Page 11 of The Bargain

“Maybe so, maybe not.”

I reach out and cradle her pretty face in my hand. Beneath my fingers, her skin is soft and luminous. I wish my touch had the power to dim that inner light of hers, to seep it out and steal it for myself like Prometheus’s fire.

“You think I’d do that for you?” I ask softly, intimately, like a doomed lover.

She tries to pull away, but her legs are up against my bed. The only way to avoid my touch would be to drop back onto my mattress.

In my hand or on my bed, Head Girl. Which will it be?

“For the right price,” she bites out.

And now, we’re at the heart of it.

Desdemona walked in here to ask something from me, knowing full well I don’t ever give anything away for free. She came here prepared to pay the price for what she’s asking. It’s the invisible knife at her throat that forces her to tolerate my touch.

I tilt her head ever so slightly back, and her lips part on a shuddering intake of breath.

“Go on, then,” I command her softly. “Tell me what it is you’re offering.”

A tremor courses through her—her entire body rejecting the humiliation of this situation, no doubt. For a moment, I almost think she won’t do it.

And then Desdemona Sutton-Knight does the dirtiest thing I think she’s ever done in her life.

She pulls money out of her pocket.

4

Bruised Shapeless

Desdemona

The first time I ever saw Elias Lennox, he was sitting in the back of a classroom. I’d been sent there by my science teacher to return some borrowed textbooks. I spotted Elias and froze in the doorway.

We’d all heard of him: the foster kid adopted by the powerful Pearson family. He was standing with his back to me, and the first thing I noticed was how thin he was. In my family, everyone is tall and strong and athletic, and at Spearcrest, thinness is only ever a result of a carefully curated aesthetic. But Elias was thin in a way I’d never seen before.

His blazer hung on his shoulders as if from a coat hanger, not a sixteen-year-old boy. He was standing by the bookshelves at the back of the classroom, eating an apple with one hand, the other raised to the books, fingertips brushing the spines. He pulled out one of the dusty paperbacks—I had to squint to see that it was an old edition of Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe.

My heart tightened, though to this day I don’t know why.

Raucous voices coming from the other end of the corridor startled us both. Elias shoved the book into his backpack, and I retreated out of the doorway. He rushed out of the classroom so fast he didn’t even see me. He brushed past me as I plastered myself back against the wall, leaving behind him the faint smell of apples and cigarette ashes and book dust.

The next time I saw him, three months later, he was standing against a wall in Julian’s family’s ancestral home, having knives thrown at his head. I stared straight into his face, and the fury I felt was almost suffocating.

Why? I wanted to scream at him, to grab his skinny shoulders and shake him. Why are you letting him do this? Why are you letting them treat you like this?

You’re better than this. Show them.

When Mum came to Spearcrest, they all looked down on her, too. Her parents weren’t rich or famous, they just happened to work at the school. Everyone assumed that, just because Mum wasn’t one of them, she was less than them. But she didn’t allow them to dismiss her. She worked harder than everyone else, carving and clawing her way out of the chasm of their disdain.

Why wasn’t Elias doing the same?

I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t stand it.

When Julian cut open his face, Elias didn’t say a thing. He didn’t even flinch. Like the violence meant nothing, like it wasn’t enough of a problem to even get a reaction out of him.

Is this how little you value yourself? I thought.

I got my answer moments later, when Julian threw down a wad of money and Elias bent down to pick it up. And I came to understand, over the years, that Elias Lennox’s self-respect isn’t non-existent.