I squirm. “Dr. Remington—”
“Please, Miss Walker,” Leighton insists, in a way that makes it clear that she’s no longer asking. I’m quick to do as she demands, surprised to find when I sit that it’s hard, despite its plush appearance. “And do call me Aunt Leighton. Most of the girls do.”
Leighton Remington is not going to be my aunt.
“What is this about?” I blurt.
I don’t want to accuse her of anything or let her accuse me. While she has a glacial mask to the planes of her face, she doesn’t look cold, just calm, like an undisturbed tundra.
“Last night a tragic event occurred. And where others stood still, you displayed a remarkable amount of compassion. In fact, I applaud you.”
My worry stills. “Really?”
“Yes. Margaret must have been in a considerable amount of pain. You had no idea what was wrong with her, whether it was contagious, but you put that aside and wanted to help her,” Leighton says. She leans forward in her seat, her hands folded over her knee. “It’s commendable.”
“Then, why…？” I trail off. I shouldn’t ask. I’m not meant to ask.
Leighton sighs and looks away. Her mask evaporates, and she lays her shame bare. Her shoulders sag and she moves even more deliberately, like it’s the only thing holding her together. It’s so honest that my stomach turns, unused to it from someone like them.
Except she wasn’t like them. I remember. Not at first.
“Did you know that I was once in a Finish quite like this?” Leighton asks.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Then I’m sure you’ve already heard of my roots. Like you, I did not come from a family of means. We lived in town, but my summers were spent here, at the estate, helping the dearly departed Mrs. Remington in her garden. I attended Edgewater due to the generosity of the Remington Family. I was in the same year as my husband, but we didn’t move in the same circles. Still, they saw my potential and invited me to participate,” Leighton explains. She sounds almost wistful. I want to ask if this place has changed for her over the years. It must’ve. Just yesterday it felt like a fairy-tale castle. Now it feels like a tomb, a place of stale air and too many secrets. “Like you, I thought it was an opportunity to… ‘level the playing field,’ as Pierce loves to tout. I wished to reach my full potential. Instead, I learned that it was a game of quite… deadly proportions.” Her face falls again and she looks more tired than anything else, the lines around her eyes deepening.
“Then why continue it?” I demand.
“Because much like you… I was powerless to stop it. Adina, I see myself in you.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. A girl of not many means invited to a place that does not want her, and in which she does not fit,” Leighton says.
“You look like you fit in pretty nicely,” I say. Her story does hold an uncomfortable mirror up to my own life, except it’s distorted by the fact that this woman looks exactly like them and nothing like me.
Leighton laughs, a rich sound that’s more real than any word that she’s spoken to me yet. “Well, if you win, one day I might say the same about you,” she retorts, missing my point entirely, of course. She sits up taller. “Yes, I give off the appearance that I am a part of this family, I admit. But, Adina, as you well know, just a number of years in an institution doesn’t give you power. They have leverage over all of us. I am not a true Game Mistress, I’m a pawn here too. The Remingtons have rules and I cannot change them simply because I want to. Neither can you.”
“What does that mean?”
Leighton doesn’t hesitate again. “I am aware that you left your room last night and attempted to leave the estate.”
My heart crawls into my throat and stops. I don’t breathe, bolted down in place, my fingers crushing into the velvet sofa beneath me.
“Adina,” she says, sterner now, her voice demanding my attention. “From the beginning of our conversation, have I ever indicated that you are in trouble?”
“No…” I trail off, my voice ending in a horrified wheeze.
“Exactly,” Leighton says. “You attempted to leave, and Miss Liu drew you back upstairs. This was the right thing for her to do. So ultimately no rules were broken. But if they were, broken rules result in consequences. For all of us.”
“What kind of consequences?” I whisper.
Leighton looks far away again, like she’s remembering something she’d prefer not to. “They would try to hurt you. The Finish can only exist this way because to be invited, one must volunteer information about herself and her family. To reveal assures mutual destruction between the families that have offered their daughters to compete and the Remingtons, if the results don’t go their way. You have no secrets. But you do have people. People that you love.”
Toni. My parents.
“No!” I declare, shaking my head. “No, no, no—”
“Adina, play by the rules, as I have done, and no harm will come to them. Keep your head down and remember you are not like them. They are cruel and vicious for cruelty’s sake. This is just a game to them. But… not to you. Never for you,” Leighton says swiftly, sliding forward in her chair and taking my clammy hand in her cool one. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good,” Leighton says, and she smiles, so gentle that I try to smile back. It falters, and Leighton sighs again, shaking her head. “I am your ally. I will make sure that you get through this. I’ve done it before. I made it out alive and whole and with the world at my fingertips, not just a Remington husband. Will you trust me to help you?”
Finally, my vision clears and I feel the possibility of survival stir within me, stoked by the threat to my family. I will play by the rules to the best of my ability. I will get through this with my hands clean, with my conscience clear, with my family safe, maybe even, if Leighton is telling the truth, all that I desire. And I will because Leighton did. Whole. That must mean she didn’t have to hurt anyone. If I win, it will not be because I was a game or an amusement for anyone. It will be because I am here for what is mine, like Leighton. Let the others fight over Pierce.
“Yes, I will, Dr… Aunt Leighton,” I confess.
Leighton leads me to the rotary phone on her desk and leans against it, her hand strong and reassuring on my shoulder. “Go on. Call your parents if you want reassurance.”
I reach for the phone hungrily… before I let my hand drop to my side.
I want to make my mother proud. At graduation, she promised me that she was. But I could’ve made her prouder. I should’ve made her prouder. Now I have the chance.
All that veiled disappointment will go away, after this. Even though the stakes are now higher than I ever imagined, after everything my parents have sacrificed to get me here, in this position, I still might finally be able to deliver on that promise to be better, to have better. To be twice as good.
“No,” I say, meeting Leighton’s eyes, recognizing the test, and nervously I decide, “I… I’ll play the game.”