Kingmakers, Year Two

9. Cat

9

CAT

M y first party at Kingmakers is my first party anywhere—not counting the tedious events we had to attend with my father and Daniela from time to time.

I always felt like a show pony, dressed up by Daniela and trotted out for some specific purpose. Usually to dance with some awful business associate of my father’s, who would invariably tell me that I reminded him of his daughter before trying to slide his hand down from my waist to my ass.

This was my first time getting dressed with friends, laughing and joking the whole time, after being offered a little pre-party drink from Chay, which I accepted because I was fascinated by the pear bobbing around inside, whole and intact, like a ship in a bottle .

“How on earth did they get it in there?” I asked Chay. “It’s a real pear, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “They attach the empty glass bottle to a branch while the pear is tiny and growing. It grows to maturity inside the bottle, then they cut the fruit stem and fill the bottle with liquor. It’s very popular in Germany, very common.”

She was doing Zoe’s makeup while she explained the drink to me, having already finished her own lacquered red lips and smoky swirls of dark liner all around her eyes.

I was supposed to be finishing my cat costume, but the pear brandy was already having an effect on me, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to draw my whiskers on straight.

“Hold on,” Chay said to Zoe. “I’m going to get my other eyeshadow palette.”

She hurried over to the wardrobe to rummage around. I took the opportunity to ask Zoe, “Are you sure it’s alright for us to go to this? Papa’s already furious about my grades . . .”

He wrote me a scathing letter after our cousin Martin ratted me out for my dismal performance in every practical exam I’ve had so far. If ink were acid, the words would have burned right through the page.

“Fuck him,” Zoe said coldly. “And fuck his letters. ”

Dressed as an angel, her face sparkling with the glitter and her paper wings floating behind her, Zoe’s crudity made me laugh.

Zoe laughed, too. She took my hand and squeezed it, saying, “We’re going to the party, and we’re going to have a perfect night. Who knows how many we’ll get, but we’re taking this one.”

“You look gorgeous,” I told her.

I made the wings for her. I’d barely had any time to do anything artistic since coming to Kingmakers, and I missed that worse than I missed anything from home. I cut the feathers using a scalpel stolen from the Chemistry lab.

That was the first time I’d stolen anything, too. Kingmakers is full of firsts for me. My heart was racing so bad I thought I’d puke, but I slipped the scalpel up my sleeve all the same, hands sweating, thinking the professor was going to catch me even as I hurried to my next class.

I stayed up late to work on the wings while Rakel slept in the bed opposite, listening to her godawful metal music on her headphones. I could hear it seeping out, relentless drums and guitars and screaming. I don’t know how she sleeps with that racket assaulting her eardrums, when I can hardly stand the little bit I can hear, even with a pillow over my head .

I cut each feather individually. The meticulous process was incredibly soothing, better than yoga or meditation. Each feather became its own universe, perfect and precise, and totally under my control. Unlike everything else that happens at school.

I will say, I’ve been enjoying my computer classes at least. The only permitted laptops on campus are the ones in the computer lab. Placing my fingers on the keyboard feels almost as much like coming home as working on those paper feathers. Even though I’ve never done anything like Bitcoin transactions, digital security, or DDOS attacks, I’m picking it up much quicker than anything I’ve learned in my other classes.

So I’ve been surviving alright at Kingmakers.

It’s Zoe I’m worried about.

She told me what happened the day she was missing from the dining hall. She said Rocco tried to assault her and Miles Griffin helped save her.

Miles is throwing the party tonight, which makes me feel a little better about attending. But also a little worse, because I know that will only make Rocco angrier.

I told Zoe what Claire Turgenev shared with me, what Rocco did at his former school.

Zoe didn’t seem surprised .

“I know what he is,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Why?” I said. “Why can’t we at least try?”

“Look around you,” she said to me. “Look at this place. It’s seven hundred years old. How many students have come through here? Show me the ones who betrayed their families, who walked away and lived a happy life. Show me them. Show me the people who stood up to all of this and won.”

Still, even though Zoe told me it was hopeless, I do see a new level of rebelliousness in her. I could tell she was excited as she dressed for the party, and even more excited as we crossed the dark, open grounds toward the distant stables.

The party was already in full swing, students lined up outside the doors to pay their cover charge.

I invited Rakel. Or, I should say, I told her about the party in one of the rare intervals where she wasn’t wearing headphones and she seemed like she might not stab me for daring to speak to her.

“Who’s throwing it?” she said.

“Miles Griffin.”

There was no need to explain any further. Everyone on campus knows Miles .

“I might go,” Rakel said, as if conferring some huge favor on me.

I left it at that, not even brave enough to throw in a, “See you there.”

Rakel and I have not become closer friends in the nearly two months we’ve been sharing a room. The center of our dorm room is an invisible Berlin Wall that I’m not allowed to cross, and we never walk together, even when we’re leaving the Undercroft to go to the same class at the same time.

The closest she’s ever been to friendly was in our last Security Systems class, when I managed to successfully decode the mystery USB stick handed out by Professor Gillespie. He gave us no instructions whatsoever. I managed to image the USB stick and start forensicating it. It was TAILS, with LUKS encrypted partition. The professor forbade us from using cloud computing or any external system, so I had to brute force the password.

