The closet is a walk-in, filled to the brim with oversized sweaters and expensive flannels. A rack full of different utility boots, each more expensive than the next, next to a pair of Aimé Leon Dore New Balances and another pair of sneakers, ratty Converses. And then toward the back are his suits, all dark except for one.
The last looks smaller than the rest. Gray plaid. I take it off the rack, pulling it in front of me and looking down. It’s too big for me, but I take it anyway. I slip out of the closet and walk back toward the bed. I press my hand lightly against his back, between his shoulder blades, just to feel his heartbeat one last time, to feel that he’s alive.
Graham, the un-favorite. Graham, who saved me, but also didn’t. Graham, who still bleeds blue.
This time, moving through the Remington Estate, I take it all in.
My room is hollow without Saint. But there are signs of her everywhere. Her trunks are still open. Her bed is unmade. Her toothbrush is still in the bathroom. I can even still smell her perfume. She’s everywhere.
Except, she’s not. It still doesn’t make sense. She’s dead, but it doesn’t feel real.
None of this feels real.
It doesn’t reconcile with the girl I saw when I first arrived. Saint seemed a cut above the rest, solid Teflon and completely in control. But she isn’t—wasn’t—any of those things.
There’s a dress laid out for me on my bed. It’s beautiful. Blue. Extravagant.
Fuck the dress.
I reach for the suit that I took from Graham’s room. Checkered and gray and just a little too large, but it’s going to be more me than the dress. I tear into Saint’s trunk, searching for something—anything—that will remind me of her—and then, there it is. A yellow silk tank top. She wore it at breakfast, the morning after Margaret died.
I take it and lay it out on the bed next to the suit.
I wash my hair again, stripping it of the oils and creams and the grimness of last night until I no longer smell the copper of Esme’s blood clinging to my coils.
I’m going to start all over again. I have always had my routine getting ready for the school day. It looked nothing like this, but I’m resetting. I feel the broken bits of me, the pieces that are gone, stolen. I replace them with pieces of others.
Graham’s suit. Saint’s silk. Toni’s eyeliner.
I feel Toni there as I apply it. She isn’t coming—I can’t afford to hope anyone will come to save me with only an hour until it’s time—but I feel her anyway, sitting next to me, the weight of her hand on my shoulder. A perfect line and a flick at the end.
I want to make myself look like me for the final game. I go into my bag, searching for my comb, and pause when I see what began it all—the invitation. I read it over again. This letter I once thought held the answer to my predicament. Each handwritten curlicue a promise. In pursuit of the furthering of women’s education and placement in society, my ass. These aren’t promises. They’re lies. Everything’s a lie.
If you choose to accept…
A lie… and a challenge.
My heart skips and I can’t help the way my lips twitch into a smile as I crush the letter in my fist and shove it into my pocket.
A challenge is just another word for a game, at least it is here. I’ve come to favor card games, in my time here, mostly because there are so many different sets of rules, the players can decide which ones to heed.
In a deck of cards, there are only three face cards, and I am none of them. If Third is the king and Leighton is the queen and Pierce is the jack, I would’ve once called myself an eight of clubs. Insignificant. Random.
But now I realize I’m the joker.
The joker is an unassuming card. In some games it has little function. In others, it’s the highest trump.
In this game, it will be the wild one. The card that will finish them all. It has to be.
I sit before the vanity with purpose now and begin to part my hair, sectioning it into four areas. I never wore braids once I started at Edgewater. I never even wore them in summers in Suburbia, too afraid of being too much.
I know how, though; it’s an ingrained practice that began at my mother’s feet as she tugged a bristle brush through the coarseness of my curls, the scent of Blue Magic stinging my nose. I don’t have any of that now, but I have gel and conditioner and my two good hands.
I cornrow my hair, and when I look at myself, I look like me. Finally.
Today is the Royale, I acknowledge, brushing mousse over my hair, dragging gel over my baby hairs with a toothbrush. There are two other girls out there, waiting. The Remingtons are out there, waiting. But I will not be dying today, I decide. I will not be quiet or swallow anything. I follow no one.
I will never think about this place after today, one way or another, I tell myself. I will not Finish here. My new life just began here, and no one remembers their birth.
I’m tired of their games and I hate the rules.
So. I’ll change them.
* * *
When a handwritten letter arrives in lieu of an escort, I realize that the Remingtons mean for us to walk to our own potential deaths alone. Yet another metaphor, I’m sure. I clomp down the hallway in my ratty old Air Force 1s. There are no signs of life here, like they don’t want anyone to witness the slaughter but them. Unlike last night.
I enter the hunting parlor.
Everyone else is already there. Even Graham.
It’s a pretty picture, the Remingtons standing by the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that show the gorgeous maze, the rose garden, the well-groomed paths along their grounds. They’re backlit so that their faces are in shadow, but I can make out every expensive thread and detail of their silk and wool. Hawthorne and Penthesilea stand on either side, both dressed in their gowns. I fill out the apex of the triangle.
Pierce is wearing navy blue, the same color as the dress that was laid out for me, like he wanted to make a matched set of us again. An offer of forgiveness to me for saying no. He still thought that there was potential for us, as long as I paid for my mistakes. He frowns heavily, gaze flitting over my suit, like he’s trying to place it. Graham doesn’t take long to do so, surprise flickering over his face as he takes me in before he schools his expression into neutral. I can tell from the curl of her upper lip that Leighton recognizes it too.
“Thank you for… joining us, Miss Walker,” Leighton says severely, making it sound like both an admonishment and a threat. She knows I had something to do with Saint running and what happened to Esme. But there’s no evidence.
“Thank you for having me, Dr. Remington,” I say back, imitating her tone beat for beat.
I look over at Penthesilea in her perfectly pink glory, like the princess that she is. She dips her head at me in greeting, but she doesn’t exactly look at me. Instead, she’s staring straight across at Hawthorne. I follow the line of her stare and Hawthorne is staring right back, her eyes wide, nostrils flaring, a demented air to her I’ve never seen, despite how perfectly polished she is dressed.
Around her neck is Esme’s thick diamond collar. If I squint hard enough, I can see specks of pink in between the tiny diamonds. I close my eyes to what I’ve done, looking over her sea-green dress instead, the embroidery of the flowers on her bodice. She reminds me of Ophelia, buried in a river in Denmark.