Page 54 of All Saints: Pledge

I grind my teeth in frustration as we both finish stretching and move out in a jog. “Like, I’m not sure there’s anything off the table in the contract. Lifelong impact stuff.” My eyes dart around as if the trees themselves are bugged.

We jog for a few beats. I wonder if she’s going to tell me off. But she’s clearly contemplating what I’ve said. Even more than that, she doesn’t seem surprised. I pull her to a stop and turn her to face me. “Wait, you knew this?”

“I’m not exactly sure what you know, so I don’t know if we know the same things.”

I make a head exploding motion. “You know stuff and you didn’t tell me?”

She looks hesitant for a moment. “The stuff I know didn’t seem important?”

We stare at each other.

“So you know that the contracts can involve serious things? Lifelong and, er, physical things?”

I note a fleeting look of panic in her eyes before she drowns it in her perfectly practiced doe-eyed look. “Well, you just confirmed something I wondered about.” She holds out her hands in a peace offering. “I’ll share my intel, too. Look, this is going to sound really stupid to you, but this is how I know what I know. Kendall’s dad? He had a long talk with me the night of the underground party. I was worried because I’m not smart or driven like you, or athletic, like the rowing twins. My looks and family name are all I have. He said there're are different kinds of ambition, and that they’re valuable too.”

“You told me that already.”

She straightens her shoulders as if I’m about to go Elizabeth Bennet all over her Kitty Bennett ass. “And since I’m joining AllSaints to find myself an influential marriage, yes, I assumed that there would be some…physical…expectations in my contract.”

I feel like I’ve been slapped. “Marriage.” Now I’m the one parroting. And combined with the fact that Augustine has been telling Clara to wait for Kendall…that does not add up to something I want to consider. Could Augustine actually mean to groom Clara to ultimately be Kendall’s wife? Just when I thought we’d reached the bottom of the draconian barrel, turns out there’s another level down.

She nods, taking my wide eyes for shock over the marriage part, and not the part where I’m wondering if Kendall has any say in his bride. Not like I care on any level except principle. “I don’t want to get marred, like, right away. But did you see that party? There were a lot of really influential families in that room. I could do worse.”

Above our heads, the gray clouds give way to little spatters of rain, but we ignore it. We jog quietly for a time, our breaths coming out in puffs of steam. She’s not wrong. Kendall had said as much last night: marriages were indeed something All Saints traded in. Plenty of people went to Ivy League schools hoping to snag an upwardly mobile mate. Maybe Clara’s goal is even more wholesome than my own—less to be taken advantage of, since she just basically wants a match maker. Her contract would be really straightforward—her contract purchaser could be her future husband. In which case, it couldn’t be Kendall. But what if the person who purchases her contract is the one who will do the matchmaking? What if…what if Kendall’s father plans to purchase her contract to control both Kendall and Clara? My stomach lurches, something rising up in me, a snake that rattles my chest.

Her hand on my wrist brings me out of my reverie. “I really appreciate you trying to warn me, though. That was very…good…of you. Probably more than I deserve.”

“I’m still not sure either of us should be doing it,” I say as we both pick up the pace again. But there’s a weight lifted. At least partially. I hadn’t wanted Clara to be caught unawares, but she has her own sources. Her own goals. I have to honor that.

“Me either,” she agrees darkly, “but I can’t afford to stop now.”

I nod in agreement and we both turn to running to exorcise today’s demons.

I hatethat All Saints stole my ability to slouch around in athleisure clothing in public, because I would give a kingdom for a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Here I sit at a table in a dark library, dressed in heather gray wool slacks, a black turtle neck and abelt. A goddamned belt. My invite for our meeting tonight stated that I needed to dress “formally andelegantly, befitting my status as an All Saints pledge”. It’s also now suggested I get a weekly blow-out, to ensure my grooming is at its peak. I guess as the money is shelled out, they expect us to buy fancier clothes. I’d been forced to do just that.

The girl in the shop looked like I’d handed her Christmas and she’d loaded me down with several outfits and cooed over my hair. Despite my reluctance, I must admit that my hair has become longer and shinier than ever before, thanks to all the attention I’ve given it with specialty shampoos and salon visits. I feel like a Stepford version of myself. It’s not entirely comfortable even if I admire that in the mirror I look more polished.

It’s nearing the end of Michaelmas Term and I’m very much looking forward to a break. Unfortunately for me, All Saints has full control. I have a full itinerary through the New Year. Even ifI could have revised my statements to my parents and bought a ticket home with my new found funds, my schedule won’t allow it. As much as I love the history here, I will miss my mom’s ham on Christmas Day and our snug little house with the tree.

I’m having a hard time focusing on reading, and I find myself with my phone in my hand yet again. So much for willpower. But social media doesn’t hold the answers I need, so I’m pleasantly surprised when a text from Jaqueline pops through.

Just wanted to let you know I finished that stupid-hard organic chemistry lab! B+! Now I just have the final exam for the recitation portion and that bitch is finished.

I send her several appropriately excited gifs in response.

I’m still mad I won’t see you for Christmas. It’s not going to be the same at all.

I know. I’m sorry.

I wish you could tell that scholarship to fuck right off, but it just means we’ll have to have an epic summer break. Although it’s going to be hard to go back to living with my parents after this week blissfully alone.

I laugh, picturing Jaqueline sitting alone in her dorm room, stretched out on her bed. Her roommate had decided to drop out of school last week and go home, leaving her side of the room empty.

My parents will freak if I don’t go home for summer, rest assured. I’m already signed up for sorting through Grandma and Grandpa’s furniture and dishes with my mom.

Talking about my grandparents bring my conversation with Kendall screeching back to me. Deciding to throw over studying completely, I reach into my bag and pull out the book with my grandfather’s picture in it. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I flip through the rest of the book and find what I suspect Kendall didn’t want me to find. There’s a picture of a severe-looking man with the name Alastair Saint James. And, once I flip through another page, my grandmother, Cella Venn. She looks like a movie star, and now I wonder why she’d never shown me many pictures of her in college. She’s a knockout…long dark hair like my mother’s and mine, big brown eyes, thick curly eye lashes. She looks quite a bit like Hedy Lamar, her favorite actress. These people do not look like they should have been embroiled in scandals. They look picture perfect.

I pull out my phone and do something I’ve never done. I google my grandfather. Almost nothing comes up. There is his obituary, and an article about a horse he’d raised that ran in the Kentucky Derby—it finished dead last, and he’d loved every moment of it. That’s it. It’s like my grandfather never existed. So I try adding “Oxford scandal” to the search results, and a news archive website pops up, asking if I want to search the Oxford school publications for his name. I hadn’t even thought of doing that, so I log on using my Oxford student credentials and wait while it loads. Sometimes I suspect the library of having slow internet on purpose to dissuade students using the wifi.

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