Angry God

Papa said Vaughn was going to do something special. That one day, he would be Michelangelo big.

I believed him.

And so, I hated Vaughn.

Actually, I’d hated Vaughn until exactly fifteen minutes ago, when I walked into the darkroom to develop the photos I’d taken yesterday. Photography was something I did as a hobby, not as art. My art focused on assemblage, making sculptures out of garbage. I liked to take ugly things and make them beautiful.

To turn the flawed into something flawless.

It gave me hope. I wanted it to give everything that wasn’t perfect hope.

Anyway, I was supposed to wait for one of the tutors to accompany me into the darkroom. Those were the rules. But I had a feeling the pictures I’d taken were going to be horribly bland. I didn’t want anyone to see them before I’d had the chance to retake them.

It was the middle of the night. No one was supposed to be there.

And so, because I was acutely, achingly jealous of Vaughn Spencer, I’d walked in on something that made me feel confused and oddly furious with him.

In bed, I smacked my forehead as I recalled my silly behavior in the darkroom. I’d mumbled “Pardon,” slammed the door, and run back to my room.

I’d descended the stairs to the second floor, taking two at a time, bumped into a statue of a warrior, let out a yelp, and rounded the corridor to the girls’ dorms. All the doors looked alike, and my vision was too clouded by panic to find my room. I threw doors open, poking my head in to search for the familiar white quilt Mum had crocheted for me when I was a baby. By the time I got to my room, nearly every girl in the wing was cursing me for interrupting her sleep.

I dove into my bed, and that’s where I stayed, hiding under my quilt.

He can’t find you.

He can’t enter the girls’ dorms.

Papa would kick him out if he did, genius or not.

Then the clank of smart shoes pacing the corridor made my heart jump to my throat. A guard whistled a lullaby in the dark. I heard a violent, loud thud. A guttural moan rose from the ground outside my room. I curled into a smaller ball, the air rattling in my lungs like a penny in an empty jar.

My door creaked open. I felt a gust of wind from its direction, raising the hair on my arms wherever it touched. My body tensed like a piece of dried clay, hard but fragile.

“Pale face. Black heart. Golden legacy.”

That’s how I’d once heard Uncle Harry—also known as Professor Fairhurst inside these walls—describe Vaughn to one of his colleagues.

There was no mistaking the energy Vaughn Spencer brought into a room, because it sucked up everything else like a Hoover. The air in my room was suddenly thick with danger. It was like trying to breathe under water.

I felt my knees knocking together under my quilt as I pretended to be asleep. Summers in Carlisle Castle were unbearably humid, and I wore a tank top and shorts.

He moved in the dark, but I couldn’t hear him, which scared me even more. The thought that he might kill me—actually, literally strangle me to death—crossed my mind. I had no doubt he’d knocked out the guard who walked our hall at night to make sure nobody broke curfew or made silly ghost-like noises to scare the other students. No fire was as big and burning as one born of humiliation, and what I’d witnessed tonight had embarrassed Vaughn. Even in my haste to leave, I’d seen it on his face.

Vaughn was never uncomfortable. He wore his skin with arrogance, like a crown.

I felt my quilt rolling down my body, from my shoulders to my ankles in one precise movement. My two Brussels sprouts of breasts—as my older sister Poppy called them—poked through my shirt without my sports bra, and he could see them. I squeezed my eyes tighter.

God. Why did I have to open the bloody door? Why did I have to see him? Why did I have to put myself on the radar of one of the most gifted boys in the world?

He was destined for greatness, and I was destined to whatever purpose he’d see fit for me.

I felt his finger touching the side of my neck. It was cold and dry from sculpting. He brushed it down along my spine, standing over me, watching what we both pathetically pretended was my sleeping figure. But I was wide awake, and I felt everything—the threat wafting from his touch and his scent of shaved stone, rain, and the sweet, faint trail I’d find out later was a blunt. Through the narrow slit of my closed eyes, I could make out the way he tilted his head as he watched me.