Page 11 of The Black Table
Slowly, I raise my head just enough to look myself in the mirror.
I can do this. Iwilldo this.
Somehow, I will figure it out.
For now, I have to go to class.
On unsteady legs, I rise back up, blood rushing to my head, and succumb to the breathing exercises as I dress as quickly as humanly possible, tugging the first clean clothes from the top of my suitcase, pulling the sleeves of another black sweater as far as they will stretch and sheathing my legs in the blackest opaque tights I own.
And as I do, something flutters to the ground, gentle as a butterfly.
A handkerchief.
Kingston’s handkerchief.
Frowning, I stoop to retrieve it. I didn’t even realize I still had the thing, and I certainly don’t want to keep it.
Then again, I realize, I don’t want to engage with him again, either. Certainly not now that I know he’s the stepbrother of the roommate who, at best, begrudges my very existence.
I look down to where I’ve been absentmindedly rubbing the hem and see a line of dark thread beneath my fingertips. Two simple rows of stitches: one across, one down.
A cross?
My heart stutters.
Or asword, Gwenna. Think about it.
I stuff the thing in my pocket and leave for class.
Seminar roomthree is at once cramped but high-ceilinged, and as soon as I walk in, I’m hit with a dilemma: where to sit. This isn’t St. Catherine’s Preparatory anymore, where we’re assigned by last name, but it’s also not a cafeteria full of students who’ve known me since the fifth grade and have already decided they’re not going to let me sit with them. I’m unmoored, unknown, and, I realize as the door clicks shut behind me, the last person here.
The professor is a stylish, middle-aged woman with the deep-dyed crimson hair only actual French women seem to possess. She weaves me in with a smile that is accommodating, if not fully friendly.
“Ah, la voilà,” she says. “La nouvelle. S’il te plaît.” She indicates the classroom, a large square table with a small handful of students gathered around it.
I nod. “Merci.” I sigh and do a quick calculation: two girls next to each other, one with long, dark straight hair, pouting lips, and tan skin like she’s just gotten back from Saint-Tropez, the other I recognize as the student worker from the administration building yesterday, blonde hair and skin the color of skim milk with some freckles and a ski-jump nose. They both give me studiously blank expressions and then turn back to their books.
Besides that, there are two painfully scrawny guys with glasses, and one guy who seems to be twenty going on forty-five with a thick ponytail and an actual briefcase. He gives me a kind of “Hello, milady” look that gives me a full-body reaction.
No thank you. None of that.
I’ve been standing still too long, so I choose the move of least resistance and sit at the end of the table.
“D’accord—on commence,” says the professor, her French as fluid and chill as a mountain stream. “If you could take out the poem assigned for reading, the Hugo. You’ll discuss in groups to prepare for the writing of yourexplications de texte. And I,” she adds ominously, “will form the groups.”
With quick flicks of her fingers, she separates us off, a move I suspect she has done only to break up the blonde girl and her brunette friend.
To my great fortune, the brunette is assigned to me.
I pick up my bag and slide to the seat next to her.
“Enchantée,” she says, in a cardboard accent. I pull my sweater sleeves down out of habit.
“Moi aussi,” I reply, hastily pulling everything and everything out of my bag, stopping just short of dumping all the contents out entirely before rooting around for my book of poetry and a pen. I wait for her to make the first move, given that, you know, she’s been taking this class for three weeks and knowswhat poem was actually assigned,but nothing.
“Donne-moi un moment pour lire le text?” I say to her—give me a sec to catch up, basically. Still, no attention. Instead, she sighs, glances at the clock, glances at the thin gold watch draped around her wrist, drums her fingers on her chin. She glances at her friend, who looks equally uncomfortable after being paired off with the ponytail guy, then stares at the door like she’s waiting for a package delivery or something.
Nothing to me.
