Chapter 6: Theo Carter

Ariel ran three blocks before she accepted that the black sedan carrying Britney to school wasn't going to slow down for her, no matter how loudly she called after it, her voice cracking a little on the second shout.

She stopped at the fourth corner, hands on her knees, catching her breath in the cold morning air. She didn't even glance back, Ariel thought, and then, more coldly, watching the sedan shrink into traffic: Or she glanced back exactly once, made sure I saw her not stopping, and decided that was worth the detour.

She checked her mother's old wristwatch, scratched, secondhand, nothing like the crisp new Crestmore uniform Mrs. Dalton's staff had delivered that morning. Eight forty-two. Class started at nine. She had no idea which direction the school was in.

Everything here looked the same. Wide streets with no landmarks, manicured lawns indistinguishable from one another, houses larger than her entire old apartment building. Back home she'd known every crack in the sidewalk, every shortcut through the lot behind the laundromat. Here, she didn't even know which way was north, and there wasn't a single person on the street to ask.

She reached a crossroads and stopped, three identical streets stretching out ahead of her, hedges too tall to see over, each direction giving no clue at all. For one humiliating second she considered simply picking one at random and running.

The low, expensive purr of an engine slowed behind her before she could decide. A silver sedan eased to the curb, windows tinted dark, an unfamiliar crest gleaming faintly on the door panel in the early light.

The passenger window lowered with a soft mechanical hum.

Behind the wheel sat a young man about her age, dark brown hair neatly styled despite the early hour, calm blue eyes, an easy half-smile that held none of the sharp edges she'd grown used to in the last twelve hours inside the Dalton mansion.

"Heading to Crestmore?" he asked, not unkindly.

Ariel blinked, suddenly aware of how she must look, winded, lost, clutching a backpack that had clearly not come from wherever the rest of her uniform had. "...Yes."

He nodded toward the badge pinned to her blazer. "Thought so." His own badge sat neatly on his jacket, matching hers exactly. "First year?"

"Yes."

"Then we're classmates." He reached over and unlocked the door with a soft click. "Get in, you won't make it on foot before the bell, not from here."

She hesitated for only a second, some old warning about strangers and cars rising briefly in her mind, before deciding it didn't apply here, not with a school badge that matched her own, not with nine o'clock bearing down on her. She climbed in, the leather seat cool beneath her, the whole car smelling faintly of cedar and something clean, like it had been detailed that same morning.

"Ariel Perez," she offered, buckling her seatbelt.

"Theo Carter." He pulled smoothly back onto the road, checking his mirror without any of the careless swagger Nathan seemed to wear like a second skin. "Pleasure's mine."

The surname stuck with her. Carter, the same name stitched into the small crest on his door. Mrs. Dalton had mentioned the family twice at dinner the night before, in the clipped tone people use for families they consider equals. Or rivals.

"So," Theo said, glancing sideways as they merged onto a wider road lined with trees, "what made you pick Crestmore? Most first-years transfer in because their parents want the address on a college application. You don't strike me as most first-years."

"I want to get into Harvard."

He looked at her properly this time, not the polite, sideways glance of a moment ago, but real attention, his eyes leaving the road for just a beat too long before returning to it. Most people he knew talked about parties, or their parents' companies, or which car they'd gotten for their sixteenth birthday. Nobody he'd met in three years at this school talked about Harvard like it was something they actually intended to earn, rather than something that simply arrived along with the right last name.

"I believe you'll get there," he said, and there was nothing performative in the way he said it.

"You don't know me."

"I know what determination looks like when I see it." He said it simply, without flirtation, which somehow made it land harder than if he had been flirting. "Most people who want something that badly either get it, or spend the rest of their lives being interesting about why they didn't."

Ariel almost smiled. "That's either very wise or very rehearsed."

"A bit of both," he admitted, and this time he did smile, briefly, before his eyes went back to the road.

The gates of Crestmore Academy rose ahead of them a few minutes later, tall, wrought iron, flanked by stone pillars. Students filled the courtyard beyond in loose clusters, blazers and skirts in matching navy, laughter and phone

 screens and the unhurried confidence of people who'd never once worried about being late. The moment Theo's car turned into the driveway, heads began to turn.

"Is that Theo Carter?"

"Who's that with him? I've never seen her before."

"New girl. Must be."

He got out first and circled around to open her door, a small, old-fashioned gesture that, judging by the immediate spike in whispers rippling across the courtyard, was apparently not a small gesture here at all.

Across the courtyard, Britney had just stepped out of her own car, laughing at something one of her friends had said, when the laughter died on her face all at once, like someone had cut the sound.

"What," she said slowly, staring, "is she doing in Theo's car?"

One of the friends beside her, Emma, blonde, sharp-eyed, followed her gaze and smirked, delighted. "Didn't you tell us Theo was your crush? Like, three separate times, at three separate galas?"

"Keep your voice down." Britney's jaw tightened until a muscle jumped visibly at the corner. Theo Carter had never once given her this kind of attention, not in three years of their families sharing board seats and champagne at the same charity dinners. And today, of all mornings, on Ariel's very first day, he'd arrived with her instead, laughing, even, at something Ariel had said in the car.

The other friend, Lila, tried and failed to hide a grin behind her hand. "Oh, this is going to be a fun semester."

"I guess this is where we split up," Ariel said to Theo, already half-turned toward the entrance, uncomfortably aware of how many eyes had settled on her.

"I'll find you around campus." He paused at the base of the steps, something more serious flickering across his easy expression for just a moment. "If anyone gives you trouble for being new, and someone probably will, don't let it get to you. This place runs on gossip like a car runs on gas. It burns off fast if you don't feed it."

"Thank you," Ariel said, and meant it more than the moment probably called for, given they'd known each other for exactly eleven minutes.

He headed up the steps and disappeared into the crowd with a final wave, and Ariel lifted her eyes to the words carved into the stone archway above the entrance.

CRESTMORE ACADEMY

For a moment, standing beneath it, she let herself feel it, how far she'd come in less than a full day, from a cracked linoleum hallway and a teacher who'd told her this was impossible, to the gates of the very school he said she'd never reach.

Then she thought of the album she'd found the night before, and the newspaper clipping resting on top of it, and the feeling dimmed slightly at the edges, replaced by something quieter and heavier. It wasn't fear anymore. It was the beginning of understanding just how much this had cost everyone, not only her.

Focus on today, she told herself firmly.

The morning bell rang, sharp and clean across the courtyard. Students hurried past her toward the main doors in a wave of navy blazers. Ariel adjusted the strap of her bag and stepped forward, falling into the current of bodies moving toward class.

This is where it actually begins.

She didn't notice, because she had no reason yet to look for it, Britney lingering by her car a moment longer than necessary, watching Ariel disappear through the entrance with Emma and Lila already leaning in close on either side of her.

"So," Emma said quietly, once Ariel was well out of earshot, "what are we doing about her?"

Britney's eyes stayed fixed on the doors long after Ariel had vanished through them.

"We're not doing anything," she said, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her blazer. "Yet."