Page 34 of Serpentine Valentine
The rage snuck into my voice again, threatening to overtake me. I let myself imagine slamming Mina’s elegant head into the table, the crunch of her nose breaking and the wail she’d let out before she cupped her ruined face.
It made me feel better.
“I can make life very difficult for you here at Acheron,” she warned, trying to compose herself by tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and fiddling with her pearl earrings. “You don’t want that.”
It hurt, her words and the laughter they produced in my throat.
I’d admired her so much forso long. Loved her even.
And now this.
I was glad we had this meeting, though. It only proved I was on the right path.
I stood slowly and braced my palms on the table to lean over her and spoke slowly, so she would feel every word.
“Every single day is more difficult than you can imagine. I wake up screaming. I don’t sleep right. It’s a hardship to leave my room knowing I’m going onto campus with men everywhere. Withhimas close as the other room sometimes. I hate my body. I hate my peers for calling me a slut. I’m alone and broken, Mina. Andyoucontributed to that. So go for it. Try to make my life worse than it is. I doubt I’ll feel a difference.
“What I do know is that I get out of bed every day for three very important reasons. One, I refuse to let my education at Acheron U be taken from me when it’s all I’ve ever wanted. Two, I fully intend to showcase exactly what kind of monster Professor Morgan is. And three, Mina, is you.”
I pushed off the table and knocked on the door.
When the cop opened it, I said, “Unless I’m under arrest, I believe I’m free to go?”
After he reluctantly looked at Mina, then nodded, I turned back to the woman who had helped make my life a living hell.
My smile was genuine, warm, and bright. It seemed to take her aback because she blinked.
“Tell Luna I said hello,” I tossed at her before I turned on my heel, hair swinging behind me like a cape, and left.
“I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.”
––J. D. Salinger
Lex
It turnedout that my words to the president were unnecessary because when I walked up the path to the heritage home I shared with my sisters that evening, a familiar rose gold head gleamed from the swing on my front porch.
I didn’t greet her as I approached, and I was surprised she didn’t say anything either. Most people were too anxious to let silence unfold around them, but I often found it more eloquent than words.
And Luna’s quietness said something.
There was no fear in it, which surprised me after last night. I figured even if she didn’t fear me for all the reasons most other women seemed to, she would fear what we had done.
The kiss.
That fucking kiss.
It made me feel like that Timber rattlesnake had that morning I lay broken and bleeding in the woods soclose to spiritual death.
It made me feel like I’d been given a gift.
When you’re given something precious after years of being handed only hexes, it feels like it’s been rigged to explode the moment you open the box. Whatever goodness inside can only be a ruse. The question is whether to throw it away immediately or enjoy it while it lasts even if it blows up in your face.
My platform loafers thudded against the old wood stairs leading up to the porch, the crunch of leaves beneath my heels little bursts of joy. I loved the sound of fall, the smell and the aura of everything celebrating before the long sleep of winter set in. Morgan had mostly ruined it for me, but as I leaned against the post and stared at Luna curled up in the porch swing, I found some pleasure in it again.
She didn’t look up at me, her gaze fixed on a folded newspaper I knew instantly wasTheNew York Times, her black pen scratching out answers in the tidy boxes of the famous crossword puzzle. That she did it in pen, so assured in her responses, was oddly arousing.
She shouldn’t have made such a pretty picture tucked against the wood slates in an oversized green sweater with the symbol for Slytherin house on the breast, the sleeves pulled down over her knuckles to keep off the chill. But the way her silky red-gold hair fluttered in the spiced autumn breeze, tickling her cold-flushed cheek, and the way she tapped the end of her slightly bitten-off pen against her plump lower lip was outrageously compelling. She had Debussy playing from the speaker on her phone perched on the railing, and her shoes made a tidy pair set beside the swing, strangely lonely like they were waiting for another pair to join them.
