment, if I close my eyes, I see myself back in my bedroom with Toni urging me to get ready. When I feel a touch against my chin, I imagine it’s Toni again, tilting my face up to inspect my makeup. It’s calming, brings me focus in a way that I need now. But when I open my eyes, I flinch in a way that threatens to knock me off my feet.
“Not going to even say hello to your competition? Realized it isn’t even worth trying?”
“Hello, Esme.”
Damn. I was just on the verge of forgetting that she was here too.
“Adina Walker. Now, whose dick did you suck to get here?” she asks with a smile.
“No one’s,” I say through gritted teeth.
It’s time to keep my head under the radar again. I bite my bottom lip and make eye contact with Hawthorne over Esme’s shoulder, but she looks away. She always looks away when Esme starts something.
“You shouldn’t touch people without permission.” Relief sings through my veins as Saint slides in from God knows where. She looks stunning in a rich blue cocktail dress. Her long black hair swings behind her in a high ponytail, and she looks down at me. “Sorry I took so long. I couldn’t get my hair right.”
Esme looks displeased that I have someone in my corner already, but she doesn’t let it stop her.
“I just wonder,” Esme sings. “Every single one of us has been nominated to be here. I’m childhood friends with Pierce. Hawthorne is a champion archer. This is Jacqueline—she’s the Northeast junior poker champion. Margaret—she goes to Rye Country Day—is a ranked debater. Even Saint is the daughter of a big-shot developer—”
And under her breath, I hear Saint mutter, “？‘Even Saint.’ My father could buy your entire state.”
“—but you. Who are you, Adina Walker, to merit a nomination?”
“I earned my place here, just like everyone else,” I insist. I can’t tell if I’m lying, not even to myself, but in that moment when I opened the box it felt true. I look over at the other girls with her. I doubt any of them has ever met Esme before today. She’s their competition, yet just by the strength of her personality and will alone, she’s established herself as their leader. Esme has always had an infuriating talent for command.
“I’m sure,” Esme says softly, sticking her tongue into her cheek over and over again, crass and crude, yet supposedly I’m the one who’s unworthy.
“Now, Esme…”
As if she’s descended from the heavens, Penthesilea emerges from a break in the crowd. She turns to one girl, brushing a stray curl from her face, straightening the skirt of another, like some kind of queen mother in a gown of gold on her way over to us.
“…must you pit everyone against each other before the events have even begun?” Penthesilea asks, and Esme’s smugness curdles. Penthesilea never sounds disappointed, but she always manages to make you feel like she is, and there’s nothing worse than disappointing Penthesilea Bonavich. It’s her weirdly detached benevolence. It’s like disappointing your favorite teacher. Impersonal but it hurts.
“I’m just being polite,” Esme drawls. “Speaking with our former classmate.”
“It doesn’t sound very polite to me, especially when she was a friend. Not just a classmate,” Penthesilea says firmly. She turns toward me and smiles. “You look pretty, Adina.”
Despite Esme’s snort, I don’t doubt Penthesilea’s sincerity, so I thank her.
But I do doubt the truth of her statement. I didn’t think at all that these cocktail parties would be formal occasions. It’s a contest, not a beauty pageant. I didn’t think I’d need gowns like these girls are wearing, with jewels dripping from their skin. I feel stupid in my borrowed Mac Duggal, the one I thought I wouldn’t even wear until the ending formal. It’s nice and structured, but it’s not couture.
“Thanks,” I say softly, off balance. “I’m just—”
“I can do your makeup,” Saint says firmly. She takes me by the wrist, tugging me away to a corner, where we’re distanced from the other girls. She sits me on a settee and squats in front of me. “I’m actually really bad at doing makeup on other people, but I can do your eyeliner? And brows?”
“I can do my own eyeliner,” I say defensively. “I… but yes to the brows. Please. Thanks.” I breathe out. “Why’d you pull me away?”
Saint hums to herself as she goes through her little makeup pouch from her purse. She makes a sound of triumph when she pulls out a new brow gel.
“Close your eyes.” She leans forward and her breath fans across my face—sweetly acidic like champagne.
I do as I’m told.
“The redhead. Penicillin—” I snort. “Don’t move. I can see she makes you uncomfortable. I can’t see why. She seems perfectly pleasant, unlike that other girl. The menace. Open your eyes, let me see what it looks like.”
I blink again, watching Saint go from a blurry form to sharp features in relief. I glance over at Esme. “The menace” is ridiculously apt.
Esme lifts her ever-present bottle of Dior perfume, leaning forward, with a much kinder smile on her face than I’ve ever seen, which is how I know it’s fake. “Just a dab at your pulse points and wrists. You’ll smell divine. You should be honored that I’m sharing my scent with you, Margaret. The Finish can be really overwhelming, but I’ll take care of you, all of you, I promise.”
She used to spray me with her Dior too—she just never took care of me. She tore me apart instead.
Eat shit, Esme.
I roll my eyes, looking away, catching Saint’s sly grin even though I haven’t answered her question. “What?”
“You pretend that you have nothing to say, but I can tell you do. I bet you keep every bad word behind your teeth,” Saint says like she understands. “But that’s how you survive out there. You can’t do that here.”
“？‘If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all,’？” I say, practically singing the kindergarten adage. One of the many lessons I learned from my mistake. My mouth—rumors—led to my downfall, and it’s not like I had very far to fall.
“That won’t work here. These girls make a game out of cruelty and they’re here to win. They will hold nothing back. Learn the spoken and unspoken rules of the Finish. Quickly.”
It sounds like both a warning and a threat.
I decide to heed both.
* * *
The butler comes for us at 5:52 p.m.
“Ladies, if you would line up, single file,” he says, plummy-voiced and severe.
Esme and her pack rush to form a line right up front. She sweeps to the head in a gown with sleeves that look like silver leaf.
“Thank you, Mr. Caine,” Penthesilea says gently as he ambles down the line, making sure that each of us is in place.
I slip in behind her, followed by Saint and another girl—I think I heard her mention that she’s from California, and she looks it, tanned and beachy and model-esque.
Mr. Caine nods at Penthesilea, something like affection in his gaze, which he lets harden over when he meets my eyes. He turns on the heels of his shiny Oxfords and marches forward. He means for it to be a dismissal, but it’s a look that’s familiar. I know I don’t belong, but it only makes me want everything more.