I walk down the hall, my uniform skirt swishing around my knees, and I can hear the whispers. They rasp against my ears like leaves on a sidewalk in autumn. They crawl into my brain, whispering things like “slut”, “easy”, “tramp”. They hole up in my heart and slither down my throat into my stomach. The squirm under my skin and wedge beneath my fingernails like bamboo slivers. I can feel them in every breathe I take, every time I place my foot on the yellow tiles of St. Claire’s Academy for the Excellent, which I most certainly am not.
Something heavy and cold rushed away from me, and I forced my eyes open. I could still feel a weak echo of its weight on my body: fear, betrayal, making a horrible mistake… The feelings weren’t mine, but they didn’t seem unfamiliar. Panting, I stared at the slim man kneeling before me. “I’m so sorry,” he said, looking sympathetic and concerned. “I passed right through you. That was entirely my fault.” I just kept staring at him, opening and closing my mouth like an idiot. Why could I see the stars in the sky…through his head?
I pressed my fingertips into the splintered log until my blood began to darken the wood. Evangeline waited with strips of linen. “Why didn’t you like my embers idea, Katherine?”I shook my head. I would take the sharp pain of wood slicing flesh over smoldering embers any day. My fear of fire ran deep. Even my best friend didn’t know how deep. It had left scars no one could see. Evangeline bandaged my bleeding fingers as the memories closed in on me. The stinging pain was nothing compared to what would happen if this ruse did not work.
The wind was stinging my raw and already frozen hands. I had been scaling this perfectly vertical tower since dusk of this moonless night, trusting my life to two thick ropes and hooks. They had brought me a hundred feet; only fifty now remained, but that stretch was known to be the sheerest of all. I flung one rope and my hopes upward. Shattering glass soon interrupted my prayers, prompting five whispered words from me: “Please don’t cut the rope.” My two targets and my current client were mutual enemies. I was now working for all of them at once.
Ian looked up at the sky. The tree swayed gently beneath him, the only thing in the world willing to hold him. How could his plan have gone so horribly wrong? He had planned for everything, and they had thrown it in his face. He could still see them… His father recoiling in disgust… his sister backing slowly away from him… his mother’s hollow “This doesn’t change anything, Ian,” that he knew to be a lie… They saw him as a freak. They might never love him again. Ian pulled his wings around himself and tried desperately not to cry. I almost cried with that line about “the only thing in the world willing to hold him”.