Oh, this should be good. “I wasn’t aware that I had one.”
“You’re smart. Too smart for your own good. And you waste your intellect, because you’re too busy rebelling against a system that’s trying to help you learn.”
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it would be to realize that the system that’s ‘trying to help me’ is actually trying to brainwash me with behaviors and thought processes that eliminate free thought or choice, so that when they tell me to jump, I won’t question the command. I’ll just do it. No point explaining this to Jarvis, though. It’s too late for her. Her synapses are already hardwired in place. She’s stuck. “There is nothing you can teach me that I can’t learn out of a book or from the internet,” I tell her. “I don’t have to comply with a system or mold myself into any particular kind of shape to please someone if I want to learn that way. I’ll be damned if I do it here, either.”
She sighs wearily, throwing her hands up. “I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with you right now. Tonight’s my night to play chaperone to you guys. I’m responsible for what goes on here, and I’m not gonna let you traipse around, doing whatever the hell you like—”
“I’m not trying to instigate an orgy. I just wanna go up to the fourth floor and say hi to a friend.”
Her face pales, apart from two small patches of crimson that blossom right over her cheekbones. Her pupils are twin giant black holes. “That’s…not an appropriate…thing to…” She shakes her head again. “Look. Who do you want to see? I’ll go and get her, and the two of you can sit down here with me. I can’t let you up these stairs, though. Boys aren’t allowed up into the girls’ wing, regardless of the time. This isn’t a co-ed living arrangement.”
I heave out a sigh, rolling my eyes. “Presley. Maria. Witton. Chase.” Each word is like a bullet striking me right between the eyes. When will I get to stop saying that interminable name?
“The redhead?”
“Yeah. The redhead.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You made friends with the redhead?”
I give her a tight-lipped smile. “I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Forgive me if I’m having a hard time believing you. You’ve never shown an interest in being friendly with anyone outside of your roommates. Anyway. Presley’s on the second floor now, in the old storage room. She isn’t even on the fourth floor. Wait here. I’ll go find her and ask her if she wants to hang out with y—”
“Hell’s teeth, woman! Forget it. Talking to you is like voluntarily smashing my own face into a wall!” I turn and head for the exit. Behind me, the English teacher makes a cute little growly noise that I think is supposed to represent frustration.
“Damn it, Pax! You know you’re not allowed to curse in front of me. I’m supposed to write you up now. And do not call me woman!”
“Fine. I’ll stick to Jarvis.”
She squawks, extra angry now. I chuckle under my breath as I shove the door open and head out into the budding dusk. My work here is done. I got the information I came for, and poor Ms. Reid doesn’t even realize that she’s the one who gave it to me.
The night air sings with crushed pine needles and cooling sap. I hang my clothes over the lowest branch of a red oak, relishing the kiss of the water vapor misting my bare skin. Before me, Guinevere’s Waterfall thunders—gallons and gallons of water roaring over the edge of the slick slab of stone. During the day, the rush of water scatters rainbows into the air as it descends to the deep plunge pool forty feet below, but tonight, with a thick bank of clouds blotting out the moon and the stars’ light, the water disappears into nothingness.
I found this place a few months after I came to Wolf Hall. While Wren was painting, and Dash was hammering away at his piano, before I picked up my camera, I ventured out into the thick forest that blankets the mountain we live on and I bonded with it. The nest of angry vipers, constantly seething and writhing in the pit of my stomach, stilled when I surrounded myself with the trees. I became still. I learned how to breathe. Outside of the forest, it’s very hard to remember how. The moment the soles of my shoes hit dirt here, though, the tension that grips me every other waking hour of the day releases its hold, and briefly I am free.
I don’t jump very often at night. Even I know how dangerous it is to hurl myself off a ledge into the void when I can’t even see the body of water below, but I trust myself enough. I’ve jumped plenty of times during the day, when I’ve gauged how far I need to launch myself away from the cliff face in order to avoid the outcrop of jagged rocks below. I stored that information in my muscles a long time ago—the body remembers. It knows that kind of thing—and I’m very calm as I step back from the cold, smooth edge of the stone.
I take the run up, and I hurl myself into the dark.
Cold wind rushes over my goose-bumped skin as I fly, first forward and then down as gravity takes hold and I begin to fall. My stomach drops. I let out a loud whoop, bringing my legs together, ankles crossed, toes pointed, and then the shock of the cold water hits me. I knife through the surface, sinking down, down, down, and even with my eyes open I can see nothing at all. Not even the faintest glimmer of light to lead me back up to the surface.
I let physics do its work.
The human body floats, especially when its chest cavity has a lung full of air trapped inside it. Instead of trying to kick my way up, I surrender myself to the crushing cold, waiting for my body to rise. It goes against every instinct I have, to wait like this. After the adrenalin of the drop, my body is alive with energy and desperate to move, but I force it to obey. Slowly, I float to the surface, my lungs prickling with need as I give in and let myself gulp down a fresh breath of air.
Everything rushes toward and away from me at the same time. That fucking French girl I screwed in Corsica. The Contessa, listing over in its mooring like a toy boat, slowly disappearing below the water; my mother, sick and dying; the moment at the hospital, just before the anesthesia took me, where I wondered if I was actually going to wake up again. And Presley, her face splattered with her own life blood, so, so fucking beautiful in her near-death.
I tread water, thrilled by how dark and thick the water is around me, black as oil. Thrilled, also, by the fact that I have no idea how deep it goes beneath me, or what might be lurking in the plunge pool’s depths, ready to take a bite out of me.
I'm not worried about potential monsters, crouched beneath the rocks below, waiting to drown me, though. I'm concerned (not worried. I could never be worried) by Chase. I make plans. I do weird shit that confuses other people because I have an ulterior motive. It is not okay for someone like Presley, someone from outside my secure little bubble here at the academy, to infiltrate my brain and distract me in any way, shape or form. It’s not okay for her to disobey my wishes, either. I told her to come to the house, and she didn’t.
For that, there will be consequences.
Gradually, I rise to the surface of the water with a renewed sense of purpose.
The path down into the plunge pool took all of five seconds. The way up takes much longer. I know the route, though, even without any light to guide me. There's a well-defined goat track up the side of the cliff-face that's relatively safe to navigate. I clamber up, my bare feet used to the coarse, rough rock and the slippery sections where slick moss has claimed the handholds.