Chosen (9781742844657) (44 page)

‘Nothing,' the Japanese boy said, returning a gold chain to the tabletop.

‘Nothing,' Constantine agreed, swapping the delicate charm bracelet for his gold chain and securing it back around his neck.

‘I saw nothing,' Xanthe said moodily, dropping a stud earring onto the bracelet. It caught one of the charms as it landed, so it didn't bounce. Joshua took his earring back and put down an abstract silver ring, which Isao fitted onto his middle finger.

‘I thought I saw Xanthe fitting this in her hair in a blue-tiled bathroom, but it was such a fleeting image, so I can't be sure,' Dylan said, always so modest, handing her back a black bobby pin. She took it without comment, sliding it into her short, sleek hair. Quietly, Dylan took the watch from the table and strapped it back onto his wrist.

‘I saw nothing,' Khalida told us. I put her lip gloss down.

‘I saw Khalida in a bathroom with two other girls,' I said. The Indian girl gave me a sharp look, but I continued. ‘She applied the lip gloss and they were all chatting.'

‘Did you hear anything?' Isao asked, grinning. ‘What were they gossiping about?'

‘When I was putting this on this morning,' Khalida informed him harshly, snatching up her makeup, ‘your sister and I were talking about how
you
are always checking out Bella.'

I startled, amazed that what I'd seen was exactly as Khalida remembered it. I'd gotten it right! Isao sighed loudly, looking more amused than embarrassed.

‘Come
on
,' he said, but anything else he was about to say was cut off by Qasim.

‘Joshua?' Qasim asked loudly, turning the class's attention to the next person in the circle.

‘I didn't see anything,' Josh stated. We looked to Iseult, the only one left. She put my watch down and took back her delicate little bracelet.

‘Aristea was in an office with the headmaster,' she said, most of her attention on the clasp of her bracelet as she put it back on. ‘They were sitting on opposite sides of a large desk, talking. There was a lot of paperwork – piles of paperwork. Aristea was playing with her watch strap.'

‘Very good,' Qasim said, while I tried to work out what moment in the recent past Iseult had witnessed through energy traces left on my watch. I took it from the otherwise empty tabletop and refastened it on my wrist.

I did quite well at all of Qasim's exercises for the remainder of the lesson. When a bell sounded, and he released us to lunch, he called Iseult and I back.

‘Iseult and Aristea,' he said, and we paused. My hand was on the door handle, and Xanthe had just stepped through the doorway. Qasim spared us a respectful nod as he said, ‘Well done today. I'll see you next lesson.'

I smiled my thanks for the acknowledgement. With a tiny glance at one another, Iseult and I left. Xanthe had not waited for me, which I decided didn't bother me. Iseult walked in silence at my side all the way to the staircase.

‘Aristea,' she said suddenly, before I could descend the stairs. I turned to her. She was so short, barely up to my shoulder, making me feel painfully tall. I thought she'd look positively miniscule beside Addison. ‘Thank you for what you said to the headmaster.'

‘When?' I asked, bewildered. I hadn't spoken to him all day.

‘When you fidgeted with your watch,' she reminded me. ‘You were in his office, talking. He asked about me.'

I suddenly recalled the moment she must have seen when she held my watch. Last night, when he'd told me he wanted an apprentice. When we started talking about Iseult, I must have been playing with the loose strap on my wristwatch.

Was that conversation meant to be secret? Was I allowed to pass this stuff on? Did it matter if Iseult had overheard some of it without my knowing?

‘I'm grateful that you recommended me, even though you don't know me,' she said in an accent exactly like mine. I wondered which town she was from. ‘You could have tried to promote yourself.'

I laughed, surprised.

‘There's no way he's going to pick
me
,' I said. ‘I'm the delinquent who ended up in detention for a month. I'm the least reliable scrier in our class.'

‘Well, let's keep it between us. The less the others know, the less opportunity they'll have to muscle in. Whatever he decides, thanks.' Iseult offered me her little hand to shake. I did, smiling.

‘You're welcome.'

