Page 69 of Swallow Your Sorries

“Hey,” I breathe, trying to sound upbeat and like I hadn’t just had a miserable nightmare.

Or a few orgasms prior.

Shut up!

I don’t know why I do that. Why do I protect Mum’s feelings by constantly reassuring her that I’m okay when she never does the same for me?

Maybe it’s because I try to be one less thing she has to worry about.

“Elle Belle,” her familiar voice crinkles over the speaker and the nickname sends a shot of warmth to my soul because I’m that damn lonely. She really needs a new phone though. I have to pull it away from my ear every time she talks to avoid the static shredding of my eardrums.

“I wanted to call earlier, but I didn’t want to impose on your first week. Tell me everything. Have you made some new friends yet?”

My heart sinks at the excitement in her voice. No matter how mad I get at her, no matter how much she never protected me, I still want to protect her at all costs. So, how could I tell her that I’m being bullied? That my uniform and textbooks were ruined and that I’d nearly drowned for a second time?

Worse, how could I tell her that she’s right about the Auclairs? How could I risk her coming to Beaulieu and begging me to leave with her? She’d think she was doing the right thing by keeping me safe under her broken wing. But all she would be doing is setting me up for a life of minimum wage. Without Beaulieu, there are no opportunities. No scholarships, no college. No ballet.

Not if I returned to my old defunded public high school.

She’s right that I’m not like the other kids here who have Mummy and Daddy to rely on. All I have are Jaime and Jarett, a match made in hell. Mum’s intentions may be good now, but isn’t that what the pathway to hell is painted with?

No, I need to stay. I need my education.

“It’s going great,” I lie, gazing over my shoulder and into the dark room at Aria and Stassi’s beds where both girls slumber soundly beneath the covers. “I’m getting on well with my roommates. It’s like a big slumber party all the time.”

I bite my tongue on the last bit tasting the metallic twang of blood. Maybe I’d gone too far on that part. Both girls largely ignored me, but more than that, they pretended each other didn’t exist.

“What about ballet classes? How are they coming?”

“Not at all,” I mumble before clarifying, “My first practical ballet class is tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to it.”

LIAR!

The entire school already knows that I’m a weak dancer thanks to Beaussip and Gant’s hefty bribe and the use of a body double just to get me admitted into Beaulieu proves it.

I’d had so much confidence in my abilities at my old school. I was the best. The stand out. The golden child of the group. What would I be here at Beaulieu? I’d made ballet my identity, and now, I suddenly feel like a giant fraud awoken from a false reality I’d wholeheartedly believed to be true. That I’m a good dancer.

“You’ll do great,” Mum reassures me, but I don’t feel any better. “I know I don’t say it enough Ellie, but I’m so proud of you. For sticking to your dreams. For earning that scholarship. For going back to that…to that awful place with those awful memories that I allowed to happen for far too long.”

My stomach burns fiercely at the word ‘earn’, but my heart swells at her accountability. At least her awareness was growing. Slowly, but surely.

“The girls down at the deli couldn’t believe it when I told them,” she says with a watery laugh. “Beaulieu Academy.I may as well have told them that you were marrying a royal and moving into Buckingham Palace.”

Well, I’m being bullied and assaulted by a pseudo-royal. Does that count?

I chuckle nervously, watching the trees dance in the breeze. In the moonlight, the lake on the fringes of campus glistens, as does the pointy roof of the greenhouse nestled a few kilometres beside it. It’s hard to believe something so beautiful, so downright alluring, could be fatal.

A chiselled face and black eyes zoom to the forefront of my mind, the perfect example of tantalisingly lethal.

I physically swipe away his smug face with a swat of my hand through the cool night air.

When it disappears, I’m once again greeted by the breathtaking landscape and I can’t help but feel like a massive fraudulent piece, marring its beauty as that word‘earn’ replays on a loop in my ear. Because the truth is, even if I’m shameless enough to stay, Iknowthat I don’t deserve to be here. I wasn’t good enough to earn it.

I didn’t earn it.

“You didn’t have to tell them about it,” I murmur.

“Of course I did! I know I was hesitant given the circumstances.”

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