Page 6 of Wicked Waters

“It wasn’t like we had a choice.” Samira’s reply was accompanied by a smirk that changed into a bright, genuine smile, and I relaxed. “Only joking. Welcome back to Hatherley Hall.” Glancing over at her friends, she grinned. “Grace is my girlfriend, by the way. I thought I should mention it upfront in case things get awkward if you start wondering why we’re all over each other.”

I glanced between them both, taking in the way they were curled around each other. “I did wonder, but honestly, I miss the signs all the time, so thanks for telling me.”

Samira’s grin widened. “No probs. Hey, we’ll have to introduce you to our other new friend, Elena. Wait, Aria, have you already introduced her?”

We chatted for a bit, and I relaxed even further. By the time the curfew bell rang, I was curled up on Samira’s bed in pyjamas and a hoodie, catching up on everything I’d missed while I’d been gone, while Gracelyn painted her toenails in rainbow colours and Aria sketched something that she refused to show to any of us. Now the bell had rung, we had around ten minutes before we had to be in bed with the lights out, so we all made our way to our own beds.

Aria leaned into me as she passed. “One hour.”

I gave a small nod, climbing into my bed and discreetly waking up my phone under the covers, turning the screen brightness right down and making sure it was on silent. I passed the hour by playing games on my phone, and once I heard Aria’s bed creak, I made myself wait another few minutes before slipping out of the room into the silent, dark corridor.

The corridors were occasionally patrolled by security, but in a building this large, it was easy to avoid them, especially since their numbers were minimal. They were mostly concerned with covering the grounds, anyway, stopping anyone who might want to sneak out. Inside, they relied more on the cameras sparsely dotted around the school, but once you knew where they were, it was fairly easy to avoid them. There were no cameras in the old bell tower, either, since the entire area was off limits to students. The entrance was completely blocked off, and most people had forgotten all about it. Except…Aria had found the hidden entrance, through a small door under a set of stairs. It looked like a cupboard—in fact, it was a cupboard—but it had another exit on the other side, which opened onto the set of stairs that led up to the tower.

I made my way to the cupboard, which Aria had left ajar for me, and once I was inside, I flipped on my phone torch so I could see the bit to push on the panelled wood that doubled as an interior opening for the bell tower door. It opened with a soft creak, and then I was out on the other side with the cool night breeze snaking down the stairs and wrapping around me.

Pulling my hoodie sleeves down over my hands and tugging my hood up, I made my way up the stairs to the room right below the ruins of the top level, where the bell had once stood. Aria was on a blanket on the floor, leaning her back against the wall with her legs outstretched and a joint already in her hand.

Crossing the room, I took a seat on the blanket next to her. “Where do you manage to get these things?” I indicated towards the joint clasped between her fingers.

“I have my ways.” After inhaling deeply, she held it out to me, but I shook my head.

“No, thanks. I just want to get all this off my chest first, and I need a clear head to make sense of everything.”

“Fair enough.” She leaned her head back against the stone wall, exhaling a stream of smoke that the wind immediately whipped away through the sizeable gap where a window used to be. “Okay. I haven’t had a proper conversation with you for over two years. So, I think it’s time you caught me up.”

Our eyes met, and there was no judgement in hers.

I opened my mouth and began.

I’d always had an expectation on me to be the perfect daughter. I was an only child, and my parents had provided me with everything I needed. Everything I needed, but not everything I wanted. They didn’t believe in spoiling me, although I was never deprived of anything. Their primary goal for me seemed to be for them to have a child they could boast about to their friends and colleagues, a child who excelled at everything. No expense had been spared in my education and extracurricular activities. Ballet, tap, and jazz were three of the dance disciplines I was expected to perform. I played tennis, rode horses, and even learned to kayak (the only discipline I was allowed to choose myself). I was coached in French and German and played piano and violin. For any child, it would be a lot, and I was left constantly exhausted, under pressure to do better every time I achieved one of my parents’ goals. When I received my letter of acceptance to Hatherley Hall, my parents threw me a huge party filled with all kinds of influential adults and very few people my age. Penelope had been there, though, and we’d escaped to my bedroom after the cake-cutting ceremony, which included an incredibly long, drawn-out performance from a string quartet. That night, I remember that the thing I felt most was a sense of relief and anticipation because Hatherley Hall meant getting away from my parents, and whatever the school pressures were, surely the other students would be dealing with similar pressures and expectations. We were all children of rich and influential people, after all.

Everything had gone well to begin with. I settled into the routine of school, carving out a place for myself. Penelope shared my dorm, and we’d stay up late talking about boys and our plans for the future, making up wild stories that a secret prince of some obscure European state would fall in love with us and take us back to his homeland to be his princess. Looking back, it was clear that we spent far too much time in our formative years watching The Princess Diaries.

As I grew older, though, the pressures gradually returned, with the weight of the expectations on me becoming clear again. My parents were friendly with several members of Hatherley Hall’s staff, and they used their connections to stay updated on my progress. I’d receive regular messages and phone calls from my mother that would make it clear that my best wasn’t good enough.

One day, I snapped. I’d been on my way to a biology lesson when everything had hit me all at once, the pressure suffocating me. I’d ducked into the toilets, and then afterwards…that was when I’d met Roman for the first time.

That first taste of rebellion, of the freedom to make my own decisions, was an addiction. I continued to meet up with Roman, I met and became clandestine friends with Aria, and I carried out small acts of rebellion—adapting my uniform, cutting classes, slacking on my homework, dabbling with contraband drugs and alcohol.

It didn’t take long before word reached my parents. Their spies must’ve been almost everywhere because they somehow knew everything, except for my friendship with Aria, which had somehow remained a secret. It had to have because there was no way I’d have been allowed to room with her this year otherwise. It wasn’t that they disliked her as such—it was more that in their eyes, she was useless because she didn’t have an influential family name like my other friends did.

My punishment was taking me away from the school I loved. I also had to relinquish my phone, to cut ties with everyone and everything to do with Hatherley Hall, even Penelope.

Since my parents were moving overseas temporarily while my father took a secondment in Geneva, they took me with them. I was assigned tutors who homeschooled me, and while I threw myself back into my schoolwork to prove I wasn’t a failure, I grew increasingly withdrawn. The simple truth was that I was lonely. So, so lonely. I missed my friends, my school, the daily routine, the old buildings surrounded by gorgeous English countryside. In Geneva, despite the beauty that was all around me and the people who welcomed our family, I was completely alone. My parents had a schedule, so I had no company day to day other than my tutors, with my father working long hours and my mother out doing whatever she did all day with her friends.

Eventually, things changed. My parents weren’t monsters, and finally, their concern for me began to outweigh their need for me to succeed.

“What did they do?”

I blinked, my gaze flying to Aria at my side. I’d almost forgotten she was there; I’d been so lost in my memories.

“When we came back to England, they allowed me to come back here. I have conditions, though.”

“Of course you do.” She flicked the tiny stub that was left of her joint out of the window, then sighed. “Let me guess. You have to toe the line? Be the perfect student? Interact with the right people?”

“Quinn. We want to make this clear. We took you away from Hatherley Hall because your grades were slipping, and we’d received word that you’d taken up with unsavoury company.” My dad clasped my shoulder. “Your mother and I don’t want to see you suffer, and so we’ve re-enrolled you as a student at Hatherley Hall now my secondment has finished.” His grip tightened. “We want you to do your best and succeed in the way we know you can. If we hear any whisper of you interacting with the Cavendish boy, or anyone who we know to be a bad influence, we will take action.”

“I-I’m not planning on speaking to him,” I whispered.

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