Page 76 of Serpentine Valentine
I looked at Effie, who shivered slightly before answering. “My birth father was unwell. He attacked our home when we were just kids and took me away with him. The police found me two weeks later, but…well, it left scars both literal and metaphorical. Our mother taught us to be strong and capable, not just in mind but in body.”
“We’ve been enrolled in one martial arts class or another since wewere seven,” Gracie told her with a little smile. “We know how to protect ourselves.”
Rhea looked at them and then down into my eyes, searching for something. “I don’t know how to protect myself.”
I opened my mouth to say I’d keep her safe but stopped before I could speak. Was that even a promise I could keep? Maybe to Rhea and Dahlia, but what about the four other girls assaulted by the Delta Alphas or Taya, who was also assaulted by Jerrod? What about the girls who texted HELP to our burner phones? Could I stand sentry for every single female on Acheron’s immense campus?
The simple answer wasno.
I was only human, however much I wished to be a god.
The extent of my rage could take down a grown man, but could it take down every predator in the vicinity of this institution? And what happened when I graduated next year? What of those girls I’d made promises to so they could sleep easier at night? Would their nightmares return?
“No, you don’t,” I agreed, squeezing her hand. “Do you want to know how?”
Rhea shuddered, but Dahlia answered immediately, the word a single, angry bark. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Rhea echoed.
“Okay.” I sucked in a deep breath to brace myself. Could I take this on? Between classes, Luna, and my plans for President Pallas and Professor Morgan, did I have more in me to give?
I remembered Agatha saying to me once, when I first started living with them, that the true sign of strength is not how hard you can punch but how much you can carry. I wondered at the endurance of my heart and decided I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.
Andthis was worth taking on.
“I’ll teach you,” I promised, and that felt better, teaching them to fish so they could eat for a lifetime instead of giving them fish so they could eat for a day.
“Us too,” Juno said instantly, overlapping Gracie’s words of, “Hell yeah.”
Effie grinned, slow and wicked. “Whoever said the Man Eater Crew had to be a group of four?”
“How can you hide from what never goes away?”
—Heraclitus
Luna
I foundthe first snakes when I was reading on a bench in the commons a week after I’d moved into Charity Lane. My body was sprawled over the damp wood even though it was really too cold to linger outside anymore. Lex’s secondhand copy of Sylvia Plath’sThe Bell Jardangled from my fingers, and my gaze was fixed on the massive oak tree towering above me. I was procrastinating by thinking of different words for the variety of colored leaves still clinging to dark branches:russet, ochre, honeyed, golden, tangerine. My lexicon was running low when my gaze skirted down the trunk and snagged on a carving in the wet wood.
Two snakes, twisted together in a figure-eight pattern, each eating its own tail.
It was instantly memorable. The message stark. Eternally eating its own tail, forever making the same mistakes but surviving. Life and death. Balance.
I swung off the bench, dog-earing my place in the book. The woodwas rough and cool beneath my fingers as I traced the symbol. Beneath it in small, precise numbers was carved 4357.
It was a curiosity, but I had too much going on to dwell on it. Living with the Gorgons was interesting, to say the least. They stayed up late studying or playing cards or reenacting scenes from their favorite plays dressed up in silly clothes they kept in a trunk in the hall closet. The night before, we’d done the fight scene fromRomeo and Juliet, Gracie a cutting Mercutio and Lex a righteous Romeo. I’d been Tybalt, dressed in a frilly, old-fashioned shirt and riding boots that were two sizes too big with a tree branch from the oak tree outside as my sword. I’d laughed so hard my stomach still hurt.
Nights with Lex were spent without much sleep, but I managed, caffeinated by the sheer pleasure of exploring this side of me and a new side of her. When it was just us in bed, she laughed sometimes and told me stories about her time with Agatha and the girls in Richmond before they’d all decided to apply to the same university. Every day I spent with her, I fell deeper and deeper, and I wondered when I would hit the end or if I’d just keep falling. If that was what it was like to be in love, to feel like your heart was expanding every moment you spent with the object of your affection.
My mom had left fourteen messages on my phone, but I hadn’t returned any of them. I intended to, at some point, but I still needed time to process. I just couldn’t figure out how to reconcile the woman who’d raised me to be a strong, independent feminist with the monster who was okay with hushing up sex crimes on campus.
And then there was the team. Flora had formed her own little posse who glared at me each practice and said nasty, derogatory things about my sexuality and gender every time I got too close to them. Mostly, I didn’t care, but our disunity led to us losing our first game of the season on Friday night, and that wasn’t okay. I had to figure out what to do aboutit, but it was probably the lowest item on my priority list.
Mostly because I’d started paying attention in Professor Morgan’s class.
He had two clear favorites, a pretty brunette by the name of Felicity who seemed to be a loner on campus, and an Indian girl, Rebecca, who I knew from a few of my lit classes. I got closer to them as they got closer to him.
Felicity was a loner because she suffered from severe social anxiety and even when she agreed to go for coffee with me, she asked if we could do it at her house, away from other people. She was sweet and shy, blushing when I asked about Professor Morgan. They had tea twice a week in his office, and didn’t I think he was dreamy?