I was first to finish, in what Professor Gillespie informed us was record time.

Rakel leaned back in her chair to get a better look at my computer screen.

“How’d you figure that out?” she demanded.

“I ran hashcat against the LUKS password,” I said, showing her all the steps I took .

“How’d you know to do that? The professor never said.”

“Just trying different things,” I said. “I think . . . sometimes when you know you don’t know anything, you can find a solution somebody else might overlook. Trying even the ideas that seem stupid.”

On the next challenge, Rakel was quickest to finish.

“Nice!” I said, checking her solution in return. “That was smart.”

For a moment, it looked like she was going to smile back at me. She didn’t, but she wasn’t scowling, either.

I don’t see Rakel as Zoe, Chay, and I join the line outside the stables. I do spot a tall boy with white-blond hair walking from the library toward the Armory. He pauses, examining the students bunched together outside the doors in our makeshift costumes. Music thuds out through the open doors, as well as shafts of dim red light and artificial smoke.

The red light strikes the boy’s handsome face, illuminating the left side while the right remains shadowed. As he stands watching, his look of irritation turns to an expression of pure fury. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and stalks past, his body so tense that all the muscle on his arms twitches.

“Who was that?” I whisper to Zoe .

“Who?” she says. She’s not looking in the same direction as me, all her attention fixed just inside the doors of the old stables.

“That boy over there—the blond one.”

I point, but it’s too late. He disappeared into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” Zoe says, sounding distracted.

We’re next to go inside. I see Leo and Anna already waiting for us, with Hedeon Gray a few feet beyond them. Miles and Ozzy are manning the door.

Miles greets us warmly, refusing to let us pay our entry fee.

“I told him not to charge you,” Ozzy says, winking at Chay. “Don’t let him take credit for that. Or for this, either.”

He slips Chay a little baggie that she immediately tucks in her pocket.

“Ozzy!” she says. “Are you trying to be charming?”

“Depends.” He grins. “Is it working?”

Ozzy isn’t good-looking, not compared to Miles, Leo, or Ares, but he does have a brilliant smile with dimples on both sides. It takes over his whole face and makes you think that he might be handsome after all.

Chay seems to think the same as she gives Ozzy a quick kiss on the cheek. Unfortunately, the effect only lasts until she lays eyes o n Ares, leaned up against one of the ancient wooden support pillars next to Hedeon.

Ares isn’t as flashy as Leo or Miles. He dresses in the plainest, cheapest clothes, and his dark, shaggy hair always looks like it needs cutting. He’s reserved and unassuming. But he has a kind of quiet strength that’s powerful all the same. I often find myself looking at him, without any particular reason. When he does speak, his voice is deep and resonate. The kind of voice that vibrates in your bones.

Chay is drawn to him like a butterfly to a flower. I can’t tell if Ares likes her in return. He strikes me as someone who keeps very tight control over his emotions at all times.

He reminds me of Zoe, actually. Thoughtful. Responsible. Never acting on impulse.

I guess that’s why I feel like I understand him, even though we’ve barely spoken.

You can learn a lot about people just by watching.

I’m not disinterested just because I’m shy. I actually like being surrounded by people, when no one is bothering me. I like seeing the little flashes that pass between people, the hidden indicators of who they are and what they’re thinking and how they feel about each other.

I love to see how Leo always checks to see Anna’s reaction whenever he’s said something funny or outrageous. I like how Anna t ouches him continually, her hand alighting briefly on his arm or his thigh, her back leaning up against his chest, as if to reassure herself that he’s still there.

I love how Chay is always so conscious that everyone be included in the group. She pulls me into the center of our cluster of friends, dancing with me until she’s sure I feel comfortable, then switching over to Hedeon, who at first shakes his head in a sullen sort of way, but then relents and even cracks a smile when Chay tries to twirl him around.

I like how Ares is thoughtful, checking to see if anyone wants a drink before getting one for himself.

I love how beautiful my sister looks, even next to girls as gorgeous as Anna and Chay. My sister’s good qualities shine out of her face: her intelligence, her honesty, her determination to do what she feels is right, even when it’s difficult, even if it’s impossible.

I’ve never had a circle of friends like this, who make me feel safe and accepted. I know they’re Zoe’s friends really, but they’ve welcomed me with open arms, as if I’m just as important and interesting as her, even though I’m not.

Kingmakers still terrifies me. I’m covered in bruises and cuts, from a variety of classes.

Yet . . . I don’t hate it here. I could even imagine a time that I might like it. Maybe on my graduation day, if I somehow learn how to fight between now and then, and I stop embarrassing myself every other day. Stranger things have happened.

Speaking of which, I spot Rakel on the opposite side of the stables. She isn’t wearing a costume, though she looks like she might be because she’s dressed in her normal civilian clothes, which include enough chains and safety pins to set off a whole airport’s worth of metal detectors.

I hold up the drink Ares brought me in a kind of cheers.

To my utter shock, Rakel raises her drink in return.

It’s not much, but compared to the first day of school, it feels like I’ve come a long way.