Page 122 of Cruel Saints (Lochkelvin Academy)

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There’s no end of talent to Lochkelvin students. Everyone thinks they can sing, though no one is as good as Finlay or even Li. It becomes a gremlin-fest by the end, each one of them trying to outdo the other in their own private competition. Right now, they’re performing a supposedly satirical play that seems to center around the horrifying addition of girls to the school. The audience is laughing along, as though a gremlin in a dress and a long wig is the peak of hilarity. It seems to end with one of the dress-wearing gremlins being murdered, his high-pitched shriek exaggerated for comic effect.

I try to ignore what’s happening on stage, spinning my headdress around my arm.

After the gremlin limps off stage, his dress covered in bright fake blood, I hear my name being called.

Taking a deep breath, I plant the elaborate feathered headdress on my head. Despite its spread of feathers, it grounds me, as though wearing the headdress turns me into someone new, refreshing me and transforming me into a better, stronger, more powerful person.

I am the kind of person worthy of wearing a headdress.

A goddess.

I lift my chin and exhale my worries.

On stage, I am calm.

Although the lights are too bright to make them out, I sense the audience and hear their silence. It’s not a silence like there had been with Finlay — I haven’t enchanted them yet. It’s colder, frostier, as though they’re impatiently waiting for the nextproperact instead of the girl in a black robe and feathered headdress who’s slowly stepping in front of them.

Through the lights, I take a moment to find out where the chiefs are sitting. Finlay’s in the front row, separated from Luke by Luke’s burly guards. They might all be separated from one another, but they’re clustered close enough together which makes it beneficial for me.

There’s an agonizing pause of unimpressed silence and coughing. And then there’s music.

It’s sultry. A dark, teasing melody, like fingers toying through hair. There’s a sense of drama here that hasn’t been shown on stage at all tonight.

When the gothic organ music kicks in, I’m no longer me. I’m inside a cathedral, of dreaming spires and old, old stone. This is sacred and my sensuous, swaying body is a part of it.

I’m no longer Jessa Weir, the strange girl in a male-dominant world. None of that stuffmatters. It seems laughable when the music is so much bigger in scope than we feeble humans, so much more in tune with the universe’s secrets than a bunch of squabbling teens. One blast of that dark sweet melody and the context has shifted in a heartbeat.

There’s power in that.

It makes me envy musicians. They create new worlds so easily, while all I can do is react to them.

My body paints impressionist art of the music and its twilight melody, contorting and lashing on stage like a hypnotic snake. My legs slide apart into a straight line, my body splitting into two halves — the saint and the sinner in me — as I bow my head gracefully across my thighs.

Every whispered lyric haunts the hall. Every reverb of the music fills me up. It pulses up my blood and down my veins, each hard punching synth a shot of adrenaline to my dance.

I want the audience fully enchanted before I squeeze them between my palms.

When the chorus kicks in, I slide the black robe off my body and suddenly the tone changes.

Everythingchanges.

That one act — of me stripping off that silk black robe — is enough to change minds, change hearts, and change the future.

This is power.

I’d been wearing so little underneath the robe that I expected the innate cold of Lochkelvin to chill my skin instantly, but I’m too warm from the dance to even notice. The music ascends me beyond this place. I’m elsewhere — glittering royal palaces, ancient glowing cathedrals, velvet dens of sin — performing for kings and noblemen and fools who can’t take their eyes off me.

When I’d choreographed this dance, I’d never expected to actually get off on it. Its sexiness had been calculated, a seduction that no man could resist. But there’s a thrill in my body, my body reacting to the music, to the knowledge that there are hundreds of people watching me right now.

My contemporary dance has morphed into something more risqué, more burlesque.

I think of everyone’s reaction to Li on Hallowe’en when she’d worn a cropped red minidress. I think of Freya’s sheer white gown that had left Danny blinking for days. I think of Becca, who always looks so hot in the most casual leisurewear. And I even think of Arabella, who commands respect from the others with the blunt authority she possesses.

And I think of myself, who’s been modest and overdressed compared to the lack of uniform back home. I think of the others — theboys— never seeing or understanding this side to me, never even knowing it existed.

I think of them wondering about it now.

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