Let it not be said that Saint doesn’t have a flair for the dramatic.
I settle in for the evening, curling up with a book I’ve stolen from the library, one I can barely find it in myself to pay attention to, my eyes sliding sightlessly over the words.
The silence makes time go by quickly, interrupted sparingly by giggles and soft chatter. Sometime around six, I hear a knock at the door, announcing that dinner has been brought to the common room for the evening. I don’t move, listening instead as the other girls congregate and then disperse. It’s nearly midnight before I decide it’s safe enough to show my face without the company of my ally.
The common room is stuffed full with different games, ways to pass the time. A half-finished game of Go, a Monopoly board dominated by someone’s little red hotels, and a game of Catan that someone has lost rather embarrassingly. Strategy games. As I thought, the games have resumed, mental warfare until the physical challenges start again with the Raid.
Esme and Hawthorne are in there alone. I know just how dangerous they can be without the eyes of others.
“I’ll just—” I start to back out, unwilling to put myself in the belly of the beast.
“No, come in, Walker,” Esme says. “You weren’t at dinner.”
“I was not,” I acknowledge. I sway forward onto the balls of my feet and then rock back hard on my heels, unsure how to move further. My stomach answers, gurgling noisily.
Esme smirks. She wants me to submit.
But the Ride is still fresh in my mind, and Jacqueline tried to do something to me after, too. Leighton’s condemnation of “The Ride has finished,” as she put Jacqueline on her knees, rings. This room is not a place for violence. To be a coward would just be another way of losing, and I can’t afford that.
I keep my chin high as I march forward to survey the buffet table. There’s more than enough left, an excess of food for the number of girls that remain. A platter of golden gougères, a tray of buttery brioche smeared with p?té, and the bloodied filet mignon on crostini decorated with goat cheese and shallot are just a few of the dishes on offer.
“I recommend the stuffed mushrooms. They’re to die for,” Esme says, so close that I’m forced to look up at her to meet her eyes.
“If you’re trying to intimidate me, you’re not,” I lie. “I know all your tricks. Remember we used to be friends.” The trick about lying, though, is that you have to believe yourself for anyone else to believe you. I don’t believe myself, and so neither does Esme.
“Were we?” Esme says flatly.
“I thought so,” I say. “As much as you can be friends with anyone.”
“Friends don’t spread rumors about each other,” Esme retorts.
I frown. “Friends don’t torment each other for their success, either.”
Esme grabs my arm, acrylics digging into brown skin.
“You humiliated me,” she snarls, neck craning forward. This close, all her features no longer look pretty. She is jagged, like the edges of her diamonds. I reverse, the small of my back slamming into the table, jostling it. “You and Charles’s bitch sister. After I took you in and made you somebody. Almost made you worth knowing.”
“You made me someone I didn’t want to be,” I say. Violent. I was violent that day.
Esme sneers. “That day you showed me exactly who you are. Disloyal. Conniving. Selfish. And you’ve shown that every fucking day since, Adina. You showed it at the bonfire, too.”
I scoff. “What are you talking about?”
“Maybe you were too drunk to remember, but I wasn’t. I remember something else I saw happening in the forest. Slut.”
She knows.
I go cold all over then. I jerk from her grip and look down at the four welts forming on my bicep. Esme doesn’t back down, though. She stares at me, her lips curled back over her teeth.
“I know that’s why he’s helping you. He had you once and suddenly thinks that you might be worth something. But I know you; you’re nothing,” Esme whispers. “I’ve been his childhood friend for years. He knows me. All the good, the bad, and the ugly, and he knows we’re the same. He’ll soon understand.”
I swallow hard, rubbing at the marks that Esme has left behind. “You think you’re going to win and tell him about how your mommy stole money from her charity board, how Daddy has a few offshore accounts, how the Feds are after you, and he’ll think you’re worth the headache?” I shake my head in disbelief at the fairy tale that Esme is imagining. She’s always been an asshole, but never so unrealistic.
“You forget who you’re dealing with,” Esme growls. “Nothing is a headache for the Remingtons. They can make anything happen. After all, the Finish has been going on for over a century. Girls, weak like Margaret, have been dying forever. And no one has stopped them yet. My family’s shit is nothing. It’s a wish and an email away from being turned to dust.”
The claustrophobia that has haunted me from the moment I entered the house swells to a crescendo.
I refuse to break. I take Leighton’s advice and let it turn me into a diamond. Unbreakable.
“Yeah, but you won’t ask him for shit. Not unless you win, because if you ask now, you’d be begging,” I spit. I glare at her. “That would require you to swallow your big ego. And you’re not capable of it.”
“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” Esme bites out. “Not yet.”
“Unfortunately, Esme, I do,” I sigh, skirting around her.
“No, you don’t,” Esme promises. “You don’t know anything. Because while you’re here to get back something you lost—I didn’t take it from you, you lost it by being sloppy—I’m here because I have people to take care of. I have people relying on me.”
From this angle, in this light, I can imagine her as the wicked girl that sprayed poison and sent someone off to her death easily.
So for a moment it doesn’t really click that Esme’s cruelty could be derived from something not wholly selfish. That she isn’t only in it to protect her own reputation or spite me.
She’s here for her family, I realize. Esme’s unhinged look peels from her face like old paint. When she looks at me, she’s far more focused and intense than anyone ever gives her credit for. She touches her fingers to her diamond collar. Outside here, she wears it to remind people of her wealth, of who she is. Here, tonight, it feels more like a reminder for herself.
“I offered to sell this,” she says, “to pay for the lawyers’ retainer. My father said no. He said that it was a gift. I just think that he was ashamed. When I win… he’ll never have to feel ashamed again.”
When she takes a step back, she looks oddly vulnerable. She didn’t mean to reveal so much of herself, but I know why she did. It’s easy to show your underbelly to someone you hate, because hatred is strong, personal. It bonds people closer than most things. Before she can reveal any more, she leaves the room, ducking under Hawthorne’s outstretched hand, sending the room into a silence that feels like a funeral.
I stare down hard at the floor, fighting back the burning pressure in my eyes.