An invitation

MIRABELLAMy pulse speeds up, a rapid flutter against my ribs that makes it hard to breathe evenly. “Oh.”“I’ve tried to put her off for as long as I could,” Cassian continues, his voice measured but tinged with something that might be weariness. “At least until I was sure you’d settled in. But she’s persistent, and she thinks it’s time she meets you.”I don’t know what to say to that. The words tangle in my throat, refusing to form anything coherent. I don’t even know this woman—don’t know what to expect from her, what kind of person she is, whether she’ll look at me with kindness or resentment. My father’s widow. The phrase feels foreign in my mind, like trying on clothes that don’t quite fit.Cassian seems to read my mind, or maybe the confusion is just that obvious on my face, because he says, “She’s not the worst person, but her marriage with your father wasn’t the best.” There’s something careful in how he phrases it, like he’s editing his words even as they leave his mouth.“Yo

A strange gift

MIRABELLAZack’s yacht is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life.It rises from the water in tiers, each deck lit up against the darkening sky like something out of a magazine spread. One level has sleek, expensive furniture arranged in careful groupings. Another has a hot tub where people are already crowded in, laughing too loudly. And on the highest deck, students are dancing to music that throbs through the hull and into the soles of my feet even before Sophie and I step aboard.“Sophie,” I say slowly, craning my neck to take it all in. “How much did this thing cost?”“Custom built,” she says, in the tone of someone reciting a fact she finds both impressive and faintly obscene. “Over a hundred million dollars.”My stomach turns over. A hundred million dollars. For a boat. I think about the two-bedroom apartment my mother and I shared for most of my childhood, the way she’d stretch her paycheck to the end of the month, and something sour rises in my throat. This is a floating pa

A shocking presentation

MIRABELLA“Let’s just go for a walk or something,” Sophie says, almost pleadingly, and I can hear the fear threaded underneath her voice, careful and deliberate as a stitch meant to hold something together that’s already starting to fray.But the crowd is already moving.It happens gradually and then all at once, people drifting toward the staircase that leads up to the top deck, pulled by some collective, wordless current. I watch them go, Sophie’s hand hovering near my elbow but not quite touching it, and I know I shouldn’t follow.Every reasonable, cautious part of me knows that whatever is up there is exactly what Kaius meant when he leaned close and murmured about gifts, exactly what Sophie has been trying to steer me away from all evening.I follow anyway.“Mirabella, wait—” Sophie’s voice sharpens behind me, but I’m already moving, threading through the crowd with a single-mindedness that surprises even me, past girls in floor-length Valentino and boys in fitted Balenciaga, pas

Maybe I want to be around you

MIRABELLA I shove my way through the snickering crowd, down the steps, and across the dock, and then I’m running, my wet clothes plastered cold against my skin, Sophie’s voice trailing after me. “Mirabella, wait!” I don’t stop. I run until I hit the end of the dock and my lungs are burning and I can’t hear the music anymore, and then I pull out my phone with shaking fingers and book a ride without even looking at the price. I stand at the edge of the road with my arms wrapped around myself, dripping, and I don’t look back at the lights of the yacht. The driver doesn’t say a word when I get in, which is the kindest thing anyone has done for me all night. I stare out the window the whole ride back, watching the beach road blur past, and by the time Windsor House comes into view I’ve stopped shaking but I haven’t started feeling anything else yet, which is maybe a mercy. The house is quiet. No lights on downstairs, no sound from any of the upper floors. Cassian must ha

A meeting with my step mother

MIRABELLAA second ticks by.Two.Three.Four.Five.Then Kaden jackknifes out of bed and runs out after Kaius, and I sit there staring at the empty doorway with my fingers pressed to my mouth.“I was drunk,” I hear him say in the hallway, and the words land like a slap.The burn of it moves through me slow, the way shame always does when it’s trying to disguise itself as something smaller. I press my lips together and stare at the ceiling and tell myself it doesn’t matter, that I don’t care, that this was nothing and I knew it was nothing even while it was happening.But he wasn’t drunk. I know he wasn’t drunk. He was entirely, completely sober, and he kissed me anyway, and now he’s standing in a hallway outside my door telling his brother he was drunk because the alternative—admitting he wanted to—is apparently worse than the lie.I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them and listen.“Stay away from her, Kaden.” Kaius’ voice bleeds with barely concealed irritation,

A horrid makeover

MIRABELLALucy’s words stay with me for days, running through my mind on some kind of twisted loop.That house is cancer for women.I turn them over and over like a stone I can’t put down, trying to decide if she’s a bitter, unhinged woman grasping at anything sharp enough to draw blood, or if she’s the only person who’s actually told me the truth since I got here.I haven’t landed on an answer by Thursday.I slip out of third period to use the bathroom, and I’m already pushing through the door before I register the sounds coming from inside.Moaning.Unmistakable, rhythmic, and completely brazen.I stop dead.Kaden has a girl bent over the sink, both hands gripping her hips, and he doesn’t stop when I walk in. He just glances over at me, eyes narrowing with some expression I can’t read—and don’t particularly want to—and keeps going like I’m furniture, like I’m a crack in the tile, like I’m absolutely nothing at all.The girl hasn’t even looked up.I stand there, completely frozen, my