Page 29 of The Knight

Chapter 12

January

Second Semester, First Year

I made it. I'm back.

Even I couldn't have predicted that I'd pull it off. Hell, it barely feels like I did—without Cole's mysterious pull with the administration and Blake's shockingly genuine tutoring, I might not be walking up towards Rosalind Hall right now, about to return to my depressing room beneath the stairs and endure at least another few weeks worth of torture. But I'm back, and more ready than ever to see Ferdinand Von Hassell, rich piece of shit and rapist, go down for his very real crimes.

First, though, I have to put my stuff away. Taking out my key—the room under the stairs doesn't have an ID scanner—I unlock the deadbolt and open up the door.

A putrid stench hits my nostrils.

Despair fills me as I walk into the room and stare up at the source of the smell. A steady stream of what can only be sewage is leaking through the ceiling—the pipes must route through here somehow, and during the winter break one of them broke. A steady drip of sewer water has been falling down onto my mattress and has soaked every inch of it. It's spilling down onto the floor even, and if I take another step forward I'll be standing in it.

"Welcome back to Coleridge, I guess. This must be the school's way of telling me what it thinks of me."

* * *

Mrs. Reynolds stares at me over her desk, a frown on her face. I can tell what she's thinking: I'm a problem without an easy solution. She's probably trying to decide whether or not she can shove me in the basement and call it a day.

"Ms. Wilder. Your time at this school has been most... eventful. How long has it been?"

I squirm in my seat. "One semester, like all the other first years."

"So just a few months." Sighing, she pushes up her glasses, the plaque with her title of Residence Director gleaming at the front of her desk. "A suitable room will be found for you while the sewer line is fixed. Old buildings have issues. These things happen."

"Right," I agree aloud, though inwardly I suspect Georgia might have something to do with it. That might just be paranoia on my part, though. "I thought Rosalind Hall was full up, though."

"It is." She clicks around on her computer screen, not lifting her eyes towards me. "We may be able to find a place for you, though."

"Oh?"

"It's just not up to me." Her eyes lift from the computer and fix on the door behind me. In a voice pitched to carry, she calls out, "Come in."

I turn to the door, a question on my lips, and make eye contact with Holly. She looks good—her dark hair is cut close to her jawline, which accentuates the feminine point to her chin. Her eyes are bright, skin perfect as always, two points of color high on her cheeks. She looks like she just came in from the cold, and is invigorated by it instead of turning into a tight ball seeking warmth, like me.

An awkward feeling hangs in the air as we consider each other. Besides our texts before break, we haven't communicated in any way, other than passing in the halls at a distance. No doubt she was busy with finals—I know I was.

"Holly." I lick my suddenly dry lips. "Hey."

"Welcome back, Brenna. I hope the winter break treated you well."

Thinking of moments with Wally's family by the fire, getting to eat food at Jade's house on Christmas Eve, presents from Aunt Cheryl and a brief moment where I could pretend like everything was okay, I tell her, "It was good."

I leave out, of course, the nights I spent awake and shivering, not from cold but because I could feel his absence. Some days, missing Silas is like a scabbed-over wound, the pain buried beneath thick protection created by time and distance. Other days it's more like a phantom limb, screaming at me with pain, because my body knows that something is missing.

"Ms. Schneider, please take a seat." The Residence Director motions towards the chair next to me. "You said in your email to me that you would consider rooming with Brenna again. Is that still true?"

"Yes," she says, and I startle with shock at how certain she sounds, how easily she says it. "I think whatever differences we had, bygones are bygones, and this is a new semester."

"Ms. Wilder." It takes a great deal of effort to tear my eyes away from Holly's face and back towards Mrs. Reynolds. "Would you be amenable to rooming with Ms. Schneider once more? Even if only temporarily."

I feel like I've walked into the upside down. Holly's room is a corner room, one of the best in Rosalind Hall. I was lucky to get to live there in the first place, and I fucked it all up for no good damned reason. Am I amenable? I'd love nothing more than to be back in Holly's good graces.

I'm just not sure if that's what this is. After all, Holly is a nice girl. She could just be letting me live with her again because the alternative is me sleeping on a toilet. Or worse, maybe she's decided to cross over to Georgia's side. While it doesn't seem like her, anything is possible.

All I know is that if Holly might forgive me, I'll do anything I can to earn that forgiveness. I just hope that it's possible.

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