With a grateful nod, Iseult squeezed past me and hurried down the stairs before me. I inhaled deeply, glad that I'd already given up on being chosen. Iseult seemed very competitive, and I didn't want someone like her to think I was a threat to her success.

At lunch, I piled my plate with hash browns, sausage rolls and a slice of pizza before I was stopped by one of the house staff giving me a letter from my sister. I rested my plate on the edge of the buffet table to tear open the envelope. The letter was short – grateful in tone, to have heard from me and to know everything was alright, but firm, too. I had to keep in regular contact with her. She worried about me constantly. I considered Angela's expression if she could see what I was eating. I reluctantly added a small, healthy-looking salad sandwich to the edge of my plate. I'd have at least one bite of it.

Kendra was delighted by Addison's decision to sit with us this meal, but looked markedly put out when he decided to leave early with Hiroko.

‘I heard from Garrett that Elijah's going to be taking us out of the grounds for today's lesson,' he told Hiroko excitedly, quickly finishing his juice. Hiroko's eyes brightened. Addison turned to Kendra and showed her his almost-empty plate. ‘Do you want another spring roll? I want to get to class early to practise.'

Kendra shook her head, trying not to look moody or upset. Sophia raised her hand slightly.

‘I'll have it, if she doesn't want it,' she said. Addison turned his body towards her and offered her the plate so she could take the spring roll, but he kept his eyes on Kendra. She forced a smile that fooled nobody. I took that one bite of my salad sandwich, wondering how this would turn out.

‘Have fun,' Kendra said, trying desperately to avoid sounding bitter. Hiroko stood and tied her hair up, not looking at Kendra. The short side of Hiroko's asymmetrical cut always fell straight out of any ponytail. Addison put his plate down and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair.

‘I will,' he said, shrugging his jacket on. He rested a hand on Kendra's shoulder and leaned down to kiss her forehead. ‘I'll see you at dinner.'

He waved farewell to the rest of us and headed for the door. Hiroko followed on the other side of the table, shooting Kendra a subtle encouraging grin.

We waited for Addison to leave the dining hall before breaking into massive smiles. Kendra scooted over into Addison's vacant seat so she was sitting beside her sister.

‘That's the first time he's kissed me,' she admitted. She took Sophia's knife and fork and began to slice the spring roll in half. Her twin snorted in disbelief. ‘I'm serious. He's just so
sweet
.'

‘So sweet,' Sterling agreed whole-heartedly. Kendra ate her half of the spring roll in two quick bites and glanced subtly at Sophia's half. Sophia picked it up and took one bite, then obligingly handed over the remainder.

‘How come you get the sweetheart?' Sophia complained. Kendra swallowed the last of Addison's spring roll.

‘I get the sweet boy because you love me and you don't mind missing out from time to time if it makes me happy,' she explained.

‘Oh. That's right.'

‘And besides, you'll get a sweetheart one day, too,' Kendra promised. ‘I won't let anything short of a perfect male near you.'

‘I'm going to die unmarried and childless,' Sophia announced. ‘No such male exists, and if he does, you've already got him. And even
if
there's another one out there, somewhere, he's never going to bother with me if he has to get past Mom, Dad
and
you just to talk to me.' Sophia glanced at me. ‘Kendra thinks that because she's twenty minutes older, she's in charge of me and who I see.'

The conversation progressed steadily from there. A younger student had been called out of Sophia's last Healing class to pack his things up and return home to his parents, the eighth person to leave. Kendra mentioned that a roommate of Addison's had received a letter that morning from their former friend Egan, encouraging the remaining three boys in the dorm to leave the school.

‘They ignored it, of course,' Kendra assured us. ‘It turns out he's a lunatic. But that's still a lot of people gone already just because of him and his mom.'

The staff entered the dining hall and began packing up the buffet table. I watched as one woman pushed a trolley through the door and noticed Renatus and Emmanuelle walk in behind her, talking in low voices. Despite that he did nothing to call attention to himself, several of the girls in the hall glanced over.

