Page 11 of New Angels

“Why am I the one being singled out?” I ask instead, because none of this is Baxter’s business.

Baxter says nothing for a while, still inspecting me. “I have a feeling you’re leading the boys astray. I know the flaws in your character only too well. It’s your desire for attention that brought this school into disrepute almost exactly a year ago. Acting that way in front of the Prime Minister, I mean, really—”

My jaw hardens. My drunk mind screams like a high-pitched siren and sweat begins to bead at the back of my neck.

You were one of the few who lived up to the word ‘talent.’

He hadn’t complained.

No.

He hadn’t complained at all.

A lithe body slicing powerfully through water. Tight dark briefs obscuring a confident bulge. A lean, muscled chest. Water, cascading across skin, dripping onto tiles. Water, sluicing over Rory in a loch, him smiling at me, the sweet summer air still with serenity, me caught between two naked bodies and wrapped between loving arms.

Only it’s not Finlay behind me, as it had been that night. It’s Oscar Munro.

My mind, my mind — so confused, so broken.

Serenity. I wish to God for serenity.

“Sex,” I blurt almost manically, to banish Oscar Munro from my head. “We havesex, all of us, in this school, in many different positions, over and over andover—” I realize how loudly I’m speaking and drop my voice to an uncomfortable, trailing whisper, “—because we’re in love… and I like it…”

My words hover like fireflies, impactful enough to almost be tangible, like I could reach out and touch them, like I could swallow them whole to take them back, remove them from the air and Baxter’s memory.

When I look up at Baxter, I expect horror. I expect her hair to curl, for a scandalized gasp, or a scream of sheer disgust. Instead, she gives a small, tired nod, and returns to her desk.

I stand there dumbly, watching as she pulls out a sheet of paper and a pen. She appears to be writing a list, which she eventually tears off and hands to me with a muttered, “So much administration.”

It’s a note for the medical wing, advising that I receive an appointment from the school nurse to discuss sexual health matters, reproduction, and my contraceptive choices. Blood rushes to my face.

“This is not my first rodeo,” Baxter informs me in a knowing tone, glancing at the slip of paper in my hands. For a second, it’s almost as if shecares. “I’ve attended multiple training courses on relationship diversity.”

“I don’t… I don’t need this.” Feeling awkward, I wave the note around.

“You absolutely do,” she says shortly. “The last thing this school needs is a teenage pregnancy or chlamydia flying around. Hopefully your confinement will put an end to this madness.”

Of course none of this is out of concern for me. How foolish to think otherwise, even for a moment. It’s to ensure Lochkelvin looks good to future applicants, for potential scandals to be squashed before they have time to erupt.

She tugs open her desk drawer, pulling out a weighty bundle — a stack of… something. Papers, maybe. I can’t see it clearly enough, only that it’s large and tied with oddly familiar red ribbon. Baxter opens her mouth, gazing down at the stack, before appearing to think better of it and slamming her drawer shut.

“You may return upstairs,” she says, before adding, almost tentatively, “Those young men are troublemakers, Miss Weir. A veritable rogues’ gallery of deceit. If it’s validation you seek, I must impress upon you that there are healthier ways of attaining it.”

“It’s not aboutseeking validation,” I say, disturbed, because it makes me sound like some kind of fraud. “It’s because they’re the only people in this damn world who give a crap about me.”

Baxter’s gaze drifts once again to her desk drawer. “Language,” she chides. I know then that there’s no getting through to her. She waves at me to leave, which I do without a backward glance, thinking that this had been a most bizarre meeting indeed.

5

Ifind the chiefs examining their empty dorm and my heart lurches at the sight. This dorm had been the focal point of at least a hundred different fixed events in time. A whole kaleidoscope of images flicks through my mind — trashing, dancing, kissing, Benji. With stripped beds and empty shelves, the dorm looks hollowed-out and bare. It had been homely before, displaying the individual interests of three different young men, but now the barrenness feels even worse than Operation Strike First, when everything they’d owned had been brutally desecrated. Something has to exist in the first place to be destroyed. Now there’s nothing left to offer up for destruction.

“You’re really going to do this?” I ask, leaning against the doorway. Each of them has a large named box containing their possessions.

“She’s pissed with us,” Rory says, folding his bedsheets neatly on top of his box. “Theoretically, she could even expel us, since my father no longer seems to give a fuck, and there’s no way I want to return to the manor. Besides… it won’t be the same in here without Luke.”

I glance over at Luke’s box, most of which seems filled with books on ancient buildings and churches. His palace guard teddy bear peeks out over a thickset edition ofA Compendium of Historical Religious Sites in Ancient Britannia. “You’re still planning on leaving?” I ask, and Luke avoids meeting my eyes.

“The longer you stay there, the quicker he’ll say no,” Rory remarks dryly, bundling up a pale blue pillowcase. “But maybe it’d be for the best, Luke. The castle’s safe now.”

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