Page 73 of Our Last Resort

“How do you know all this?” I asked Simon.

He shrugged. I could guess what that meant:Some girls spoke. Obviously. But I can’t tell you which ones.

I thought about Edwina, slipping into the girls’ dorm, extracting a rotating crop of them from their beds. Sometimes a group, sometimes an individual girl. In some instances—when she’d left with multiple girls—she must have, truly, been meeting up with friends. But when she’d made her way out with just one girl—those nights, she’d been on a mission. She was headed to Émile’s house. Doing his bidding.

Simon and I went back to our respective dorms. The world had shifted under my feet. I sat on my bed, knees to my chest, arms around my legs.

I knew nothing of this Émile. A man whoslept with the girls.A man with a system. Who waited until we were of age, until he was off the hook. A man who helped himself tothe girls,marked us as if with a branding iron. Desire like an assembly line, a thing that had to be done.

I had believed in him.

A man, powerful but sweet; the implicit trust of his unlocked office.

It was a lie, this version of him that I’d trusted my whole life.Pure Émile, beautiful Émile, the best man accepting a dollar bill marked with lipstick, an angel led astray, giving in to temptation, just once.

He wasn’t real.

All he was, all he had ever been, was a story I’d told myself.

The next morning, at dawn, I went back to his office.

As long as I lived in his world, there was no other choice. His rules. His desires.

Around seven, he did something.

Ah, yes.

That, I remember.

His fucking hand on my fucking shoulder.

At ease. Unquestioning. Proprietary.

Disgusting.

“Oh,” he said. “I almost forgot.”

He grabbed my wrist. With a long pair of scissors, he snipped off my white bracelet. It fell to the ground, dirty and worn and abandoned.

“Here.”

He reached into his pocket and produced a new bracelet. This one was blue, larger than its predecessor. It wasn’t special: Everyone got one when they turned eighteen. Gabriel had received his own six months earlier.

“Hold still,” Émile said, and tied it around my wrist with a triple knot.

Later on—much, much later on—I swam in the Atlantic Ocean and felt the creepy swirl of seaweed wrapping itself around my ankles. It brought me back to that moment, Émile’s office and his fucking bracelet around my wrist.

Émile held up my arm, admiring his handiwork.

The bracelet was supposed to feel like a big deal. It was a privilege, an achievement.

Émile dropped my wrist and turned his gaze to me. His expression was exalted, expectant. He was waiting for me to say something.

“Thanks,” I said.

That’s when I knew.

Gabriel and I were on cafeteria-cleaning duty that night. On our way out, I whispered to him: “Can you meet tonight?”

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