Page 145 of Feed Your Fiends

“I’ll keep my pointe shoes under lock and key.”

She taps her knife in thought. “I’m going to find out who did it.”

“That’s what Gant said…before.” When he pretended to care about me. Love me.

“And I’m going to find out why Zedd’s so mad at me. I mean, I know, but I don’t know. You know?”

I remember the girl in gold at the twins’ birthday bash.

“You’re liaising with that girl you brought to the party. Zedd hates her, I assume?”

Then it clicks! The girl he barked at in the greenhouse.

“But he won’t tell me why. Besides, she’s a tech whiz. She’s helping me hack Beaulieu’s cameras to find out who took those pointe shoes.”

I perk at that. “Anything yet?”

She shakes her head. “So you and Gant are really over?”

“A lot’s happened. Sometimes, there’s no going back. Somethings just can’t be.”

She looks at me inquisitively. “Do you wish you could go back?”

“What’s the use in wishing when you can’t? You understand that better than anyone with Etienne, right?”

“Right.” She nods. “It hurts now, but it’s for the best.”

“The best.” I nod.

“Who…who would want those sorts of relationships anyway? A bully and victim. A stepbrother and stepsister. They’re disgusting.”

“Pathetic.” I nod, and Aria nods back again.

I watch tears slide down her perfect ski-slope nose onto her mushy bagel. Then I take in her perfect hair and perfect face and…nothing is really perfect, is it?

I look around the café. I won't cry here, not with the sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows while the finance bros with briefcases and coffees go about their morning.

Cry for what?

I had money that I could turn into lifelong wealth. I got rid of my tormentor after receiving the best medical care money could buy, and in one night, I’d be returning to my dream school. I got everything I wanted.

Still, my eyes burn as I gaze into the parfait Aria’s set in front of me. Silently, we let tears fall until the food’s wet and soggy and the yoghurt has reverted to watery milk. Then, a thought strikes me that I hadn’t thought of at the moment. A thought, any thought, to distract me from another pity party of pathetic peril.

I hiccup and glance at Aria. “Who’s Zedd’s mortal enemy?”

Elle

When I walk into Libellule an hour later, I’m immersed in a sea of blondes from strawberry to platinum, to golden, to ash, to dirty blonde. That seems to be the only requirement aside from being a woman and drop-dead gorgeous.

Girls from the palest pales to tawny to deep ebony shimmy around the club, all in sage green corsets with long silk ribbons and emerald glass beads. They look worlds apart from the cheap plastic one I’d worn on my first and only day on the job.

‘I hate this outfit.’

‘Fuck, this corset is cheap.’

I shake away Gant’s words.

There aren’t enough corsets to go around because only half the women are wearing them. The other half are topless, prancing around in emerald thongs, lacy black stockings, and spiked stilettos. They’re rotating the corsets with similar-sized girls clustered in groups because they’re all auditioning with the new uniforms. If it can be called an audition.

---