Emmanuelle looked mildly annoyed as she grabbed a plate and scooped whatever was left onto it. Renatus continued talking to her, staying close enough that he didn't have to raise his voice. He collected no lunch, but followed her to the table. She sat down at one end and began to eat while he stood beside her, resting his hands on the table, leaning close to talk quietly.

I looked around the hall. Of the fourteen girls still enrolled, six were openly glaring at Emmanuelle. Sterling had lowered her head so that her fringe swept into her eyes, supposedly for the dual purpose of making her look more alluring and hiding the jealous expression shining in her eyes. I saw Khalida with her two roommates sitting further up the table, whispering darkly and shooting nasty looks at the French councillor. Even my non-obsessive girlfriends would occasionally glance up to take part in passively admiring Renatus.

At times like this I had to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Why was I the only person around who didn't find the headmaster sexually attractive? Other sensible girls, like Hiroko and the twins, were able to observe and regard an attractive person in an entirely objective manner without becoming ridiculous like Sterling or totally disinterested like me.

Well, it'd be wrong to say I was disinterested. But it was a different kind of interest to theirs. I enjoyed his company and I found our conversations intensely compelling.

Last night had been a perfect example, both intense and compelling. The visions held by the ribbon had only startled me; it was the heart-wrenching grief and sorrow that followed that had ripped at me. Renatus was carrying around a great deal of repressed guilt, loneliness and self-loathing. He hated himself. He hated being him. How did he deal with that kind of self-disgust all day every day?

And how could he be dumb enough to believe he was worth so little?

When I returned to the office it was to tell him that he was stupid for hating himself, but thankfully I'd realised on my way that it would be rude and unfair. Feelings could not be controlled. I could not help disliking Xanthe. Renatus could not help disliking Renatus.

I was so, so glad to have gone back. He'd said it made me “the better of us”, whatever that meant, but I was just glad because of how much had become clear and how much I now understood. Renatus had had a sister, who had died. I reminded him of her, although I couldn't see how. Ana, like her brother, had possessed film-star good looks, and I was certain that I looked nothing like her. The picture of Ana's tear-streaked face had stayed with me all night, clear in my mind, even as I fell asleep.

I didn't dream. I never dreamed anymore.

‘You're so weird, Aristea,' Sterling commented mildly.

‘What do you mean?' I asked, startled out of my reflections. Sterling blinked.

‘I don't know,' she said, apparently surprised that she was expected to provide a reason for her statement. ‘You're just weird. You were just plucking at your buttons and it made me realise that you're weird.'

I looked down at my front. In my unfocussed state I had indeed been playing absently with the buttons of my blouse. Sterling decided to elaborate.

‘You run a brush through your hair twice like you couldn't care less, and I don't think you could, and you don't bother with makeup, and you don't wear jewellery…And that's you. You're minimalist and it's usually like you don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.' She shrugged and smiled. ‘But then, in the morning, you spend fifteen minutes trying to decide what you'll wear, and you always end up in an outfit that looks like you're heading to a job interview, and then you spend all day fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. It's just weird.'

Her words echoed in my head. She was right. These weren't
my
outfits. This wasn't
my
style. It wasn't in my nature to worry about how I looked. From the moment I'd realised I was coming here I'd had this idea that I needed to prove myself, and that
I
wasn't good enough as I was. I'd been trying to be perfect. I'd been trying to be Angela.

But Qasim hadn't picked Angela. He'd picked me. The White Elm had accepted me into the Academy as I was, weird and untidy me. They didn't care how I dressed. 

‘I'm going to be right back,' I told the girls, getting to my feet and hurrying from the hall.

Here I was, so insecure about my own self-worth that I'd spent six weeks trying to emulate my big sister, and I'd had the nerve to attack Renatus last night about self-esteem issues when I was so obviously a walking bundle of them.

I let myself into my dorm and pulled my clothes off, feeling freer with each neatly pressed item that came away.

‘Bear with me, Ange,' I murmured vaguely, stuffing the blouse into a drawer. I dug through the clothes stored there until I came across a tight black t-shirt with rows of silver stars across the front. I'd found it on sale when shopping with Angela two years ago, and she'd allowed me to bring it here for weekend wear.