Page 19 of Feed Your Fiends

“But did you see how awful he was for me back then? When he tormented me?”

“Elle—”

“I get it,” I say, that iciness finally causing a numbness to spread through me. “On the first day of the academy, you said that we weren’t friends. You’re Gant’s friend first. Not mine. I can’t blame you for guarding his best interests.”

“I can,” Stassi says, the venom thinly veiled in her tone. “Elle’s new to the group, but you didn’t tell me that you were liaising with him.”

“Liaising?” Aria asks incredulously.

“So what the fuck do you call it?”

“Being a friend! Someone to lean on in a time of need. Gant was cracking like a fucking egg, not that you noticed or cared. We were here, you were gone all summer, treating us like an afterthought. Yet you’re acting like you’re a better friend than me.”

“Because I am!”

“For who?” Aria hisses back with just as much venom. “Elle? Why not me? The person you’ve known since childhood.”

Stassi slumps, backing down a fraction.“Last summer wasn’t anything personal, okay? It was complicated. You wouldn’t have understood.”

“You never gave me the chance to. What? You think I couldn’t handle the idea of you having gastric surgery?”

So she found out.

“I didn’t tell her,” I say quietly, long after the secret leaves her lips.

“But I was supposed to tell on Gant,” Aria says, looking between Stassi and me. “See how hypocritical that is? We all kept secrets.”

“That’s different,” Stassi grits. “Aria, your body’s perfect, okay? Some things I can’t share with you because how could you relate?”

“Perfect?”

“Yes! Fucking perfect.”

“Who the fuck are you to decide? Who are you to say what I can and can’t relate to?”

“Please,you’re so perfect even Madame, with her impossible prima ballerina exceptions and delusions fawned all over you. Everyone always did. Everyone wants to be you. Every mother wants you to be their daughter! Not Miss Piggy.” Undeniable hurt etches deep between her brows at the last word that cracked in her throat.

Had her mother called her that? For the first time, I can feel the resentment laced in Stassi’s demeanour, and I can see that her secret surgery was about far more than Aria simply not understanding.

Aria scoffs, but her eyes are suddenly sheened with tears. “Oh, you want to talk about mothers? Fine. Yours is a bitch, and don’t flinch because you’ve called her that since we were ten. Now, let’s talk about fathers.”

Stassi doesn’t respond, but her shaking bottom lip slips between her teeth.

“My body’s so perfect. Is that why my father’s racist family won’t meet me because I look so perfect? So pale and blonde…oh wait, that’syou, but I’m perfect.”

Stassi’s clenched jaw loosens, the tension slipping from her shoulders.

Damn.

“I’m adarkieto them, and you think I wouldn’t understand how it feels to be rejected over something I can’t control? To have my own family see me as a creature, athing, anit. An abomination that’s diluted his fair genes. I’m not even a person to them, just like your mother equates you to a mere dress size. But I’m that fucking perfect.”

Stassi looks horrified, her mouth dropping open. “Aria—”

“You’ve made up your mind about me.Fine.” Aria’s eyes, full of welling tears she won’t ever let fall in front of us, snap to mine. “I threw those pointe shoes down the rubbish shoot into the bin. Someone took them out. Someone followed me from Gant’s dorm, and they saw me put them in there.”

“Yeah, Gant,” I say, far more coolly than I feel.

Aria shakes her head. “It wasn’t him, and I’m going to prove it.”

---