A Lesson in Vengeance(78)

“What do you think of them?” I ask.

Leonie pats the seat next to her at the island, and after a beat, I take it. She crosses her arms over her shut notebook and meets my gaze straight-on.

“You really want to know?” she says.

“I really want to know.”

A smile cuts across Leonie’s red-lipsticked mouth. “I think they’re full of shit.”

I almost choke on my own laugh, startled, amazed—Leonie has to be the first person I’ve ever met to just come out and say it. But she’s right.

“They’re all bluster. They make it seem like the coven is the only path to success after Dalloway, but that’s just propaganda.”

“It’s not entirely propaganda. Margery girls always succeed.”

“Because they’re rich, not because they’re Margery. They’re rich and they’re white.”

My teeth catch my lower lip. There’s a bladed quality to Leonie’s voice; I’ve never seen her like this.

“Why did you join then?” I ask.

Leonie shrugs. “Why does anyone join? And I liked it, at first. They liked me, too. Only then last year I mentioned that one of their little bits of historical legend was technically inaccurate, and all of a sudden they started treating me differently. It was…let’s say illuminating.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Right? But that’s my point. They’re horrible.”

I sit with her words for a moment, turning them over in my mind like stones. She’s right, of course. She’s right, but I didn’t want to admit it before. The Margery coven was all about appearances—from their feeble gestures at “magic” to their rejection of Leonie. Their rejection of me when I got sick.

I wonder what part of the legend was inaccurate—if this is another piece of knowledge Leonie acquired during her research off-campus. I wonder how limited my own understanding of the Dalloway Five is, if by studying only what I found in the library, I’ve trapped myself in a certain view.

I only ever wanted the Five to have been witches. I only ever saw what I wanted to see.

Not like Leonie. For Leonie, it was never about what she wanted—it was about discovering the truth.

“I’m really sorry, Leonie,” I say at last. “I…That’s repulsive.”

Leonie rolls her eyes, but her smile is good-natured as she says, “See? Now you’re getting it.”

I head to the fridge and take out the cheese plate Clara and Kajal assembled last night after dinner, peeling off the plastic wrap and bringing it back to the island.

“Do you want to know something?” I say, impulsive, but suddenly I want her to know this about me. Leonie has confided in me about her dream of being a writer. I want to trade one secret for another.

She opens her notebook again, setting her pen down at the binding. “All right.”

I’d told Ellis, of course, if indirectly. I told Alex. Maybe putting words to this part of myself has already drained the secret of some of its power, because it’s easier now to meet Leonie’s gaze across the table and say, “I’m lesbian. It’s a little bit of a secret….Or…it was. Maybe not anymore.”

To Leonie’s credit, she doesn’t even look surprised. “Oh. That’s cool.”

“It is cool,” I agree, and I grin before I can stop myself. Leonie smiles back. And for a moment it feels like there’s a cord drawn between us, a link.

“For what it’s worth,” Leonie adds, “I don’t think anyone in the house would think any differently of you, if you ever decide to tell them.”

I’m sure that’s true. It’s never really been about fear of exclusion—not lately, anyway. Maybe it just felt like such a personal part of my identity. Maybe I didn’t want to let anyone so close.

Ellis has changed all that.

When evening falls, three of us Godwin girls play rummy in the common room till fatigue takes over. Clara is already off on her glamping trip, although I have no idea how she managed to get permission to skip class for something like that. And Ellis returned to the house after dinner, but she’d darted straight upstairs without speaking to anyone. Judging by the glassy look in her eyes we’d all gathered she was writing, too absorbed in the world of her characters to remember the rest of us existed.

“I don’t know what you did to her over break,” Kajal says as we’re all heading upstairs to our respective rooms. “But whatever it is, it worked. I was starting to think she’d never finish that damn book.”

The heat that rises in my cheeks has nothing to do with Ellis’s book and everything to do with what I did to her over break. I wonder if it’s written all over my face—if they both can tell exactly what I’m thinking, despite my efforts to appear cool and unruffled as I bid them good night on the second-floor landing.

The candles on my windowsill have burned out; they’re stubs of melted wax now, the wicks charcoal smudges impossible to relight. I scrape the wax off with the edge of a ruler. It’s slow work, but I don’t stop until every sign of the candles has been rubbed away. In their place I put a row of colored flat marbles I bought at the antiques shop I went to with Ellis that one time. I’d gone back before break to purchase the pince-nez Ellis had worn. I’d meant to give them to her as a gift for surviving midterms, but I forgot; they presently rest in a velvet-lined case hidden in the back of my desk drawer. Maybe they’ll make a better gift for when Ellis finishes her book. She can revise with the glasses perched on the end of her nose, red pen in hand.